HEAD GAMES, a Hallowe'en One-Shot
Looking for a hallowe'en one-shot/short adventure you can run at your D&D table? You can nab HEAD GAMES from DMsguild right here!
This is an adventure about losing your head, literally! The mysterious Head-Taker has rocked the little village of Diggerby Hill. Discover their true identity and motive behind their Head-Taking, and enjoy new rules for becoming a Pumpkinhead as well as a new spooky sport: Deathball!
The Blog Post, Minor Spoilers
Of all the stuff I've put out on DMsguild, I had maybe some of the most fun brainstorming and running HEAD GAMES. Inspiration comes in bursts and the pieces for this one all fell into place at the right time. It's inspired by stories in which people have their heads chopped off and replaced by a gourd- Sleepy Hollow being the obvious one, but the
Mayan Hero Twins legend (in which one gets their head replaced by a gourd) is a specific and strong influence too.
There's something both visceral and comic to me about a story where getting your head chopped off is, like, an inconvenience. It's gonzo and reckless in a way that the D&D rules don't exactly allow for- which is why, of course, it was necessary to make some rules of my own. I gave players the option ahead of time to get beheaded, and thankfully I had volunteers who were willing to give it a go.
On another level, I enjoy the flagrant disregard for biology that it entails. The scientific mind insists: you can't replace the head, can you? You can replace everything but the head, right? Because the head has the brain, and the brain is where you are, isn't it? When you defy that logic, you're catapulted into a folkloric mode of thinking instead, which I find to be a more agreeable framework for fantasy-horror.
Plus I had so much fun with these renders! The distressed pumpkinface makes me smile:
