Play Report: Keepers of the Unquiet Dead

I was given about three hour's notice before game time that I'd be GMing. We wanna hang out and play a game! How about that apocalypse thingy you told us about!

So off we go, time to prep on the train ride over. I decided to stick with my prep-formula that I came up with last time, which you'll see below.

In the weeks before, I'd been listening through the excellent Discern Realities podcast, a short burst of fun Dungeon World ideas and discussion. The day before I'd listened to an episode where they introduced a set of 5 magic items associated with a group called the Keepers of the Unquiet Dead.

The setup goes something like this:

The Keepers of the Unquiet Dead are a monastic order dedicated to pacifying and securing the undead. Their keeps consist of vast tombs where they collect and care for the ones that cannot find peace. Above all, they honour who the undead were in life, providing comfort to those many fear and seek to destroy.

Alright, I know what we're gonna do today!

I throw together a premise. The intro above, plus:

But something has gone wrong recently. The monks are no longer making regular trips into the towns to collect the dead, and the grave-piles are starting to stir. Worse yet, villagers are starting to go missing, with some reporting tortured cackling laughter barely contained echoing through the night.

For what it's worth, at the time, this was meant to be a one-shot. I think right here (as in: almost immediately) was the point where a one-shot became untenable. This setup is way too complex for a one-shot. But just wait, it's going to get worse.

For prepping any PbtA oneshot, Jeremy Strandberg has an incredible, comprehensive blog post all about it that I regard as required reading.

I'm feverishly prepping now. A dash of dank crypts, a pinch of spooky subtle magic, things are looking good. Most of this is a creative writing exercise, and I don't have to worry about the format, just filling in the blanks. But what about the enemies? I need some stat blocks.

Consulting Dungeon World's bestiary, I come across an entry for ghoul with the move: "gain the memories of their meal". I'd already been considering intelligent ghouls as well as feral ones for a bit of enemy variety, and the pieces fit together: when ghouls consume living flesh, they gain their memories, and their intelligence.

The more prep I did, the more my ideas encircled this one, and it almost wrote itself. Now here comes the prep, in soup format:

• Setup questions: the broth

Who did the ghouls kidnap, and how do you intend to get them back? Who is the youth in the too-large overalls that's followed you out of town?

• Impressions: spices for on top

Muted chanting, as weeds slither from the ground as if called to the sound. The stench of rotting flesh. The thick, woody, sickly sweet scent of frankincense.

• Locations: veggies to fill it out

A cluster of moaning, feral undead, staring transfixed into a mirror. A single ghoul, feasting on a monk's dead body, growing disgusted with what it does.

• Key places: the meat of it

Uh oh, I didn't have time to come up with any.

• Items: the ?utensils? this is falling apart quickly

Pulled from Discern Realities shamelessly: the lifesong flute, graveroot powder, the mirror of Lost Days.

• Dangers: noodles or something

Intelligent Ghouls: d8 dmg, 1 piercing, 10hp, 1 armor Feral Ghouls: d6 dmg, 6hp

• gnaw off a body part
• gain the memories (and intelligence) of their meal
• call for more ghouls

At this point, I'll remind you I intended this to be a one-shot. Of course, that didn't happen at all, and we ended up running three sessions. It effectively broke down like this:

• session 1: approaching the crypts and dealing with feral ghouls and mercernaries that are already in the middle of pillaging the place
• session 2: delving deeper into the crypts and getting their asses handed to them by a group of intelligent ghouls (essentially vampires)
• session 3: meeting a friendly NPC, finding their way to the final boss, and confronting him

I won't go into the details of these sessions, as I'm writing this they were already months ago. However, I will share some of the observations I made back then.

This blog post has meandered a fair bit, and languished in a half-finished state for quite some time. Still, I'm glad I finished it! It reignited a lot of design ideas I had left rolling around in my head, and hopefully more focused posts will follow. Let's finish this with an interesting one: I've said multiple times now that the premise was too complex for a one-shot. What would a better one have looked like?

The current premise consisted of:

• an interesting faction, with a world-defining detail built in
• a problem (they've stopped doing their thing)
• another problem (some villagers are missing)
• possibly yet another distinct problem (cackling at night)

and, via the prep questions:

• another another problem (someone you know was kidnapped)
• a mystery (who is this kid?)

There are myriad things that could have made this better, like a more open-ended goal. Obviously, looking at the premise written out like this, the main word that comes to mind is less. Here's how I choose to look at it: this premise set up the players to pursue the truth of these mysteries and resolve them. We might have had time for one of those, but not both. With both, what ends up happening is that to get through the session, answers are revealed to them without much effort and it ends up feeling like a waste to have made them mysteries at all.

Realistically, just one of the above (including the interesting faction) were enough to carry a session, or the interesting interplay and mix of them would have been interesting to either discover or navigate. This is what I'm choosing to take away, at least for the time being: either hand the PC's a complex situation to unravel, but don't pin your hopes on them solving it; or give them all the information they want, and have them try to navigate it. With this in mind, here are two simplified starters for this adventure. We begin with the intro on the Keepers, and then:

Option 1: mysteries to unravel

..but something has gone wrong recently. The monks are no longer making regular trips into the towns to collect the dead, and the grave-piles are starting to stir. Your task is to pay the monks a visit, and find out what's happened to them.

The first option focuses the task around finding out what's happening. If all that happens during the session is they wander the Keepers' place figuring out what went down, they succeeded at their goal. It also gives the players an opportunity to say no, we want to do something more active. Questions for this premise then focus on the PCs' connections to these mysteries, why they care about them, and so on.

Option 2: a tense situation to navigate

…but no one has seen them recently. You've heard they were attacked by a band of mercs the knights of a neighbouring lord that finds their ways repulsive. As a result, the monks have not been coming to collect the dead, and the grave-piles are starting to stir.

This one presents all of the major information to them up front. There can still be uncertainty hidden within, but the basic premise is fully on the table. The cool thing here is it doesn't say what exactly they should do: go save the monks (probably the most obvious choice), confront the lord, or even seek out some other way to protect the village. Questions here can then focus on the PCs' connections to the factions in play, and what they intend to do for the session.