More Story ideas

As you may have noticed from some of my other posts – especially my Halloween post – that I am a fan of horror. This interest extends into role-playing for me and I am always looking for new and unique story ideas for my campaigns. I just found a unintentionally great site for helping develop horror plot hooks.

The site, Creepy Pasta is a forum for people to post their short horror fiction and also includes posts culled from 4chan. The site is laid out in a very easy to use manner with the various sections represented by images at the top. The four sections for that I would suggest looking through for plot devices are "artifacts", "beings", "madness", and "rituals".

Artifacts contains stories involving items that seem to have come from Lovecraft’s bad dreams. These could be used in a campaign in a number of ways. First, this could be an item that the protagonist is seeking to gain power, or already using to enhance the abilities while deforming them or driving them mad. Second, one of these artifacts could be plaguing a village in any number of terrifying ways. Third, an expedition could have uncovered an ancient artifact and the PC’s have to identify its powers and destroy it before it causes trouble.

Beings, as it name would suggest, has stories involving horrific creatures. Even the few stories that I have encountered in this section in which the being was benevolent portrayed the entity as disturbing. These beings could be stealing children, razing towns, laying siege to castles, or just inadvertently scaring the guano out of anyone it comes across.

The posts in madness could be used to explain why the king is crazy, or to be given to PC’s slowly, in pieces, as they start failing madness checks. Coupled with some of the artifact stories, this could lead to some really creative plots.

The name "rituals" is kind of misleading. This section does not primarily focus on dark rites performed by evil priests and wizards, but more of a if you do x, you will gain y power, and z detrimental effect. Also, many of them list penalties for screwing up the ritual. These could be incorporated into stories easily; anyone seeking power (PC’s, evil NPC’s, heros needing just that little extra boost to defeat a dragon, etc.) could be attempting the ritual. Of course, if a hero attempted some of these rituals they may be driven mad or become evil and then they would become a threat for the PC’s to deal with. Even worse, now they would have increased power.

Some of the stories will need to be tweaked for a number of reasons, but this is good because it makes it uniquely yours. Some of the stories mention computers, but these could be swapped out for crystal balls; many other substitutions would be equally easy. Obviously, any locations mentioned would have to be transposed into somewhere in your campaign world. Also, some of the beings and artifacts may need to be adapted so that they powers fit better within the rules of whatever game you are playing.

Have fun! If you know of any other good online resources for horror ideas, please don’t hesitate to post them here so others can benefit.