Back to the House of Lament

This weekend we returned to the House of Lament and the action began to accelerate. Fate was earned, magic was wielded, and ancient evil woke up sooner than expected, and now the three heroes are in a very serious soup. We had lots of fun despite some shortcomings in the adventure design, but more on that later.

We picked up where we left off last time, in the parlor post the first seance1. The kids got the clue about the chimney witch candle situation, one of three possible mini missions, and set off to the second floor to explore further2. They encountered more harmless and creepy haunts, found the paperwork, and a bit of valuables3. Hooray!

They brought things down to their employers and then did the second seance. They got the second clue from their random ghost, and by chance promptly marched to the place the clue gets answered. It was almost a straight line to it, which is good, cause I could see the adventure design flexing under the weight of its design choices.

I think the oldest kinda remembered this part, because they got this same random ghost four or so years ago. Because of that, they get passed the sealed door and meet the ghost kids and the skeleton mom, then cross the threshold like Elsa, triggering the waking of the house.

This was a lot of fun, and our only conflict for the night4. The toys in the nursery animated with the intention on getting to the ghosts and consuming them5. I used the stat line for the Tomb Guardian found in the Scholar’s Guide to represent the three toys and the kids chose a drive off conflict

Adapting Torchbearer Monsters for D&D Adventures

A quick detour here on using monsters in Torchbearer for modifying other system adventures. It is actually easier to do on the fly with what Thor and Luke have put together than it would appear on the surface. I use a simple framing when doing so:

• If it isn’t in the book, look for something that serves a similar purpose.
• If the D&D encounter is meant to be hard, keep an eye on the Might difference. Sometimes that will change the monster I pick, or I will adjust the monster to match the threat expected.
• Swap any weapons for mundane weapons that make sense if they are expected.
• Look at the Hit Points and how they are focused. This will have a huge impact on how much of a challenge a monster is going to be situationally.

And that is it. Most D&D monsters in adventures are covered by some version of what is in the core book. It is super easy to file the serial numbers off any one of them to get what you need.

What was nice in this particular conflict was it was the first time my one son got to use a spell in the adventure. He cast the shield spell, which unlike in D&D where it kinda loses value over time, is a really potent tool for defense. That plus the might differential basically made him a defense machine, which is important if you want to avoid having to make compromises.

That said, the conflict was fun. Tense at times with rolls, but not too tense. These are goons, not main event monsters, and the kids handled them well. They have gotten good over the last year knowing how to use their actions strategically to build on one another and how to maximize their teamwork.

So they successfully drove off the now battered animated toys with no compromise, got the hungry & thirsty condition from the Grind, barricaded the door to the ghost kids, and marched off to poke around some more6. They found the haunted painting and did nothing to placate it, triggering the ghoul encounter, which is where we stopped for the night.

Good fun was had by all, but you can see the issues with the adventure design really come into play. Some of it is that modern D&D adventures are filled with bloat. Some of it is terrible layout of the material in the book. And some of it is the sins of Ravenloft and that era of game design (1990’s) that still show up to this day. Gonna take a minute to unpack it.

Chekhov’s Gun Principle

House of Lament fails at this in various points. It is a haunted house clearly modeled on the Haunting. The book, the movies, the pastiches all in one bag of cats. Where there are weird things in the beginning, there are bad things when the house wakes up. This adventure fails at holding that promise true.

This is a cardinal sin. It doesn’t build tension. It doesn’t add to the experience. It is simply another room where something weird and meaningless happens once. The adventure is filled with spaces that don’t matter at all, and just fill “exploration” time, which leads me to the second problem.

The Nineties Were Not Great

Not for adventure design. Lots of other great stuff. I was there. Among the not so great stuff that happened in the 90’s; adventure design.

Lots of people probably blame Vampire: The Masquerade. I don’t. Everyone was grasping at narrative straws for their games then. It is probably because there was less lead in the water. Who knows?

What I do know is that adventures that have this legacy in their DNA are very centered on a particular narrative. On it’s face, there is nothing wrong with that, but it does some particular things to dungeon design that suck the life out of things…

1. It assumes specific behaviors to reach the payoff of the adventure.
2. It assembles roadblocks to stifle agency vs establishing conditions for action.
3. It relies upon a linear series of events despite having a veneer of choice.

The last item feeds into my third and final criticism of the adventure.

Adventure Design Isn’t Just About the Adventure

Adventures are tools, not stories. They are references for the main event, not the event itself. At some point, probably the 90’s, we lost that point of context and everything became linear in the design. Everything became narrative, not choose your own adventure, and the layout of the documents followed suit.

House of Lament suffers from this sin. The material is hard to find within the adventure. It isn’t scannable. You have to hunt and peck in the material to find key bits of information. It makes you do homework to use it. A lot of homework.

The experience is even worse with how the physical products are produced. They aren’t designed to have notes written in them because of the production values. Glossy paper, tight margins, and loads of illustrations all make it a book, not a tool. It is supposed to be a tool, not, in this case, Shirley Jackson fan fiction.

Effectively, it is a terrible user experience, which impacts play at the table. Alas, it is where we live now, but it could be so much better. I want it to be better.