Halloween sessions

[S1C0]

I for one cannot wait for Halloween both in game and out.

The purpose of this post is to share ideas for Halloween sessions that would go great for a nice
 Paranet paper type scenario that could be fun for all.

My first thought would be a horror movie type feel but others may adopt a more Sinister route.
 all ideas are welcome and encouraged.

I will periodically post about my thoughts and ideas.

[dragoonbuster]

I used a warlock, dubbed The Man in Black (because people without names are scarier, and I'm a huge Stephen King fan...), to break the 6th Law, travel back in time, and change 1 key event in the PC's history a few months previous. It ensured the Bad Guys the group just defeated a couple weeks before actually won and succeeded in what they wanted. Meanwhile, the PCs had a Halloween party and got to mingle with city NPCs.

The PCs woke up three years in the future, having memories of both defeating the Bad Guys and everything up to "present day" Halloween, as well as having memories of losing to and fighting a guerilla war against said Bad Guys for three years...needless to say, it was a weird and rough awakening.

This led to some pretty epic battling as St. Patrick's Cathedral (their last stronghold) was assaulted by the Bad Guys while one of the wizards prepared a chronomantic spell to send the PCs back to kill the Man in Black before he ever cast his original spell, which they did.


Of course...the MiB showed up again that New Years and there was time-hopping to D-Day during World War II, a future New York, and to Arthurian times to meet Merlin, and he'll be showing up one last time this coming Halloween, but I can't share the plan for that because some of my players read this forum


Fun Halloween ideas:
- The Wild Hunt, of course
- Someone is trying to kill an immortal and the PCs have to save it, or the PCs have to kill an immortal
- A horror film festival or something like SPLATTERCON!!! comes to town and attracts a bunch of Fetches
- Some teens get drunk and crash a car through the wall around the local graveyard with lots of history...and suddenly there's nothing keeping in the Bad Things anymore
- The last two years, on Halloween, someone has gone on murder sprees, making them look like wolf attacks--a souped-up Loup-Garou that only transforms on Halloween is the cause, and the PCs have decided three years of murder-sprees in a row is too many.
- Jack Skellington shows up and starts spreading Christmas around town with disastrous results

[S1C0]

Time travel is always a neat story mechanic, i am a fan of the old zombie hoard survival scenario, perhaps a bunch of uppity necromancers have rolled into town. I think it would be fun for high refresh PCs to fight a forgotten god who is trying to make a comeback.

Haunted houses are a staple best not to forget the classics after all ;7

thank you for your thoughts dragoonbuster please feel free to share more.

 

[Haru]

I'm planning on doing something with ghosts. I've been wanting to run this thing for years, and I hope I'll get to this year. I copied this from another thread I posted it in:

Intro:
Frank hated driving through this part of town. But he had a long day and he just wanted to get home, and the long way around would have taken him another 15 minutes. Damn, it was really hard to see anything through the dark and the rain.
"In other news, the 11 year old tiger Lili had to be shot today, after she mauled one of her caretakers to death. To date it is unknown why the caretaker was in the enclosure at the same time as the..."
Click.
The next radio station was playing country music. Not Frank's first choice, but better than news like that. After a few moments, he felt better, tapping the beat of the music with his fingers on the steering wheel. It wouldn't be long before he was home with his wife and little boy, and he would finally get some sleep.

"Jesus Christ!" Frank cursed as he stepped on the brake as hard as he could. He hadn't seen the little girl before it was too late, and though he didn't feel an impact, he couldn't see her now, either. "Oh shit!" he exclaimed, loosening the belt and opening the door. "Oh god, oh god, please don't be hurt!" Frank muttered to himself. He stepped around the car as quick as he could, but there was nothing to see. He circled around the car, even checked under the car. Nothing. "Oh thank god," he exhaled in relief. Damn, was he so sleep deprived that he had started to hallucinate?
"Excuse me, mister, have you seen my cat?" The girls voice almost gave him a heart attack. He didn't hallucinate then. He turned around and saw a girl standing there. She was wearing a white dress with blue flowers on them, that went down to her ankles. She didn't wear any shoes, only white socks. And he could see the street through her feet.
"Mister? Have you seen my cat, mister?" the girl repeated. This couldn't be real, Frank pinched himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, counted to three to calm himself down, then opened them again. The girl was still standing there.
"Mister? Have you seen my cat?" Frank started to answer, when he heard a growling noise behind him. He turned around, just as the girl happily yelled "Kittie!" The ghostly outlines of a tiger were stalking closer from behind him. 15 feet. 12 feet. Frank tried to turn around, and more on instinct than anything else grab the girl and run. The tiger was over him in a fraction of a second, and it didn't even hurt, before he blacked out.

