I pitched Shadow Over Gloomshire for a long block at MK-RPG and immediately saw an issue. This adventure supposedly lasts 3-4 sessions, and I'd pitched it for an 8 week long block. What was I going to do in the other four weeks?
As it turned out, that wasn't an issue. I'd booked a holiday for week 8, and week 3 was so incredible hot that half the group were too ill to play and we cancelled. Allowing one week for character creation, I'd only need one extra session of material.
Week 1: Character Creation
Character creation for Dragonbane isn't exactly complicated, but it does take a while. I gave people the standard kin options, plus cat people because I like them, and the standard profession options, plus paladin and demon hunter from the adventure. I suggested Mariner might not be the ideal profession here, given how little water was involved.
Rather than how it's described in the book, I had each player roll a set of stats, and then gave them the option to use any of the rolled sets of stats. This is because my husband has a tendency to roll unusually good stats. I've done this before with Pathfinder 1 games, to prevent the party from ending up as Husband and his Puny Minions. As predicted, he rolled some good stats, and while not everyone chose to use them, the party were fairly well balanced at the end.
The final party was:
- Dr Hovis Crumb, mallard scholar
- Grimduck McQuack, mallard hunter
- Lady Mazikeen (Maze), halfing paladin
- Felis Nightstabber, cat person thief
- Kaine Wolfram, wolfkin fighter
- Halvelda Greycape, human animist mage
Now I had to work out hooks. I decided the paladin could have an invitation from Minerva, and the scholar suggested a research trip. I still had to nail down some details, but I decided to go ahead with everyone meeting in a bar, with the other characters largely going along for mercenary reasons.
In keeping with the tropes of horror I decided to have a harbinger - a strange old man in the coaching inn who talked about how great Gloomshire ale was, but also how Gloomshire was a terrible place and nobody should ever go to Gloomshire. Naturally they began asking questions about exactly which coach they should not get on in order to not go to Gloomshire, and this might have continued for a while, but at this point the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate.
Week 2: The Coach Trip
By now I'd managed to sort out a few details. Mazikeen got a handout in the shape of a letter from Minerva asking her to come to Gloomshire to help with the problem. Dr Crumb got a document from the University of Pondsburg, in which Professor Hugh Quackman was requesting research into the history of Gloomshire. With both saying not to travel alone, it made sense that they had a hunter, thief and fighter along with them, while Halvelda was there to learn about the unusual flora and fauna of the area.
We picked up at breakfast time in the smoking ruins of the coaching inn, where people were largely sitting exactly where they had been the night before. After a bit of chatter the coach arrived and they all climbed aboard.
The journey went smoothly until they had to stop due to a blockage in the road, in the form of a wrecked cart and a sobbing forest giant. Bertha the giant proved not to be hostile. She was crying because a group of harpies had stolen her pet pig, Sir Piglington.
While some of the party staged a rescue mission, others tracked down the cart driver, who was very scared and relieved to have company. He got in the coach. Meanwhile, the harpies were defeated and Sir Piglington returned to Bertha's arms. She thrust her hand in her pocket and handed over the first thing she found as a reward, which turned out to be a fabulously valuable gold bangle, and got to work clearing the road so they could continue.
They stopped off for the night at an inn, run by a halfling woman called Violeta. Maze, who despite calling herself a mightly paladin was only just old enough to be adventuring, got extremely drunk and passed out on the hearthrug. Everyone else did make it as far as the bedrooms.
They were awoken in the night by strange noises, and looked out to see a huge hairy creature standing over Mazikeen. Kaine, being something of an expert on large hairy wolf creatures, identified it straight away as a werewolf.
They elected to incapacitate the werewolf rather than killing it, realising that it was probably the landlady and that she likely had no idea that she was doing this. In the morning, once she'd changed back, Halvelda and Grimduck went out to find wolfsbane to make a cure for her, and the party continued on their way, arriving in Gloomshire that evening.
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None of this is in the adventure itself. These two encounters were inspired by entries in the Dragonbane bestiary. I used a battle map book from Tom Cartos that supplied the blocked road map and the inn map. This made for a simple, fairly linear session for the players to get to know their characters and the system before moving onto Gloomshire proper.
Week 3: Welcome to Gloomshire
Half the group were still unwell from heat, but we did pick up an extra person from another game that wasn't running at the club that night. They asked to observe, but I suggested they could play an NPC if they'd like to try it out properly, and brought along Victor Drakos, mallard demon hunter.
