Friday, October 28, 2022

Game Log: Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme

In my previous article I provided some tips for running Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme from Candlekeep Mysteries. Most of those tips came from running the game myself. We had a good time overall, but I was hoping for a smash success with this one. I love horror as a genre, and while I’ve been incorporating horror elements in my 5th edition campaigns, this was the first full horror scenario I’ve had the pleasure of running. In this article I’ll describe what I did, and where I could have done things a bit differently.

 

Candlekeep looms over the Sword Coast.

I ran this online over three sessions. The first two were about three and half hours long and the last was about two hours. 9 hours total with five players. They were playing new characters for this little side adventure from our weekly Ravnica campaign.

 

Summary: The characters arrive at Candlekeep in the night and are sent to a cellar beneath the inn (which is full). Once there they meet a group of NPCs and explore this hidden portion of the library. In the morning, they awaken to a tune playing in their head non-stop. The NPC in charge seals the cellar after sending out a message for help. She reveals that the tune is an ancient curse that afflicted the library once before. As the curse continues to manifest, NPCs start to lose their minds, violence erupts and something sinister becomes more and more powerful. Eventually the PCs discover source of the curse, and are given a hint or two on how to stop it. The finale is spent trying to finish off the malevolent being Shemshime, and breaking the curse.

 

My first big change would occur before we even start playing. Setting expectations. I told my players that this was “more of a horror adventure than a mystery”. But I really should have just said, “This is a horror adventure. Your goal is to survive long enough to break a curse.” Nearly all my players created investigators of some kind. As such, they didn’t really get to use their skills and abilities that much. This led to some frustration from them, because half of their stuff wasn’t super useful. To be fair, this adventure can work with pretty much any character group. That said, their expectation was to be able to use mystery solving skills to help them in this adventure. But those skills aren’t really vital to survive the scenario.

 

This expectation also made the resolution of the “mystery” of why this was happening feel unsatisfying. One player actually said, “I don’t know what to do, because it feels like we aren’t finding any clues”. And no, they weren’t finding anything, I was handing them clues when I needed them to find them. As I mentioned in the other article, this adventure is on rails, like a house of horrors carnival ride. For a real mystery, the players need to time to search, to put pieces together, to follow up leads. Now you could restructure Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme to play out like a classic locked room mystery. But you need to put in some extra work to do that. To really run this right from the book, it is better to make sure your players know this is a horror adventure to enjoy as an experience, not a mystery to be solved.

 

Creepy drawing by a child. Always fun.

Finally establishing this was a horror game, I should have found out what kind of horror the group wanted. I didn’t ask if they were good with evil children or harm to children. So when little Gailby was in the spotlight, I wasn’t sure how far I could or should go with her character. My players liked most of the NPCs so I ended up pulling my punches when it came to violence toward them. And some player characters were never in actual peril. The main bit of feedback I got at the end was that the scenario wasn’t scary enough. They wanted more thrills, more peril. Not necessarily more blood (because I had one player who said “I’m a weenie and get grossed out easily”). But if I knew their comfort level with scary/imperiled children and that they wanted more spooky scares, I could have adjusted things to hit that mark. I also should have been very clear that a Total Party Kill (TPK) was a very possible end for this scenario. That way, I wouldn’t feel like I had to pull punches at the end, or worse drag things out into a third session. In the end they wanted “more Hellraiser and less Hocus Pocus”. I delivered somewhere in the middle and it didn’t satisfy anyone.

 

With that in mind, I had planned to only run two sessions for Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme. I should have stuck to that with all my might, because the momentum of this scenario really flagged with the third session. We have a hard end time, and we ended mid-fight with Shemshime. Yeah, don’t do that! It sucked. In my previous article I outlined the optimal way I should have run the adventure. What I did instead was spend way too much time with the set up and then tried to work in all the Events. 

 

Would you trust old Krinkle?

Knowing that the players wanted a bit more Hellraiser in the game, I would have started session two with the Puppets event, and had the NPCs go all out in trying to harm the player characters. Stakes would have been high, because the players liked the NPCs, and I could have even added some flying books adding chaos to the situation. A good strong start for session two.

 

From there we could have jumped into finding the book must faster. Instead, I let them spend way too much time trying to find the book and looking for clues, and just slowing everything down, instead of keeping it fast moving and fun. We did hit all the events. And the discovery of the singing skull was a great macabre moment. But It isn’t really necessary. I could have had possessed NPCs start shouting “Finish the Rhyme!” or have them find that scrawled in a book that falls during the chaos of the Puppets event. Lots of ways to do it.

 

Now my favorite bit of tabletop roleplaying games is the character interaction. As a player, I’m definitely an actor type with a bit of storyteller thrown in. As a DM I love the stories we make together, and that means having NPCs that I love playing. I tweaked my NPCs a bit for this game. I did my best to have each NPC find something interesting about a player character, and share a nice moment with them. This means I altered some personalities here and there, and adjusted some NPC motivations or backstories. But it was worth it. If I ask my players about this session a few months from now, I think they will remember the NPCs and the Shemshime being invincible. 

