Warning: My Players please don't read. Serious Spoilers!

The Party killed my brother ... OK, not mine, but someone's - and they did it kind of brutally.

And the aggrieved elder Brother is a "big deal" in the Eldreth Veluuthra of Neverwinter Wood. He's going to want revenge.

So I plan to take a page from the story The Most Dangerous Game (full story text at the Internet Archive here), where he has contracted a bounty hunter to drug the Party, strip them of their gear, and deliver them to him (along with their gear), in the Neverwinter Woods, where he plans to extract revenge by turning them loose (unequipped) and hunting them for sport, with his aides. The idea being that if they can reach such-and-such a river (the edge of the woods, or some other such marker), they can go free - for now. If he catches them, they're dead. Since he is conveniently (for the story) Lawful Evil, he'll honor the terms of the game, although he won't promise not to seek other forms of revenge in the future.

I plan to stress that he still has all their gear.

Will the party get captured by the bounty hunter, or will they manage to evade capture (but still find the contract for their capture - other adventure hook there)? If captured and hunted: will the Party try and merely survive and try an escape? Will they try and turn the tables, and make the Hunter the hunted, by taking out some of his aides, rearming themselves, and go full on jungle (forest) guerrilla warfare on the BBEG? Will they lay traps and ambushes? Will the lure of the possibility of recovery of their (substantial) gear cause them to ignore the safety of reaching the goal, and attempt to circle back for it?

So - atmospherically, I really want to play up the tension and horror of being hunted, and since the hunters are way more mobile than they are (Elves, in the woods, on horseback if needs be), I'm thinking that I can probably dictate when/where/under what conditions the encounters take place. 

The Party is 6th level: Rogue (half-elf), Sorcerer (half-elf), Eldritch Knight (dragonborn), Monk/Rogue (shadow, drow), and Cleric (forge domain, dwarf)

So, I'm turning to the wider community here for creative input. I have my own ideas right now, but 1,000 heads are better than one :)

What do you think would make good encounters, and under what circumstances? Some encounter ideas work best if the Party is gear-less, some better if they've managed to equip themselves somewhat, and other encounters if/when they've recovered their equipment.

How would you play up the atmosphere, tension, and horror of being hunted?

Any input anyone could provide would be appreciated, thank you :)

Im not really sure how to play up the atmosphere except to find a good background soundtrack. Also, maybe reading some more short stories or books that are horror or suspense or thriller may help with getting a feel for narration that sounds ominous and forboding. 

I am currently running CoS over Discord for my party (so I don't have a soundtrack going) and I also feel like I have a hard time making the environment and events feel genuinely scary. 

I really dig the idea of an encounter built off of The Most Dangerous Game. Its one of my favorite short stories 

It's certainly a morbidly fascinating story - and very Victorian - which means it's also horribly racist in spots :p 

However here a few ideas that could be employed off the top of my head:

• Toying with the Party - running down the group to the point where they could win, and then breaking off. Letting them know they could have lost, but they're saving the sport for another day.
• Trying to split the group - hunters  (humans, or not) of packs have tried to do this for millions of years. This could be done through straight out maneuvering, or by the fact that not all the Party can move at the same rate.

• Using an NPC or two as "red shirt cannon fodder" - caught the first day as an example to the party.
• Using a not-quite-so-disposable NPC who decides to fight back - and fails horribly, but seeds the idea in the Party.

Also - the environment of the Neverwinter Wood is - in itself - a third player in the game, as are the potential creature encounters there ( including a number of Fey creatures ). However, there's a potential there for seeding the Wood with one or more potential allies as well - to add another level of complexity. The tension between the Elves and the Dark Fey ( and the Wood's connection to the Shadowfell ) could be utilized.

I have to admit - while I think this is a fairly novel style of adventure that I've never tried before - it gets really dark, really fast :p

I'm kind of on the fence about using it for that reason.

I d be curious about how long the Party could survive in terms of days, and how? It could be that there's a Safe Boundary, but nearly deadly to get to with a skills check nightmare; but what if part of the Hunt is simply to survive for x days and nights? Foraging, hunting,  finding secret shelter. Clean drinking water! Only one place in the Forest for that? Poison berries,  psychedelic mushrooms with a high DC to discern the risk of eating. Any sort of natural trap, snare, falling trees, or quicksand that could easily kill a character can make for a panicked moment, especially if the Bounty Hunter (s) will close-in the next round. Risks of starting camp fires will alert the Hunters, but braving the overnight chilll could wake up feeling Exhausted. Suddenly the Survival and Nature skills come in far more handy,  too. There could be all sorts of risk/rewards of even just mundane activities. There could also be a risk in sleeping/trancing period in this Haunted part of the forest. The comfortable large tree canopy above could force a player to Keep Sleeping and never wake up, drawing life energy. Or the nightly Parade of Banshees.

Having the Hunters too loudly talking about the Terror of the Woods who hunts for herself at night, within earshot of the Stealthed rogue, could incite some paranoia about "what" that Terror could be. Definitely have an unnamed Red Shirt get whacked early;

just start a chase scene, whoever trips first gets taken prisoner too be tortured in whatever generic Horror Movie way you want, how do the others rescue him/her?

Be flexible and open with improvised weapons

Oh, my prey, you have til dusk to run. From the setting of the sun, until you reach the end of these woods, or you die, the hunt is begun. Oh the horror! I'm giddy with excitement! I wonder how many of them I can keep as trophies.....To the hunt boys!

