Reddit reviews Heroes of Horror (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement)
We found 5 Reddit comments about Heroes of Horror (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying Supplement). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
D&D 3.5 had a book. Heroes of Horror that is all about running a horror campaign. IIRC it has some pretty good general advice in it.
Fantasy Flight Games put out a Grimm Roleplaying Game a few years ago.
Also, do you have a copy of Heroes of Horror?
And have your players already done Ravenloft?
two books i highly recommend for a horror campaign:
[ravenloft player's handbook] (http://www.trollandtoad.com/p214737.html)
and
heroes of horror
source: i really only ever run games in ravenloft due to how much i love the setting.
An overly difficult enemy is still beatable, it's just got more HP's to beat out of it and a harder punch to accidentally TPK your group when the rolls slip up. But is that actually scary? Is it still scary after you've done that trick for more than 50% of your encounters?
You might be better served by switching up abilities and weaknesses of the enemy types that your players fight. A vampire? Pfft, magic weapons and silver, here we co-oh crap, that didn't work. What kind of monster is this? Ohshi-ohshi-ohshi-! Fear isn't going to sprout from the dice, it's going to pop up when your players have fool proof plans... That fall apart. Anxiety (what do we do now?), worry (how can we stop it?), and intrigue (what is going on here?) will fill your sessions and your players will be falling over themselves trying to piece together what's going on so they can toss your NPCs into a shallow grave back behind the abandoned castle.
As for your insanity counters idea, Heroes of Horror touched on this idea with a Taint mechanic that may be worth looking into (page 62 if you have access to the book). Personally, I don't think that slapping on rules that primarily disadvantage your players mechanically is very fun. In a game about words, stories, and settings, messing with someone's numbers that they worked hard (benefit of the doubt) to crank up is just sort of insulting. Better that you use their purposefully evil decisions as fodder to create conflict, both internal and external as the PCs have to deal with the repercussions of their actions and the players have to have an internal struggle on whether or not to do bad things again (bonus points if all of their options are gray, with ups and downs for even more drama!).
Heros of Horror might be of use to you.