Halloween Adventure Idea
This is mostly a systemless idea, although I envision it as a Don’t Rest Your Head or Call of Cthulhu game.
I love holidays. They are basically an excuse for me to be a kid in small bursts. I especially love Halloween. There is something about its mixture of spooky and fun that just feels right. What better way to share some good-natured mischief than through an RPG session?
When I run this session, I intend to use the Goals and Milestones idea from this post. This is partly because I want to offer a playground into which players can live the excitement of Halloween vicariously through their characters. This is also partly because I’m a busy guy and I don’t have a lot of time to bang out a complete adventure that would do the sort of justice that this holiday deserves!
Characters are 9 year olds out for a night of trick-or-treating. Everyone in the group are friends and live in the same neighborhood. Most of them go to the same school and very likely share the same classes. If you are running this session with a game like CoC, you will likely want to hand out some pre-generated characters. I very much suggest that you don’t give characters any truely useful “adult” skills. No one should really know how to shoot a gun or survive in the wilderness. Stick to rudimentary perception and investigation skills, and keep them sparce. If you are using a game like DRYH, then the only real character creation issues you have are exhaustion and madness tallents. Exhaustion tallents should be linked to the things a 9 year old might find themselves doing. Running fast, playing tag, riding a bike, hiding, maybe even so far as “being a bully.” For madness talents, see the idea in the following paragraph.
The main “hook” that is supposed to make this session interesting is that some dark magic takes hold as the sun sets and makes anyone wearing a costume slowly become the thing they are emulating. This isn’t so much of a debilitating event as an enhancing event. People become real vampires, ghosts, and werewolves, with all the strengths and features of that mythology. A girl might become a real fairy princess, able to make royal decrees, call on fairy troops, and other privileges of her title. In DRYH, this becomes your madness talent. In CoC, this becomes a way for your character to break the rules of reality. Allow players to attempt strange and impossible things, so long as they fit into the purview of their costume. Any time they attempt such an event, have them make a POW x 5 roll. If they pass the roll, they pull off the fantastic effect with great results and manage to mostly keep control of their identity, losing a single point of sanity. If they fail the POW check they still do something magic, but it does not have the intended effect. In addition, they lose 1d10 sanity as they slowly start forgetting they are a child, believing they are the subject of their costume instead.
The Goals and Milstones of the evening should be kept to things that can be achieved during that one magical night. A character might want to impress someone they have a crush on. Someone might want to break the world record for candy haul. Someone might want to get revenge on the older bullies that always steal their candy every year. Someone might want to prove he is the bravest by touching the mosoleum in the center of the old graveyard (on a dare from other kids, naturally.) The GM should help the players keep the goals within this scope. Characters are 9 and it is halloween night, they shouldn’t have too much adult-level drama in their world yet!
The GM should have a good goal ready to spice up the session. The most obvious goal would be to discover what is causing the magic and either stop it, or make it permanent (depending on a character’s point of view.) You might choose to ignore that obvious thread and go for something else. A classic ghost story where the characters have to help put a wandering spirit to rest. A haunted house tale where the characters find themselves in the spooky old house at the end of the lane. Maybe the boogyman is out tonight, taking kids, and the player characters are the only ones who can stop him. That weird old lady with lots of cats might be a real witch, and she curses the characters to perform some sort of deed before the night is over, otherwise her devils and demons will drag them back to her and put them in her boiling cauldron. Any sort of fairy tale or spooky story could be a perfect kernel for this sort of thing.
If you really enjoy this idea, you could turn it into a multi-session event. Each session features a new set of kids, dealing with a new set of issues, but having to confront whatever chaos the previous groups have wrought.
Hi there – cool blog, adding it to my blog roll as soon as I finish typing this.
I’m currently running a Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest over at my blog. If you’re interested, read my article and see if you’d want to write this up as a submission.
See you around!
Cool idea. I think I might suggest something similar to my gaming group. I haven’t actually played “Don’t Rest Your Head” yet, so I don’t know how the “madness talents” work, but being FATE-based, I’m sure it isn’t hard to learn (or house-rule, in the absence of rules).
This is a cool idea, I like the way it’s a stand-alone game that doesnt have any pre-requisites. This makes it open to beginners and people who don’t have time for a long campagn.
Great post!