Like always, I’m borrowing from things when creating my idea for a D&D campaign, this time I’m looking at a couple of shows that I have enjoyed Helix and Nightflyers, both are about a group of people, set alone either in Antarctica or in space, where there is something odd going on, some phenomena or disease or curse happening, but you never know who might be bad.

For me, this is a short campaign, not a big massive game, but something that you can play when you want to play a horror based game for a little bit. You could certainly put this towards the end of a longer campaign, basically, survive this and meet the final boss, but you’d have to make whatever is causing the issue not play in the normal rules of the game, because you’ll probably have some higher level spell casters.

This game is about one last run, one last mission for a group of mid level characters, 5-12 range, where they know that they are doing, they aren’t experts, but they aren’t bad, and they, for a hook, have been brought in for a big score, one dangerous mission, Hell’s Run.

Hell’s Run is a shipping run up the coast of the continent, through an area where the veil between worlds is thinner and strange things happen. But the score of this mission is going to be worth it, it’s a retirement mission for everyone on the ship, including the captain of the ship, and have the players create the captain. Give them the parameters that this is someone that they all know and care about and let them create them and create a back story for them.

Immediately on the voyage things needs to start going wrong. Food spoils that shouldn’t have spoiled because it was packed wrong, a crew member becomes sick while another goes crazy, weird things are happening before they even get to Hell’s Run. But nothing so bad that they can’t complete the mission, this is still a driving factor for the Captain and for most of the crew, though some will want to mutiny, if they can do it, again, it’s retirement and fame. As they get further along, the disease should crop up again on a few crew members and something or someone, probably the first mate, should end up going overboard in the night and be lost at see, even though they are a veteran sailor and the weather was fine.

That first whole part is about building suspense and you can go as fast or as slow through it as you’d want. I’d recommend this being a couple sessions, that should build tension and kind of build in a claustrophobia. Have the players do things to try and cleanse or stop whatever is happening, and still have stuff happen. Have the crewmen say odd things and the Captain start to slowly and subtly change on them.

Then we get to Hell’s Run. It’s called that, obviously, because some malevolent force is on the other side of that veil, probably brought there to protect whatever the players are after by creating this treacherous sea lane.

This is where you get to have fun with it, it should be fairly obvious by now that there’s someone who is sabotaging the ship, and have that ramp up big time and make it even more obvious. More crew members getting sick, and while it doesn’t kill fast, it’s basically always fatal, and start rolling at the end of each session to see if a player character gets sick. If one does, just let that player know with a few details of how to play it and when to start showing it. And have the Captain go insane and possibly someone become possessed, as the DM, this is one of those times where it’s you against the players, kind of, you won’t shoot down a crazy idea still, but you’re going to make it hard for them and who knows if all of them will survive.

Now, have some fun with the horror elements. I’m not thinking, for the most part, of using random ghosts or stuff the players can fully fight. If there’s some tragedy in a backstory of a player, dead parents, whatever it might be, play with that for the horror elements. Give them things to fight that then disappear, give them monsters that make no sense, visions and the ship changing on them so one day the sails are white the next they’re read. All the potatoes turn into turnips that bleed, which might just be beets, but as much as it’s meant to be horrific, make it crazy and disturbing as well, all the while, slowly whittle down the crew, have them die in various ways, and do a lot of it off screen. Have the players find the weird stuff that leads them to a dead crew member, not witness it themselves.

Then when a player gets sick, see what the players can figure out. See how they react to the situation, see how they search for a solution. If they have someone who can cure a disease, let them, but this is a game taking place on a ship where things are going missing and being destroyed, healing a disease will work for some time, but eventually they’ll run out of components needed, unless there’s a Paladin, where, maybe play around with the rules of the disease, make it a curse instead or an alien entity in the body that needs a living host to survive.

Play this out for a handful of sessions and then reach the promised land with whatever crew there is left. With the Captain, if he’s still around after going insane and probably making some crew walk the plank or something like that. And I’ll leave it up to you if there’s a return voyage home. Maybe it’s a paradise they find on the other side and they decide to stay. Maybe they just make it through the weird visions and what’s known as Hell’s Run and find themselves on the river Styx and sailing into hell itself. Or they could do a voyage back, I’d probably not do that unless you’re planning on making it go even faster.

This game is meant to be dark, so warn your players ahead of time. I haven’t talked about it much because I tend to play with close friends who I know will let me know if I’ve gone too far, or we tend to keep it quite lighthearted, but there’s a concept known as the “X Card” basically, it’s an agreement that if something at the table, some role play or whatever it might be, is making someone uncomfortable, they can touch the X card (if it’s physical) or just say something like “End Scene” and the scene will end and the it’ll move onto the next thing, no questions asked. For running a horror game, there is some buy-in that things will make you uncomfortable at times, but definitely set-up an “X Card” of some sort for this game so players or DM always can move it along to a new scene, no questions asked.

Would you play in a game like this? Do you like elements of horror or strong horror themes in your games?

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