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I along with some friends have been roleplaying since september.
We have never really had a campain, just lots of mini dungeons.
I have been nominated the DM and I have decided to make a horror campain.
Any ideas?

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - HP Lovecraft

Take that and run with it. Avoid cliched monsters (werewolves and vampires). Create a storyline that is unexpected and unpredictable.

Yes. Let them see what the monster has done, find its tracks, and hear the thing. But keep it just offstage to heighten the dread of the actual encounter.

PCs tend to get a bit anxious if you close off the way they got in to a dungeon. Especially if they know that the thing they are hunting for is in there with them.

Don't be afraid to kill a character every now and again...if the players know that you will, then they will respond more fearfully to anything you throw at them!


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Ooo, actually, one I used to always love, throw a doppelganger at them. That always scares the hell out of players because then it comes down to luck whether they win or not...

Alternatively...pass random notes to individual players forbidding them from discussing what is written on them. That always makes people nice and paranoid!

Have one of the players be a doppleganger. Having an inside man can really make it interesting. Just make sure it is someone you know you can trust and knows how to be subtle. If it is running around screaming "I am evil" you won't get the desired effect.

Don't name monsters/ If you tell people they're fighting Orcs, it's "OK, Combat Scenario 2B. Let's go." and there's no real tension in the fight. If instead it's a slavering, horrible monster with inhuman black nails and yellow, rotting teeth, that can be scary. Also, players won't know if it's going to whip out an ability they've never seen.

Make sure they're in on it. Reward players (if not their characters) for going along with the genre expectations. The smart thing is often for them to bunker down, but that's no fun. If they explore the haunted house, especially in the late afternoon (I.E. so it can get dark when they're there...) I think that's a good time to hand out some extra XP.If they wait, it's their fault and they may even fail at rescuing the townsfolk or whatever. At the least, the monsters have conveniently moved all the good treasure out...

One thing to consider is what subgenre of horror you're looking at. All are valid options, but there's a big difference between 'blood and guts' stuff like zombie attacks and more subtle stuff like dealing with dopppelgangers (as Ahtman suggests).

The Ravenloft campaign setting had some good tweaks to minimize player's abilities to short-cut mysteries. I only had the 2nd edition version, but I know it essentially killed Detect Evil (Using Detect Evil in a place where the entire plane is evil is a really bad idea) and made a lot of effects to detect lies and such harder to use.

Another idea for the Detect Evil thing is that DE detects where evil has been done, not an instant view into everyone's character sheets. Sure. Lord Evilpants shows up as evil, but so does that girl he beat up, at least for a while. So does the place where he did it, and the implements used. Twist DE (with warning to players) to be more of a "Sense stuff we should get involved in" instead of an instant justification for an attack.

Shane Hensley, who created the Deadlands RPG (mix of horror and wild west themes) had some good advice on one book. One piece I remember is not joining in on jokes. Players joke as a way to defuse tension, and may do it unintentionally.

There is plenty of horror in D&D, always was. How much tension is added is up to the DM.

I'd recommend picking up some of the Ravenloft books on Amazon or Ebay. They're 3.0/3.5 so they may or may not perfectly fit into whatever system you're using, but they were written by the White Wolf guys, so they're "Concept First, Rules Second" about things. I use them with Pathfinder and get good results with minimum tweaks to monster stats. 4E would be more difficult. The general gist of the books are as follows:

