Last time in the mystery campaign, the party sold Clover Loom on a business plan for a natural healing center, attended a party with high rollers from the Above, and learned that both Loom and party attendee Edgar Hillerman were both affected by mind control spells which seemed to cause them to seek out someone to steal from and/or hurt Lyssbetonk Cogswagon. They were dismayed to learn that the mystery's ever-growing web reached even further than anticipated; instead of finding answers, they found more questions.
So this time we played, I offered up a fairly broad set of options. I had my outline of expected events, but I resolved to keep those events sketchy so I could change details if it suited the moment. That's exactly what ended up happening. The players started in a direction that I hadn't planned for, and most of the session came out as a long, improvised exploration of the options open to the party. And given the momentum of the story at this point, as the players approach the adventure's halfway mark, it was perfectly suited to offering what the players needed to progress (even if their progress in the mystery moved only in shifts).
As per usual, I'm going to provide some of the notes I used to prepare for this session, but with a small twist. My players seem to be reading the site now, so I don't want to offer my full notes--there are still secrets in this session that they haven't approached. Instead, I'll offer the framework that actually came into play in this session and talk about some specific moments and choices that came into play. Let's start with the basic notes for setup and characters involved:
Setup: The party has signs
that both Hillerman and Loom have been mind controlled prior to their threats
toward Cogswagon.
The setup is information that places us in a new, distinct phase of the investigation. The party has moved from the discovery of the mind control to much larger questions: What's behind the mind control? Who cast it? Why target Cogswagon? These are questions I want the party to begin to answer, though some elements of it will remain in the dark for a few more sessions. To be candid, it seemed to me that at least some of my players feel put-upon by Portia, their questgiver, and they struggle with not having a better grasp of the facts. This is something I would like to address as DM, but it's delicate. To give a sense of certainty and direction at this point in the mystery would mean either giving away details meant for later or dropping in red herrings, and as we all know by now, we do not do red herrings. So my choices are simple: keep the party in the dark for now and offer some certain things to balance out the feeling of not knowing, or revise the entire campaign. And I think another session or two will really change the tone of the game by providing some serious direction forward. This is a delicate thing as a DM, balancing the players' engagement now with what is still to come. I'm hoping to strike that balance in the coming sessions, but we will have to wait and see.
Characters:
First Guard - Portia Rockhammer, 160 dwarf, fighter
Inventor - Lyssbettonk Cogswagon, 189 gnome, wizard/artificer
High Roller 1 - Clover Loom, 84 halfling, rogue
High Roller 2 - Edgar Hillerman, 51 human, rogue
Thief/Spy - Sippikup Magee, 111 gnome, rogue
Clues:
Sippikup
Magee shows up to Hillerman’s tower midway through questioning and can verify
what has been said--he adds that Hillerman contacted him three days ago, the
same day that Loom hired him.
So what did the party do? Following their visit to Loom's tower and some planning at Ais' place, they resolved to investigate with Sippikup Magee. They knew from Hillerman's advice that they could likely find Sippikup at the Icy Stare, a rough-and-tumble tavern where you might be able to find a contract killer. But the Icy Stare, I decided, was a secretive bar, and it would be harder to find than simply deferring to Ais, who lives in town. Montana sized up the denizens of Yamseth, looking for a rough-looking person who might know about the Icy Stare. He spotted a man with an eyepatch and a mean demeanor and asked; the man replied that it was hidden under a trapdoor in an abandoned building at the edge of town. This was a bit of inspiration for me--I hadn't designed the Icy Stare, and when an appropriately rough-looking person was asked about it, I suddenly needed a detailed description of it. The trapdoor in an abandoned building satisfied the way that the bar could remain secret, but the direct giving of this information satisfied the way that the party would act on the information. Satisfied with the answer, the party continued to the edge of town to find the bar.
As they made their way there, another chaos storm struck. Beor again failed to escape the bolts and saw Ais and Montana as copies of himself for over an hour; Ais' hair spontaneously fell out when she was struck. This second effect was the cause of some distress for Ais, who spent most of the rest of the day ruefully remembering that her hair had disappeared. With the damage done, they went and found the path to the Icy Stare and discovered it had a doorman who demanded a password. This was a little moment I wanted to use to characterize the man who had given directions; he gave the party enough to find the door but did not provide the password, and I thought that was a fun detail about his being a rough kind of guy. Beor managed to almost talk his way past the doorman, but ended up offending him at the last moment with a comment about his abnormal eyes. The party did manage to coax him into opening the door, and they were into the tavern.
Surveying the room, they noticed three distinct groups of customers: those playing cards, those eating meals, and those playing a drinking game. Montana approached the drinking game and boasted that Beor could beat anyone here. A mustachioed human, who appeared quite drunk, pulled out a vial of green liquid and drank it, declaring that he had purified his body of alcohol and could face off against Beor. Beor managed to win the first round (a race to finish five hard drinks) by a bit and the resulting rematch by a greater margin, thanks in large part to his immunity to alcohol from the chaos storm days before. By the end, the mustachioed man nearly passed out, and Beor was deemed the winner. Upon winning, Beor simply said, "Sippikup" to see if anyone would respond, and a tired-looking gnome answered, "Do we know each other?"
