In a Halloween game, you’re obviously looking at a few basic ideas. You either are going with a monster situation, so something like a vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, or zombies – the classics, or you might be looking at a cult, or you might be going with something more twisted and sinister, but it isn’t going to be a story about picking daisies in a meadow somewhere. The story ideas are going to be a bit more grim, a lot of the time. But before you go making the darkest D&D game possible for Halloween, we get to our first point.

If you think about D&D as a movie, what sort of Halloween movie do you want this to be like? Are you going to go with something dark and gritty like Repulsion, see my Halloween Movies Post for what it’s like, or something that’s a little bit more off the wall like Repo! The Genetic Opera or Cabin the Woods? Both of these are fun things, and you can go quite goofy with the latter. But it depends on the feel that you are going for. So, as you’re planning picking which type you’re going for will determine a lot of other things.

From here a lot of your game building is going to be fairly similar to a normal one shot. Think about what sort of encounters you want, keep them varied, do combat, social, investigative, even skill challenges. Try and focus the theme down more so onto the game that you are going for. Also, plan out some more description than you might normally. The more you can describe, the more you can set the theme for your game. If you’re going for something that’s more serious, set it with description that demonstrates how the world seems off.  Plan this out ahead of time, because it’ll be tricky to do it all on the fly and it’ll be one of your bigger tools to use.

When it comes to the actual session, there are things you can do to reinforce the scene. If you normally play in a well lit room or during daytime, move it to a darker location or at night. Running the game outside can even be fun. But, for example, if you are playing a Gothic style of vampire game, play at a table light in a room that is primarily lit by candle light. Just have enough light that you can see the player sheets. Music is also going to be nice and easy to create the feel that you are going for. It can either be ambient noises like a woods if you are hunting down werewolves in a dark forest or it can be be organ music for when you come to the vampires castle. It might be cheesy, but if that’s the type of game that you are going for, it’ll work out just fine.

That’s how I’d run a one shot for Halloween. I wouldn’t recommend doing it at a convention, unless you have your own room where you can control the atmosphere, a big convention hall just won’t work.

But what are some ideas, because that’s what I really like coming up with:

Dracula’s Lair

Your players are a team of vampire hunters who are pretty skilled at what they do. They’ve managed to figure out when the vampire lord Dracula lives. It’s a pretty straight forward murder Dracula game. What I’d do is create it into a house of horrors, the castle that Dracula lives in. Start with the players getting social interactions with some villagers who can help them find a “secret” entrance into Dracula’s lair. Then once in the lair, have Dracula show up and taunt them, throw Renfields at them, other vampire spawn they have to deal with, and traps and puzzles they have to figure out. None of the combats/challenges should be too hard, but the players shouldn’t have a chance to rest. Make it about resource management for them, and let them figure it out as they go along, and then allow creative solutions to problems.

The Last Night

A zombie outbreak has happened and only pockets of nomadic people are still around. The adventuring party has banded together and is being forced to defend a small tent town from a horde of zombies that is coming over the hill at them. Another game idea where you’re trying to keep enough resources in reserve in some ways, but I’d probably borrow from my Pride, PrejuDICE, and Zombies game where there is one head zombie. The players have to make rolls for the army of humans or for themselves to take out a large horde of zombies, but mainly, they are trying to take out the necromancer who is controlling the zombies. But if rolls are going poorly enough, have some way to track if the zombies are getting closer to the civilians or not. Lots of women and children in that group will probably mean that the players try and stop the attack. So dealing with the horde is a skill challenge whereas dealing with the necromancer or head zombie is going to be straight up combat. You could also make this on the road and the players being harried by zombie attacks as they try and keep the civilians safe and make it to a safe zone.

Love Bites

A werewolf is madly in love with a village boy and they enlist the adventuring parties help to get the boy to notice the werewolf and possibly agree to become a werewolf. This game is clearly on the sillier side of things, but it would be a number of quick quests that the players can do. Vary them up from collecting a certain flower or weapon that is lost deep in the woods, finding a master poet to write a poem for the werewolf to give to the boy, fight through a band of goblins to keep the boy safe while they are out hunting in the woods, etc. Find a few of those and make them fairly absurd how the players have to do it so that the game has more of a lighter feel to it.  Maybe even hold off on the werewolf reveal until a few minutes into the game when the players have already agreed to help. They shouldn’t attack the werewolf because the players have agreed to play in the game, and you can also create PC’s for them to play who aren’t going to be apt to kill the werewolf as a monster.

Have you ran a horror through D&D before? How did that work, would it work well for a Halloween game?

