D&D 5E campaign Heckna helps GMs create a horrifying carnival adventure using a deck of cards

Step through the tent entrance and be terrified by the sights and sounds of a horrifying carnival in Heckna, an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons 5E that GMs can run using a deck of cards.

Set in a fantastical travelling dimension called the Revelia, Heckna is a supplement for D&D 5E that takes players from first to tenth level. Lured by the sinister machinations of Heckna - the mastermind behind the Revelia - players find themselves trapped in an accursed funfair world where monsters stalk the attractions and victims are turned into carnival creatures.

Joined by a hunter who’s sworn to defeat Heckna and end the Revelia for good, players must see through the mirage of the bright lights and work together to escape. They will need to survive attacks from a curtain call of terrifying enemies - such as clown thralls controlled by parasitic insects called Shnozlings, and the murderous aberrations known as Children of the Candy Corn.

Eventually, players will have to face off against a series of bosses who serve as underlings to Heckna and must be defeated in order for players to progress through the tabletop RPG adventure. Once players have successfully reached the heart of Revelia, Heckna will reveal themselves and attempt to prevent their escape - by any means necessary.

Heckna is an adventure for D&D 5E that uses the Shuffled Stories engine, a system designed to help GMs to structure their narrative using a deck of playing cards. Each card represents a possible encounter that could take place within the story, with higher-numbered cards representing higher-level encounters. There are three different areas of the Revelia - each one culminating in a boss fight - that can be split up into a selection of different encounters based on the Shuffled Stories system. The Shuffled Stories engine enables the adventure to be played multiple times with any combination of the possible encounters.

Heckna is being published by Hit Point Press, a company that has previously released other supplementary materials for Dungeons & Dragons 5E such as Humblewood - a campaign setting where players assume the roles of woodland creatures who go on adventures - and the Deck of Many series of animated spell cards.

The Kickstarter campaign for Heckna is live until October 8th, with a pledge of $20 (£16) getting a copy of the adventure book in PDF form and $40 (£31) for a hardback copy. The PDF version of the adventure is set to be released in January 2021, whilst the physical version will arrive next June.