"Bad Kittie," was the first thing he heard when he opened his eyes. The girl was standing over him, looking at him with a smile on her face. "I found my cat, mister. Do you want to play with us?" Frank didn't mind. Though he felt like he was forgetting something important. Oh well, it would come back to him. "Sure," he answered, as he stepped over some poor soul's corpse to follow the girl and the tiger who were already passing through the walls of a nearby abandoned house.

***

The idea is this: A white council wizard was in love with a mortal woman. She got pregnant after a while, but was shot in a gas station robbery. Mortal doctors couldn't help her, and full of grief, the wizard turned to necromancy to keep his wife alive, at least long enough for the daughter to be born. It worked, and a few month later, the little girl was alive and well, albeit born from a dead body. She grew up well, until around her 8th birthday, she suddenly fell into a coma. Since then, she's been hooked up on machines in a hospital, which keep her body alive.
Though she isn't really in a coma. Her unique circumstances brought with them a gift over the undead, specifically ghosts. She accidentally left her own body one day and is now wandering the streets, wreaking havoc by binding and creating ghosts or not letting them pass over. Not out of malice, really, but because she doesn't know any better. Ghosts just don't hurt her.
Subsequently, ghost stories have been on the rise in the city. A lot of people have stories about seeing the little girl, and even more have stories about random encounters with various other ghosts. Some are fairly harmless, some, like witnessed by poor Frank, not so much.
But there is more. A wizard with the inherent power to control the undead is a powerful ally. A little girl with that power is a weapon to be molded and pointed at ones enemies. So it's not only her father looking for a way to make her better (he doesn't realize the scope of her condition yet), but various supernatural parties are trying to get a hold of the girl, ghost or real body.

[bobjob]

I'm not running a DFRPG game right now, but I am running a D&D 5e Mystara game with ties to Ravenloft. The party has defeated Strahd von Zarovich and have claimed Castle Ravenloft and the village of Barovia as their own. For my game on October 28th, I'm going to do a Hocus Pocus themed session in which they find out that three statues in the garden are actually Night Hags that Count Strahd had punished by turning them into stone. Since the Count is now dead, he cannot renew the magic keeping them bound and they'll be released in time for All Hallows Eve. At the very least, it should be entertaining.

I love themed game sessions. On December 31st 2012, we played Cyberpunk 2013 to ring in the New Year. On the last day of the Mayan Calendar we played Shadowrun (because that was the end of the current age and Magic would be returning to the world). On Christmas I've run a Die Hard themed Shadowrun game.

[S1C0]

I love ghost stories, personally they always provoked thoughts as to how it would to be a ghost, i think it would be fun to do a cursed item game, one where somebody under its influence who needs to be separated form it.

[dragoonbuster]

I love ghost stories, personally they always provoked thoughts as to how it would to be a ghost, i think it would be fun to do a cursed item game, one where somebody under its influence who needs to be separated form it.

I wrote up a False Lance of Longinus for a plot going on in RagnarokNYC; one that isn't the actual spear but has gained power over the years of people believing it is the genuine article. Of course...the majority of those people were lusting for power and pretty Bad People, so it's pretty tainted by now. It's not intended to be PC-held in the long term, but it makes a great plot tool. I could see it mixing with Halloween well. Note that getting rid of the Curse as described below was just something I came up with at the time, and wound up going with an Extended Conflict instead when it came to actually exorcising someone of the curse. I described the curse as something more like a virus than anything else; it worms its way into you and takes over. The PC afflicted with said curse wound up facing her own version of Harry's Id; her Id was the part of her that allowed in the curse in the first place (and is why everyone human falls under the curse if they lay hands on the Spear...their own Ids betray them).

