Whether it's the spooky season itself, or you just have a penchant for terrifying your players, Dungeons & Dragons has all the creepy theatrics you could hope for. Sometimes, a campaign can get stale and the party might want to play something completely different, and that's where one-shots come in.

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These stories serve as inspiration for encounters and short adventures, which can even be squeezed into your usual campaign, where the players find themselves trapped with ghouls, fiends and hags, or hunting down the killer in their own backyard. Don't forget the chilling background music.

5/5 Murder Mystery Dinner Party

A grand home and a delicious feast, the players are sat around the long dining room table playing Truth or Dare. Then, an outcry. A guest has been murdered! The doors are locked until the culprit is found, and the party's host is calling the guards at first light.

The group has six hours to discover that it was the homely local doctor who has preemptively set up traps throughout the house. With grand visions of becoming a renowned surgeon, he requires more organs than he has access to, and hoped this dinner party would be the perfect way to harvest from healthy bodies.

Hide clues throughout the mansion, such as the doctor's bloody coat hidden under a floorboard, a huge order of ice having been delivered to the cellar door, or the host's own sickly sister mentioning the doctor's strange promise recently.

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Deadly traps can pick off curious players searching for the culprit, leaving behind only a ghost. Players who die before dawn go unseen and can manipulate small objects to help with investigations. They might even overhear a few suspicious conversations. Other guests could include a low-born woman who rose to wealth very suddenly, a disgruntled and overworked local laborer, a foreign emissary who has plans to meet with the monarch tomorrow, and a famous bard with a sordid history.

If the doctor isn't confronted with his crime by first light, he panics at the prospect of city guards, and begins pouring out wine and spirits onto the furnishings. As a final desperate act to cover up his murders, he sets the wooden mansion alight, ending the one-shot and burning all the evidence.

4/5 Baba Yaga's Coming To Town

It's a well known legend that the queen of witches lives in a walking house, quietly relocating at the witching hour from atop giant chicken legs. The players begin in a tavern where they may overhear the latest gossip; a new building was erected overnight. No one has seen the occupants yet. The next morning, ten villagers are found to have died in their sleep. Every 24 hours, ten more people will suffer the same fate, including members of the party's family within town, friends and important governing members.

If the players approach the new house, it is locked. It's worn and made of soft, rotting wood. Damage to the house is mitigated by a magical barrier though, so breaking in would require a very high-level Dispel Magic. The next day, the house will no longer be there, and will have turned up in another part of the village.

In order to crack the case before the party themselves are mysteriously murdered, they must succeed on a Perception check at three in the morning to catch sight of a ghoul creeping out of a victim's window and crawling back down the village well. This ghoul is a soul captured by Baba Yaga's Soul Cage spell. She sends them out to do her bidding, including casting Soul Cage on more townsfolk. She can also feed off of these trapped souls, and after using them six times, they will vanish.

The well acts as a tunnel into Baba Yaga's house. It comes up through her cauldron, allowing the group to access her creepy home, and find the countless cages of wailing Wisps she is torturing. Unless they're all level 20, the party will be unable to fend off Baba Yaga, and their best bet is to free the souls and save the townsfolk. However you choose to end the adventure, she will fly off in her mortar and pestle back to Feydark swamp.

3/5 Hide And Seek

The party are thrown into a chase, deep in the darkest woods. Hiding behind a tree, a player feels the evil presence pass them by, sniffing the air and dragging its claws through the leaf litter. What the players don't know is that they are being hunted by a Nalfeshnee, a terrifying boar demon that can teleport to chase down prey. It can smell their fear, and emits a rippling darkness that causes victims to use their movement and action to move as far from it as possible.

The aim of this one shot is to make it to the forest's edge where a lawful good mage resides alone, and is their only hope of banishing the fiend. Every round the players within 30ft of the Nalfeshnee must succeed on a 16 Wisdom Saving throw or become afraid, attracting its attention and adding to its growing hunger. Those that the demon catches up to will be eaten over the course of three to five rounds, giving the other players time to hide, seek, or run.

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Leading the way are irregular lanterns that can be glimpsed with a Survival or Perception check as the party crash through the woods. Level three is suggested for this group, as well as creepy sounds and small glimpses of the beast chasing them in the darkness.

2/5 A Fairy Ring

Jumping into a mushroom ring are fairies and tiny fey creatures, who disappear once inside. They encourage the players to join them, explaining they're going to a Fey banquet with endless dancing and ambrosia. The fairies are very charming, and will even use spells to convince people to jump in too. Once they step within, they're transported to a beautifully lit forest at dusk, with multicolored glowworms strung up in jars, tiny fireworks popping out of tree hollows, and three gorgeous fey beings.

A table is laden with the most enticing foods, drinks and colorful party favors. There is constant music playing, laughter, japes and joy. For hours into the night the group can play card games and receive fortune-telling. After some time, the character with the highest passive perception or insight begins to feel uneasy. They catch the odd evil look on a fairy face, or notice that the bright food seems to be rotting. A sense of foreboding and danger should be felt.

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Over time, the Fey glimmer fades more and more, though they insist nothing is wrong. The jokes become nasty, and the tiny fairies can be found poking sharp daggers into feet or dumping wine into laps. Once all the players realize, the glamour is dropped to reveal hideous creatures. The party is now trapped with three Hags, and must fight to leave this magical realm.

1/5 Nosferatu's House Warming

For a level 13 one-shot, a group of adventurers have been paid to check out the creepy old house on the edge of town. Upon being greeted by the sickly-looking butler, they are informed that the master of the house isn't feeling well at the moment, but they're welcome to wait out the coming storm inside. The lavish house is full of family portraits, flickering candles and grand staircases.

There are some strange-looking 'family members' roaming the halls, and after an hour of exploration, their hunger for blood grows too powerful to control. From then on, the players are fighting and running from up to six Vampire Spawn in order to find the master of the house. These Spawn might let slip where he currently rests, or if they overpower the whole party, can lead them to the crypt in the basement to meet him.

They will need to defeat the master Vampire to destroy the creatures he's made and ultimately escape the haunted house.

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