I recently wrote up a Blood Prairie One-Shot and ran it for three different groups. Here’s the post-mortem, plus a few One-Shot tips I’ve gleaned from the experience.
The Set-Up
Provisionally titled ‘Little House on the Blood Prairie’, the adventure was fairly simple; there’s a rascally escape artist out in the Blood Prairie, and you must bring him in alive. Here’s the blurb I gave the players:
Raphael Rayne is many things: a stage magician, an escape artist, and a high-profile scoundrel. It’s due to the last one that he finds himself in the Blood Prairie, fleeing into the darkness with a price on his head.
And what a price it is! Big enough to buy yourself a life somewhere sunny. So you took the job. High risk; high pay. The only problem is, questions keep coming up. Why’s an entertainer worth so much to the law? Who are those slouching figures following from a distance? What’s inside the strange, dark mansion Rayne is headed towards?
The Posse starts by following some wagon tracks across the Grey Sin River into vampire country. They find their target camped by seven massive salt pillars, leading us into a quick bit of wilderness initiative. From there, a combination of stealth, combat, subterfuge, and pursuit erupts, possibly culminating in the capture of the bounty.
If Raphael Rayne escapes, he leads the party to the aforementioned ‘little house’. If the Posse catches him, they roleplay with him a bit before vampiric ranchers begin chasing them down, turning hunters into the hunted. Either way, we’re railroading to the Little House on the Blood Prairie.
Once at the house, the Posse must contend with the factions within (the slippery Raphael, his ghostly mother Anastasia, and the Control Devil she was bargaining with for world domination) while seeking the strength to slip past the faction without (Odlaw Banks and his vampire cattle rustlers). Luckily, her scheme is almost ready for use; the Posse need only trap one more Rayne family ghost in a cursed box to seal the devil’s bargain, bestowing life to Anastasia’s collection of indestructible mannequin soldiers.
I used the Vampires to light the house on fire for the last thirty minutes of each game. It’s the oldest Game Mastery trick in the book: when in doubt, light it up!
The Reasoning
So this adventure had a few major goals:
- Showcase both wilderness and indoor encounters
- Showcase the major monsters (vampires, devils, ghosts, humans)
- Be flexible/interesting enough that I could run it three times in two weeks without being sick of it
- End on the kind of high-octane madness that has defined my favourite Blood Prairie sessions.
- Get people excited about Blood Prairie
I also wanted to put my own advice to the test. I took my cues directly from this One-Shot Recipe I wrote a while back.
In the interest of a wee post-mortem, I’m going to quickly discuss the three play-throughs, how the recipe held up, and then see if I have any revised tips.
Session 1: Friends!
The Players: Beloved Wife Chelsea and Best Friend Gabriel.
The Set-Up: With two players, we started each with two perks. Gabriel came with a Frontier Psychiatrist, who had some Hypnotism perks. Chelsea rolled up a Hard Case, one of the ever-increasing ranks of the Sisters Slims.
The Result: The Posse let Raphael slip away from the initial encounter. Using the house’s secret passage, Raphael managed to harass them a bit, wounding Ms. Slim, but they got to the cursed Ghost Box before he did. They figured out how to harm Anastasia’s ghost using a camera, trapped her in the ghost box, and traded her unquiet soul to Crowcrown, the Control Devil. Using their indestructible army of hardwood and steel dolls, they cleared out the vampires. Both PCs survived.
Session 2: Strangers!
The Players: GameKicks, a group that meets at the Vancouver Library. I thought I only had three people coming, so I was surprised when we ended up with five players. Honestly, it seems like a great little community. I’m hoping to join them again soon.
The Set-Up: Character creation at the table, with one perk each. We had a late arrival, so it took about 45 minutes rather than the usual 20-30. Probably a mistake on my end. Final Posse was a Gunslinger, Wild One, Hard Case, Occultist, and Frontier Psychiatrist.
The Result: The Posse captured Raphael and dispatched his hired goon (a new addition), with some help from a False Man decoy.
When they got to the house they split up, Scooby-Doo style.
They got the Ghost Box, but let Rayne slip loose while they were distracted. He got off a False Man of his own, which produced a great game moment. The Occultist recognized what was happening, but was down in the basement where she couldn’t say anything; the second floor team decided Rayne was catatonic from the ghosts and trauma, and elected to try feeding him to his spectral mother.
