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Horror in all its facets with Hero System for Halloween.


Jeffrey Davis

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It is almost Halloween.  I would like to hear about some frightening Hero System plots or stories from any genre plus any favorite rules for such things.  

 

Example:  Sanity and effects it has in conveying the horror of the event or scene.   Your description of a Frightening Hero System creature or your ideas for one.  Maybe you have a thought or idea of a great Halloween adventure that we can all add our two cents to.

 

here is mine to start.

Coblynu, a Welsh word for Goblin.   A short humanoid around 4 feet in height.  Appears as an old man with oversized facial features like nose, eyebrows and ears and gnarled and knobby old knuckles.  They can disappear in shadows and darkness and travel from one shadow to another within eyeshot.  They can mimic any sound and delight in tormenting people and animals.  When provoked, they can be deadly.  Oh, did I forget to mention they can use magic.

 

Imagine if you will your hero saves the day, something minor on his or her way to some rather unimportant.  The saving is not even something memorable but your hero or heroes just ruined the plans of a group of these Goblins.  The genre is not relevant as things go missing,  vehicles don't start because of missing parts and one hero opens a door to have a bucket of ice water drop on his head for minor stun damage.  Nothing too bad, right but as the tricks go on they get more and more deadly.  Bucket of ice water becomes a bucket of rocks to an iron bar.  Car doesn't start to car fills with smoke to car explodes.  A weapon goes missing just as our hero needs it most or the missing bank's gold is now in your hero's gym bag.  You get my meaning.  

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I'm not generally a fan of the horror genre, but I am very partial to superheroes, and an admirer of good writing for any genre. Back in 1990, author and RPG designer Allen Varney contributed an adventure to the Fourth Edition Champions book, Champions in 3-D, titled, "Horror World." This remains the most brilliant and effective translation of Lovecraftian horror to the supers genre that I've ever seen. It was based on the premise of an alternate Earth in which the heroic pulp-era investigators fighting to prevent the manifestation on Earth of nightmarish elder horrors from beyond... failed.

 

With Hero Games' permission, Allen Varney put the entire text from his adventure on his personal website, under the title, ANOPHELES: Atrocities From Beyond . That webpage includes the adventure proper, stats for its NPCs and monsters, and 4E Power constructs to model Lovecraftian sanity-blasting effects. (Fair warning -- it's not for the faint-hearted. Seriously.)

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I ran a Justice Inc game where everyone was run of the mill pulp era types: Private Eyes, etc.  They started out hunting down a serial killer who stabbed people with an icepick through the neck and bled them out.  Well it led to an old castle on a hill (the old Ravenloft module castle) where a creepy old guy was apparently the killer.  It wasn't until he laughed off bullets that they finally figured out he was a vampire.

 

The reporter tried to stab him in the chest with a pencil.

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  • 5 months later...

Another Halloween game I ran once was set in Camp Nungahom, a Crystal Like type adventure.  I gave the players two choices:  They could play intelligently and with care, and take their chances with the unkillable monster.  The other choice was to act like a dimwitted horror movie idiot (backing into dark rooms, etc) and each time they made a really stupid move they got a "get out of jail free" token that they could trade in to survive a lethal event.

 

Most of them died anyway, but it was fun for all.

 

 

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