Dugeons and Dragons, and Mice and Men

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"

To a Mouse, Robert Burns

This Halloween, I had ambitious, nay, insane plans.

I would run a horror Dungeons and Dragons one shot for my sister, my brother, and my mother. The source material, Curse of Strahd is a popular module. It's set in the Gothic Horror inspired lands of Barovia, a land of tragedy ruled by a Vampire Lord who seeks the reincarnation of his lost love.

As is the case with most of my ambitious plans, things got out hand quickly.

Now, for those who are not familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, setting up one play session game is tricky. The DnD is part collaborative storytelling and part chess with dice. The players are directing the choices of their custom designed character. The Game Master, that's me, is in charge of everything else. Yes, literally everything. Set design, villain motives, weather patterns, and spreadsheets that translate the words 

“My barbarian goes into a rage. I attack the werewolf,” 

into dice rolls and numbers that tells me how badly the target is hurt. I then translate those results into a narrative clip, 

“Your hammer smashes into his knee and there's a crunch. However, as you whined up for another hit, you see the flesh twist and the bones snap back into position. What would have been a crippling blow is an ugly bruise.”

There is a lot of setup that goes into any Table-Top-Role-Play Game. I did not slack. I spent the better part of September cherry-picking and trimming down the source material to fit in the playtime. The original game can easily become a year long commitment with over 100 hours of play time.

I kept it simple. Well, I tired to keep it simple. My goal was three hours of playtime. However, as I trimmed content, I found myself having to create content. This because a huge undertaking.

For example, I had to cut the 'ominous temple to dark powers.' In the base game, this temple provides lore about the vampire and meet the Dark Powers who will offer the character risky deals for their favor. It's a good way reward characters taking the time to learn about the vampire. It also takes multiple play sessions just to explore the area.

Because the players could no long travel to the Dark Powers for those boosts, I had to design a way to bring the Dark Powers to the players. The solution was delightfully twisted. If a character dies in the game, their soul goes to limbo were something offers them a deal.
This mechanic works because it allows my players to stay in the game after they fall in battle. It also work with the narrative themes of power corrupting and that running from death has consequences. The Dark Powers are evil. Their favors have downsides.

However, this tweak only solved half the problem cutting the temple causes. I still needed a way to give the players a way to learn about the vampire's history. Most importantly, I need a way that was 'show not tell.'
The simplest way would be for me to design and act a monster hunter character. However, they downside is that if the players miss or have their characters make a bad impression on this hunter, they can't get the backstory. Also, Game Master run characters can easily take all the oxygen out of the table. The players essential get baby-sat through the story. That's not collaboration.

So, I put a spin on the monster hunter. I killed him. As the players explore, they hear rumors about gruesome fate of the hunter and his companions. If they investigate, they can find caches and notes about the hunter's plan to weaken the vampire and then kill him. However, it's obvious something went wrong.

This method give the players a choice on how much or how little exploring they feel like doing. Maybe the think they can salvage the hunter's plan. Maybe they feel they have a better plan and ignore the hints. Maybe they hear the rumors and decide that opposing the vampire is a waste of time.

The removing the temple was just two of several modifications I made. There was also some flavor and thematic modifications.

First, there was the infamous Vistani problem. The original Curse of Strahd game is old - really, really old. There are some toxic racial setrotypes about Romani and other Nomadic cultures. This is a leftover from Stoker's Dracula novel in which a 'tribe of Gypsies' serve as the vampire's willing minions. My source book doesn't make more than a token effort to hide the fact that all the Vistani are con-artists and spies for the vampire.
Classical horror trope or not, that had to go.

Secondly, and just as pressing, the book described the vampire's castle as a ruinous mess, broken ceiling, rotten furniture, and swarms of rats, bats, and spiders. This is fine, unless one of your players has a phobia of spiders.

I spent two hours going over the narrations notes line by line, checking for spiders and spider webs. Gruesome displays in the dungeon? No problem. A midnight parade of the ghosts of fallen adventurers? Also good.
A belfry with a nest of giant spiders living in the bell? That drop down onto the players? If that stayed, my phobic player might pass out, or set fire to the game table.

By Halloween day, I had put several weeks of my creative writing time into this game. My computer screen looked like a math textbook and a public speaking class had an eldritch baby. The session ran smooth as butter.

Sadly, I failed in my original plan, run the game in one session. Even with cutting 75% of the material there was just too much too do. There was also the human element.
My family can't stay seated for three hours straight, especially not my mother. During our two and a half hours of playtime, we took multiple stretch break that somehow always turned into house tidying breaks.

We even had to stop short of my three hour mark. My sister got a migraine attack. Yes, I'd spent ages building this, however, if you are in pain, you are in pain. My options were to reschedule for when she felt better or try to cut and re-balance the entire game on the fly for Mom and my brother.

Nevertheless, it was a good Halloween. Before the migraine attack, everyone was having a blast. Even my mother, a complete novice to DnD was able to enjoy the story. She actually killed a vampire bride by using a long-sword and an alligator.

It will be interesting to see what kind of story unfolds.