This didn’t go great.
Ultimately, this group encountered Anastasia more than any other. They didn’t:
- have many silver bullets
- discover Anastasia’s weakness to cameras
- read her entire diary, discovering the full nature of her deal with Crowncrown
- take the silver knives in the dining table
- destroy Raphael’s locket picture of his mother, erasing the last image of her, and banishing her ghost
So, via attrition, they got worn down pretty hard. They had some pretty good moves (there was a great scene where they used silver-salt gelatine in the darkrom to banish a ghost), but the random encounter table was merciless. By the time the Vampires lit the house on fire, they were approaching Crowcrown which, given that they didn’t have the twentieth ghost to trade to Crowcrown, went poorly.
Four of the PCs died; the Wild One jumped out a window, smashed the Ghost Box on the nearest vampire, and used the confusion to steal a horse. Eighty percent of the Posse died, and Raphael went free. Overall, a very Blood Prairie ending.
An Aside: There was a surprisingly heated conversation during the half-time break about how feasible Athiesm was in the setting. If the death of god caused angels to literally blot out the sun, how could anyone reject the evidence that the divine did, at one point, exist?
Good points were brought up on both sides, but ultimately our Frontier Psychiatrist won my vote by referencing the multitude of real world groups who don’t let evidence get in the way of their ideologies. The ‘Flat Earther’ argument makes good sense to me.
Anyways, I’m sure a variant of this conversation will be had at many Blood Prairie tables; coming soon to a break time near you!
Session #3: the Convention
The Players: We had a full set of convention folks, plus Chelsea! I won’t name names here, but it was great meeting all of you.
Through a twist of circumstance, one of our players was a GameKicks regular who missed the GameKicks session but caught us at con. Another was the buddy of one of my Nirvana on Fire players. Crazy little community overlaps! I hope we get a chance to roll more dice soon.
The Set-Up: I premade seven characters (one of each class), minus a name and quirk for each. I wanted to give people a little chance to customize their characters, without wasting any precious convention time. It went a lot smoother this way. I didn’t hand out the Unemployed Angel of the hop. I held it back until the first PC died.
The Result: It went well!
They caught Rayne, read almost the whole diary, and passed the lesser threats (Raynes goons, the workman’s ghost in the workshop) without injury. Sadly, Rayne slipped away. The Posse’s doctor discovered him amidst some painted backdrops in the photo studio and caught a bullet in the gut for her troubles. No one could stitch up the sawbones, but her death opened up a slot for the Unemployed Angel to appear. Their healing powers would later save the occultist at a critical moment, allowing the Posse to seal the deal with Crowcrown, win the army, recapture Rayne, and destroy the vampires waiting outside as the house burned down behind them.
Cinematic!
Ultimately, it was RIP for the Doctor and Chelsea’s Gunslinger. The Occultist sneaked through with a single point of Grit, thanks to the Unemployed Angel. Not sure how the divine agent felt about handing over the doll army of doom to the occultist; sadly, we didn’t have a second session to explore it more.
How’s my Driving?
So, how’d we do on our goals?
Showcase Wilderness and Indoor Encounters
Check! Wilderness rules work great, and the two initiative systems seemed really intuitive at the table.
Showcase All Monster Types
Check! This was the first ‘in-play’ outing of the Control Devil. Talk about deadly! I scattered ear plugs throughout the house and included a diary entry about how ‘all his power is in his voice’. This did not help the players, who ended up shooting themselves in the face with alarming regularity.
Honestly, I’m surprised (and delighted) how often players chose death over freeing the devil.
The Ghosts ran well, though I may still tinker with the haunting rules. The human occultist was a lot of fun, and the vampires worked well as a sort of ambient, plot concern, though they didn’t get much of a combat outing. Still, it’s a one shot; you can’t jam in everything.
Runnable Three Times without Fatigue
Check! Raphael being a sort of opposed party of one, playing hide and seek with the Posse, helped a lot. Having multiple entrances, a loopy-Jacquays’d map, and a bunch of factions helped keep things feeling sandbox-y and alive.
End on Madness
Check! But is it ever going to be enough?
