Ravenloft

I’ve been running a lot of horror in my game lately, mainly due to the fact that my current homebrew campaign is a 4th edition rendition of 2e Ravenloft with a touch of my personal flavor.

Sure almost every homebrew I’ve ever created has had a lot of horror elements in it, whether it was rife with undead or a vampire posing as the main antagonist, but never before have I created (or in this case used) a world where everything is dark.

We are six sessions in right now and while my players and myself are definitely highly enjoying it, I cant help myself from picking my own work apart already. One thing I’m always trying to do is analyze my own GM’ing habits to then self prescribe a way to improve them. So I thought I should share with you some of my follies and triumphs in running the campaign so far – bear in mind this is definitely an art form I’m very new to but I’ll try and share my shiniest pearls of wisdom.

All Show is No Show

While when you think about a horror campaign you often think of writhing zombies, skeletons, vampire bats, werewolves and all that sort of thing, but what you don’t often ponder is “how often should these things will be showing up?” The photo montage of awesomeness in your mind shouldn’t be an instant replay of every game session.

These are climactic moments in your game, and if every time your players turn around they are faced with something extremely gorey, depraved or outright horrifying they’ll soon grow numb to your ‘shock effect’. One thing I learned in desktop publishing that I believe applies to all facets of life is the phrase “all show is no show”.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” ~ H.P. Lovecraft