my players are in a ruined dungeon right now and are getting ready to come to the climax of a 5 year campaign. They've been searching for a magical warhammer that is the only weapon that can destroy the shards of a "bloodstone". this bloodstone can resurrect Orcus OR it can be jammed into the warhammer to make it a crazy powerful weapon.
the main villain in the campaign has actually taken over the mind of one of their NPC companions (but they players aren't aware of that
). once they reach the final room there will be the hammer, at which point the villain will reveal himself and turn the whole night into a big boss battle (Halloween). the hammer itself though, is going to be gigantic...as in takes up the whole room...and is held up by thick ropes. the players will need put the bloodstone shards on an altar, and release the hammer to smash it.so yeah, that's kind of the gist of the night. boss battle, giant warhammer, ruined dungeon.
what I need though is a way to make this a spooky adventure. also, at past Halloween D&D games I've decorated the basement and really gone all out. it's basically decorating for a Halloween party, but themed for the adventure. last year they went on a witch hunt in a swamp, and so the basement was decked out in dead tree branches, crows, green lighting, fog machine, hanging moss, etc etc. i don't want to spend a ton of money here, so any decorations need to be DIY without too much expense. that aside, I'm really wanting from you guys some inspiration for Halloween/spooky ways to twist the adventure i currently have planned.
ideas off the top of my head:
1. my players will hopefully come dressed up in character...so I'm wanting to play on that a little and have something for them to do physically before or during the game. they have to walk through the garage first, and I usually have that decked out pretty good with decor. maybe I create some kind of event in the garage..."drink this blood potion stuff to be cleansed" "solve this riddle before entering"
2. I thought about getting a lock box with multiple pad locks and such all over it. then throughout the adventure the players find keys or magical spells or whatever to unlock the padlocks. maybe since the box is something cool?
3. during the boss battle, I'm going to segment it a little so that they fight the boss in phases. maybe one phase they have to get up to the hammer and cut one of the ropes holding it up while fending off the boss or something. during that phase, the players get up from the table, and go into the garage or another room that's decorated, and do some kind of physical event (as described above). it might break up the action a little, but I think they would dig it.
thoughts??