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A Nightmare on Elm Street

Out of the three classic series, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street, this is my favorite. Freddy Krueger just makes a better villain and it’s a little less the standard that we’ve seen. The fact that Krueger gets to people through their dreams is a fun horror concept and that separates it from the others which have a bit more of the slahser vibe to them. Now, I won’t say that all nine of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are great, but they are, for the most part, entertaining and not a heavy horror watch.

A Nightmare Before Christmas

Another more main stream horror film A Nightmare Before Christmas is the kids Halloween entry on the list. If you are saying that this is a Christmas movie (clearly says so in the title), go watch Die Hard and stop reading this article, or something like that. No, it’s a movie that you could watch for either if you really wanted, but it has more of the movie in the aesthetic of Halloween than it does of Christmas. There are a few scarier moments in it that might be too scary for a small kid, but it really is a lot of fun. And that’s also where the title for the article comes from, “This is Halloween” is the line from one of the songs in the movie.

Dog Soldiers

Now we’re getting a bit out of the normal, though we’ll be getting more mainstream with the next one which is also by the same director. Neil Marshall is one of my favorite directors, and this is probably my favorite film by him. It’s about a group of soldiers in the woods, dealing with werewolves. It is very much a horror film with some nice twists that might not be too shocking, but are done well. The movie does a good job of keeping the characters confined and ratcheting up the tension. I haven’t seen this in a few years, but having watched it a few times, it has held up well.

The Descent

Another film by Neil Marshall, this is his biggest or most successful film. Now, it wasn’t as big a success here in the US as it was abroad, so before complain about it, watch the unrated version or the European release (both should be the same thing). The film ends like it should and it really packs a punch as compared to the US ending. It’s a smartly done film and again has that confined location, as it’s about a group of spelunkers who are trapped in a cave. The film just has a lot of intensity and a lot of stress while watching it wondering what is going to be happening next. Descent is a movie I really need to watch again because it was that good.

Repulsion

This is not your typical horror film. As compared to a lot of the above that have jump scares, this is just unsettling and it works so well at it. An early Roman Polanski film shot in black and white, it really delves into a character whose world is crumbling around her and she is spiraling into madness. Very different from your standard horror film, but very well done, it doesn’t have jump scares, it’s about things falling apart. It’s not going to be the film for everyone because it has a more plodding pace to it and might not be ideal for what people are looking for with a Halloween film. However, it is a very well done horror film.

10 Cloverfield Lane

This film is a bit newer than everything else on the list, but one of my favorite recent horror films. It’s probably considered more suspense, but seems to have a strong horror feel to it as well. In my opinion there is a good amount over lap between the two and a good horror film should have strong suspense to it. The original, Cloverfield, which isn’t on the list, but I’d still highly recommend, is more of the straight up creature feature horror film, but 10 Cloverfield Lane builds on it in a different direction and it’s done very well. While it is pretty straight forward, there are a few elements that you never feel like you fully have a grasp on and that makes it a strong film. Also, the acting in the film is really well done. You can check out my article on it here.

Black Sheep

The Chris Farley film is absolutely a horror masterpiece. Oh, wait, I’m not talking about that one, I’m talking about the one with the pissed off sheep. This small movie from New Zealand is the classic horror/gore/comedy and is just well done. There are a few scenes where it’s slightly over the top in the use nudity and gore, but for the most part, it’s just absurd. It’s not a high budget film, it’s not even the that well done, but it has that campy feeling that you come to expect from Halloween films and is definitely a film that no one knows about that is fun to watch.

Evil Dead

Classic horror film, the original, with Bruce Campbell. I think the first film that I saw him in, and it’s just amazing. Definitely a violent film, and if you think that the special effects are going to look good still, no chance. But it’s one of those classics that is definitely worth checking out for the B-Movie horror. Since Kristen doesn’t like horror films, it’s again one that I haven’t seen in a while. I think it might be time to do a horror movie night sometime when she can plan something else.

Finally, a few more less serious ones.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil

This horror comedy works well as it runs with the classic tropes from Wrong Turn and others where you are alone in a cabin in the woods but instead of the hicks being the bad guys, things are thrown out of balance when the college students show up. This is much more of comedy, but because it uses horror tropes so heavily it’s definitely one to watch around Halloween. It’s probably a film that I could pop in and watch whenever I want. And Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk are amazing in the film.

Repo! The Genetic Opera

A weird little film, it’s a musical and it actually has a pretty decent cast. Yes, Paris  Hilton is in the film, but she’s playing herself, and it actually works out well enough. The film has a bit of a comic book feel to it, intentionally done, and a bit of a horror film to it. It isn’t a pure horror film, but it makes sense to watch around Halloween with the aesthetic in the game. Basically, the plot of the film is that people have extended their lives by getting organs implanted, and it’s a huge deal in the world, however, if you can’t pay, you can take out a loan, and if you can’t pay your loan, the organs get repossessed. It’s weird, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Cabin in the Woods

The final one on the list is really a amalgamation of a ton of horror films. It has a weird ending, but it throws out nods to horror films like they are candy. It isn’t as silly as Tucker and Dale vs Evil or other parody horror films, but this one is more a satire versus parody. It ends oddly, and some people don’t like that, but I think it’s an odd twist on horror and why there are horror films. It definitely has a nice horror aspect to it and one, that if you want to see a ton of different horror films, but only have time for one, Cabin in the Woods will cover all the horror films that you want to watch.

What are some of your favorite horror films for Halloween?

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In short, it comes down to this: What happens when you like a story, a movie, a book, or other nerdy thing that you know is bad? By “bad,” I mean any of the following — poorly written, super cheesy or over-the-top, garishly low-budget, filled with flat characters, or even problematic from a humanist perspective. It’s anything that got slashed to pieces by critics, anything that causes people to scoff (or cringe) whenever it’s mentioned.

This is a complex topic, and one I have no hope of covering in a blog post, but for now, I just want to get you thinking — mostly because, as much as I’ve thought about this myself lately, I haven’t reached as definitive a conclusion as I’d like. So what do you do when there’s something you love but no one else can understand why? How do you handle it when you can see all the flaws in the form, but love the thing in spite of them?

Let me share a couple of examples. Peder and I both have our own objectively crappy things that we love, despite their manifold failings. For Peder, it’s B movies like Repo! The Genetic Opera and Big Trouble in Little China. And for me, it’s a certain brand of fluffy, horribly written romances that do the trick — not so much the Harlequin romance types; instead, things like Hallmark original movies, foofy YA first-love stories…and yes, of all things, the Twilight Saga (I know, I KNOW, you guys; whatever you’re thinking, I’ve already thought it, I promise).

In talking about our respective craptastic affinities, Peder and I have found that there’s a key thing that makes you love something that sucks — whatever else its failings may be, there’s something in that story that rings true to you, or speaks to you in a way that, for whatever reason, nothing else can. Peder tells me that to him, the great thing about B movies is that they’re just sheer, unbridled escapism. They’re so absurd that they could never, ever happen in real life — and that’s what makes them so much fun. The painfully cheesy special effects and ridiculous dialogue just add to the sweet, sweet escapist scenarios. And for me, cheesy romance stories speak to that simple, fundamental desire all of us humans have — to be loved. They speak to it in a such raw, unembarrassed way and I find it totally intoxicating. Whatever problems Twilight has (and boy howdy, you guys, there are SO MANY OF THEMMM), that story in particular somehow manages to speak to that desire in a way that rings true to me, in a way that’s so stark and arresting that I can’t help but see it shining (sparkling??) there, deep (DEEP) down at the heart of the story.

I think the main thing that makes this sort of nerdy love so difficult is pretty simple — embarrassment. I mean, think about it — how many things did you love when you were a kid until you found out somebody else didn’t think it was cool, and you suddenly stopped liking it (or at least hid your love for it)? And how much has that emotion followed you through your life, making you feel like you should only like things that others around you think are acceptable? And when you get right down to it, isn’t this concept what nerddom is all about? At its heart, it’s that genuine, unabashed love for things that most others turn up their nose at for being too cheesy, too obscure, too weird, too whatever.

So let’s ask this — what if we went full-throttle and allowed ourselves to like what we like, regardless of what people think or don’t think about it? What kind of power would that give us?

Maybe not much to speak of. But maybe a lot. So far, I’ve decided that the key here is awareness. Be aware of all the reasons why the story in question is crappy (especially if it comes to that humanist thing I mentioned earlier — and that’s all I’ll say about that, because that could be a whole other blog post). Knowing all the reasons to dislike something doesn’t mean you have to dislike it yourself — it just helps you pinpoint what it is you do like about it. And with that knowledge, you can responsibly love that silly, cheesy, weirdsauce, crappy thing with reckless abandon. And you don’t have to care who knows it.

Phew. We got a little deep here, guys…thanks for bearing with me for so long! To cap off this madcap blog post, let’s hear from you — what crappy thing do you love, and how does it manage to be great amid its crappiness?

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