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Anonymous10/16/25, 20:56No.96769046
I'm planning a road trip horror campaign, where players will drive down an ominous high way and encounter things like haunted motels, cryptids in the woods, small towns with dark secrets, bands of murderous bikers, etc.
I already got some ideas brewing (like most rest stops are odd, but not dangerous to get the players to let their guards down when the dangerous ones pop up, crashed cars on the roadside that can be scavenged but will try and run them off the road later
), but could we get a thread going for road trip horror ideas, like the space horror threads in the good ol' days?
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Anon10/16/25, 21:13No.96769157
Don't forget top-secret government test sites in the area. Bonus points if the game takes place during the Cold War.
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Anon10/16/25, 21:58No.96769489
I think the best idea will be to explain why player characters choose to engage with all that stuff. They can't all have just gotten mail from a dead wife.
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Anon10/16/25, 22:26No.96769727
So American Gods?
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Anon10/16/25, 23:13No.96770079
Back when I ran a superhero game, the South West highways wete stuffed with spooky paranormal shit. Ghosts of natives and highwaymen forever stuck in conflict, weird fucked horses showing up out of nowhere, ghoul brides luring fools into a certain death, all that jazz. Sometimes I'd also add really weird and suspicious people just casually standing along the road.
Like another Anon said, Aliens are mandatory. I'd also add subtle paranormal oddities like non-sensical signs, the road suddenly taking a sharp turn into a loop the loop, the car radio picks up the schizophrenic rants of some lunatic who appears to be VERY close to the characters, etc
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Anon10/16/25, 23:28No.96770183
Why would the PCs not just go NOPE? I mean, they have a fucking car.I mean, in horror generally the protagonists are just stuck in there/the bad guy is inexecapble. Or have an obligation of sorts to beat evil. This is clearly not the case with a bunch of people doing a road trip (hell, even in actual horror road trips like the Hills have Eyes, first thing go is the ability to drive away).
Maybe the highway itself is Silent Hill 666? Like a parallel dimension?Anyway have a classic tale of (low key) spoopiness on the road https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-transdimensional-gas-station.23173/
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Anon10/16/25, 23:59No.96770379
Having the PCs be a TV crew tasked with documenting and rating the various stops along the highway might be the answer. Because then not only are they putting their jobs at risk if they decide to just drive past a place without checking, but it also means that you can have the promise of a potential bonus for getting big news.
Photograph a cryptid or uncover some big crime in a small town, and their boss transfers some extra pay, which they could spend in some of the non-haunted locations.And it also avoids the lazier excuse of just having their car break down or run out of gas whenever a threat wouldn't be able to pursue them, or being trapped by supernatural means.
The option still exists, but rewarding them for being nosy and snooping is probably going to go over better compared to just telling them they can't, or forcing them to fix their car at arbitrary times.
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Anon10/17/25, 00:29No.96770559
I'm reminded of that Stephen King short story where all the dead great rock stars haunt this nothingburger town and anyone who gets lost there is forced to attend concerts all night every night for the rest of their lives.
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Anon10/17/25, 01:07No.96770729
> we can’t stop here
> this is bat country
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Anon10/17/25, 01:34No.96770861
God, I miss living in the Southwest.
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Anon10/17/25, 01:57No.96770979
>Hairy/Haunted Hands
A phenomenon thats been reported many times by various people. People see a disembodied set of hands that takes hold of their steering wheel and tries to drive them off the road or into traffic. Rational explanation is obviously people half asleep seeing things, but you don't have to be rational.
>Ghost hitchhiker
A classic
>Phantom onlookers
Another IRL reported phenomenon. Essentially various people have said they've encountered stretches of highway where they see shapes, usually humanoid, watching them from the shoulders of the road. This is often accompanied by at least a few of them throwing themselves at their car. At least one story I read reported shadows of various shapes divebombing the car for hours, and when they stopped they rocked the car so violently the people decided it was better to floor it.
>Ghost cars
Random encounter where one just swerves into your lane for no reason but you pass right through it. Or maybe its like one of those serendipitous times where you're driving a for a long trip and you keep passing, and then being passed by the same guy for hours at a time. But when you both turn into a motel, or a rest stop or whatever he's no longer there.
>The running guy
You know when you were a kid and imagined a guy running alongside the car, maybe jumping over obstacles or parkouring on cars? Yeah, he's real. You decide if he's good or bad. Maybe the PCs have to beat him to a specific location, or maybe matching his pace avoids danger.
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Anon10/17/25, 02:02No.96771011
The Uncanny Highway is a good resource for this sort of game that I highly recommend;https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/472509/the-uncanny-highway-blue-plate-special-edition
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Anon10/17/25, 19:04No.96775754
What's keeping them on this path? I feel like at least some of the time players will have an incentive to just stop or try to make some kind of detour to avoid a peceived threat.
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Anon10/17/25, 19:10No.96775785
jeepers creepers(original)
the hills have eyes
Retroactive(film)these are films I suggest to research your topic
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Anon10/17/25, 20:08No.96776174
Hotel California. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave... I have no idea how you'd let them get out of that one. Maybe they have to steal the registry and remove their names from the list of guests.
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Anon10/18/25, 00:03No.96778005
You could have a diner where everything on the menu is labeled suspiciously. Like "Meat" burger and stuff like that. Or the opposite where it's normal when you order but weird when you get it. Buffs or debuffs for actually eating it.You could take an idea from the vidya Pacific Drive. Where their car will develop quirks like will only start when the wiper blades are running or the horn sounds as long as the headlights are on. Fixable with some effort but annoying to do so.Messages in the sky like a foreboding skywriter.You could pull some weird small town stuff from early episodes of Welcome to Night Vale. Back when it was good.