The party claimed to be working for Edgar Hillerman, which alarmed Sippikup, who feared his new job was lost. He cooperated and answered questions about Hillerman and Cogswagon, who he mentioned he had been watching for Hillerman for three days. He said that he witnessed the turbanned figure break into Cogswagon's through the front door and break out through the window; he further testified that he saw the figure duck into an alleyway where he saw Hildy's bleeding body moments later. He also added that the turbanned figure seemed to have a woman's body, which is only the second piece of information the party has discovered concerning the turbanned figure at all. This detail was improvised, but I plan to work it further into the mystery in ways that will hopefully surprise the party. Lastly, Sippikup said that Clover Loom also hired him to watch Cogswagon three days ago, and that a mysterious booming voice had been directing him to watch Cogswagon for the last nine months, though he knew nothing about the voice or its owner. Content with the information they had gathered, the party left the Icy Stare to head to the Briscoe Inn for a late lunch.
The party arrived at the Briscoe Inn and greeted the barkeep Carl and ordered their meals. I want to take a moment to address their orders because each player decided on a deeply roleplay-focused level. Oddly enough, the easiest area for roleplayers to express themselves in my experience is in taverns. When I wrote my tavern reference list with unique bars and restaurants, I included sample menus. But if you're fine with it, let your players order whatever they want. Consider this: Ais, a tiefling, ordered a raw meaty leg covered in spicy sauce--this reflects Ais' nature and her tastes at that moment. I had Carl bring her a cow leg covered in a sauce of boysenberry, habañero, and rosemary. Montana walked up to Carl and played a song that he called "Kicking Rocks Down the Road" or something similar--this reflects Montana's self-expression through song and his trust in Carl to understand his abstract communication. I had Carl bring him roasted goat, grilled artichokes, and a tumbler of crindlin (a halfling alcohol made by distilling tree sap). Finally, Beor ordered a salad--which reflects his life as a druid and an outsider. I decided it would be fun if salads hadn't really been spread across Evanoch yet, so he had to explain to both Carl and the chef what a salad actually is. It took a few minutes of roleplaying the scene, but eventually Beor had taught the chef to make a salad. I joked with my players that in a game where you can do literally anything, we choose to explain how to make a salad to a person who doesn't exist. We all had a laugh and the party ate their respective lunches. I really can't stress enough: taverns are where players generally feel most comfortable roleplaying, so let them take it as far as they want in these scenes.
After finishing lunch, the party reviewed what they know about the messaging spell Sippikup had described. They knew it had elements of Message, Thaumaturgy, and Minor Illusion, and they wondered whether the same spell caster had cast the mind control spells on Loom and Hillerman. They traded theories about whether it was one powerful mage or a conspiracy of mages. I want to break this step down a bit. It is a difficult art to give information about a spell to players to guide them in identifying it. You want to provide enough information to figure it out without just giving it away. If you're the kind of DM who plays hard and fast with the rules of magic, you'll want to prepare for these moments. But I run very loose with magic. Years ago, I developed a system of magic that allows users to create custom spells from a vocabulary of ideas that go into the spell. As a result, I can have a spell accomplish basically whatever I want it to with a high degree of precision as long as the caster is sufficiently talented. So for the mind control and messaging spells, I am operating off the framework that these are custom glyph spells. Thus, my description of the magic involved revolved around what traditional spells it was similar to (Message, Thaumaturgy, and Minor Illusion for the messaging spell, for instance). I've dropped hints about glyphs to the party before, and they haven't taken the bait yet, but by offering these powerful spells in the story now, I'm opening the door to their finding out about custom spells and how powerful a caster it takes to manage them. This will lead to further discoveries, but for now, the players knowing that the spell transcends traditional magic is enough.
With some ideas about how to address the magic, the party headed back to Portia at the guard headquarters. They filled her in on everything since their last visit, before they had met with Loom. Portia listened intently and occasionally asked for clarification; eventually she had some suggestions for how to proceed, including questioning members of the Above about the party that had happened three nights ago. Then the party offered another reaction I was unprepared for: they asserted that they had the identity of Hildy's killer in the turbanned figure and argued that they should be relieved of duty. Portia apologized, saying that normally murder cases are quicker to solve than this, but she couldn't let them free until the turbanned figure was apprehended or dead. I think most DMs would be a little shocked if their players tried to shrug off the whole story, and I was not exactly sure what to do. I don't like the idea of my players feeling like their involvement in the story is compulsory. This is something I am working to address by making the following details more engaging, but it's going to be a few sessions before I can confirm that this isn't roleplaying not wanting to be invested in the murder investigation as opposed to genuinely wishing to free themselves of the responsibilities of the story.
Our final scene before the end of the session was Portia allowing the party to select items from the guards' confiscated items and promising to obtain the rights to a repossessed property where they could build their natural healing center. Each character selected magic items; Ais took an invisibility amulet and an enchanted amethyst, for instance, while Beor selected a stoneskin jerkin and a ring of cure wounds, and Montana selected boots of pass without trace. I felt that it was appropriate at this point to reward the players with a selection of items. They have managed to complete almost half the adventure and could us a bump up; perhaps more importantly, they have discovered that their murder investigation is more than asking a few questions around town, and Portia is willing to help them with the case since it exceeds what she expected. In a roleplay-heavy campaign, it can be difficult to decide when and how to distribute more powerful items, but I felt that halfway through and with good story reason was enough to bestow some magic items on the party.
That's the result of our seventh session playing in this mystery campaign. There are going to be escalating situations stemming from practically every development from here out, and I'm eager to see how the players handle these twists. Until next time, happy gaming!
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