Hey, all,

So, earlier today, lightning struck, and I came up with an idea that got me extremely excited. I'm currently running a Pathfinder campaign, my party's at 7th level, and 2-4 sessions from now, I'm going to do a horror session...

Involving a haunted house...

Using the room tiles from Betrayal at House on the Hill. For those unfamiliar with the game, you can get a sense of what I'm talking about by skipping to 4:10 and 5:10 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAW4sAntTtU <---- that video.


I'm sure I'm not the only person to ever think of this, but it's something I've never seen done before. So, I bring my idea here. Has anyone else tried this, or something like it? Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Among the things I want to do are:
*re-write the effects of many of the "trap rooms" to provide mechanical challenges in the Pathfinder system (I.E., collapsed room requires a reflex save to avoid falling through)

*Toy around with adding the item, omen and event cards, or at least specific ones like Secret Passageway, Revolving Wall and Handgun (which would be a wand of magic missiles)

*Work up specific descriptions of each room to better fit my setting (I'll be happy to go into blistering detail about the setting details that are specific to this adventure, but gaming stories are boring, so I'll just put a one-paragraph synopsis in the first reply to give a general sense).



So... what do you think? This is a bit of an intimidating endeavor, but I think I can pull it off with the right prep.

Setting and session information:

Setting: Apocalypse-in-progress, in which a doomsday cult is slowly merging the natural world with the awful, awful plane their gods reside on. They have succeeded in raising an army, and the town this game will occur in is "occupied territory".


Session: Upon arriving in a new city, the PCs are invited to dinner at the old mansion just outside of town. They discover that their host is the local occupation leader, and a high-ranking cult member, who dangles enough plot carrots in front of them that the players (whom I trust completely) won't just kill him outright. There are a few other NPC guests at dinner as well.

During dinner, the lights go out, and when the torches and candles are re-lit, one of the NPCs is missing. This begins the meat of the game: searching the mansion for clues about this person's disappearance while stranger and stranger things happen. From time to time, characters are "Taken", through a number of increasingly frightening means. The end result is always the same: the character (be it PC or NPC) is no longer there, and nobody is able to locate them.

Once the last person is taken, the climax begins. The PCs are all in a sort of shared hallucination that re-enacts the last few hours of the lives of those that lived in the house. In a few short hours, the house's inhabitants went from happy and healthy to captured, to tortured (by the PC's dinner host), to forced to dig a pit in their own yard, to being soaked in spirits, thrown in the pit and lit on fire (also by the host).

Characters who don't make their will saves once the vision gets to the fiery death begin taking fire damage. Those that do awaken in a dim cellar to find the ghost of all of the members of the family, all melted together into one terrible spirit, and the motionless bodies of everyone who was in the house at the start of the session, screaming in pain. Killing the Host/cultist/commiter of the atrocity will free the spirit, and everyone enthralled in its visions.







Shit... I really meant that to be shorter. Anyway, the part involving the betrayal pieces is that middle part, exploring the house. As they move through the house, I'll draw the tiles randomly and provide description.

I know Leoff has used the Clue board for D&D games. It's even conveniently pre-gridded.

Yes, thanks, Saragon.
We also own the D&D Clue game, which has monsters charted in.
I made cardboard tiles the shape of the rooms so I can change the identity of the rooms at will. Parker Bros. Construction and General Contracting is a very prominent business out in the Three Kingdoms.
I worried at first that using a Clue board might break immersion, but after one delighted laugh, it even provided extra atmosphere.

I like the physical components of the pitch, but I'm not thrilled with the mind trip part. That may just be me, I'll assume that you know what your group likes.
--
TAZ

What about that part rubs you the wrong way? For clarity, I plan to have that part be very short, only a few minutes at most. I would narrate it like a montage, not a longform roleplay scene. So, short descriptions following something like this:

Normal life.
Have group make will saves.
Soldiers kick down the door, panic, captured.
Will saves.
Interrogation
Will saves

And so on. Jumping quickly from scene to scene, always allowing them a chance to escape.



As for unig the Clue board, that sounds really cool too. I've never actually played clue, so I can't picture the board, but I'll definitely look into it.