 

However, my strength as a DM is also my weakness. I love creating and playing NPCs. But I also overindulge in social interactions. In a long running campaign it isn’t so bad, if the players are also really into it. My players are, and we can have a few sessions without combat and only social and exploration events. But in a short scenario, this is not good. Once I get the players connected to the NPCs, then I need to really lighten up on the social interactions and ramp up the scares and thrills. I dropped the ball here. 

 

Welcome to the Cellar.

The set up took almost the entire first session. Now, they were all playing new characters who had not met before, so there was the good old fashioned awkward player character introductions. But I anticipated that, and we moved through them as quickly as possible. But I did spend too much time with the grand tour of all three levels of the cellar, and meeting the NPCs. I realized this when I hadn’t hit the quarantine mark by the break in session one. What I should have done was have the remaining NPCs all be in the main floor to meet at once. Instead, I sprinkled them throughout the cellar and just slowing things down meeting all of them. I did accelerate events a bit, and we ended with the fireflies going dark right before the shadows attack. Not a bad way to end things.

 

However, we started session two with a fight, and that ate up a bit of time. Then I tried to cram in all three middle events (Singing Skull, Escape Attempt, Puppets). It was too much. Add to that the confusion of the party searching for clues that aren’t really there to be found. I drip feeding them secrets as described in the events. It felt awkward and a bit frustrating. When they finally found the book and figured out how to repair it, I gave them a little time to plan… and then a little more time… and then a little more time. I should have just said, “we are ending tonight, so let’s just go with the plan you’ve got.”  I must say the in-character discussion was a blast, and I was having a lot of fun having the NPCs chime in with bad advice and distractions. But I really should have just backed off and stayed locked into our end time.

 

They started the Shemshime battle with only about 20 minutes of game time left. And things did not go as they hoped. But they were inching toward the correct resolution. Again, I should have either let their original plan work (or partially work), or just leaned into the horror of Shemshime wiping the floor with them. But because I didn’t set that expectation, I wasn’t sure how comfortable they would be with a TPK ending. I ended up stopping the game at our set end time, and said we’d finish the adventure next session. 

 

When the third session rolled around, I could tell the players just weren’t as engaged. They shifted strategies a few more time and then finally destroyed Shemshime. I did an epilogue scene and actually stretched that out a bit so we didn’t end super early, but that just made the finale feel even more sloggy. The session ended with a bit of shrug, when it should have been a cheer of victory or a bunch of laughter at getting wiped out. 

 

Music from the book sets the mood.

One last thing that happened that was no one’s fault, but that ended up impacting session one was that none of my music was working on Discord. I didn’t have a backup solution, and so the session played in silence. Normally not a huge deal, but with a scenario so focused on the musical rhyme, I spent a ton of work on the playlists and timing for implementing them. Because the first session was silent, all that establishing mood was lost. I really should have had a backup ready to go, even a Youtube playlist for individual players to run on their side to build that atmosphere. I will say that when the music did work on Discord for Session 2 and 3 my players loved it. 

 

Looking at this long ass article you might think that this mini-campaign was a failure. But it really wasn’t. Everyone had fun. They made great and memorable characters. Each of them said they would love to play these characters again. They liked the NPCs. They liked the set up and scenario of the curse. It was a nice break from our regular campaign and was a lot of fun to prep and run. 

 

But hindsight is 20/20. I could have run Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme in a way that was more fun, and memorable. It really hammered home how important expectations are to a new game. I don’t think a session 0 is needed for something like this. But if I had been clear this being a horror thrill ride, we all could have embraced it, and really made something we’ll talk about years later.

Monday, October 24, 2022

Tips for running Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme


I ran
 Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme from the Candlekeep Mysteries adventure book. I learned quite a few things from running it. I figured I’d share them with you, to give you a hand running your game.

Let the investigation begin... in another adventure.

I ran this online over three sessions. The first two were about three and half hours long and the last was about two hours. 9 hours total with five players. They were playing new characters for this little side adventure from our weekly Ravnica campaign.

 

Summary: The characters arrive at Candlekeep in the night and are sent to a cellar beneath the inn (which is full). Once there they meet a group of NPCs and explore this hidden portion of the library. In the morning, they awaken to a tune playing in their head non-stop. The NPC in charge seals the cellar after sending out a message for help. She reveals that the tune is an ancient curse that afflicted the library once before. As the curse continues to manifest, NPCs start to lose their minds, violence erupts and something sinister becomes more and more powerful. Eventually the PCs discover source of the curse, and are given a hint or two on how to stop it. The finale is spent trying to finish off the malevolent being Shemshime, and breaking the curse.

 

Here are a few things I learned.

 


Shemshime’s Midnight Rhyme
 is a horror adventure, pure and simple. The mystery portion of the game is actually very limited in scope. To be honest this scenario plays out more like a ride through a house of horrors. The characters sit in their seats and the DM takes them through scare to scare until they get to the finale where their big decision is how to finish Shemshime (if they figure it out). Make this clear to the players. They are not here to solve a mystery. They are here to survive a curse. This should help them focus less on the “why is this happening” to more of “how do we stop it”. 

