I presently have a DM who is attempting to run a horror game. Our problem is that our group dynamic generally leads to comedy no matter what. Something good he did, however, was put us up against a little girl(a vampire) who loves hide and seek. Any other group could have been scared.
... I agree...
but a lot of times, horror and comedy are like seconds away from each other anyway. It's weird.
Here's what I got Robby.
I can't make people run.
No one runs. In D&D everybody fights. Lots of times will fight no matter what the odds, I guess expecting some duex ex machina or something.
I had a working horror campaign once though, here's how it worked.
[spoiler]Real life stuff happend.
We had a player quit, and dm'ing switched to me.
We all sat down and came up with a campaign setting.
I made them the "stars" they were basically the disciples(sidekicks and children, and inheritors also) of the group of people who had last saved the world, but the world was still realing from a war + calamity. (as I right that I realize I could have set this in ebberon or even faerun's 4th edition, in the end the campaign we came up with on our own ended up sounding like points of light.)
Now humanity was new and the world wasn't fully explored. Humanity (to the knowledge of the humans anyway) essentially only exitsted on the western most edge of a continent ocean on the west Mountains on the east (geographic isolation.)
So I send them on a rescue mission for a lost colony, on the other side of the mountains
The king of the had wanted to expand before the war and the King Regent who now ruled pushed to complete that dream (ooh manifest destiny)
The actually King and the heroes who proceeded you had left through a portal during the last battle to keep the world from ending or whatever and had not shown back up That was 5 years previous.
Anyway, I send them on a rescue mission for a lost colony, on the other side of the mountains
I basically sent them into a "darkside" like tales from the darkside.
-------------- [/spoiler]
I selected a list of horrific things from the list as well as the creepy events thread from the old wizards board.
I used note cards to deliever the creepy events, each person noticed something else.
I ran the first adventure from the heroes of horror book. The one about the hag and uncle chortle.
A kid escorted the party to the house (who was a ghost like critter actually trapped and asking for help)
I went to run the second story (the evil baby) but was looking at the lords of madness for somthing and came across the Tsocar, and then thought about "the thing" and invasion of the body snatchers.
I was sold.
[spoiler] So they showed up in a town divided, (with some really obscure architecture) both sides conviningly arguing the other had been "infected" or "Replaced"...
I also had some guy in a church (a mad man) warded with many cerulean signs gylphs scralwed in grafitti every where... Researching guess what? The find the city bomb... rember that thread? He wanted to destroy the city and everyone in it "just to be sure". Communicating with him was hard cause he rambled so much.
Later they find that the inhabitants of the city had moved into an existing and abandoned land mark, everything was cool till someone tried to get in one of the doorless domeshaped building, which released the Tsocar. . . [/spoiler]