A False Lance of Longinus
One-Time Discount: +2
It Is What It Is: An old but sharp spear tip. As an improvised short sword it does Weapon: 3 damage, or Weapon: 4 damage with a haft attached. Has aspects [Power For A Price] and [One of the Greater Relics].
Indestructable: Exactly that. Not many things can actually destroy this weapon.
-1 Demonic Co-Pilot: Being a False Spear, this weapon has had faith placed in it by many. Unfortunately, far too many Bad Men have held this weapon and intended evil with it, tainting any possible purity within. It desires the obtainment of power and engaging in war, strife, and death above all else. You may also take Sponsor Debt for any roll falling within the Spear's agenda with GM approval.
-1 Marked by Power: You are not Marked by anything specific, but rather carry an aura of power about you (effectively a self-sponsored Mark).
-1 True Aim
-6 Mythic Recovery
+2 The Catch: Sources of True Holy power--not just any boardwalk preacher can bypass this recovery; only objects and acts of True Faith will work.
-0 Undying
-0 Cursed Bearer: The spear is cursed. All those who lay a hand to it (accidental bumps do not count, but purposefully holding, etc is what matters) are inflicted with the aspect [Obsessed With the Spear], and feel they must possess it all cost, which must be removed with the equivalent of an exorcism by a Higher Power or someone with Righteousness (or equivalent), and a separate Conviction roll by the cursed person to relinquish the spear, each versus a difficulty of 10. Even looking at the spear too long may cause the same affliction. You do not have to be holding the False Spear to draw on its powers, but must have control over it to do so. That means if it is locked in a safe at home, you could be on the other side of the world and benefit from its power--but if a thief takes the blade, it immediately becomes his and you lose all of it's powers--but not the curse, unless removed as described previously.

[S1C0]

I like the way you did that item, i went with the Necronomicon myself last year, it was not best scenario mind you, but all in all a rather terrifying encounter.

I think a session where your group got sent to jail then a riot beaks out, could lead to a good ole shanking.

[Keryth]

Well, in my campaign, I threw a Halloween tribute in as we played close the holiday. One of the players was possessed (through his own actions) by the spirit of Norman Bates. Through a series of events, the spirit of the PC eventually was imprisoned in the body of a young girl. The group cerainly could not leave things like this, so, they researched how to save him and restore everything. I forget the exact details of how, but they needed to go to an island at the center of the lake in Camp Crystal Lake. During their time there they ran into both Jason Voorhees as well as a 'dreamland' sequence that brought them into conflict with Freddy Krueger.

[dragoonbuster]

Session 1 of what will be 5-6 total sessions all based on this Halloween occurred today and as a first I let players bring in both of their PCs if they wanted to, so we had 14 PCs running around at our peak in the scene? Let's see...

- Part of the population (humans + animals) began going berserk. Some threw themselves out of buildings, some dashed their heads against hard objects over and over, others attacked anything that moved nearby.
- A several-thousand strong brood of immaturely-born vampires from a 5th Court that had been 'lost' for several months showed up again after spending time maturing and mutating thanks to leftover radiation from the Manhattan Project and Outsider corruption.
- Outsiders apparently broke the tentative lines formed around the thousand-foot breach in the Outer Gates, as thousands of them began crossing over into our world at any weak spot in the Veil.
- The nature of the chaos and Outsider-infected humans in the power structure scattered the police and rendered them nearly ineffective. The three above events occurred more or less simultaneously.
- Some one called the Wyld Hunt up into the city, which only added to the confusion.

The PCs called allies within:
- The White Council
- The White Court
- The Red Court
- The Army, Air Force, and National Guard
- Interpol
- Various private security/paramilitary organizations and other freelancing mercenaries
- Valkyries and the Einherjar
- A large network of ghosts

They also:
- Successfully impersonated the Mayor to issue a TV broadcast to help organize civilians
- Civilians by and large were evacuated (via mirrors to a Sidhe's demesne who they bargained with for guest rights for all the civilians), had protection arranged for them, or were inspired to rise up against the enemy
- Wrestled control of the Wyld Hunt from the Elking to set it only on their enemies and not on the city or its defenders
- Stole explosives from the city's version of SI to proactively collapse a trio of tunnels beneath the city that could have been used to free a vampire god and/or trigger an East-Coast shattering earthquake. Because Eris said so.
- Rescued a kidnapped PC
- Closed a portal linked directly to The Outside
- Protected the majority of New York's (mainly Manhattan's) bridges and tunnels to contain the worst of the 'invasion'
- Activated a Ley Line and used magic to supercharge Edison's abandoned power grid in the Lower East Side, used to generate enough power to charge a larger thaumaturgy to wipe out all of the remaining 5th Court similar to the Bloodline Curse in Changes
- After accomplishing all this and taking a brief break while their allies continued to secure the city, He Who Walks Behind aka Sharkface appeared at the PCs 'home base' (his third time on screen), after he's already been 'killed' once already by the PCs. Sharkface also showed up with a 6th- (and other numbered- ) Lawbreaking warlock that many of the PCs know because they'd already killed him twice.


And the day's only half over.