Haunted House Help

[hasek]

I am making a haunted house adventure for Halloween and need ideas to make it feel less like a dungeon and more like a haunted house. The party is 5th level and we are playing Pathfinder. Thanks.

[Chaot]

Go get the Call of Cthulhu QuickStart rules and check out the attached adventure "The Haunting." Classic haunted house with a twist.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

I suppose a lot of it depends on what kind of adventure this shall be:
Will it be a mission to solve a haunting? Or a dungeon crawl in a haunted house?

On good trope is the locked safe. You could have it be a vault protected by a terrible trap, to prevent anyone from tampering with it. The idea of the safe is to force the players to search the mansion for a key, or a clue to open it.

Foreshadowing allows you to make additions to the Haunted House bestiary. For example, if the players find a big portrait of a man with a pack of hunting dogs, you can start haunting the party with sounds of a far off hunting horn and then when they are vulnerable, hit them with a pack of zombie hunting dogs.

You can get a lot of mileage out of seemingly normal monster stats, if you dress it up as objects related to the house.
EX: The Chandelier crashes down on someone and then begins strangling them. You're using the stats for a dark delver but the players only see it as a possessed object. Likewise books in the library become a flock of vampire bats.

I never liked the movie Rose Red, but it did have a unique idea in that the house did not eat people but instead turned them into a kind of disgusting vampire. The victims were merged into the house and became made of wood, glass, carpet, and their own corpse. They wandered the endless halls, preying on who ever they could catch.

[Dark Angel]

Without it seeming to Resident Evil-ish, windows can be used as a means for monsters to bust through them. It can also afford them opportunities that are not present within dungeons. They become mundane scrying devices when something is going on outside (watching another player, seeing an incoming threat, or bypassing a tough/trapped/unopenable door by going through the windows and over a ledge or roof top. Of course, you have magically trapped windows that show something outside but is really just a programed illusion (or ghostly projection).

[MichaelTumey]

Well since you're using Pathfinder, then you'll need haunts. I've got a handful posted in the Roleplaying Games forum of this site.

Although the fluff is more Japanese than you might want - you could easily reflavor the description to not sound Asian (and it's not free - $3.99 PDF), but I've got a haunts product called #30 Haunts for Kaidan - that feature 30 haunts each with a rich backstory, several are associated haunts, some manifest differently than typical haunts, and some oni and undead monsters are included as well.

I released another Japan-based haunted (and mapped) location product (with me as author) called: Haiku of Horror: Autumn Moon Bath House, featuring several haunts, a curse and a custom drowned ghost that comes in multiple CRs from 2 - 22, so it could easily adapt to any player level. It's built as an investigation mini-adventure/detailed encounter site. The included curse called the Ju-on, is based on the movie, The Grudge. This product is $2.99 at DTRPG.

As I said, the latter 2 products are feudal Japan-based, however, it wouldn't take much to reflavor them to fit a non-Asian theme.

[The Giamarga]

The strange story of the Darkangnon Estates[sic] is a free 5th-6th level 3.5 Ravenloft adventure set in Arkandale.

Check out this post for some other ideas and/or links for interesting stuff about the PF haunts subsystem.

Or check out this d20 product: Fright Night: Haunted House.

Or check out these two items from free RPG material for Ravenloft thread.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Here's something from a thread I'm compiling about Rules of a Haunting. Never let blood touch anything in a haunting. Blood not only is the literal source of life but symbolic of life force. Feeling the touch of life can stir things that were previously dormant. If the house itself is the haunting (or is a ghost or spirit itself) then it's appropriate for the house to creak and shudder as the vital energy brings it to awareness. More blood means more and more dangerous changes. This is especially true of women's menses; symbolically that is an especially potent source of life force.

Likewise sometimes the old tricks are the best. Paintings that change to horrific scenes or portraits when looked at or gradually over time, food that looks edible but then turns into something rotten or does something incogruous (like a cake that bleeds when cut), busts that turn and watch as the characters go past, books that fly off the self at the characters or fly around and harass them, a fire in a fireplace that roars outward at great size and heat, basically environmental stuff to ramp up the suspense and terror. There doesn't have to be any reason behind it at first, as fear of the unknown is quite potent. If the characters research what's going on then the explanations should be equally unsettling.

For more I would recommend Grave Encounters and Grave Encounters 2 (seeing the first one before the second is essential as it lays the groundwork for some of the more terrifying ideas and scenes in the sequel).

[hasek]

Thanks for the help, you guys just gave me a bunch of good ideas.

[Dark Angel]

The strange story of the Darkangnon Estates[sic] is a free 5th-6th level 3.5 Ravenloft adventure set in Arkandale.

I was going to recommend that, but that seems to take away from the abandoned house/above ground dungeon crawl as the "monsters" and the inhabitants

VIEW CONTENT:

(A family tormented by fleas of madness)

can limit what else could be placed in the place. However, that monster could be added as an insane twist and really drive them up the walls.

[The Giamarga]

This thread on paizo has lots of ideas for haunted house adventures. Check out the spoilered list of Dungeon adventures.

Add to that list:

Two for the Road (Dungeon #49) The heroes aquire a gypsy wagon that is haunted by gremlins

The Ghost at Widder Smithers (Dungeon #62) A spectral apparition appears in Widder Smither's house, but the real danger is trapped in the old woman's cellar.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Whoops. I posted the wrong title for the movies I meant. It's actually Grave Encounters. This has been changed in the original post.