Hi everyone! I'm a middling-to-experienced player but a first time DM. I'm obsessed with Halloween, and wanted to put together a really special campaign for my group. My hope is that I'll be able to balance actual D&D Lore and Setting (and all attendant rulebook stuff) with a Harvest-time setting featuring pumpkinhead undead, giant black cats, witches, goblins, ghosts, mummies, a Frankenstein's Monster, vampires, and candy. I'm wondering if anyone has ideas or places I should look for inspiration. Being somewhat new to the D&D setting, it's a VAST ****er to penetrate. Admittedly, I'm looking to sap on y'alls knowledge a little bit as I put this together. If this seems like a neat idea to anyone, please share your input! I'm open to just about any suggestions. I've composed a brief intro, which I'm also super open to C+C on. See below:
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The harvest moon lounges quietly above a foggy cluster of hills. Gnarled trees tangle across ridges and dales, broken in twain by neat rectangles of crops, and shedding their fiery leaves. Corn grows tall and yellow in neat rows while children caper recklessly through their multitudes. There is an air of apprehension: a meager harvest could cripple the small communities dotting the landscape. Prayers are offered to the appropriate gods, bonfires blaze in protective runic patterns, and local magic men conduct elaborate rituals to preserve and guard the winter's sustenance.
Harvest is a time for nervous celebration and for hearty food. While hunters chase fatted prey to their hiding places, farmers tally their bounty with the earnestness of a fastidious banker. The pies, roasts, smokes, fries, bakes, raws, and sweets aren't prepared solely for the living, though. As the hamlets batten down the hatches for a frigid winter, their dead return. Ancestral haunts glide seldom-seen from home to home accepting offerings at their shrines. Harvest is a time of liminal fragility, when the thin river between the living and the dead grows bone bridges, and those that dwell on the dusky shores of mortality sally forth to cause mischief- and sometimes, tragedy. Harvest is also a time of hope. The perseverance of the yeoman is laid gloriously bare, vulnerable to the tempestuous will of nature but uncowed and unbent, raising a shepherd's crook to the granite sky.
In the sleepy town called Harker's Hollow, the harvest celebrations are expressed with the kind of reverent joviality attendant to public funeral feasts. One partakes of the feasting with as much joy as any other celebration, but with bitter seasoning sprinkled on by the specter of mortality. One dines and drinks with friends, but also with guests departed: feeling the ghostly eyes of a watching mother or the quiet laughter of a grandparent. One hugs their close friends tighter in sight of the river Styx. One regards a looming snowcloud with the anticipation of snowball fights in equal measure to the dread of frigid hunger. Finally, often drunkenly, one offers a pristine cake or leg of turkey to the ancestral shrine. One casts the divining straws before daring to approach sleep. One salts the doorway in order to prevent uninvited guests from entering the bedroom.
As summer abdicates to winter in the province of Teregard, an old man sheds his mortal coil with the shuddering words "ward your doors and tend to your fires: the bounty is rotten." A group of travelers find themselves at the local Faelin-Faere, engaged in a fierce apple-bobbing competition."
Hi everyone! I'm a middling-to-experienced player but a first time DM. I'm obsessed with Halloween, and wanted to put together a really special campaign for my group. My hope is that I'll be able to balance actual D&D Lore and Setting (and all attendant rulebook stuff) with a Harvest-time setting featuring pumpkinhead undead, giant black cats, witches, goblins, ghosts, mummies, a Frankenstein's Monster, vampires, and candy. I'm wondering if anyone has ideas or places I should look for inspiration. Being somewhat new to the D&D setting, it's a VAST ****er to penetrate. Admittedly, I'm looking to sap on y'alls knowledge a little bit as I put this together. If this seems like a neat idea to anyone, please share your input! I'm open to just about any suggestions. I've composed a brief intro, which I'm also super open to C+C on. See below:
"
The harvest moon lounges quietly above a foggy cluster of hills. Gnarled trees tangle across ridges and dales, broken in twain by neat rectangles of crops, and shedding their fiery leaves. Corn grows tall and yellow in neat rows while children caper recklessly through their multitudes. There is an air of apprehension: a meager harvest could cripple the small communities dotting the landscape. Prayers are offered to the appropriate gods, bonfires blaze in protective runic patterns, and local magic men conduct elaborate rituals to preserve and guard the winter's sustenance.
Harvest is a time for nervous celebration and for hearty food. While hunters chase fatted prey to their hiding places, farmers tally their bounty with the earnestness of a fastidious banker. The pies, roasts, smokes, fries, bakes, raws, and sweets aren't prepared solely for the living, though. As the hamlets batten down the hatches for a frigid winter, their dead return. Ancestral haunts glide seldom-seen from home to home accepting offerings at their shrines. Harvest is a time of liminal fragility, when the thin river between the living and the dead grows bone bridges, and those that dwell on the dusky shores of mortality sally forth to cause mischief- and sometimes, tragedy. Harvest is also a time of hope. The perseverance of the yeoman is laid gloriously bare, vulnerable to the tempestuous will of nature but uncowed and unbent, raising a shepherd's crook to the granite sky.
In the sleepy town called Harker's Hollow, the harvest celebrations are expressed with the kind of reverent joviality attendant to public funeral feasts. One partakes of the feasting with as much joy as any other celebration, but with bitter seasoning sprinkled on by the specter of mortality. One dines and drinks with friends, but also with guests departed: feeling the ghostly eyes of a watching mother or the quiet laughter of a grandparent. One hugs their close friends tighter in sight of the river Styx. One regards a looming snowcloud with the anticipation of snowball fights in equal measure to the dread of frigid hunger. Finally, often drunkenly, one offers a pristine cake or leg of turkey to the ancestral shrine. One casts the divining straws before daring to approach sleep. One salts the doorway in order to prevent uninvited guests from entering the bedroom.
As summer abdicates to winter in the province of Teregard, an old man sheds his mortal coil with the shuddering words "ward your doors and tend to your fires: the bounty is rotten." A group of travelers find themselves at the local Faelin-Faere, engaged in a fierce apple-bobbing competition."
The Curse of Strahd Campaign would probably go a long way for the feeling you're looking for. Or maybe steal stuff from Call of Cthulu.