- Detect evil doesn't show you evil. It shows you what people are "Innocent".
- Innocence is like virginity. Once it pops, it's gone. While intact, it gives you some bonuses to resisting evil, but penalties on will due to being naive. You lose it by doing evil things, or going crazy.
- Cliche monsters are still in, but generally have more/different immunities than you'd expect. A vampire will probably be rendered inert from a stake, but he might not care about holy symbols. There could have been a flower put on his grave when he was buried though that is an allergen to him that he recoils from. This should not be obvious and requires effort to discover. Likewise, your werewolf might be vulnerable to gold, rather than silver. The heroes have to find enough gold and then get the weapon commissioned. All on the down low while trying to avoid being hunted.
- Consider the impact on the psyche. Ravenloft makes you take saves for fear, horror, and madness. If you think your guys can roleplay that, you should look up the system and the effects of it. It's fun.
- Consider low magic. I hate telling my guys that they can't play a particular class though, so I tell them that they should stray away from Evocation spells when doing a horror setting. I don't ban them from it. There'll just be "consequences"
- Consider music. Nothing over the top, but I like using winamp along with the remote control I have on my phone for it to kick off stuff by Midnight Syndicate at moments before things are going to get tense. It adds to it, especially when it just quietly starts up from the other room without anyone going up to the computer.
- Not everything should be scary. This sounds weird to say when planning a horror campaign, but if you don't have something worth fearing for, why be scared? That is, if it's all "back to the wall, we're here to hunt monsters", then that's all it's going to be. Give them something worth protecting. Something they're scared to lose.

That's my most immediate thoughts on the matter. If you get the books, get the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Avoid the Campaign setting. It's 3.0, and the other two cover the same topics better. I'd also look into the Denizens of Dread book. It has all manner of terrific monsters in it along with a complete rehash of old ones. (Goblyns are suddenly these medium size things with giant claws that spellcasters brew in their basements.)

Someone I knew got a new simcard for their phone and used it to do spooky calls/texts to the players (both in and out of the game).

The way I started this game was with the two PCs (we've added more since) running up a spiral staircase with three other men. They did not know each other and I made them Wisdom check to realize this. As they stopped to try to discuss it, one of the guys screamed at them about how there wasn't time to stop and that they must hurry. Upon getting almost all the way up the tower, one of them triggers a trap which drops a portcullis. The lead PC dove through it, but everyone else got caught. He continues running while the other two guys lifted the portcullis so that the PCs can get through. As they catch up to him, they come across a room on top of the tower in which a man in a black robe who looks identical to the lead NPC along with eight other guys in black robes all stand around an altar. On the altar is a naked woman, tied down. The robed man addresses his counterpart, laughing erratically and saying "You'll never save her, George. It's already too late. You've lost this time."

Fighting breaks out. The robed guy has a long kris for a weapon. He IMMEDIATELY runs the girl through, because real evil doesn't even give good the chance to win. The bad guys all have poisoned daggers that cause paralysis like a ghoul's touch. They quickly stun both PCs and "George". I emphasize how they're still conscious and aware though it's felt like their joints have hardened. The last thing they remember is seeing the guy with the Kris run it through the chest of one of the PCs.

---

They both wake up in a field, fully armed and with all their gear as they had designed their characters. The locations of where their wounds should have been hurts like they've been cut, though there are no signs of injury. The grass around them is trampled as if they were running in a circle going up stairs and then jumping around in the middle like they were pretending to fight. They still don't know each other, how they got there, or who the people were.

A session or two later, they found out from a Vistani (gypsy) seer that it was a premonition, and that they might be able to still stop this from happening.

Ditto on keeping the main character off the field.

One option is to add political tension or even a hidden true enemy. (e.g. The vampires are the obvious enemy but they are in fact being controlled by a cleric that is trying to destabilize the government or discredit another from office.)

Another option is to make the unkillable monster. My favorite for this is a liche but you can make a number of things work here. Use of simulacrums, clones and phylactery allow a number of "final" battles. The cool thing here is they kill the simulacrum but say at the cost of a character or two. They think they have finally killed the main antagonist of the campaign only to find out they really have only killed a monster that is 60% of the real thing. Go onto the next time and they finally think they have killed the liche but find out that he is reformed and to truly end his menace they have to locate the phylactery - ideally in some gods-forsaken corner of the world or on another plane.

You can complicate the situation as much as you want and a liche - being an undead wizard - should be a fear-inducing direct threat - while also an option to impose the ongoing threat. (e.g. What will it send against us next? Who is working for the liche?)

Of course the ultimate is to uncover that some unspeakable ritual is scheduled so now there is the weight of a time limit. IMO D&D parties are very resilient if given an unlimited time to address any issue. Impose a time limit so they can't stop, rest and recharge. That imposes a real issue for them. (e.g. We are spent on potions and spells, we could rest for a day but we have to get an answer and get back to the lord within a week or our success will not matter...)