From there it's going to be interesting, and I'm reminded of an article I read from....?somewhere? that had an interesting mechanic that could work well here. The first part is to understand that the hunter(s) are omni-present but not omniscient. They can show up at any time, anywhere the players are, with or, without, warning, however they don't know where the players are or what the players' plans are.

As the players roam about you'll also have a few triggered locations that the hunter(s) will show up at, and you'll tie in player actions to increase or decrease the likelihood of a random encounter with them. Do they light a fire, do they take shelter in a preexisting cave, do they inadvertently cause a dead tree to fall? The chances of a random encounter increases by X. Do they make gillie suits, do they force their way into a blocked cave, covering up the mouth, then the chances of a random encounter decreases by X. There is also the very random encounter, it should be rarely used, but it's still a good tool. The trick here is to have the hunter(s) appear within earshot, not visual range. 

The reason for this is to give the players a chance to escape, the mechanics of the game really don't give us much for this as it's very binary. Instead adapt the chase rules a touch and have the players do things to avoid capture. Hiding in the river, climbing trees, running for their lives, anything their hearts desire, but a chance to evade. Depending on their success, they evade the hunter, they catch the hunter's attention, or they are attacked. There should also be a "weakness" that the hunter(s) have which the players can learn about to help with evasion. For example, one team of hunters, or a single hunter, is arachnophobic, so the players can learn about this and potentially use it to their advantage. Maybe the horses are spooked by certain things, the players can figure this out and use it. 

The rest of this scenario is classic narrative. Set the mood with an NPC or three being mowed down, show what happens to the "brave" NPC who decides to fight instead of run, and let the players decide their course of action. Give very limited time to make decisions when the hunters are present, they're dangerous and the players need to act now. Let the players have even more latitude on how to use their abilities and creativity. Break the woods into a grid so that you can manage safe zones, terrain, and native encounters, as well as knowing the buffer zone for when a hunter shows up and the players need to evade. 

Good to see you again! 

Some really good suggestions here - thank you :)

I very much like the idea of the hunters having an "exploitable weakness" or two, that the Party can pick up on, and use.

I think setting up at least one "appear within earshot, not visual range" encounter - or alternatively within distant visual range, with an easily discernibly path, like alongside the river running through the valley - where there exists the potential for the Party to ambush their hunters if they should be so inclined and think of it - would be a good idea as well.

An encounter where the hunters spot the Party outright, and attempt to chase them down on horseback, before the Party members can reach the safety of heavily bush filled ravines, would be an excellent place to employ a 4th Ed style Skill Challenge. There's an article by TheAngryDM in which he utilizes a Skill Challenge type mechanic for an NPC/Player chase to try and apprehend a fleeing NPC. No reason it couldn't be adapted for (a) chasing NPC(s). I think the use of a visible "distance tracker" that the Players can all see would add to the tension "... sorry, with an Acrobatics roll like that, you not only don't manage to lose the rider in the thicket, but you get hung up in that thicket for a moment ... you get free, but the rider has closed some of the distance ... <moves the marker from 4 to 3>". Can they keep the marker from counting down to zero before the 5 rounds it takes to reach the safe zone? 

I appreciate the feedback :)

How strict are you planning to be about spell components? Cause you could make the sorcerer next to useless if his spell choices call for material components and that's with the gear. Ditto the Cleric if you won't let him fashion some sort of holy symbol. And boy, will it be the monk's time to shine -- not necessarily a bad thing, just realize he's going to be impacted substantially less then the rest of the party.

I would think you could have some bits and pieces of things that could act like very, very basic gear scattered through the woods, too. A stout branch that could act as a club or greatclub or quarterstaff. Maybe they find a corpse of a former victim who's somehow managed to hide a dagger on him (which is basically a vehicle for the rogue's sneak attack). As you'd hinted at allies, maybe a fey who's willing to loan one of them a sword, provided they agree to do a service for him in the future. Give them a few little items, and they might be more willing to try and fight.

And one suggestion, be clear they will have a way out. I once had a DM do something similar, but he had the NPC keep saying something like, you can join us or die (where die meant, we will hunt you for sport). He wasn't clear on the fact that we were to be hunted, however, and it seemed like he'd given the characters a no-win situation (join the evil or be executed), which in turn really made us players mad and led to the group kind of exploding.

And just because the boss would keep his word, doesn't mean an overzealous underling might not still chase them across the river.

Angry GM on the Xenosis

Extremely highly recommended article for someone looking to run a tense survival game where the players are being hunted by an entity much more powerful than they are.  Admittedly, the proposal for this Most Dangerous Game-esque story isn't entirely in line with a typical Xenosis game, but a lot of useful tidbits could nevertheless be gleaned from the wise, if saucy, words of Angry.

Try to take lovecraft's approach on horror into account. The reason his books are scary is because of the lingering dread that the enemy is unbelievably strong, and the sense of hopelessness fighting it. If the party does manage to kill one, have more appear. Make fighting them head on appear useless.

(spoilers for TMDG) The Most Dangerous Game was intense because whatever Rainsford did, he could never kill General Zaroff. It was only through a huge deception did he manage to kill him. Make the players have to rely completely on stealth and traps, give them the knowledge that the hunters are way stronger than they are. Like the previously mentioned idea of a red shirt killed by the hunters to show their power, instead have a NPC that is stronger than a player by themselves (if you were going to give him a class, lvl 8 would fit) attack a hunter and get slaughtered, while the party watches.

Also, I just read The Most Dangerous Game last week for school, after never remembering hearing it referenced before. That there is the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. 

Look into "the Trajectory of Fear". Priceless.

Quote from Noman_Ashthorn >>

Look into "the Trajectory of Fear". Priceless.

 That is an A+ source right there