The House on the Hill | DND 5e Horror Themed Mini-Arc (4-5 sessions) | Session 0 Free!

About the adventure

This is a special horror themed mini-arc of my own creation! Prepare yourselves for a haunted house mystery centered around the death of Dennis Smallsong, only son of Sarah and Samuel. Decades after the his passing and the subsequent abandonment of the family estate by his parents, Dennis has been sighted inside his home by the family's loyal groundskeeper once more. The now petrified groundskeeper tells tales of stone-skinned devils that drove him away from the home, an overwhelming sense of dread that emanated from the estate, and unnatural beasts that now seem to have overrun the mansion... The superstitious folk of Pine Tree Village have come to you now, begging for help in ridding them of this evil! You all are sell-swords, bounty hunters, investigators, and the like working for the nearby town of Trimesa, a more established settlement than the village, and are being sent to figure out what is going on and put a stop to this nonsense before it becomes a bigger problem. Solve puzzles, find clues, and fend off foe and madness alike to unlock the secrets within this House on the Hill!

Additional Details

How to prepare

You should prepare by ensuring your character sheet adheres to the below guidelines. We will be communicating via Discord and playing on Roll20. If you have a face cam, I urge you to use it! I'll have mine on and I find it makes for a more personally engaging game experience!

What I provide

I will bring the voices, puzzles, music, SFXs, content sharing from DNDBeyond, including a myriad of extra races, subclasses, spells, magic items and more from official sourcebooks, and maps with Dynamic Lighting so that you all can have a thrilling murder mystery to remember!

Gameplay details

Expect a heavy emphasis on role play, riddles, and puzzle solving. Combat will be present, but is not the primary focus of this story. Your party will collect clues, solve riddles, conduct rituals, and fight your way through fear and monsters to find what is causing hell in this house. For a more immersive horror experience, I will be implementing a variant of the madness mechanic based on the rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide from pages 258-260. Details will be in the Discord server. Also, I will be implementing roles for this game. These roles will have no impact on the mechanics of the game, though you will get some free stuff and have a secret goal to act upon during the game! The intent of this system is to give you all some more structure for roleplay during our game. Roles are given out on a first come, first serve basis, so sign up early to get the role you want! Available roles are: The Leader The Veteran The Favorite The Unit The Newbie

Content warnings

(none)

Safety tools used

Breaks
Session 0
Stars and Wishes

How will character creation work

Character creation will be done before the one shot through DNDBeyond. In order to maximize game time, please follow the below rules as you create your intrepid investigator: 1. Your character may be any of the official races/classes, except for Artificers, and will be at level 5 for this game. 2. To ensure everyone is an appropriate power level for the game (and to avoid any potential issues with suspiciously strong characters), we will be using the fixed hit point type and the standard array or point buy method for generating your 6 core stats. 3. For your gear, select starting equipment and grab whatever you want from that list. Note that some items/quantity of items will be altered for a more immersive experience. For example, I will alter the commonly obtained 'tinderbox' item to become a 'matchbox' to promote management of matches as a means to ignite light sources and incentivize players to investigate their surroundings more thoroughly. Torches will be downgraded to candles as well as having the quantity you start with reduced. Sensing a pattern? 4. A few spells will be prohibited/reworked in service of the horror theme or to better fit with the madness mechanic. Spells that circumvent the need for matches to create light, such as Light, Dancing Lights, and Create Bonfire will not be allowed. However, spells such as Calm Emotion and Heroism will, in addition to its base effect, also be used to stave off madness for a short time! This list is not exhaustive and I reserve the right to request you change out certain spells. I encourage you to message me if you feel your spell selection might be problematic or if you have an idea for how a certain spell could be altered for this game. 5. Darkvision will be receiving a nerf since this story will take place almost exclusively indoors and sight up to 60ft would be nearly the full map. Characters who can see in the dark will only be able to do so up to 15ft while players without this trait will only be able to see 5ft. Keep those matches handy : )

Players can expect

• Find a game to join solo or search for a professional game master for you and your friends/coworkers/family.
• Book your session and wait for the Game Master to approve you.
• If you don't have a blast with your first game, your next game is on us.