I am writing a new adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess role-playing game; well, in truth I seem to be in a constant state of writing three or four adventures for LotFP, but I don't tend to mention it unless one is nearing publication. I'm not quite there with Terror in the Shadows, but it exists in complete enough form to be tested, which is lucky, because I started running it for my group on Saturday.
It's set in Paris in 1625, and is an investigation-based adventure; our first session consisted of lots of wandering around the slums, talking to people and looking for clues, and the closest the party got to a fight was when they apprehended a randomly-encountered pickpocket.
My goals with the test are to see how robust the mystery is in general, and also how well an investigative adventure fits into a D&D-like ruleset. So far the players haven't made use of any character mechanics -- no one's cast a spell yet, for example -- but the investigation seems to be progressing well, with no bottlenecks or dead ends threatening to scupper play.
The test has been useful in showing me where there may be gaps in the adventure -- no major holes so far! -- and in giving me ideas for further details to make it more interesting. The most enjoyable bit for me was seeing the players putting together bits of information and turning them into a series of -- sometimes contradictory -- theories about what's going on; since I've written the mystery, the solution is obvious to me and my fear was that it would be clear and straightforward -- and thus boring -- to the players too.
I suppose what I'm saying is that playtesting is good; that is something that's rather obvious and no one needs to be told, but there it is.
We should be meeting up again this weekend to continue the investigation. I'll let you know how it goes.
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