I lit the house on fire a little earlier every time I ran this module. I think I just wanted a bigger ending, you know? My Nirvana on Fire con game ended with heroic acts of self-sacrifice, a battle against a massive, unbeatable foe, and some spaceship on space station violence. In contrast, the burning house, vampire gangs, and satanic doll army felt a little small. I think if I run this again, I’ll need to find a little extra chaos to inject in those final moments.
Get People Excited for Blood Prairie
Check! People like this game. I think we might really have something special on our hands. If you’re interested in checking it out, make sure you’re on the mailing list. Ashcan versions should be headed out soon.
What About the Recipe?
I think the Recipe works!
Same Page: The adventure title did prompt someone to ask how much ‘Little House on the Prairie’ inspired things, which was a tonal misstep on my part. Apart from that, most of these folks showed up with an arsenal of western and horror tropes to guide their play. Sending both setting and adventure blurbs ahead seemed to really help.
Chance to Stretch Your Legs: This part went off great in sessions 2 and 3. In session 1, Raphael won initiative and the ensuing pursuit; sub-ideal! When the Posses won wilderness initiative, they had a chance to approach a static target according to their various character types. Some tried diplomacy; others, stealth, ambush, and illusions. It worked well! In future, I might just have Raphael and his party auto-fail Wilderness Initiative to provoke the approaching Posse. I love it when characters reveal themselves through their tactics.
A Mechanical Challenge: Lots of these, but most of the fights were five or six versus one. Maybe Raphael could invite all the vampires inside in a final, desperate gambit?
A Character Challenge: Parlaying with the vampires and questioning Mr. Rayne were great scenes
A Player Challenge: Probably the most successful part of the adventure. The haunting turns the whole mansion into one big puzzle box. Seeing the variety of approaches players brought to it was really interesting.
A Hard Choice: This went well on the system side; Blood Prairie’s lethality and scarcity mechanics present you with a lot of hard choices as you go. On the adventure side, I think I could have plumped this one up a bit. Maybe if it was clear why Crowcrown wanted the souls of twenty dead Raynes, I could have got the Posse agonizing over wether or not to make the deal. As it was, necessity pushed the Posse into making the deal without thinking too hard about it. The other option was vampires!
A Memorable Character: Raphael worked well. He was a good mix of pathetic and charming. False Man and Snaggle the Knot Imp made great powers for an NPC who presents a more story-based challenge than a mechanical one. In a longer game, I might have had the party spend more time with him before reaching the house.
A Big Ending: Bigger! Bigger! Extra Explosions! More Psychedelic! Additional Apocalypse!
What Did We Learn?
Alright, here’s my updated list of one-shot tips.
- If you’re making characters at the table, they should be at least half-done for a one-shot. No more than 10 minutes of character creation.
- Explain the plot twice. Take all the clues and enviormental storytelling in your adventure and make a redunant, second line of clues. Especially focus on monster-weaknesses and puzzle-solutions.
- Organize your notes based on session time. First hour, second hour, last thirty minutes, etc. Maybe even set a few alarms on your phone. The earlier I had the Vamps set the house on fire, the better it landed.
- A fun magic item goes a long way! I got a ton of juice out of the adventure’s Ghost Box. Upon opening it, the PCs discovered that, instead of a bottom, the box extended some thirty metres down, like a narrow rectangular wellshaft. From the bottom, the nineteen dead Raynes raced up towards the living. I managed to get all three groups shouting ‘I close it! I CLOSE IT!’ before my description was done. Classic! Highly reccomend; honestly, it should be a part of the recipe.
- If your ‘memorable NPC’ is, like Raphael, a bit of a heel, he should be most likeable upfront and most dastardly at the end. Getting the family lore made him a bit more sympathetic towards the end of these sessions, which was maybe the wrong direction to head in.
- Consequences, consequences, consequences. Next time I run a one shot, I want to have a few epilouge questions ready to go. Access a little of that longer-campaign magic that a one-shot is missing.
So there you have it. The reflections of one (very handsome) idiot on three playthroughs of one one-shot. I intend to tighten all the screws on the damn thing, make it twice as nice, and share it around when the Blood Prairie Ashcan’s launch. Sign up for our mailing list so you don’t miss that, and enjoy these Blood Prairie play reports in the mean time. You may also enjoy these DM tips or this play report on Dread. Anyways, stay weird and stop by our store if you’re managing to make a little disposable income in these crazy times.