I'm going to run a one-shot game the weekend before Halloween and I wanted to put a holiday-themed run together. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas for a run or extra things to do in order to add a spooky element to gaming session.

Thanks in advance for anyone's input!

Someone is killing Halloweener gangers, lopping their heads off, emptying them out before sticking them on poles with LEDs lighting them from inside like a classic jack-o-lantern.



Wait...


Oh you are asking for ideas for a new run, not what we did LAST Halloween.


NVM.......


Not sure what to go with, but you should have a Great Form Pumpkin (Plant) Spirit in there somewhere.

Tamanous or a Shedim makes a haunted House.
Real Ghouls, real bodies. Hilarity Ensues!

A Headless Horseman Free Spirit. All weapon skills maxxed out, rides through the city dual-wielding a shotgun and an assault rifle, with a bracer of throwing axes and a gigantic broadaxe.

Funny. That's what I'm doing. In part, actually.

The Free Spirit, Sam Hain, is putting together a frightful night for Seattle as he puts machinations into play. He summons a fellow nightmare, The Headless Horseman to reclaim Downtown Seattle for a night. He awakens a mummy at a traveling Egyptian exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. He beckons a pack of werewolves into a frenzy and lets them loose upon the International District. Invites are sent to three of the Northwest's most powerful vampires who descend upon the Barrens for a feast. A Jewish Rabbi is tricked into creating a Golem of Man in the Queen Anne. And a living specimen, a so called "fish man", is lost in the Everett Dockyard.

Only a mysterious blind druid name Mug Ruith holds the key to stopping all of the madness. But I plan to let the runners try to take these things head on if they so choose.

Using the Halloweenies in some capacity crossed my mind. These are all good ideas. Keep 'em coming!

Serial killer is abducting college students. He lives in a creepy house in a polluted, run down formal suburb somewhere with his aging mom who has severe dementia. The neighborhood had been vacated by all but the most unfortunate after a nuclear power plant incident. However, he's actually dug a network of tunnels from under his basement, kind of like a NVA tunnel, but it's where he stashes the bodies and confines the students who are still alive so he can molest them.

In order to make it challenging for Shadowrun these activities for a number of years have created a toxic zone in the tunnels and furthermore have gained the attention and support of one or more evil toxic spirits who do everything they can to prevent astral recon. This was not immediately obvious to Awakened onlookers because the whole neighborhood was blighted and toxic 'coz of the reactor incident.

The player characters are hired by a relative of one of the disappeared college students. The Johnson, who in this case is not corporate, has some family ties to the mafia, but for years has tried to make his own life and live apart from his family. However, one of the students who disappeared was the love of his life and after an extended period of investigation to find out what happened to his lover, he realized that a bunch of these disappearances go back to this particular house. At the time he hires the team a moderate fee to simply investigate what is inside the house and rescue the lover or her remains.

So, when the team makes entry into the house, at first it seems like a creepy, dusty, dark house filled with roaches, Chinese food boxes, and creepily out of date furniture and bundles of old newspapers stacked to the ceiling, and the only person they run into is the elderly mom with dementia who is harmless and basically an innocent in the whole affair.

However, when they go down to the basement, they find the VC tunnel, and it becomes evident that to accomplish their mission they must enter.

Apply visibility modifiers for Full Darkness. Unless people have auditory dampeners non-silenced pistol discharges will deafen for 1d6 combat turns (inability to make Perception checks based on hearing, and a modest general penalty for Perception Checks) and rifle discharges will deafen for 2d6 combat turns and disorient (across the board penalties and a chance of wandering in an unintended direction) for 1d3 combat turns. A grenade, rocket (LOL) or assault cannon, or sustained rifle-caliber automatic fire will do the same but will also have a chance of causing permanent hearing damage to exposed team members without protection.

As the team explores the tunnels at first they're following hints or traces of the perp, or barely audible sounds that could be coming from a victim, maybe the victim they're looking for! But once they get in deep, the tunnels inexplicably start shifting and changing in such a way that they do not let them leave! Furthermore, the bodies of the dead victims start to emerge through the soil and attack the team with savage clawing and biting. Due to the extremely narrow tunnels and cramped quarters any hand to hand combat checks are subject to a penalty. There shouldn't be any normal wireless connection down there but if someone somehow manages to use GPS or some other technology to locate themselves they will find that they are basically walking in circles and moving slightly deeper into the earth. The team will begin to re-encounter any "bread crumbs" they dropped, as well. The GM should describe various branching tunnels and rooms the team can explore but these should be randomly generated and in the end should make no differences at all besides for affecting tactical terrain since somehow the team will end up just walking in circles. Sometimes, a hand or something will reach out of the earth and grab a player character giving a penalty to all checks until someone with an edged weapon chops the hand off or the player character succeeds in an opposed STR test to break free.

Before too long, the attacking dead bodies will begin to resemble old enemies, deceased comrades, and even old relatives, especially if there is anything in the character backstory where the character would feel guilty or uncomfortable about the relationship. Upon seeing these disturbing sights characters must make a WIL check or else they will start to wig out and suffer general minor penalties to most actions requiring a clear head. Furthermore, if appropriate for the character, the next time the character fires an automatic fire capable weapon, there is a 1 in 6 chance the character will let rip with the maximum amount of automatic fire instead of a burst or semi auto shot.

While the novelty or horror of this is still fresh, it's time to climax the evening. Eventually, the player characters end up in a bricked-up decommissioned historical subway or sewer station (whichever is more appropriate) which is deep under the earth. In a strategic location in the level there is the victim that the players have been hired to save in some kind of horrific bondage; you can use whatever kind of horror you want here, if you want to go all Hellraiser, or whatever you think will bother your players the most. There should be a tactical map of this. In this location the players finally encounter the serial killer but he is possessed by a very powerful toxic spirit. As it turns out many of the bodies supplied have been eaten as well by a group of ghouls who have been twisted in some ways by the evil of the location and the influences of the toxic spirits such that they attack intelligently and in some ways have advanced offensive capabilities.