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Anon10/18/25, 09:42No.96780481
Here's some inspirado.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWDR6Acu2x0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6fl2NejDc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieG2ZUNYAPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPymW88LDIg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3nteRVXe0c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbdxeoOOMpQ
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Anon10/18/25, 10:39No.96780617
>I have ideas
>But I won't post them
>But please do my homework for you
>Also, this thread is totally legit and not a blatant spam
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Anon10/18/25, 12:17No.96780951
Left Right Game was a road trip creepypasta series from way back
It's a pretty quick read. I think you will like it
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Anon10/18/25, 15:33No.96781872
Consider a more ominously hostile environment to encourage players to brave the more extraordinary dangers as often as is reasonable. Sand and dust storms that encourage the players to find proper shelter and not just weather things in the car, driving rains that make the road untraversable for a time, blazing sunlight that taxes the vehicle and their water supplies, blanketing snow that just slow down the world around them.Another idea is another group of travelers, more seasoned in the ways of this place. Could have them be allies with ideas on how to survive the threats that abound, could have them be enemies who's paranoia drives them to believe that no one as naive as the party could be real in this cursed place.Somewhat common in this sort of (presumably) American horror is the government spook, the man in a black suit who may not be on anyone else's side, but he certainly isn't on yours. You probably already thought of this, but in case you didn't.
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Anon10/18/25, 16:06No.96782056
>I'm planning a road trip horror campaign, where players will drive down an ominous high way
Did something like this with an old travel book (like pic). Called it The Spiral Bindbit of a bitch to run considering we were making it up on the spot, but some things I notedOlder maps are more fun, players wont have a perfect map if they follow using google maps- and explain away the differences with "oh those roads are blocked with wrecked cars, landslides, etc"maps of larger towns and cities were in the book, helped with combat.there was a list of large settlements and how many hours it'd take to drive to them on average. It's in hours but you can turn it into days for a longer, more dangerous treck.
Oh and we split the map into "zones" with one of each "city" in every zone. helped with themes.height levels were marked with red, made it pretty easy to figure out how remote some towns were.talking of towns we eyeballed a radius and figured every town in it would probably know each other... then asssume most towns were destroyed anywaypretty fun but some more concrete rules woulda helped
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Anon10/18/25, 21:29No.96784113
There is a game called Pacific Drive that feels pretty appropriate for this. Two concepts I would steal from it are the car quirks and the neutral hostile fauna.>Car Quirks
Over time the car in the game would develop weird little...quirks. They always followed the formula of When X does Y, A does B. So maybe when the hood is closed, all the other doors open. Easy fix, just close the hood and then close the doors. Mildly annoying but when you have to pull over to add more coolant, and then the chupacabra shows up, slamming the hood and peeling out but forgetting the rear passenger doors are now open adds nicely to the stress.They could be totally harmless, like when radio is on the gas gauge does a little dance or even helpful, like when cabin light is on gas is used more slowly, but they always give some life to the car that will help make the game feel more like a road trip and less like a string of encounters. To note, don't tell your players what the quirk is, but do give them hints and let them diaganose it. Give them a mysterious repair book with answers if they get the diagnosis right, like If they get it right tell them some bullshit on how to fix it (To fix the "When car turns left too long, Hood pops open, Take the hood off and give it a bath")>Neutrally Hostile Fauna.The game also had a lot of fauna that weren't actually hostile, but would fuck you up anyway, like the "bunnies" who were basically flying balls of twisted rebar that would bounce around the country side and occasionally get stuck onto your car. They would panic and try and escape, damaging your car in the process. They didn't WANT to be on your car, but they are magnetic and your car is a big hunk of metal...
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Anon10/18/25, 22:21No.96784461
https://m.youtube.com/@foreverstorytime2566
Could make it semi educational and do it like a Scooby doo episode monster of the week.
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Anon10/19/25, 00:03No.96785051
Why are the players on a road trip? What is driving them onwards?
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Anon10/19/25, 05:27No.96787003
I'm super interested in doing something like this.
What system are you using?
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Anon10/19/25, 05:45No.96787081
Less arguing, more spooky road ideas.>Worlds Largest...
Every town apparently has one. Some god awful statue of something or other that they claim to be the world's largest. World's largest egg. World's largest sausage. World's largest spark plug. This town in particular has the "World's Largest Apple Pie" as American as can be. Except its... way larger than you expected. Honestly you should have been able to see it from the highway. You should have been able to see it for hours driving up to the town. Maybe days. Every time you look at it, its bigger somehow. Immense. Mountains are dwarfed by it. You can't look away.>Dejavu Burger
I don't know if this is a uniquely Canadian thing, but basically every small town in this whole country has an A&W, fast food burger joint. Make up a brand, and every town on the spooky highway has one. Its corporately bland and unassuming. Nothing overtly spooky about it. Except the clerk is the same in every single one. Its a safe haven, otherwise. But gets progressively worse the more times they stop in. Less clean, food gets worse, clerk gets more and more rude, then jumpy. Then its just not safe anymore. They might not visit enough for it to get really bad, but its a limited resource and they should feel that.>Bunkertown
The whole town thinks the cold war went hot at some point, but had a Fallout style vault complex under the town built in the 60s. Nothing overtly nefarious besides what normal long term bunker living might do to people. The appearance of the PCs might set things off. There should be a lot of questions how a town that size has not been visited by anyone in 50 years.>Road Whispers
PCs occasionally pass, or are passed by Semi trucks going wherever. Maybe even encounter a driver or two at a rest stop. They always give off an attitude of a spirit walker. Someone who knows too much and is trapped by that knowledge. Doing them enough favors gives them a CB that whispers warnings about danger.