{"id":7656,"date":"2021-11-27T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7656"},"modified":"2021-11-16T11:33:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T16:33:23","slug":"what-nightmares-may-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7656","title":{"rendered":"What Nightmares May Come"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Andrew Foster\nSelf Published\nCity of Mist<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
An aging catholic exorcist and assessor needs the crew’s help in banishing the alleged evil spirits surrounding a young boy. What kind of terror could bring a once steadfast priest to the breaking point ? Could a mere child really be the harbinger of something evil or is something else at play? Whatever it is, it\u2019s quickly spreading to the nearby neighbors who are being plagued by the all too real events colored by death and terror. If that wasn\u2019t enough, people are starting to believe the rumors about a previously captured serial killer who is on the loose again. Will the crew be able to save the residents of the 36th Street Apartments in time before their own living nightmares consume them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 25 page adventure is the usual spooky dream time investigation adventure of a modern horror nature. It has nice touches here and there and, surprisingly, doesn\u2019t reach TOO far in to the pretension that the marketing hints at. It also has no idea how to support the DM. Or write read-aloud. Or format a section for scanning. And, I take offence at the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This adventure centers around a kid who is the living manifestation of The Spirit Of All Life, the aboriginal creator who also created the dreaming. Or is the dreaming? I don\u2019t pretend to understand. All I know is that a white kid is the aboriginal creator. Can you do this in a home game? Sure. Should you shit all over gypsies in a published adventure? Probably not. It\u2019s in bad taste and things suitable for a home game are not always suitable for a published adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I don\u2019t know where to start with this. I bought it explicitly because it looked like pretentious edge lord shit. Read that marketing blurb again. \u201cWhat kind of terror could \u2026\u201d and, the best of all, the last two lines of the other marketing blurb are \u201c… ultimately come face to face with their own demons, and hopefully find the wisdom to help a hurt soul come to terms with their grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c Uh huh. Grief? Uh huh. The characters own demons? Uh huh uh huh. Fucking masterful pretention that is. How could this adventure be anything other than the full on catharsis that we all seek from a tuesday night of gaming with beer and pretzels!? Finally, my deep held truma regarding the search for meaning in a world inherently devoid of it shall be resolved and no longer will all love me and despair but I shall remain Galadriel. Or, I\u2019m gonna have some more Campairi and roll my eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this kids mother dies. He starts making people have nightmares, including a priest who comes to exorcise him, a psychiatrist who examines him, and basically everyone in his apartment complex. The party enters at the behest of the priest, does some basic investigation of the priest, psych, and the apartment complex. They go to the kids apartment, find a THING has happened, and go to the roof to find the kid pulling the entire complex in to the dreamtime. The only real conflict here is with shadow monster things from the dreamtime. This seems lame to me, much in the same way that I bitch about designers using humanoids too much in fantasy adventures. When every threat is supernatural the tone of the game changes and becomes substantially less visceral, with, I believe, less perceived threat of the players characters. The fantastic made mundane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a pretty standard adventure of this type. You get a call from the priest. Go to the church and fight nightmare monsters. Investigate. Go to the next place in the chain, the psych\u2019s office. Fight nightmare monsters and investigate. Go to the apartment complex and investigate and fight nightmare monsters. Find the kids apartment and have the \u201cemotional\u201d ending. 95% of all modern adventures go this way, be it the modern genre of the post-90\u2019s time frame. They both do it. You know, the plot thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m going to cover a few interesting things about this. First, the monsters\/people, etc have a few bullet points in them to help run them, atmospherically. One of them \u201cCreeps along the walls silently like a fluid shadow\u201d, or \u201cWhispering and snickering near you\u201d or \u201cBang and scrap at the doorway where Father Stone has barricaded himself in\u201d or \u201cDissipate right in front of your eyes with a terrible screeching noise.\u201d I talk frequently about specificity and in supporting the DM with some advice. These are excellent examples of what I\u2019m talking about. It\u2019s specific examples that the DM can either include directly or riff off of, instead of generalized advice. It\u2019s not text heavy, or dragging on for paragraphs. It\u2019s bulleted for easy reference. It\u2019s exactly how the DM should be supported for a shadow nightmare monster might act and\/or interact with the party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also doers this interesting thing, in one place, that tells the DM \u201cHey, if you want a quicker pace to the game then skip this next section and if you want a slower pace then use it.