 

Tied to this, find out how horrific your players want this to run. You can adjust the horror dials pretty easily on this scenario. If they are hard core horror fans and want more gore and scares, use the NPCs as the punching bags. It is very hard to scare players with character death in D&D 5th edition. But if make your NPCs likable and engaging, then hurting them or having them hurt each other can really make things horrifying. I mean you have a child and her father as NPCs. Possessed children make for a great moral quandary, but only if the players are OK with that. 

Isn't little Gailby cute?

 

You may have a group that doesn’t want to see children come to harm, or isn’t really into gore. Then stick to the atmospheric spooks and scares. Lean into the creeping darkness, and the shadow attacks (even at this level, shadow attacks against physically weak characters can be scary with their strength drain to death ability). Have the floating books and freezing rooms make a bigger punch (maybe even creating condition affects like exhaustion). Create your own mind-bending scares. Suddenly the passages and stairs in the cellar don’t lead to where they are supposed to. Add voices calling to them in the darkness or add ghostly figures of the unfortunates who were killed by the curse before. To paraphrase my players, find out what kind of horror game they are looking for. Are they feeling more like Hocus Pocus or Hellraiser?

 

This adventure has moments that force player characters to attack other players characters, and it can get deadly very quickly. It also takes away player agency and some players hate that. Before running this game, make sure your players are good with this. If they aren’t, then lean into the NPCs, most are weak and can’t really harm the player characters. But if you make the NPCs likable and relatable, your PCs are going to struggle with hurting them, especially knowing they aren’t in control of their bodies. 

 

This adventure is best when it is kept short and visceral. I don’t think you want this going over two sessions. Break down what needs to happen in the game. Identify your natural breaking points (because they make a good place to stop, or because you can raise tension by pausing there).  Then keep an eye on the time as you run. Do your best to hit those stopping points. Remember it is better to have a shorter session in this case. The longer it goes on, the less intense the game becomes.

 

Here are the key points I identified and where to break for a two-session game.

  • Set up – Meet NPCs, explore setting, the curse starts.
    Lurking Shemshime

  • Quarantine – Varnyr’s announcement of the quarantine should happen right before your mid-session break.
  • Tension moment – atmospheric scare like books moving, room getting cold or firefly behavior 
  • Ebder’s Outburst – Characters learn the words to the rhyme
  • Tension moment 2 – Shadow attack, finish the battle and describe a downed NPC or strength drained character and end session one.
  • Singing Skull or Escape Attempt or Puppets – Start the session with one of these. If your players really bonded with K’Tulah, then the Escape Attempt is a solid one. If they want more of a Hocus Pocus style game, the singing skull is perfectly creepy. If they are more of a Hellraiser group, the Puppets scene can be brutally disturbing. Whichever one you start with, keep the other two in your back pocket in case you need to fill in some more game time. But don’t feel like you have to run them. It is more important that they…
  • Find the book – Use NPCs or clues to direct your players to the book. Don’t get bogged down here.
  • Book fixed – Shemshime appears at the midsession break.
  • Planning – Allow them some time to come up with a plan based on the completed rhyme. If needed remind them that the adventure will end with this session. The longer they take to plan, the less time they have to deal with Shemshime.
  • Battle – The players attempt to strike back, and adjust plans as needed. 
  • Epilogue – Either a quick scene of the survivors leaving the cellar and getting the reward – or of the Candlekeep wizards finding the corpses of the player characters and NPCs, and a slow pan over to the book looking innocent in a pool of blood. 

 

This scenario features music, which means you really should try to include some kind of audio version of the rhyme. There are a few on YouTube to pick from. My favorite used the lullaby from the film Pan’s Labrynthand shifted the words of the poem slightly to fit. The tune is melancholy and sets a great mood. You can also cobble together a great playlist of music including tracks from the film score, or just play the whole film score to Pan’s Labrynth. This way the background music contains the rhyme as well as having the performed version form YouTube handy. 





Overall keep it fun. It can be tempting to get too dower with horror games. But this scenario isn’t so much a creeping dread story, but a brisk and punchy set of thrills with a terrifying conclusion. When you feel things bogging down too much, throw in another scare. The room gets colder. The books start moving. An NPC suddenly shrieks and runs at a PC with a heavy book. If the players get stuck on how to finish off Shemshime, use the NPCs to guide them, or decide to let whatever idea they did cook up actually work. Remember the “mystery” isn’t the point of this scenario. It is fun scares. If your players end the game frustrated because they didn’t solve the mystery in a satisfactory way then you didn’t set the correct expectations for the game. They should be enjoying the thrill ride, and even if they all get slaughtered by Shemshime, they should end the session laughing and chatting about how awesome the scenario was. 

 

I learned most of these lessons the hard way. Coming up, how I ran the game and what I would do differently.