Halloween Edition: "Horrors That Walk" in your games

Well Halloween is almost here and I figured I may as well try and make something different.

In many tabletop games, players rarely have to face creatures that are virtually impossible to kill.  Monsters come in many different forms, but the monsters can be defeated, they can be killed.  A horror is very different in this respect - they can be detained, they can be subdued, and only after a vast effort they can be killed...if only temporarily.  Below are some guidelines I came up with that will help to govern how you can use them in games.


--Horrors That Walk--
There are monsters, then there are monsters that frighten other monsters.  They are the Horrors that Walk, beasts that may wear human skins, have voices and minds of their own or move and act upon some instinct to slay certain people, or anyone that is in their way.  The horror can never rightly be killed as they always seem to come back, though if a means of finally putting an end to the horror did exist it would require a great effort to see through, and cost much from the people hunting it.

Rules of the Hunt                                                                 
Immunity:  Horrors are generally immune to being harmed.  They can appear to take damage, but have a ghoulish capability to ignore the harm done to them.  Pain is fleeting, and only an irritation.

Hit Points or similar methods of tracking damage should be ignored.  First halve any damage done to the Horror, it feels little to no real pain and tends to heal rapidly or is some form of undead.  Damage does add up and upon reaching a certain "Threshold" the Horror will fall inert for a time.  A few minutes typically in which time half of this accumulated threshold is reduced.  It can also choose to go inert to lure a target into a false sense of security, only to strike.  It also can continue to act beyond its threshold, but it runs the risk of being diminished or even defeated.

A weakness is also a possibility for the horror, something it fears, something that may pertain to its nature.  When around its source of weakness damage against it is increased.

A good guideline for setting a Threshold for the Horror is to add up the HP (or similar health) of the group, and divide by half.  The horror will typically not rest, and only rests if made inert.  It also will become inert on its own under certain circumstances (such as no one being with in a mile of it, or when a certain season has passed by, or if a  certain ritual is performed, and so on).

This doesn't mean that its threshold doesn't decrease.  If enough time passes (usually 24hrs) in which it's not harmed, it can reduce its built up threshold by half.

For example:  Jason Voorhees, while not afraid of water per say, was killed by drowning.  When fought around bodies of water he is weakened.  Freddy Krueger was burned alive and tends to be weakened greatly when dealing with fire...at least real fire and not something with in the dream realm.

Death:  The horror can be killed, but this is often a temporary solution (though not always).  Part of the fight and story of dealing with this sort of creature is discovering its weakness, or the one way to put it down for good (allegedly).  The easiest solution is often to render it inert and beguin the gruelly process of dismembering the horror, though as we all know this is often just a temporary solution.

Combat:  The horror doesn't need to have an easy time with hitting the players or being difficult to hit.  It should be moderately easy to hit since it just doesn't care about the damage to its body.  What matters is how hard it hits back.  These creatures often hit hard, hard enough to kill with a single hit.  This is what I call Brutal damage.  Consider this to be akin to taking a critical hit without actually rolling for the crit, and should it do so (if the game supports this), well then you may as well just have the player make whatever roll they need to to avoid dying.  Remember that these are beings that can break through walls, doors, and the like with what seems to be very little effort.

The Realm They Inhabit:  One way of holding the horror in check is that they are restrained to certain area's or realms in which they hunt.  Freddy Krueger haunts the realm of dreams, and can only hunt in this realm...but because of this any group caught with in the realm that Krueger hants (Elm Street, and the city it is in) can all be with in the same dream if they are close to each other, otherwise they are limited to their own dreams.  In such a realm, the rules still apply to Krueger - but the key to survival is to wake up - and that would require certain objectives to be met, to survive certain things, and reach a point where one has mastery over the waking dream and then choose to awaken from the nightmare.

One way to look at it is the horror having their own biome in which they thrive.  But if you take them out of that biome they are weakened to some degree.  Such as being easier to kill.  Again with Krueger, once you are able to awaken, if you grab him and wake up with him held - he will no longer be with in the dream realm but will be physical once again, which means he can be killed...well for a time.

Story:  All horrors have a story of some sort, why they are what they are.  Players may never quite learn how they came into being, but it's important that they be able to learn about the horror, and have methods at their disposal to best the creature should they manage to learn about it and uncover some of its secrets.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown from "IT" is one example of a story surrounding the monster.  Clues are uncovered as the story progresses and as the children manage to survive the creatures various attempts on their lives.  They eventually find out how to fight it and best it the first time, but on the second round they had to put it down for good, and the task was made that much more difficult.


