Super last minute, I sort of got roped into last minute DMing a campaign for my housemates. I'm excited but they're very different people so it's going to be hard to keep everyone engaged. It took forever to find a plot hook for everyone but essentially session 1 is going to be investigating the site of a sinister cult ritual that has taken place, relating to the kidnapping of a child from the nearby village. I'm planning for the cultists to be gone when they get there, just investigation and traps to do, but the question is what do i do with the missing child? Should I have him just lying there tied up? Should he be vanished along with the cult followers but potentially rescuable in another session later on? Or should the cult actually kill him? I'm trying to cater to my player who really likes dark and sinister plots but I don't want to make it too dark for everyone else, who aren't as into all that. Can anyone help me think of a compromise?
If you haven't read/played the Curse of Strahd introductory adventure "Death House", that might be a good place to start for a cult theme.
Violence against children is a touchy subject, so I'd recommend either letting the child be rescueable, disappeared, or have the violence be implied, but unprovable. Alternatively, you could have the ritual transform the child into something else, like a demon, or reveal that the child was never actually a child to begin with.
Perhaps the child was swapped out with a changeling at birth, and the cultists either knew this, or didn't, and it caused a problem with the ritual. The players discover the aftermath of the ritual gone awry.
I'd say go full-on "The Witches" and have the child transformed into a mouse.
Actually, here's my recommendation... The Child's soul has been removed from their body and replaced with something else. The Child('s body) is now the vessel for the Big Bad, and the child's soul has been placed inside of a creature of some kind. The party can either keep the child with them as a friendly mouse companion or, y'know... leave it with the kid's actual parents. You get something fairly dark, but not too upsetting for players who would be put-off by finding a child's corpse or something, and for the character who likes things to get a bit dark, well... you've got a creepy evil child running around now. Plus you have a Big Bad that the party can't just kill, because I'd assume they're going to want to put the child's soul back into their original body, so they need to find something more creative than just finding the bad guy and beating them up.
Super last minute, I sort of got roped into last minute DMing a campaign for my housemates. I'm excited but they're very different people so it's going to be hard to keep everyone engaged. It took forever to find a plot hook for everyone but essentially session 1 is going to be investigating the site of a sinister cult ritual that has taken place, relating to the kidnapping of a child from the nearby village. I'm planning for the cultists to be gone when they get there, just investigation and traps to do, but the question is what do i do with the missing child? Should I have him just lying there tied up? Should he be vanished along with the cult followers but potentially rescuable in another session later on? Or should the cult actually kill him? I'm trying to cater to my player who really likes dark and sinister plots but I don't want to make it too dark for everyone else, who aren't as into all that. Can anyone help me think of a compromise?
Depends on what the cult was up to. I would note that the child being left behind, apparently unharmed, is pretty creepy, because they must have been up to something.
Obvious correction. Why does it have to be a child? Make it popular tavern keep, or a beloved bookworm/scholar who discovered more than he ought to know etc. Violence/peril against children is problematic at a lot of tables, and since you've never gamed with these folks, you don't really know their boundaries as to what would cross a line. Also, since they're presumably new players they may not be aware of how to articulate their boundaries.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The child was only the "key" to the ritual, without getting hurt. They needed the innocence of a child to open the box of horrors or whatever they're up to. The only thing happenend to the child is that its hair turned white, or its eyes changed, or its skin is now covered in strange runes, or starts making prophecys/knows things it can't remember afterwards. No one can say if thats good or bad for times to come, but still will spook the players, if played right.
You can soften it all you want, but using a child's "innocence" as a means to open a "box of horrors" is still _exploiting_ a child and libel to trigger some folks with sensitivities to that issue (and psychoanalytically "loaded."). Heck you've even "marked" the child in the above example (see prior comment about "loaded"). My advice is written purely out of an abundance of caution, but informed by my looking into the fairly impressive writing on consent in TTRPG and the why's that writing exists in the first place. My table wouldn't have a problem with the stuff outlined, but if you really don't know your players its best to ask them about their comfort zone than it is to poll a group of DMs who play a range of tables as far as comfort zones and tolerance goes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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Super last minute, I sort of got roped into last minute DMing a campaign for my housemates. I'm excited but they're very different people so it's going to be hard to keep everyone engaged. It took forever to find a plot hook for everyone but essentially session 1 is going to be investigating the site of a sinister cult ritual that has taken place, relating to the kidnapping of a child from the nearby village. I'm planning for the cultists to be gone when they get there, just investigation and traps to do, but the question is what do i do with the missing child? Should I have him just lying there tied up? Should he be vanished along with the cult followers but potentially rescuable in another session later on? Or should the cult actually kill him? I'm trying to cater to my player who really likes dark and sinister plots but I don't want to make it too dark for everyone else, who aren't as into all that. Can anyone help me think of a compromise?
If you haven't read/played the Curse of Strahd introductory adventure "Death House", that might be a good place to start for a cult theme.
Violence against children is a touchy subject, so I'd recommend either letting the child be rescueable, disappeared, or have the violence be implied, but unprovable. Alternatively, you could have the ritual transform the child into something else, like a demon, or reveal that the child was never actually a child to begin with.
Perhaps the child was swapped out with a changeling at birth, and the cultists either knew this, or didn't, and it caused a problem with the ritual. The players discover the aftermath of the ritual gone awry.
I'd say go full-on "The Witches" and have the child transformed into a mouse.
Actually, here's my recommendation... The Child's soul has been removed from their body and replaced with something else. The Child('s body) is now the vessel for the Big Bad, and the child's soul has been placed inside of a creature of some kind. The party can either keep the child with them as a friendly mouse companion or, y'know... leave it with the kid's actual parents. You get something fairly dark, but not too upsetting for players who would be put-off by finding a child's corpse or something, and for the character who likes things to get a bit dark, well... you've got a creepy evil child running around now. Plus you have a Big Bad that the party can't just kill, because I'd assume they're going to want to put the child's soul back into their original body, so they need to find something more creative than just finding the bad guy and beating them up.
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Depends on what the cult was up to. I would note that the child being left behind, apparently unharmed, is pretty creepy, because they must have been up to something.
Obvious correction. Why does it have to be a child? Make it popular tavern keep, or a beloved bookworm/scholar who discovered more than he ought to know etc. Violence/peril against children is problematic at a lot of tables, and since you've never gamed with these folks, you don't really know their boundaries as to what would cross a line. Also, since they're presumably new players they may not be aware of how to articulate their boundaries.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The child was only the "key" to the ritual, without getting hurt. They needed the innocence of a child to open the box of horrors or whatever they're up to. The only thing happenend to the child is that its hair turned white, or its eyes changed, or its skin is now covered in strange runes, or starts making prophecys/knows things it can't remember afterwards. No one can say if thats good or bad for times to come, but still will spook the players, if played right.
You can soften it all you want, but using a child's "innocence" as a means to open a "box of horrors" is still _exploiting_ a child and libel to trigger some folks with sensitivities to that issue (and psychoanalytically "loaded."). Heck you've even "marked" the child in the above example (see prior comment about "loaded"). My advice is written purely out of an abundance of caution, but informed by my looking into the fairly impressive writing on consent in TTRPG and the why's that writing exists in the first place. My table wouldn't have a problem with the stuff outlined, but if you really don't know your players its best to ask them about their comfort zone than it is to poll a group of DMs who play a range of tables as far as comfort zones and tolerance goes.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.