Ashington Manor (DTaDL)

[Teravala]

From Dark tales and Disturbing Legends, does anyone else have experience running this for a group? I've run it twice now and although the second time was admittedly smoother, it just felt like a lot of the party waiting around for the temporal shifts to occur, and I struggled to really provide meaningful encounters with the various cursed individuals without it devolving into *party pops into this incarnation of the Manor* "You there! why are you in my office?" and then the man in the back yells everyone attack and it turns into a ballroom blitz.

[Joël of the FoS]

I DMed it once, in my ongoing campaign. I didn't have the problem you decribe and it was great fun.

I used the Maiden's Rescue way to introduce the story ("Peter Vashon, a local shopkeeper of modest means approaches the party with a plea for help. His daughter, Miko, has been taken by a group of bandits that have been plaguing the area")

It started with Eliza (vistani mother of Miko) telling the whole tale of the cursed place that is Ashington Manor - first the murdered vistani, then later the Hala hospice, then the inn, then the asylum. All finishing with slaughters. That gave the atmosphere of curse and mystery to the location.

Then they entered the place, realized the time changes, and that it was changing randomly. It switched to all previous eras, and in different times between the stories of each era - sometimes the girl was murdered, sometimes before. I also ran each era as completely new ones each time they switched, i.e. the scenario has no memories of them or their previous interactions. So when they arrive at the Inn era a second time, the owner doesn't know them as previous seen. It was a fun way to "play" each story completely, sometimes arriving at the end, then at the start, so the players can understand the whole story of what happened in that era. (avoiding meeting themselves paradox)

This wasn't explained in the adventure as written, and left for the DM to interpret, so 1) you can have the NPCs remember the PCs when they interacted with them 2) or not. Choice #2 was easier, as all interations started anew, not necessarily as hostiles.

And Maekon in the middle of this, mysterious at 110 %.

The player's focus moved quickly to what do we have to do to escape this place? Yes, there were battles, but most of the time, the players made it quietly through the place, searching for clues to this puzzle...

You can read it in my game sessions 12 and 13 (see the Veranda part of the site).

[Teravala]

I DMed it once, in my ongoing campaign. I didn't have the problem you decribe and it was great fun...

A lot of really good insights there. I think part of the breakdown in narrative was because when they would shift back into a previously visited incarnation I had the antagonists remember them if they had seen them previously. I overall liked the story of it, but did find a few holes that I either wasnt skilled enough to navigate (I ran it very early on in my DM career) or was poorly worded. It didn't help my group decided to murder hobo basically everyone after the intro. They met the kidnapped girls parents, heard the history of the house, decided if they saw ashington/illhousen/ any of his proxies, they were to kill on sight, question the corpses with speak with dead after.