Murder at the Mahalo

By Josh Yoder
Crimson Adder Curiosities
Weird Heroes of Public Access

It’s time to hang ten, heroes—we have a mystery to solve. Tiki Tony was found dead at the Mahalo Tiki Bar. Police ruled that the 45 stab wounds in his chest were self-inflicted, claiming he was alone and that no other evidence was found at the scene. However, anyone who knew Tony swears he was in an exceptionally good mood that week, excited about a new “centerpiece” he had just added to the establishment. His niece is hosting a wake for him at the bar tonight. Go there and ask around—I feel something fishy is afoot.

This fifteen page adventure presents a couple of NPCs in a bar for the party to talk to. While organized well, there’s just little here beyond the NPC’s to run an adventure with.

Tiki bars are the best bars, after dive bars. And I’m rather fond of murder mysteries. And that Hawaii episode of The Brady Bunch was ok. Besides, people are always trying to do mysteries in D&D and they all suck because of divinations spells, so let’s see one where the spells don’t exist, ey?

This adventure has a page with six entries for “pushing the adventure forward”. It has a page with six weird things that can happen, like your drink turning red. It has a page of “ritual ideas” (more on that later) and five pages of NPC’s, two to a page. It is from this, and an overview page, that you are to run an adventure. I suspect that this could happen, in some possible world in which an adventure supports itself, but it doesn’t really happen here. 

Tiki Tony is dead, you go to the wake in his tiki bar. There are ten people there for you to talk to. They each have an initial description, on an overview page, or something like “The grizzled old man is in a leather jacket, and his eyes seem tired.” This is good. A brief quick hit, glancing around the room, not over revealing things, but communicating some vibe from the initial impression. Great way to present a room full of NPC’s. Perhaps just a little static, the googly eyes and hateful stares (that are to come) are missing from this quick hit, and I do believe that the INTERACTIONS between people is what can drive a lot of great social situations in games. Anyway, we then move on to the actual NPC descriptions, two to a page, in a kind of index card format with bullets. Each starts off with their name and something like “Drama Teacher, Former Girlfriend of Tony,.” Again, very good. A concrete grounding of both who they are and their relationship to the murdered party. Then we move to some bullets, which starts with he same description we got in the overview: “Women in her mid-50s wearing loosefitted hippyish night clothes.” So far so good. Then five or six bullets of things they know and/or do. 

These are generally ok. Well, better than ok. We’re missing any interesting quirks, and the characters come off a little dry, even though they have some batshit stuff, like the biker who is the only survivor of his former gang. The descriptions, while good at facts, just don’t come off as very colorful. Or, perhaps … just don’t spark the DM to really run with them. The counterpart to an evocative room description, perhaps, that puts an idea in to the DMs head that they can expand upon? Anyway, beyond this point, the interactions between them are not handled well, i think. We get things in these descriptions like “Giving death stares to Betty” or “Flirting with Bob” as well as “Loudly calling to Tony from beyond the grave.” What I’m looking for, in a group scene like this, is for a page of this stuff, front he various NPC’s, to be pulled out. I want, in essence, a summary page. Not of what they know, that works well, theoretically anyway, as bullets in an NPC description. What I’m looking for is for that summary page to have the interactive information as well. That we see X making eyes at Y, or drinking heavily, or yelling out to Tony for his spirit to talk to him. This is, in essence, the same as my “Vista Overview” points: When you arrive at the top of the hill you want a brief overview of what the party can see down below: the bright lights, fires, large structures, mobs, and so forth. You don’t want to them have to dig through forty different locations descriptions to check to see if any of them have something that the party might see from atop the hill. The goal, as always, is to assist the DM in running the adventure. 

The more pressing issue with this, though, is the lack of anything going on. There is a page of “weird shit that can happen to you”, which is generally something like some object in the tiki bar talking to you. Other than that, there’s a page of “Moving the adventure” things to roll for, six in all. You see a clean spot on the counter where something recently sat. In the bathroom mirror you see a tiki idol staring back at you with glowing red eyes. Yeah, ok, sure. The result, I think, is that you perform some ritual to exorcise the demon of the idol. What is the ritual? It’s a random table, roll three times and that’s what the ritual is. I’m not a fan. There’s no real way to discover this, you’re just told to roll. Actually, you’re told to go with whatever reasonable plan the party has for a ritual. I’m actually a fan of THAT. The random use of Bless, in D&D, to solve a problem is an under-utliized tool. But, then, the random table, disconnected from the adventure? No way to discover a ritual? Nope. This is the misuse of randomness in an adventure and I’ll have none of it. 

There’s this whole “He went to a carnival and make a deal a dude to get the idol” (that was going to save the bar business) that is really never explored. Maybe it’s a series and that’s the next adventure? It just feels like there’s not much going on here. This is one scene, the “go to the wake at the bar” scene, in a larger adventure, it feels like. There’s not much in the way of investigation. Just talking to the NPC’s. Which, yes, IS investigation, but there’s not much beyond that. 

I guess, what do you want out of a one room play? No Exit?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages, showing you the overview and the NPC summary page, such that it is. You don’t really get a sense as to what the adventure IS though. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517383/whpa-13-murder-at-the-mahalo?1892600