The present party members chatted with Victor, and with Maeve, a young human paladin who'd also had a letter from Minerva. She was quite relieved to meet Maze, as she'd been worried about whether she was really experienced enough for this job, but it was clearly just a mix up over their very similar names.
They headed off to visit Minerva, with Victor in tow, where they learned about the something nasty in the temple in the graveyard, but were interrupted by a dwarf running in carrying an injured elf. I'd described the travelling carnival setting up outside the gates with guards telling them not to as the party arrived, so this wasn't hugely surprising. Minerva offered to look after the two of them while the party went out to help fend off the horde of stygian wolves attacking outside.
With those dealt with, they went back to the tavern, where they learned that the missing party members had been helping out there due to the cook having turned into an undead monstrosity. The next morning they got up early and headed to the graveyard, having decided that going during the day was far more sensible than at night.
They took a cautious route around the inside edge, avoiding some of the more significant pitfalls along the way. They ran into Bones, who they took a bit of a liking to, despite his determination to sell them eyeballs. Maze bought a skeleton hand. Then on to the temple itself.
Week 4: The Temple
With Victor's player back with their regular group, and Maze's player also unavailable, I decided that the two of them were outside fighting a winged horror while the other two got inside, and then cut back to the other three party members waking up in the inn to discover that the others had gone on an adventure without them.
They had a less eventful trip through the graveyard (it was almost like four adventurers had recently passed that way and already had the encounters!) but still ran into Bones. They weren't quite as taken with him as the previous group, and also declined to buy any eyeballs.
With most of the team back together, they explored the temple. Kaine made sure to smash up all the skeletons before they could do anything annoying like come to life. They still had to fight one when it popped out of the font. A friendly chat with the one entirely non-hostile inhabitant netted them some extremely useful books which would certainly please Professor Quackman as well as providing valuable information for their search. They wanted to know why the ghostly priest's skeleton was chained to the bed, and he explained just how humiliating it was to see your own remains walking around without you. They sympathised, and agreed to his request to have his bones moved into a proper crypt - for which kindness he gave them the key they needed.
They opened up the door to the catacombs, and were immediately set upon by a skeletal snake, where they discovered that being eaten by a skeletal snake isn't exactly dangerous like being eaten by a live snake would be, but is nevertheless rather inconvenient. At some point in all this, Halvelda got a demon on a spellcasting roll, and unexpectedly aged significantly.
Week 5: Deeper Underground
With the whole party back together and not inside a skeletal snake, they descended into the catacombs. A quick stop off in the embalming room let them restock on bandages, and not long after that Halvelda spotted a concealed door. From then they explored the catacomb very much in reverse order, finding many doors that would have been locked if they'd come to them from the other side. Maze touched an obilisk and also unexpectedly aged significantly.
Some fighting later, they located Fiona, and decided to have a rest. This holy site kept the bad things out, so they could recover somewhat. Fiona also cleansed Halvelda and Maze of their unnatural aging, while apologising to Dr Crumb for not being able to reverse his entirely natural aging.
Week 6: Finale
It was time to take on the demon - after getting out of the catacombs, of course. More encountering of doors from the wrong side happened, and Dr Crumb finally found a use for the stone crow he'd been carrying around for several hours.
Suitably armed with Fiona's sword and a lot of other weaponry they'd picked up along the way, they prepared to face the demon. And face it they did! The demon was killed, the two blades were reunited, and the shadow over Gloomshire was lifted...
...For now.
Conclusions
This is an excellent adventure, with interesting new monsters, fun NPCs, a solid main quest and enough hooks that you could easily build a longer campaign around Gloomshire. The only caveat is that I had some trouble getting my head around the main plot - the big bad is encountered fairly early on in affairs, as is the demon blade, and it took me a lot of scrambling through the adventure to figure out that they couldn't just take the blade because the demon was still there. I found it in an introductory section.
I also had a bit of a struggle with the maps. This would be no issue on a VTT, but on a real table, the catacomb map is, shall we say, a little prone to colouring outside the lines? Copying the damn thing onto my Chessex Megamat was something of a challenge. And you do need a Chessex Megamat. The catacomb is huge, and filled the entire mat. The temple map is an easier draw, being largely along the grid lines. I drew that on my Ergon silicone mat, as I rapidly realised I was going to need to be swapping between maps pretty quickly.
But that aside, I had an absolute blast running this. And I realised that I'd dropped enough hints about a certain NPC's involvement in events that I could very easily run a second long block game as a sequel to this. So assuming players sign up, in a few weeks time they'll be heading off to the Van Walden mansion to find out what's really been going on in Gloomshire...