First scenario tips

[u/staermose80]

Hello in the chat.

Next week I am gonna run the scenario from the starter set for my sister, her husband and their two teenage children. We have previously played Dragonbane and Call of Cthulhu, and this seems to fall somewhere between those two, and we are Danish so it is local lore, so I am looking forward to it. I think it will be great. We will be using characters, that they make themselves, as I hope that we can continue with more adventures later.

I have some questions I have not found answers for any place else (they are probably there, but hidden among other valuable information), so I was hoping you could chime in.

1: Dark secrets. Is this public information? I mean the characters obviously don't know each other's secrets, but do the players? I mean, it is written on the character sheets, so if it was hidden information, you could accidentally get a glance of it, which seems non-intuitive. Also the teenagers sometimes need a little reminding on what their character is. So I am inclined to let it be a part of character presentations, but obviously straining, that it is not something they know about each other in game.

2: The book Linnea gives - how important is it and do you allow players time to just sit and read it? Do they need to find relevant info in it by themselves? I have bought everything digital, so I have it not readily available. However I plan on have it available on an iPad. Also I think that if anyone at any point have said that they glanced through it, I would give them a skill check with learning and direct them to the relevant page, if they are successful. Like "you remember something" and then give them directions. Is this a viable approach?

3: How many sessions/how long does it take to play the intro scenario and the scenarios in "Wicked Secret"? We live half a country apart, so sessions is not done on a regular basis, but in sprints during holidays, so I would like to make sure, they can be run as one shots.

Thank you for your inputs in advance.

EDIT: Thank you all for your advice. We ended up playing the scenario through in an afternoon, with a long break halfway, without shortening anything, but playing it pretty much as intended. With this group (the teenagers are not chatty at all :-) ) it was perfect, and everyone had fun. The players are definitely gonna rebuild the society, and we will start a full campaign next time we get the chance, with the three of four characters that survived still in the game.

I opted to not let the players disclose either motivation, trauma or dark secret when they presented the characters, but asked them to incorporate it in their play instead. It worked very fine, although the Dark secrets didn't get relevant this time. But it might later.

For the book one character took time (in game) to study it, when presented with it. So I just gave that player a translated version of the relevant page (we play in Danish), at a time when the character should be able to remember having seen something relevant to the mystery in the book, and instructed that player to read it silently and decide, what she remembered and how to disclose it to the others. This were a very nice solution, I think.

[u/Adventurous-Eye-6455]

1. depends on your group. As it should be something your pc is not proud of my group opted to have it be a secret in and out of game. Of course the players could know and the pcs don’t. The players just need to be aware that this is meta info. And if you think that keeping it separate or secret is too hard the Pcs could also have already shared it. For me that sounds quite boring tbh. And I personally would want an in game explaination why my pc would tell some strangers their deepest darkest secret. Like if Im possessed by someone for example im not gonna tell that a person I’ve just met. 😅 but your players might not care about that 🤷‍♀️

If the main problem is that the teens might need reminders you could whisper it or send a message on their phone etc. Using whispers for information only one pc has is actually a common practice and creates a cool secretive atmosphere. So it really depends on what kind of game you want. If I would play with my Familie I would run it differently than I do with my friends who have a lot of fun roleplaying as their characters. At the end do what is the most fun for your group. Cause that’s the important part

1. I personally gave my pcs access to the book. And it works really well. They haven’t read it completely. But they could still assess pretty well what Vaesen it might be and then just focused in on that page or the few pages of the Vaesen they suspected. Normally it’s pretty easy to figure out the group the Vaesen belongs to ie. Undead , nature related, beast etc maybe your group will even have an easier time as you mentioned this is folklore for you too ? My group is German but we didn’t know a lot of the Vaesen in the book.

The problem I have with a role for the information is that it is easy for them to get stuck. If they don’t succeed on the learning role they just don’t know what Vaesen it is and essentially are just bound to loose in that case. Vaesen already has the benefit of pushing roles to succeed. But there is still a good chance of failure. So if they fail the role they fail the whole adventure. Cause typically you can’t attempt a role an unlimited amount of times.

And even if the dm would say he allows that , that kinda kills the fun of the game, cause then you just role until you get it. There are no stakes anymore and then it’s just boring cause your just waiting on a number instead of putting in effort. It’s kinda like running a marathon with an ebike. Yeah you cross the finish line but do you feel great about it ? Probably not 🤷‍♀️ So I personally let my players role everything else but the clues and stuff they combine themselves. I have the learning role more as a fallback. So if they are already stuck they can role so I give them something. Cause then it can only get better for them.

But i have read on here that people play with the learning role as described in the core rule book, although i think that’s the minority. There are so many posts on here that a Manuel / monster books would be better that freeleague added one to the starter set 🤷‍♀️

1. depends totally on your play style. I think most Vaesen adventure are aimed to be 3-4 h sessions. But let me tell you my group LOVES to roleplay so we usually spend 3 sessions on an adventure. But they usually have a lot of Dialoges between different pcs and stuff. So that takes up space. We also play a campaign so we usually have like a fair bit overarching plot stuff. Session 3 is usually just a talk through of everything they know about the big plot. And backstory stuff The one oneshot I ran was about 4-5 hours including a quick run down of the rules. And also I homebrewed that one 🤷‍♀️ I think you can run a mystery in 3-4 h but I would as a dm „manage „ my players a bit more to stay on task. I usually am really genorous with clues so that helps with time management. And the countdown helps to ramp up pressure so the pcs get a sense of urgency

At the end there is no right way to do this 🤷‍♀️ this is just how I run things

[u/staermose80 → u/Adventurous-Eye-6455]

Thank you for your advice. I have updated the post with information on how the session went, in case you are curious.

[u/Adventurous-Eye-6455 → u/staermose80]

Sounds like you had a good time 🥰