Tabletop RPGs - Horror

Scenario By: jadedsynic

Monsters weren’t supposed to be a thing in Australia. The TV shows and the movies all swore zombies and ghosts and vampires happened in America. Some of those creepy crawlies missed the memo. You, your mates, and your mates’ mates, have set off to clear them out.

In your escapades, you’ve caught the attention of a Mister Harker. A string of disappearances you were investigating has ended somewhere peculiar. Harker is willing to pay for a “discreet handling” of the *thing*, and has information on it to boot. There’s one catch: the passersby in the area report hearing the screams of their missing loved ones.

“Hunter: The Reckoning v5 — A Little Place of Terror” is a World of Darkness scenario, where you play as an underdog among underdogs. Dice and character sheets will be provided during the session.

Player Capacity: 4 to 5
System: Hunter: The reckoning WoD 5e
System knowledge required: Low. Knowledge of system will add to the game, but is not required.
Rating: MA 15+. Strong Impact Violence, Horror Themes.
Seriousness: On the serious side (5/6)

Scenario By: PlagueMaiden_

Beginner Friendly

Congratulations! You, a group of investigators are summoned to Melbourne to meet with the Prince personally at the next Elysium.

Too bad when you step into his office all you find is a pile of ash.
Being the ones to discover it, the blame is unfortunately on you.

Unless of course you can find the real Killer.

Player Capacity: 2 to 5.
System: Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition.
System knowledge required: None. System will be taught during the session.
Rating: MA 15+. Blood, violence, alcohol, darker themes.
Seriousness: Moderate, leaning towards serious (4/6).

Presented by: Henry
Written by: Todd Miller

Beginner Friendly

Attack of the Brain Bats! is a one-shot scenario set during the early 1920s in the Vermont countryside. The investigators have accepted an invitation from their friend, Professor Alexander Chapman, to spend a weekend at his home in the country to go bird watching.

Chapman doesn’t have many neighbors, but the nearest, deranged Dr. Carl Schmidt, has set in motion a chain of events which could doom them all.

Experience the bird watching expedition of a lifetime! Save your delicious brains from the hideous alien maws of the brain bats! Save the world (or at least Vermont)! And if you’re lucky, you just might even spot the elusive Golden-winged Warbler!

Player Capacity: 3 to 6.
System: Call of Cthulhu.
System knowledge required: Low. Knowledge of system will add to the game, but is not required.
Rating: MA 15+. Alien creatures, mind control, moderate gore and horror.
Seriousness:  Moderate, but on the less serious side (2/6).

Presented By: Witch

City Of Red Waters is a blood-soaked colonial setting that puts the horror and delusion of living under such regimes front and center in the stories of play.

The backdrop of the setting is an exaggerated earth analogue, playing out the equivalent of the European race for colonial conquest. Its focus is on the city of Inverrouge, sat at the mouth of the river Sange, its soil drenched in the blood of genocide, and its waters polluted with corruption and greed. It is a setting that focuses on blood as the central substance of all life force and mystical force, where overindulgence leads to addiction and vampirism, and where the twisted machinations of the city’s institutions pull everyone into their web of suffering and complicity.

City of Red Waters by Ash McAllan is an alternative setting for Blades in the Dark by John Harper.

This version of City of Red Waters has been adapted to use the Deep Cuts system expansion by John Harper.

Player Capacity: 2 to 4.
System: Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts.
System knowledge required: None. System will be taught during the session.
Rating: MA 15+. Colonial (& state) violence, (wealth) inequality, racism, graphic violence, drug-use, sexual themes, vampirism (consumption of blood & all that fun stuff)
Seriousness: Average (3/6).

Scenario By: Megan 

Beginner Friendly

A lone lighthouse stands in the darkness of a cavern – its glaring light cast out into the shadows as the astrolabe turns within it. The shelter that sits above the lighthouse lamp shimmers, its glass prisms and reflective surfaces turning as they always have.

The Fourth Pharos has persisted in the thinnings between the known world and the unknown, and has risen and fallen in iterations through the centuries. In this space, the cartographer expects nothing untoward when they receive an envelope, and in opening it they unveil the latest delivery of phenomena.

Such a small thing, this Oldfairen coin. So easily lost, or carelessly misplaced. The curse it carries, however, threatens to split apart the City of Newfaire. Perhaps even all of Hale, if left unchecked. Only the descendants of the Betjar family stand a chance against the corruption it’s poised to unleash.