\u201d That\u2019s interesting advice, especially in one of these plot\/investigation things, and something that I don\u2019t think you ever, but rarely, see an adventure do. It\u2019s totally misplaced in this adventure and has you skip some quite evocative content, but, hey, nice idea anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FInally, the designer does have a certain penchant for writing a cliff hanger line of dialog. The hook has a priest calling you late at night and whispering in to the phone in a terrified voice before screaming \u201cI will cast you out and send you back to hell!\u201d Sweet! That\u2019ll wake you up in the morning! As you approach the church, the read-aloud there ends with you hearing a scream coming from within \u201cYou have no power in the house of the Lord! Unclean spirit, I cast you out and back to hell!\u201d Uh \u2026 fuck yeah! That\u2019s how you write a cut! None of this \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d interrogatory bullshit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok. I did my good deed for the day and noted a few non-shitty things. Time to Burn it down. Burn it down baby burn it burn it down!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The read-aloud happens as you transition to each new scene location. It is terrible. Dreadfully pretentious. I guess, I could see how it could be ok in a kind of noir-like voiceover. \u201cThe silhouetted gothic form of the River- side Cathedral, with its vaulted but- tresses and harsh pointed arches cutting through the thick misty fog looms over you, stopping you in your tracks. Is it awe, reverence or fear?\u201d or \u201cThe palpable hopeless- ness reminds you of one of the City\u2019s harshest truths…\u201cEveryone is just a step away from disaster.\u201d\u201d Classic examples of telling instead of showing. You want the party to feel this way, and it\u2019s up to you, as the designer, to write content that gets them to feel this way. I am not so jaded as I let on that I cannot be moved. But, if you TELL me to fell someway them I\u2019m just going to roll my eyes and say fuck you, at least internally, and fuck with the game. You gotta communicate this shit by showing. What can you describe that makes me THINK \u201ca step away from disaster?\u201d Write that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The designer also leaves shit out. A LOT of shit. They center certain pieces of information as being important to the story and then never mention it again, at least not in a way that is useful for the the DM. A serial killer, back on the loose again? Let\u2019s not mention ANYTHING about him other than give him a stat block for his nightmare version. What the fuck do you do if the party starts to investigate the killer? Asks questions about them? Nothing. Well, \u201cmake some shit up\u201d, of course. But, the designer should be supporting the DM in this. Thisa happens time and again in the adventure. The priest is troubled by a past exorcism that went wrong. The demon in the church taunts him about this. The party is sure to ask him about it. But, nothing is provided. Sure, it\u2019s all misleading content, but, fuck, if you\u2019re going to introduce something like this then give it a few sentences to support the DM as the party inevitable follo wup on this lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scenes are also incompletely described. You see a doctor sitting in her chair in one intro paragraph. There\u2019s no fucknig mention of the giant pools of blood that surround her, since she slit her fucking wrists. Or, in another, of a body hanging out the window of the apartment complex that you can presumably see from the street, or the piles of people mulling around in the courtyard. No, you must reach those other locations before those details are shared. And yet, those clues, mentioned before then, lead the party to those scenes. If you open a door to a 20-x20 room with a fucking giant dragon in it then you mentioned the fucking dragon inthe read-aloud. Prominanalty. You don\u2019t leave the giant pools of blood as a follow-up detail. This is not the over-explaining that I blast readaloud for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could go on an on on this adventure. I\u2019m particularly disappointed by the lack of dreamtime support, and annoyed at the direct question \u201cwhats your worst nightmare\u201d that is asked for the players characters so it can manifest. This is SOOOOO overfuckingused and always not supproted \u2026 just as it is here. And the final \u201cbattle\u201d\/scene on the rooftop is essentially not supported at all …e xcept for a entire page of stat block for the kid. Who the fuck can wade through that during a game while running it? Nothing evocative, nothing to guide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A locked door mystery without mentioning the door being locked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages. You can get a decent idea of the writing style from it. It\u2019s a good preview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/375944\/What-Nightmares-May-Come?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n