Every Halloween, a small group of gamers and I get together and I run a Ravenloft game of some kind (this is the only way I can get them to play in the setting, a tragedy.) This year, I have selected Bleak House, partially because I think some of them know enough to be excited at the hints of meeting Van Richten I've been dropping to them and mostly because I like the psycological nature of the beginning of the story. That said, it is a fairly complicated module and, also, leaves much to the DM to create on his own. I relish the opportunity, but I have some concerns.
1) Being too heavy handed: The fact that the module itself warns against this only worries me further. I'm not sure what to do to keep my pcs from just giving up hope under the weight of all this horror, and I don't want to have them relying on the Deus Ex of you-know-who slipping them a note saying "Hey, here's your key, let's blow this joint."
2)Creating enough content: My pcs are clever. Very clever. And I worry that I'm not going to consider enough angles to keep them constrained for the entire time. This sort of game encourages and requires outside of the box thinking, and I just know they'll come up with something I'm not prepared for. This isn't always a bad thing, but I still don't want them to escape before I'm ready. Admittedly, the relative isolation of the island tends to make escape practically impossible as it is, but still. Additionally, I find the descriptions of some of the "treatments" to be quite good, others less so. The multiple personality treatment especially seems thin and hard to replicate in any sort of interesting manner.
That being said, here are my ideas thus far (in no particular order.)
-The characters are hired by someone suitably concerned about Van Richten's well being (Gennifer and Laurie, or George if they're too young.) He's been missing for some time after leaving to travel to Martira Bay to visit Alanik Ray, complaining about bad dreams. The great detective has reported to them that he has disapeared, and moreover that some pressing events have kept him too busy to investigate (maybe he thinks the old guy just wandered off and the Foxgrove's think there's more to it. I don't know.) Anyway, they gather up some well known hunters ala League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (some are recurring characters from last year's Hour of the Knife game, others are new) and asks them to travel to Martira Bay by ship to investigate.
-The ship gets stuck at sea and wrecks as written. In addition, I was thinking of incorporating some material from Stormwrack, the ocean adventure book, to make the two sequences unique. Specifically (and significantly) the PCs will be faced with Sunstroke while the ship is stuck in the middle of the calmed oceans, which could lead to other problems later.
-They're picked up by the Mercy and transported to the island as per module
-Eventually, (if they're not prisoners from the minute they arrive) when the pcs confront Heinfroth about why they're recieiving treatments at night, he weerily confides to them that the trauma of being shipwrecked along with the sunstroke (see, told you) has fractured their minds. He tells them they've been at the asylum for over a year now, and every morning they storm into his office and relate to him this same story.
-One of the new and improved treatments I devised is similar to that which is used in A Clockwork Orange's conditional response treatment. A character is shown illusionary images of whatever it is they do (combat if it's a warrior, spellcasting if it's a mage) and injected with something to make them violently ill while they watch it. Failing madness checks means any time they attempt those actions later requires a new madness save to avoid becoming nauseated.
-My girlfriend (a psycology major) and I brainstormed several notable NPCs the party could meet while inside the asylum
-A delusional who believes he is Baron Strahd Von Zarovich (notable, since several of these players were wiped several years ago when I ran that module. Should alleviate some of the tension and lighten mood.)
-A nymphomaniac
-A pathological liar
-A Hannibal Lector type psychotic (who PCs could be threatend to become room mates with if they step out of line.)
-Someone similar to Dracula's henchmen in the Stoker novel, who eats animals and thinks he gains their strength.
-The ubiquitous multiple personality disorder sufferer.
-One method of throwing PCs off is the moving of patients from one room to another over night while they're sleeping, with resultant changes to the numbers on the masks (leaving PCs wondering if this is the person they were speaking to the day before)
-Some sort of visible representation of the Big Brother element, be it a black orb on the ceiling, an illusory "Magic Eye" or the like.
-Van Richten stays in the background of many of the scenes, not interracting with the characters in any way, as he has no way of knowing whether or not they're just another trick of Heinfroth's. So all the PCs know is that "patient 3b" seems to always be around, watching them.
-The ever present threat of the lobotomy treatment, as provided by the cerebral vampires taking a larger than usual sip of a patients fluids and leaving them catatonic, for those who consistently step out of line.
-Some kind of aid for the characters in the woods. Things are definitely against them in that environment, especially if they haven't recovered all of their equipment yet. I was thinking a treant of some kind, though that might be a bit "Lord of the Rings."
Anyway, that's what I've come up with so far in a nutshell (help, I'm in a nutshell.) I'd like to hear thoughts, especially from DMs who have run this module before, especially especially from folks willing to share anecdotes from the aforementioned run throughs of this adventure.
Thanks in advance!
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