Ultimately your horror should be chopping down NPC's, but treat them as a living environmental challenge to overcome.  They should always have a way of surviving so that you can heard the group toward the final confrontation where survival is truly up in the air.  A good horror monster is all about the story.

Have you already done something like this in your game?  Did you borrow a horror movie Icon, or did you come up with something original?

In the spirit of Halloween, sound off in the comments section with your creations, your rules, or just your stories for others to enjoy.


Enjoy your Halloween everyone.

Project: Operation Dice Box!

Hi folks!  It's not easy coming coming up with content, especially when I don't have my own website...well not yet at least.  Either way, while I am playing around with a new Martial Artist character class for D&D 5th Edition, less mystic capabilities and more actual martial artist.

The box!

Well I've also been working on a dice box.  I happened, while I was working, to come across a fancy jewelry box.  Nice red felt, latches and hinges already in place.  No outside work needed on my part to spruce it up!

This was a case that was large enough to hold an array of matching  jewelry like a necklace, bracelets, earrings and maybe a few other odds and ends of a matching set.  Now with the raised parts of the inner sections of the box, I couldn't just open, adjust and reuse with little fuss.  No this was going to be a total gut job.

The box before it was gutted.

So the first order of business was to rip out the top portion and its stuffing.  A little use of the exacto knife was needed, but the work got done with only a mess of padding and the cloth.  The only issue after all this was out was that some of the padding had been glued in place...ugh.

The next half was all about ripping out the bottom half.  Now I did look this over to see if I could use it, salvage it, but once I got that out I learned that the nature of the raise portion would make that impossible.

Its all out, now to clean up the glue!

Oh well then, its gotta go. No use trying to make something work that likely won't.  Plus I can now deck out the interior how I want.

Now the gluing done in the box wasn't great.  It was like who ever made the box decided to just add glue to a few spots and to do so in specific large globs that needed to be sanded down.

So with much sanding, thanks to the handy sanding block I've had for some time, I managed to get the globs of glue sanded down enough that I was happy with them.

Next up would be measuring and making a template of sorts for the interior.  Now I have some large flashcards laying around and it's easy enough to use these to fill in the spaces of the box, add some tape, measure out the sides...and learn a bit about who ever made the box.

Ugh, measure 2x, cut once, box maker failed.

You see when you make a box out of wood there is 1 important job you need to do.  Measure the fricking wood your using for the walls!  Well who ever built this thing used what felt like scrap bits of wood, and didn't take the time to make sure that all the parts were measured up when they are were building it!  Sure it all closes up nicely, but when you cut pieces of paper very precisely, put them in place and see that parts of the paper stand above some parts of the wall, well clearly precision wasn't what the box maker was going for.  So I had to shave down parts to go for a decent fit.

Well with my template made, and it fitting the both sides of I got some felt, some glue to use, and set about my next leg of work.

All together and working.

Once I had the felt cut I placed in the box to see how it fit initially.  Well it needed a bit of trimming, this of course owing to the fact that felt is thicker than the paper I was using and in turn sat differently.  But the adjustments were minor and I cut out the top and bottom for the box.  I added the glue to the bottom of the box and put the felt in, adjusting it as needed.  Then I glued the sides.  I gave this a day to set before I started to glue the felt to the top half in the same method.  Once the felt was in place I cut a few bits here and there to glue in place to deal with a few gaps in the corners.

Well the only thing that it needs are arms to help hold the lid open.  Well I have those...but just lack the time to get them both in.  I have one lid arm in place, but on its own its too loose and the lid still slams shut.  Also there is a small problem with screws.  This needs small screws, and one has to be careful not to break the wood of the box.  So after measuring, setting, getting the screws in for one arm, removing them cutting some cardstock paper to act as a washer, and use a bit of super glue to strengthen the paper.  I added glue to the hole for the screw, and got it all in place to ensure that the screw won't come out, and doesn't go all the way through the sides of the box.

And this is hardly the end of my tinkering.  I need to make up a collapsible dice box, one that folds up and stows away in the box.  But how to do that?  Well prototyping things out always helps.



Well once I work out how to fold it all up, I will make a cardboard version, then I'll get some wood and work out the actual building from there.

When I have sometime.  A new semester of classes started and it's all about photoshop, illustrator, and web animation.  Time consuming - but interesting and very helpful skills to acquire.