But beneath the beacon, a rumbling shakes the structure. Further down the Pharos, roars, crackles, and screeches pierce the silence of the space. The blood-soaked ruins beneath the Pharos churn with the movement of entities advancing to the lighthouse.

Its security has been breached, and as the lockdown sequence commences, it blinks from the cavern.

Player Capacity: 2 to 5.
System: Candela Obscura.
System knowledge required: Low. Knowledge of system will add to the game, but is not required.
Rating: M. Violence, psychological trauma, family breakdown.
Seriousness: On the serious side (5/6).

By: Fractal RPG

Beginner Friendly

At 2:13 pm on March 15th, 1839, the sun and stars were stolen from the sky, leaving behind only the endless Dark. As men of science and learned sages scrambled for an answer, things began to creep out of the Dark: creatures of horror and nightmare, creatures of our new reality. Worse still, sometimes those who spent time in the Dark came back different, wielding strange powers but lacking in their humanity.

You are a Venturer. Someone bold enough, crazy enough and desperate enough to leave the safety of the Great Lanterns that protect the towns and travel into the Dark. Every time you leave town, you risk your life and your very humanity…you know it, and you still do it.

Whatever it is you seek in this Dark world, at the end of the day, it all comes down to one question: What will you risk, to achieve your goals?

DARK VIGIL is a game of psychological horror and survival in a Victorian-Era world perpetually shrouded in an unsettling darkness of unknown provenance.

Player Capacity: 2 to 6.
System: Fractal System.
System knowledge required: None, system will be taught during the session.
Rating: M. Horror, violence, bodily corruption.
Seriousness: Moderate, leaning toward serious (4/6).

By: Into the Weird Blue Yonder 

The trenches will take something from you, and never give it back.

A great war has ravaged the world since before the dawn of recorded history. Violence tears at the edges of reality, the darkness consuming entire countries as industry and technology become ever more violent. You and your comrades may or may not have signed up to be thrust into the trenches to investigate things no human was ever supposed to see.

Player Capacity: 2 to 6.
System: Custom d20.
System knowledge required: None, system will be taught during the session.
Rating: MA+. Death, Exploitation, Guns, Imprisonment, Indoctrination, Injuries, Mental Illness, Torture, Trauma, Violence, Xenophobia.
Seriousness: On the serious side (5/6).

Presented By: Henry
Written by: Lance Jackson

A night at the movies the investigators will never forget!
It’s the year 1925 and the investigators are on their way to the Majestic Hall in Pomona, Queensland to attend a limited screening of “The Story of the Kelly Gang”.
All the investigators have their own reasons for being at the Majestic but in the dark night of rural Australia they will be drawn into a battle for minds, and not everyone at the theatre is what they seem.

Player Capacity: 3 to 6
System: Call of Cthulhu
System knowledge required: Low. Knowledge of system will add to the game, but is not required.
Rating: M. Covert Drug Use, Extreme Medical Procedures (removal of brain), Body Horror and Mutilation, and Death of Personality
Seriousness: Average (3/6)

Scenario by: Hexxelia

The Jeong family discovers strange insects building a nest in their garden. The nest grows very large and displays the ability to somehow resurrect the dead. When Tom Jeong dies, his wife Karen sprinkles his cremated ashes on the nest, restoring him to a semblance of life.

Player Capacity: 3 to 4.
System: The Magnus Archives TTRPG
System knowledge required: No system knowledge required, but awareness of the world of Magnus Archives via the podcasts or other media will be needed.
Rating: M. Human remains, parasitic infection, hornets/wasps, animal remains, child welfare.
Seriousness: On the serious side (5/6).

Scenario By: Elm 

Beginner Friendly

The body in the morgue defies explanation, it is contorted and horrible to look at. The mortal afflicted was obviously in great pain. None of this matters. What matters is that it was unnatural, public, and if it spreads could reveal what we are.

You have been summoned to solve a murder, not for justice but convenience. Navigating the awful and strange world of the Circulatory system and Blood Alchemy. Will you find the cause and put it to an end? Or find something addictive and profitable, despite the risks…

What the Heart Haunts is an introductory Vampire: The Masquerade story that explores the blood-soaked World of Darkness. Our vampires will be investigating a mysterious narcotic, navigating undead politics, and unleashing their inner beasts.

Player Capacity: 4 to 6
System: Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition (World of Darkness)
System knowledge required: None, system will be taught during the session.
Rating: MA 15+. Body horror, gore, implied drug use and discussions of overdosing.
Seriousness: On the serious side (5/6)