This was the first game I had ran a game in 13 years and my previous attempt went apallingly. Needless to say I was quite nervous so I put in a lot of prep work and had players I knew would go easy on me if I did mess up.
We had some random characters I made earlier and opened the game with an invite to investigate disaperances at the village of Sleepy Hollow indicating a headless horseman was rumoured to be the cause. The team went and met with Mr and Mrs Payne briefly then went to the local brewery which had a sort of pub attached and proceeded to get very drunk! Resulting in a clumsy but charming magic user.
They heard about a sorcerer that lived in the woods and sold magical items so decided to investigate.
On the way they stopped by the old Van Tassel house which turned out to be haunted. The ghost of Katrina Van Tassel suggested Mrs Payne was possibly a witch and the players began to suspect she was responsible for the horseman. They kindly exorcised the ghosts and proceeded to the magic shop.
Upon reaching the magic shop one of the players was turned into a 10 year old girl which was remedied by the sorcerer. Naturally it was decided the best way to thank him was to rob the shop and fight the sorcerer; Amazingly they all came out of it unscathed due to Faerie Fire taking care of the invisibility problem (much to my surprise)! However one character did end up with a solid silver pointer finger, crime doesn't pay, except in this case.
Upon returning to the manor Mrs Payne tried to charm the fighter into coming to the basement with her but alas a successful save roll left him unconvinced and after playing along beautifully he surprised her with a stab from his dagger, as you do. Hearing her screams of pain the rest of the party and Mr Payne came running in and the resulting fight ended with both of the Payne's taking a one way trip through the window.
The players managed to convince the Payne's teenage daughter that she was now free to live the life she always wanted and to sign over the Payne land to the players.
Now rich, with a fully stocked magic shop as well as the Payne land for income the players decided to investigate the 'basement'. They found and fell victim to a few magical items which were largely declawed without Mrs Payne present. They also found a torture chamber (though sadly did not locate the cell with the poor mutilated village folk who were left to starve to death).
The last room they came to had a demon mural on the wall which caused one player to turn on the fighter but a failed grapple roll resulted in her being pushed to her death. This seemed to be the fighters preferred method of dispatching his enemies. When the specialist saw the mural he felt compelled to sing 'Ding dong the witch is dead' to escape his soul being eaten.
Lastly the players made quick work of a black mamba which earned them a valuable statue and 30 pieces of silver.
Overall there was lots of laughs and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. It went quite well, though I think there were too many side quest clues resulting in players being quite confused at several points. Several times I expected them to die horribly but clearly luck was on their side as only one player died.
I plan on running a slimmed down version of this again at our local roleplay club so it will be interesting to see how it differs! The experience has left me feeling a lot more confident about running games in the future and I'm already working on another.
Thanks to Kathryn Jenkins, Oliver Palmer and Scott Dorward for being my guinea pigs!
We had some random characters I made earlier and opened the game with an invite to investigate disaperances at the village of Sleepy Hollow indicating a headless horseman was rumoured to be the cause. The team went and met with Mr and Mrs Payne briefly then went to the local brewery which had a sort of pub attached and proceeded to get very drunk! Resulting in a clumsy but charming magic user.
They heard about a sorcerer that lived in the woods and sold magical items so decided to investigate.
On the way they stopped by the old Van Tassel house which turned out to be haunted. The ghost of Katrina Van Tassel suggested Mrs Payne was possibly a witch and the players began to suspect she was responsible for the horseman. They kindly exorcised the ghosts and proceeded to the magic shop.
Upon reaching the magic shop one of the players was turned into a 10 year old girl which was remedied by the sorcerer. Naturally it was decided the best way to thank him was to rob the shop and fight the sorcerer; Amazingly they all came out of it unscathed due to Faerie Fire taking care of the invisibility problem (much to my surprise)! However one character did end up with a solid silver pointer finger, crime doesn't pay, except in this case.
Upon returning to the manor Mrs Payne tried to charm the fighter into coming to the basement with her but alas a successful save roll left him unconvinced and after playing along beautifully he surprised her with a stab from his dagger, as you do. Hearing her screams of pain the rest of the party and Mr Payne came running in and the resulting fight ended with both of the Payne's taking a one way trip through the window.
The players managed to convince the Payne's teenage daughter that she was now free to live the life she always wanted and to sign over the Payne land to the players.
Now rich, with a fully stocked magic shop as well as the Payne land for income the players decided to investigate the 'basement'. They found and fell victim to a few magical items which were largely declawed without Mrs Payne present. They also found a torture chamber (though sadly did not locate the cell with the poor mutilated village folk who were left to starve to death).
The last room they came to had a demon mural on the wall which caused one player to turn on the fighter but a failed grapple roll resulted in her being pushed to her death. This seemed to be the fighters preferred method of dispatching his enemies. When the specialist saw the mural he felt compelled to sing 'Ding dong the witch is dead' to escape his soul being eaten.
Lastly the players made quick work of a black mamba which earned them a valuable statue and 30 pieces of silver.
Overall there was lots of laughs and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. It went quite well, though I think there were too many side quest clues resulting in players being quite confused at several points. Several times I expected them to die horribly but clearly luck was on their side as only one player died.
I plan on running a slimmed down version of this again at our local roleplay club so it will be interesting to see how it differs! The experience has left me feeling a lot more confident about running games in the future and I'm already working on another.
Thanks to Kathryn Jenkins, Oliver Palmer and Scott Dorward for being my guinea pigs!
