I ran the one-shot At the Monongahelas of Madness by Matt and Rob of the DM of None podcast a few months ago. The adventure begins as a murder investigation in Appalachia and turns when the party uncovers a cultist’s plan to summon a Great Old One. The adventure is written to be system agnostic with some language to help figure out difficulty checks. The session went better than expected, and I want to reflect on my adventure prep to identify lessons I can take forward to future games. If you want to discuss adventure prep with me, message me on Mastodon @[email protected]
Adapting 5E to fit the adventure
I ran At the Monongahelas of Madness for my spouse, a coworker, and his spouse. My players were mostly new to my table and D&D 5E. I ran a couple adventures for my spouse from Dragons of Icespire Peak after she expressed interest in D&D, but she had never played with a group. My other players had never been at my table. They had experience with other systems but hadn’t touched D&D since early 3E.
If all went well, I hoped to get my players to join a regular 5E campaign. A big goal for me was introducing my players to 5E mechanics without turning anyone off. To me that meant players should have enough options to feel like they could express the individuality of their characters without being overwhelmed. I threw out classes as a first easy simplification. The adventure was set in the modern day, so fitting classes would be torture and it was a one-shot to boot. In place of classes, I made a hybrid system where each player picked a background for their character and then chose an accomplishment that would distinguish the character from their peers. While making the backgrounds and accomplishments, I read through the adventure noting the skill checks and divided those skills between the options.
I made a four-page character creation document for my players. In addition to choosing backgrounds and accomplishments, players picked ability scores, determined hit points, and noted their proficiency bonus. That’s all. Just in case anyone showed up without having read the character creation document or was really stuck on time, I made a few premade characters.
Everyone loves props
With the game mechanics taken care of, I turned to making props. The adventure gives descriptions of some items the players may find. I love being able to hand my players physical clues when they’re solving a mystery. A prop means less exposition from me and more dialogue between players. Additionally, I wanted my props to convey unease. If you find these props useful for this adventure or any other, please use them.
In the first scene the players discover a dead body. In a nearby pile of half burned clothes is a student ID and a partially destroyed flier for a revival service. An intact flier can be found later in the adventure. The student ID let me convey a couple pieces of information without having to info-dump at my players. The flier hopefully hinted to the players that they were going to see some weird stuff.
If the players follow the lead from the student ID, they can explore Monongahela Bible College, a fictional missionary college that is inexplicably home to a very well-funded Egyptology department. A campus map shows a huge building dedicated for Egyptology while all other classes are held in one building. The murdered student’s transcript shows she took an Egyptology class but also that all other classes seem to be taught by a small group of instructors. I tried to use the map and transcript to convey the sense of an intruder in one’s midst.
In the murdered student’s dorm room, the players can find a term paper. I made a cover page that dropped a hint to the family financing the cult.
The Egyptology department is full of clues and is where the adventure turns from a murder mystery into an occult investigation. The players can discover a burial map which shows the graves of previous murder victims. I made the map easy to match up to an area map which I gave the players at the start of the adventure. The pattern of graves also matches hand-drawn marks on an aerial photograph of the valley of the kings. The players can find Akhenaten’s Hymn and a simple puzzle to discover a hidden hymn to Yog-Sothoth. I printed out Akhenaten’s Hymn, wrote the puzzle from the adventure on the back of a page, and highlighted a few important lines. Once the players figured out the puzzle, I handed them the hidden hymn to save time. The players find a map of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which I printed from the museum’s website and wrote on, that shows the cultists plan to steal something. Finally, the players find a rejection letter from the museum which also hints at the planned theft. I used the letter as an opportunity to inject a little humor into a scene otherwise full of jump scares and grim findings.
After the Egyptology department, the players shift from investigation to action. There aren’t any new clues to make into simple props for the rest of the adventure. If the players some clues at the college, they have an opportunity to find them in the church that the cultists use as a front.
A start with the spotlight on the characters
Before the session started, I made two notes of things I wanted to ask the players. First, I would ask the players to collectively decide their unit’s place within the law enforcement landscape. Were they independent advisors? A law enforcement echelon higher than state police? A secret department for weird crimes? I wanted the players define their agency to generate their buy-in to the narrative. Second, I would ask them to describe what their character was doing at 2am when the phone call about the dead body came in. This would give them a way to introduce their character through action and move us right into the first scene.
Reflection on my prep
At the Monongahelas of Madness was written by veteran DMs. It’s well organized and can be run after one read-through. I spent most of my prep time coming up with the character options to fit my simplified 5E mechanics. The props were easy enough to make because each of them is described in the adventure. The props mostly served their function to give clues without me info dumping at my players. As we’ll see in our next post, I think my best prep decision was what I didn’t prepare. I left a lot of room for the players to define the world and left myself a lot of room to react to player choices.
Stay tuned for my session reflection in the next post. If you’d like to discuss session prep, contact me on Mastodon @[email protected]
Feature Image “Vessel of Paramnesia” by Kieran Yanner copyright 2016 Wizards of the Coast