Last week, I talked about some mechanics for a social encounter that I planned to try out using the PCs’ dinner with Fiona Wachter in Vallaki, who invited them over to try and recruit them to help her overthrow the current Baron. The PCs were suspicious of her from the jump, so her plans didn’t go very smoothly… but luckily, I think my plans did!
My basic plan was for the players to be tempted to investigate and explore the house by hearing strange noises and sensing strange magic. However, Fiona’s challenge rating was very high, so they’d almost certainly get caught or stopped… unless they managed to render her vulnerable by forcing her to take a bunch of Stress points. She also had moves that cost her Stress points to use, so they could either inflict stress through moves or by trying to provoke her into using her moves. This second part didn’t get as much use, but that was fine, it was still a handy way for me to nudge things along when the moment was right and I felt like the abilities I came up with—around redirecting the conversation and smoothing over her guests’ feelings—were on the right track.
For the first time, I felt like I had a good interplay of forcing out-of-combat resource use and of spending my own resources, mostly Fear, on Fear moves that I’d made for the characters and for the house itself. It was extremely helpful to have a pre-planned set of game-changing moves and ideas, and just really reinforces my feeling that that is what the published adversaries and environments need to be providing, especially ones that aren’t meant to be the background for or opponents in combat.
I also leaned into using countdowns/clocks as the method for the characters to search the house as opposed to trying to run it like a D&D dungeon crawl, which worked much better and pushed things towards the key interesting inflection points rather than the sense of moving forward square by square that can be so tedious if that isn’t the format the characters and adventure are designed for. (That said, DNGN CLUB just released an incredible Daggerheart Hex Crawl that I fully intend to adapt once they go into the woods in search of Baba Lysaga, a local hag…)
In short, this felt like a session where a lot of elements of the system itself clicked into place for me. I feel very aware that it was a session where I not only had a lot of time to plan, but I knew exactly what they’d be doing for the whole session, barring some really bizarre choices to abandon their stated plans. I still think that it’s a system that makes improv difficult, but I also know I’ll get better at coming up with Fear moves and Environments on the fly as I continue to play more.
I also got a chance to indulge in some great dramatic irony, which is something I’ve been wanting to try out more. I can’t remember where I saw or read it, but right before the campaign started, I saw something about how fun it is to include cold opens or “post-credits” scenes of things the characters wouldn’t be seeing, vignettes that are purely for the players’ benefit, to build a sense of suspense or tension or mystery. I wrote one for the second session and haven’t really had a chance since, but this session one of the players had a long conversation with Strahd in disguise, and rolled badly and thus forgot the entire conversation as soon as it happened. The player leaned into the characters’ trusting nature beautifully and spilled a ton of secrets to this nice young man, while the other players could only watch, knowing a) that this was clearly a bad idea, even if they didn’t know exactly why and b) their characters would never learn about it, because the character in the conversation was going to forget.
I deliberately had the roll happen at the beginning of the conversation rather than the end because I suspected the tension of knowing all of this would be forgotten would add to the pleasure of watching the scene from the outside, and I really think it did. Everyone mentioned it in their Stars during our Stars and Wishes after the game, and it was a great reminder that stepping outside of the narrative, letting the characters know things they can’t know, not only is really fun, but is also a great tool for the horror genre specifically that I should take care not to neglect.
Next session is going to require some courage on my part, as I set up to do something I really struggle with: impose consequences for a choice the characters made without realising how important it was. Last session, they decided not to go find a missing holy relic that was protecting the city, and this session, they decided to remain in Wachterhaus and explore the clearly-evil basement rather than leaving in time to see the beginning of the consequences of their inaction. Seeming heavy-handed or unfair is one of the things I really get scared of as a GM, so I’m going to try hard not to pull my punches, and I’ll let you all know how it lands!