At the heart of tabletop roleplaying games is that spirit of sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories as a kid. That makes the season a great time to gather some friends for a Halloween Rpg session and run a fun one-shot adventure (or even a brief campaign if you can find the time). After all, there are plenty of ways to implement horror elements into traditional RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, especially with homebrew repositories like the Dungeon Masters Guild to offer inspiration.
However, Halloween is an even better opportunity to check out some other RPG systems that are more catered to the various forms of horror. The indie game scene is chock full of alternative options that fill just about any genre niche you can imagine, and when it comes to scary settings, the bases are definitely covered.
Whether you want the thrill of hunting classic monsters to get into the spirit or to recreate the dread of your favourite scary movie after handing out candy, these systems go light on the rules to facilitate collaborative storytelling and typically don’t demand the same time investment from game masters or players.
For your game night considerations this month, here are our top recommendations for spooky-themed systems you should check out before All Hallow’s Eve:
5) Mörk Borg
From its setting to visual design, few RPGs go quite as hard as Mörk Borg, the “pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG” from Free League Publishing. This incredibly metal system falls into the “Old-School Revival” camp of game design, where the rules are lighter, combat is harder, and game masters can be more spontaneous. This makes the game less daunting to learn and thus well-suited as a Halloween RPG.
Players are encouraged not to get too attached to their characters, as they’re likely to die along the way. Ability scores are determined by randomized rolls, as are starting equipment. There’s no need to sweat classes or feats or the properties of your magic sword—just hop in and start fighting for your survival in whatever hellscape your GM presents.
With its self-professed “artpunk” style, Mörk Borg deals with crypts, necromancers, gothic cathedrals, occult powers, and dungeon crawling. If that’s not enough, it’s easy to slot more “on-brand” threats and scenarios into its bleak setting to suit your All Hallow’s Eve festivities. Or, if you’d rather lean further into the genre distortion, you can check out its spin-off games, the cyberpunk fever dream CY_BORG and Pirate Borg. Whatever your flavour, this system looks like a punk zine melded with a rules-light RPG in all the best ways, and will surely be an evocative ride for the season.
4) Kids on Bikes
If you love to cozy up with the scares and thrills offered by Stranger Things or most of Stephen King’s canon, Kids on Bikes is probably a great Halloween RPG to try this year. Hunters Entertainment encourages players to emulate that unique atmosphere of 80s and 90s coming-of-age stories like It, where… well, kids on bicycles ride around their sleepy midwestern towns solving mysteries way above their paygrade.
Specifically, the characters fall into certain profiles or tropes of the genre, like the Loner Weirdo or Popular Kid, and draw their strengths, weaknesses, and personalities from them as they navigate the adventure. Furthermore, the group can have an ally with supernatural powers, with players taking turns controlling them. Generating the specialized setting with other players is great for a session zero as well, encouraging player investment.
Requiring a set of polyhedral dice and a brief bit of character sheet generation, Kids on Bikes finds a sweet spot in the rules-light versus rules-intensive debate. It’s simple and intuitive enough that newcomers should find their way with relative ease, yet still offers some crunchiness for more established players. The options are almost unlimited if you choose this system for your Halloween RPG sessions.
(Alternately, season it with content from the magic school variation Kids on Brooms to spice things up even further.)
3) Vaesen
Vaesen, also from Free League Publishing, was one of the most refreshing experiences I’ve had with spooky tabletop RPGs. Its setting evoked the same feelings I had when I discovered Lovecraft’s short stories—both the dread of being watched by larger, occult threats, and of savouring something novel and unconventional, but with more modern sensibilities.
Vaesen draws inspiration from less likely sources than other Halloween RPGs. The base game hails itself as “Nordic Horror Roleplaying,” with a hauntingly-illustrated take on Nordic forklore. As in Kids on Bikes, players choose an archetype character to base their in-game persona on. You might play an intellectual like an Academic or Doctor, a lawman like the Private Detective or Officer, a tortured Writer, or lean into the occult elements with the Witch or Occultist.
Attributes and skills are generated accordingly, but Vaesen also encourages character and team development by having players choose a Dark Secret for their persona, and determine relationships with the other characters (whether they’re close connections, or more recent acquaintances). It’s these elements that help elevate this unique setting, and make it a perfect Halloween RPG for a themed game night (or really, at any time when the days are short).
2) City of Mist
Published by Son of Oak Games, City of Mist blends everyday people with the legendary in a malleable, noir-inspired setting. Player characters are a combination of a regular identity (like an old-money socialite, or a hardened detective), called a Logos, and a mythical figure or concept (like King Arthur’s legendary Excalibur, or Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh) who grants them otherworldly power.
What makes City of Mist a great Halloween RPG is the ability to take any existing myth, legend, or even concept and use it as a source of power for your player character. If you really want, your in-game persona (called a Rift) might tap into the skill set of any legendary character in your favorite scary movie or book, like Freddie Krueger’s ability to enter nightmares or Van Helsing’s knowledge of the occult, and use that power to solve mysteries in City of Mist’s unique take on Noir.
The system uses minimal dice rolls, with the GM never rolling anything. Wrapping your head around its use of “Tags” instead of some more traditional RPG elements is one of its bigger challenges, however. “Tags” are mechanical elements that inform a character’s personality, equipment, and ambitions, while “statuses” replace and expand the hit point system in most other RPGs—if one gets shot, for instance, they don’t subtract a number from their maximum HP, but might gain the “gunshot-wound-3” status, which reflects the severity of the wound.
It takes some time to adjust if you’re used to straight d20-based systems, but once you’re acclimated, City of Mist can help you realize some truly ambitious and creative scenarios beyond your wildest hopes.
1) Monster of the Week
Our top choice for a Halloween RPG session is Monster of the Week from Evil Hat Productions. This system allows you to live the sort of scenario you might find in any given episode of “monster of the week” TV shows, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural. It taps into this common conceptual structure to make a system that plays with familiar conventions while facilitating roleplay intuitively.
Players make characters by choosing a “Playbook” (like a class in other RPGs) that informs their personality, abilities, and role in the story. A Chosen like Buffy has certain powers and fate-bending luck, a Searcher’s skills make them good company for Agent Mulder from The X-Files, and a Meddling Kid would fit right in with the team of the Mystery Machine.
The thematic influences make the game easier to learn, and the system itself strikes a compelling balance—it’s lighter on rules than D&D, but with enough mechanical elements to give players options and agency, and the complete package intuitively facilitates roleplay. For all of this, Monster of the Week is our top pick for a Halloween RPG event—or any other time.