So there's the climactic battle, which should be absolutely harrowing on more than one level. The player characters should feel that their lives as well as their very souls are at stake and that some horrible squirming doom awaits the vanquished. It should be a difficult and traumatic combat that taxes all the resources of the team in part because one or more of the toxic spirits are able to pelt them with bastardly spells the whole time they're trying to fight the ghouls etc. It should be one of those battles where the GM really knows the magic rules in and out and is able to really put pressure on the players by exploiting those rules.



Ideally it should come to the point where it looks like the team is going to be defeated and that in fact the GM has planned some horrific follow up adventure in which really bad soul-destroying things are going to happen, but in fact, the whole nightmare should seemingly end at a critical point when the toxic spirits are defeated. So in other words, it's not like the players have to kill everyone in order to win...actually the serial killer will revert to a normal serial killer (yawn vs. shadowrunner team0 and the ghouls will revert to normal ghouls (likewise) once the spirits are destroyed. Ideally they should be just about to go under when someone manages to take out the last spirit and vhoomph, everything goes back to normal.


The team finds they can leave via the tunnels which are no longer changing, they can find their way back to the house, everything seems OK, like they made it...

...but finally, when they get back into the creepy house, now Mom With Dementia is possessed by a REALLY powerful and PROFOUNDLY toxic spirit, or maybe even an appropriate Horror....

...and it should be everything the team can do to escape from the house and the neighborhood with their lives and souls intact!

Someone in a white mask with a weapon focus in the form of a small blade is going for a specific family because reasons!

Ghoul Cab is being targeted for the ability they have of driving in the Barrens without being harassed. Investigate the deepest, darkest places of Shadowrun to find out why.

Also, because you're doing that, you can't go to all the squats close to yours and get free candy.

dude, you gave me a really sick idea . .
wendigo . . giving out human meat fried with chocolate or somehow people will actually like it as free candy to children on halloween . .
who says you have to start your cannibal cult with adults eh?

WoundedRonin: That sounds like a fun Run, but the "problem" is that as soon as the players realize what's going on, they're going to bug out and respond Call of Cthuhlu tactics augmented with 2070s tech.

So expect them to visit the nearest construction site and appropriate drone earthmoving equipment and call their fixers for high explosives. Then they'll break out the full-auto stick 'n shock and every spirit they can summon. Also, expect them to send drones into the tunnels.

That is kind of my job now, isn't it?

and i adore your creativity *nods*

It could be done as part of chain that sells steak fingers (strips of steak, coated in batter, and deep fried for a bucketful of greasy goodness).

They could do that but then they fail to rescue the victim...it's kind of like if the Marines from Aliens had the mission to find the colonists but they started with nuking from orbit.

"Only way to be sure."

That's only a concern if there's a bonus for a live rescue. After all, Mr. J is paying for her recovery or that of her remains.

Generally speaking, when shit starts coming out of the dirt to claw at you and it's dead people, that's your cue to burn it with high explosives.

1) Babysit a celebrity who wants to go slumming to 'real' bars and parties on Halloween night.

2) to fulfil the terms of a will someone has to spend the night in a haunted mansion on a small island off the coast. Runners could go with as protection, or hired by the executor as witnesses to it all or maybe are supposed to make sure the person doesn't spend the night. Or maybe they are told they are protectors/witnesses while team 2 makes a grab at the target setting up the runners as patsies.

This could be anything from Scooby Doo like to H.P. Lovecraft. Especially if the runners are sent to get rid of the person and there really is something nasty there-who joins forces with who to survive the night?

Depending on if your players are clowns it could become Scooby Doo meets HP Lovecraft.

Ruh Roh, its CaRuhlu!

What's that Scooby?

CaRuhlu!

I don't understand what you're sayi---

*CHOMP*

=======

Yes, it's unlikely that the Big C could sneak up on someone, although I recall in another thread how crappy perception checks seem to be for normal folk.

one Halloween i ran a special run for my group. they learned to fear the blue stuff.

it begins with a frantic call from a Japanese businessman to a fixer, rousing the PCs from sleep with a 3am time-sensitive job. the johnson is the manager of an up-and-coming idol singer, and shes dead. worse, she died of a drug overdose in her hotel room with the daughter of an important ambassador. he is paying to have it cleaned up discretely and quietly.

now, here's where it gets fun- the 'drugs' are a block of blue powder in the bathroom, and around the nostrils of the two dead girls. (its actually a very toxic classified nano-substance, and the ambassadors daughter stole it from her fathers diplomatic pouch thinking it was drugs.)

the complication- the next hotel room has a peeping tom, using a radar sensor camera to watch through the hotel wall (same camera as the 4A cyberware). he has everything that happened recorded, and is still filming when the PCs arrive. So the PCs need to move two dead bodies, a block of blue death, and deal with an incriminating recording.

the horror twist- the blue powder is VERY nasty for cyberware. a few hours after its in the body, it has latched onto the hosts cyberware and started running its pre-programed modifications. aside from acting like cutters, this stuff will turn a body with enough cyber into a mobile zombie. its a slow process, and takes a few hours. it also tries to get a wifi signal back to its home base once it has modified enough cyber, but has a weak signal strength.

Very imaginative!

Even without the nanites it would be fun.

Have you seen Mystery Incorporated?

Anyone make Halloween fun for their team this year?

Trick-or-treating at Crime Mall sounds like a good way to cause trouble.

Edit: and thread necromancy seemed reasonable for Halloween on a forum.