Whether it’s for Halloween or maybe you’re just in the mood for something spooky: either way, you want to run a horror dnd campaign. But how do you go about injecting horror into Dungeons & Dragons - a tabletop roleplaying game that’s typically about providing its players with a power fantasy? Though, it does depend on what the aim of the dungeon master: whether you genuinely want to try to scare your players or simply run a D&D game featuring horror elements. Each one of these goals requires a different approach.

Horror dnd adventures and settings 

If you’re looking for a more straightforward way of injecting running horror in your existing campaign or an entirely new one, there are various books that will do just that. 

There are several Dungeons and Dragons books for 5th Edition and 2024 from Wizards of the Coast that are either entirely horror themed, or at least lean more into horror than usual. These will provide you with a framework for your horror RPG campaign, either as a pre-written adventure or a sourcebook featuring various elements for you to use in your campaign:

• Curse of Strahd: An adventure book that takes players through the haunted halls of Castle Ravenloft to face its enigmatic owner, Count Strahd. This is a classic D&D adventure that was updated for 5th Edition with a new version in 2016.
  
• Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft: A campaign setting book focused on the world that Curse of Strahd takes place in - including the surrounding area of Barovia and the various people (and monsters) that inhabit it. This is a great book if you want to create a storyline around classic gothic horror tropes, such as vampires.
  
• Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden: This 2020 adventure book takes place in the Icewind Dale region of the Forgotten Realms, which has been plunged into a dark perpetual winter. Players will be immersed in a complex storyline with multiple branching paths, and a heavy emphasis on the struggle of surviving in harsh conditions.
  
• Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk: An adventure book that returns to the iconic setting of Phandalin, which featured in the very first adventure released for D&D 5E. This time, players will be venturing underground to investigate an otherworld cult with disturbing, cosmic horror-fuelled plans.

Create your own horror dnd campaign

Alternatively, you could create your own original homebrew campaign. Consider what kind of horror story you want to tell and which flavour of horror you want to lean into. There are numerous directions you could take your campaign or one-shot in, each with their own sources of inspiration and tropes - whether that’s horror movies, horror video games, horror books etc… 

• Classic Hammer Horror style with iconic monsters and a campy, family friendly tone. (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein)
  
• Gothic horror that indulges in the macabre, with transgressive themes and romantic imagery. (Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
  
• Science fiction horror that explores big subjects through weird technology or alien creatures. (Alien, The Thing)
  
• Zombie horror that depicts the underdead as either a vast horde or individually dangerous creatures. (28 Days Later, Dead Rising)
  
• Ghost horror that haunts you with strange occurrences and mournful stories. (The Woman in Black, The Amityville Horror)
  
• Stalker horror that features a memorable villain who hunts their victims using an iconic weapon or method. (Halloween, Scream)
  
• Cosmic Horror that causes you to question your own existence and fear the unknown. (The Cthulhu Mythos, Bloodborne)

You can take elements from any of these sub-genres of horror and find ways to implement them into your D&D campaign. Perhaps your story is set in a derelict spaceship populated by a terrifying alien monster hunting your players. Maybe your campaign features a post-apocalyptic world that’s been torn apart by the undead, or includes an historic mansion that’s been plagued by the dead spirits trapped in there. 

Whichever of these subgenres you choose, you’ll also want to decide the kind of tone or vibe you want to go for with your campaign: Do you want to thrill your players with intense confrontations with monsters or killers? Do you want to make your players uneasy with strange unexplainable events and a mystery to solve? Or do you want to terrify your players through inescapable dread and psychological horror? 

Including horror gameplay elements in your campaign

You can take things a step further with your dnd campaign by introducing gameplay elements that tie directly into the horror. Dungeons and Dragons is usually all about the power fantasy, enabling players to overcome challenges and feel like their characters are growing stronger. If you’re interested in pushing your dnd horror campaign that bit further, you could change the gameplay of D&D 5E or D&D 2024 to challenge this power fantasy and make your players feel more vulnerable. 

When it comes to dming, there are ways to pull the rug out from under your players and communicate the fact that they should be unnerved or even afraid. You can do this in small ways: 

• Asking players to make perception checks for no reason other than to freak them out and make them question their characters’ senses
  
• Using descriptive language to build atmosphere and immerse your players in a horrifying environment that will keep them on edge
  
• Including strange environments that can’t be mapped or tracked in any normal way, messing with the players’ perception of their world

There are also bigger and bolder ways to change the TTRPG gameplay to scare your players - 

- You can introduce an enemy that cannot be fought in the normal DnD way, and must be faced in a different manner or avoided entirely. 

- Include a mechanic that constantly threatens the players and forces them to play cautiously - such as a deadly disease or an easily disturbed ghost.

- Punish your players’ recklessness by making attacks hit harder, injuries seriously impede them.

- Introduce extreme survival elements like dangerous weather conditions or oppressive darkness.   

How to prepare for your horror dnd campaign

There are various things you can do to prepare a strong foundation to run your horror dnd campaign on. 

You can create a collection of useful worldbuilding elements to use during the campaign itself; such as a rough outline of the campaign setup; profiles of key characters; details about your monsters/creatures/threats; a rough map of your key location/s, and options for how your players can potentially escape or overcome the danger (with room for your players to find other ideas or possibly fail). 

You can easily create all of these elements via LegendKeeper: including wiki pages on characters, story points, and creatures, as well as a comprehensive map with pins that can link to other pages to provide context, and a timeline feature that will allow you to create a history your story and track your players’ actions.

When it comes to horror, it’s really important to ensure that your players are comfortable with the potentially harsher elements of your campaign. Safety tools will give you a clearer idea of how to shape your campaign - Lines & Veils provide indicators of what to be careful with and what to completely avoid, whilst the X card will allow your players to safely communicate when they’re uncomfortable with something. 

Have fun, stay safe, and scare your players.