Nathan Smith – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

I shot myself in the foot last week, but I’m sort of glad I did.

I shot myself in the foot last week, but I’m sort of glad I did. I hadn’t adequately prepared for the session, and made some on the fly choices that have changed the mystery fairly dramatically.

What was going to be a standard haunted house, find the remains of the murder victim thing is now a time travelling mystery inside a living house. Instead of being haunted, the house IS the ghost. The players are headed back to 1972 to change the past and prevent the murder from ever taking place – by murdering the murderer!

Or, they might just burn down the house. Either will work.

My first mystery!

My first mystery! The players really enjoyed it. I improvised quite a bit of stuff that isn’t in here. But it was a great setup for future mysteries as I introduced some key players.

One of my favorite moments was after the players realized the mummy’s weakness to fire; the mummy also had an insect form and insect attack. They connected these two facts in the most unexpected, but logical and amazing way: their main weapon for the fight was citronella tiki torches. In fact, the mummy was downed with a tiki torch thrown javelin style.

I’m not used to improvising this much.

I’m not used to improvising this much. We ran our first session last week; two players had never done any tabletop roleplaying games and the other two were fairly inexperienced. Roleplaying was minimal when I didn’t prompt them or push them, but I’m not worried about that; as they learn and their characters grow from vague ideas into solidly defined people that will get better.

I’ve only run Pathfinder and 5E before, and this game plays so differently than anything else I’ve done. I knew I shouldn’t plan too much, so I kept things minimal, and it really really stretched my improvisation ability (in a good way). I had a few takeaways that might help others running the game:

1. Take notes during and, more importantly, just after play. I had a bunch of things I had decided on the fly in my head that there was no way I’d remember a week later. This one I will do so so so much better in the next session.

2. Have a list of names ready for when you need to create an NPC/Bystander on the fly. Write down who they are and check them off the list so you don’t re-use them. Make sure it’s a diverse list.

3. You won’t think of everything. This first mystery involves the murder of a security guard at a museum. My players immediately asked about security cameras and security gates. I recovered quickly, but was so used to fantasy settings that those hadn’t even crossed my mind. Now they have become a key element of how the players are going to solve the mystery.

4. Remember the Hunter names. Write them down if you need to. I struggled with this one. My mind was preoccupied with rules I am still not 100% confident on without reference and trying to keep all the npcs and their motives and jobs in my head. There probably would have been more roleplaying if I’d consistently addressed the hunters by name.

5. Set the scene. I thought I did this one well, and the players responded to it. I based the main location in this mystery on the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, which I expected most of the players to have visited. None had. So, I had to describe not just how it looked, but how it felt, especially at night when it was empty. This put them in the right frame of mind to play a horror themed game.

I’m about to run our first session and a need some advice on my mummy monster.

Name: Posht Set-ankh, the Reanimated Mummy

Type: Devourer

Powers: Inflict Curse, Insect Swarm Form, Life Drain

Weaknesses: Fire

Attacks: Slam 2-harm close, Insect Swarm (attack) 2-harm area, Insect Swarm (envelop) 3-harm intimate restraining

Armor: Wrappings 1-armor.

This is our first session so I didn’t want anything crazy complicated. The gist is that a budding necromancer (a minion who will ingratiate himself to the hunters if possible) raised this mummy and immediately lost control. The mummy’s goal is to force people into its sarcophagus where it can devour them, leaving the mummified husk of the victim behind. It’s a fairly stupid monster, but would become smarter the more people it devoured. The setting is a natural history museum (I plan to use this location again unless things don’t go at all like I think they will).

I have two questions:

1. How should the mummy’s curse affect the hunters? A -1 ongoing seems boring, but it’s about all I can come up with.

2. What other weaknesses make sense? I’m loosely planning this as a 3-parter, each with different undead monsters (mummy, ghost, reanimated t-rex). So I want there to be a common thread of ways to hurt (but not kill) the monsters: holy water/symbols, certain runes etc, and then specific ways to permanently kill each type of undead. But I think the mummy needs other weaknesses – fire is fairly generic and I’m not sure how the hunters would deduce it.