The Cursed Chateau "Bad Ending"

The Cursed Chateau has an interesting background story that I wanted to reveal to the players. I think that places and NPC details that are in a book but can be playable, are almost a waste of time to a Referee.

I have no advice for an experienced Referee. Everything went like a regular roleplaying where the you recreate NPC actions and dialogs to make sense in the emerging context, and PC makes guesses, suggestions, and ultimately they discover the story behind (or not). Sometimes, they create new details and are convinced about them, and that makes the recap even better, in our case: they concluded that GUILHÈM was MIQÈL and YSABEL son, and the old JÒRGI was trying to create and escape for the mother when everything went nuts.

Our adventure ended at the SANCTUM, since players had to go to their homes, and I wanted to close the scenario. So, we checked how much Joudain's Fun they have: 77. They touched Joudain's ring trying to claim it's domain possession rolling 1d100 for 77%. Sadly, they failed and they were consumed by the curse and became undead.

I was very pleased with my own ruling and enjoyed the adventure a lot.

Entering The Cursed Chateau

So, I'm running The Cursed Chateau for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This has been my experience introducing the module to my group, who are very goal-oriented type of people.

First: I bought the book because its black / golden printed colors, and thinking it was similar to Akumajō Dracula (Castlevania), or Val Helsing, you know. After reading it, I could find some vibes to my own expectations, then I liked it.

Following book advice, I introduced the PC with an old relative to the Ayarai family. In this case: Jôrgi Ayarai, a dweller from Las Chòtas village. Las Chòtas had a better past, but now it is almost abandoned, and restoring the Ayarai state to its rightful heir, could help to revive the region (according to Jôrgi).

Jôrgi gave them an strange artifact with the shape of a tarrasque, and three digits in rounds similar to those briefcases with key. This artifact function is to reflect in the game world, the current result of Joudain's Fun. The number is transparent, but how they go up or down, not. Later, the PC will discover that "The Tarrasque" updates everytime they leave a point of interest (keyed area).

Players looked compliant with the goal, but looked for more infor,mation in an abandoned chapel in Las Chòtas, where they found an out-of-place pseudo-religious Ysabel paiting with a Joudain's dedication on its reverse. They were intrigued and they left for the Chateau in the morning.

Now. I expected the first session to revolve around the Hedge Maze, and that was the case. It was a pain in the ass to be drawing the labyrinth in a graph paper as the progressed. Keeping that in mind, next time I'll try to do it smoother. Barbarian (reskinned Dwarf) player was leading the group, so he was tasked to roll 1d100 to recieve a result from the Encounters table. Fighter-Mage (ex-Elf) was notating when The Tarrasque digits changed.

PC were curious about the statues and the corpse from the explorer from Las Chòtas, so I made a puzzle on the fly around the statues heads pointing four cardinal points. They had to find the head from the headless statue to complete the puzzle.

I was surprised how clever were the players to cope with the undead, specially when they tried to rob Ysabel grave. Let's see if the keep their spirits high next session.