One of my favorite all-time RPG memories is inviting my friends to the house to run I6: Castle Ravenloft, inviting the players to the titular evil lair to face the vampire Strahd as he stalked them through his home. There's something special about running a horror game on Halloween. Everyone is already in the mood for a fright, and as a game master it's our solemn duty to provide them with one. Malifaux gives us a number of options to do just that. So, with that in mind, here are the top 6 Penny Dreadful one-shots to run for a night of spooky fun.
#6 Til Death Do Us Part
The Fated
are contacted by a woman to investigate a murder. Pretty standard adventure
set-up, right? Well, there’s a little twist: the woman wants them to investigate
HER murder. Poor Sarah’s woken up as a zombie with no idea how she got that way.
Worse (well, ok, maybe not worse), her fiancé is about to get married to
somebody else! The Fated have about 30 hours to figure out what happened to her
and obtain the information necessary to confront her killer. I love the set-up
for this Penny Dreadful. The only thing that knocks it down this particular
list is the lack of horror elements past the initial hook. If I was going to
run it for a Halloween game, I might have to dress up some of the enemies down
the line to include a bit more horror. But still, Til Death Do Us Part is a
solid mystery with an excellent hook.
#5 The Ferryman
Something
is stalking the shores of Malifaux’s waterfronts. Mariners and dock workers are
going missing, and rumor has it a creature in the river is to blame. When a
bounty is offered for bringing the thing in, a cadre of hunters (including the Fated)
take to the waters to try and end the nightmare forever. Playing on the horror
of an aquatic unknown menace, the adventure is reminiscent of the movie Jaws
(right down to a Quint-like character). Not classically horror-filled, with the
right application of a John Williams score and appropriate measures to build
tension, this adventure is more than capable of keeping the Fated on the edge
of their seats. One thing is for sure: if the Fated go after the Ferryman, they’re
going to need a bigger boat.
#4 Ghost House
The classic
haunted house story with a Malifaux twist, this story is a fantastic one-off
for some spooky horror classics. Every game master at some point or another
tries a version of this, and if you’re worth your salt you pick up simple
tricks here and there to help things out. The house in question for this story
isn’t exactly “The Haunting of Hill House,” however, as it is VERY blatantly
haunted and the first thing the Fated will likely see is the phantom owners of
the home gliding by. Still, put on some appropriately spooky ambient music.
Make some halls longer than they should be. Knock under the table at a tense moment,
and you can make for a memorable evening.
#3 Night of the Carver
I mean,
come on. He had to be in here somewhere, right? Malifaux’s Halloween Boogeyman has been a
part of the world since nearly the beginning, and there’s a reason the Carver
endures in the stories. A killer who manifests on the most haunted night of the
year and stalks the city’s citizens (and a city full of people who still go out
and celebrate Halloween anyways), the Carver combines the dark fairytale fear of childhood with the unstoppable killing power of a modern-day slasher like Jason Vorhees. In this particular
story, the Fated have to protect a mark that they’re trying to deliver for a
bounty after he angers some Neverborn, leading the Malifaux natives to sick the
Carver on him. It’s quick, which is ideal for a holiday party atmosphere where
it can be tougher to keep the group’s attention. If you’re looking for a game
to run on Halloween Night, you can’t find one that fits better than this.
#2 Bad Moon Rising
Not all
Quarantine Zones are created equally, as your Fated will find when they join a
pack of Neverborn hunters to try and drive them out of the western QZ named Beggartree.
Here, the local Knotwood forests have grown over the walls, congesting the city
with gnarly plant growth, tangling roots, and one very, very angry Waldgeist.
If they can survive that challenge, they’ll have to deal with infiltration of
the hunters by Dopplegangers, try and restore an abandoned Guild relic left on
an earlier hunt, and try to disrupt a sinister ritual to awaken one of the Neverborn’s
most dangerous enforcers before they can turn him loose on the city. A more
combat focused adventure than usual, this locked-in-with-the-monsters adventure
has the claustrophobic feeling of movies like Alien. It’s a lot of fun,
particularly with pre-generated Fated who you can casually dispatch in a horrific
spray of gore.
#1 Heart of Darkness
The first
time I read through this adventure, I was legitimately creeped out. The story
hook is ultimately fairly benign: a new type of gemstone has been found at a
mine in the Badlands, and the Fated are sent to investigate who’s been
smuggling them out to sell in the city. When they arrive, however, they learn
that workers have been going missing, and those who remain are literally
jumping at each other’s shadows. When it is ultimately revealed that the camp
is being stalked by a Bandersnatch, and the stones from the mine are egg sacks
from the very same creatures, the Fated are left to deal with this horror of
the Malifaux world. This is easier said than done, however, as by the time they
know what is going on, one of the Fated is likely to have a spider-monster of their
own hiding in their shadow. Done right, the slow build of paranoia in the camp combined
with the bizarre phenomena of the creatures can build an atmosphere like John
Carpenter’s The Thing. This adventure is still one of my favorites of all time.
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