B6: The Veiled Society and Urban Investigations

 

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My thoughts on B6: The Veiled Society

A few days ago I bought the PDF version of B6 from DrivethruRPG and I have been browsing through it. Full disclosure: I have not actually played through it so my point of view is limited in that respect. It's written by David Cook, co-author of the Expert Rules and X4 & X5 modules. The module does not have a great deal of information about the city of Specularum and I suspect the author assumed the DM would have access to Gaz1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos, where Specularum is given more detail. Actually given the differences between Specularum in this module (5000 population) and in Gaz1 (50,000 population) I suspect TSR had not hammered out the details of what the capital city was actually like when they commissioned this module.  

I won’t give away too much of the plot but it involves three competing families, the Radu, Torenescu and Vorloi, who each hold considerable power and influence within Specularum. Then there is the titular Veiled Society, a criminal group that is stirring up trouble and may be linked to one of the houses. There are a number of urban encounters - a religious procession is interrupted, the PCs are confronted by masked men and there is a riot that the PCs get caught up in. There is a dungeon under a widow’s house that then leads to a murder mystery and political shenanigans.

Would I use it as written? I think I would give it a go with the caveat that improvisation on the DM’s part may be required to link the various encounters together (see my thoughts below). Some of the situations in the module seem a bit arbitrary such as requiring the PCs to split up between different inns, and at one point if they don’t face questioning by a clerical tribunal they will be hanged for murder within a week. DM discretion is a good idea, particularly for this adventure. The author is keen on the idea of different PCs dealing with different factions, thus splitting the party somewhat. My feeling is that this should not be necessary and only done if the players and the DM feel they can handle it. 

I feel like this could be a good introduction to Specularum and the groups and factions within it. After the adventure the PCs could get involved in other schemes and investigations or perhaps delve into previously forgotten dungeons underneath the city. The three families may have had some upsets and some deaths as a result of B6 but they are still functioning and will want to reestablish their power bases whether criminal, courtly or mercantile. Maybe new factions and groups want to establish themselves, perhaps the Dmitrov family or merchants from Minrothad Guilds or even a cult of Chaos.  And of course Duke Stefan Karameikos III and his own ministers and officials will want to maintain their governance.  

Personal Thoughts on Urban Investigations

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I tend to stick to dungeon adventures. This module is quite a radical departure from that format, both for myself and I suspect for early TSR - the previous module in the B series, B5: The Horror on the Hill, was a combined wilderness trek and dungeon crawl beneath a ruined monastery. One of the things about a dungeon is that rooms, corridors and locked doors are very good at keeping a controlled flow of the adventure. The PCs have to get through one room to get to the one beyond, or when they reach a junction in a passageway it is a simple (though not always foreseeable) choice of which passage they take. Dungeons are in some ways flow diagrams made solid. 

Urban adventures like this are considerably more up in the air, with the PCs coming up with unusual ideas for how to handle situations and NPCs, sometimes clever, sometimes stupid. The adventure author cannot predict how player characters will react, and usually neither can the DM running the adventure. The bottom line is that these urban investigations can have a certain amount of structure - in B6 this is the various events such as the interrupted procession, the widow asking for help (which leads to a relatively conventional dungeon under the streets) and the riot. But getting the PCs from one event to the next is far more fluid. Trying too hard to steer PCs in the right direction can turn into railroading, but in a city like Specularum (and here it is only 5000 people, nowhere near the size of some fantasy cities) it is very easy to get distracted or go off chasing red herrings. The investigation aspect can be quite unpredictable and some parties may solve it quickly while others just don’t put things together or even notice the clues. It is tempting to me to add side encounters that adventurers in a city might come across but the PCs might well assume they are part of an intricate plot. This module (The Veiled Society) has a section at the front where random encounters are discouraged. Understandable though perhaps rather boring and timid. The author also has the interesting idea of coopting the PCs into fleshing out the shops and NPCs, encouraging the players to make notes on where newly created establishments and NPCs are and what they are like. 

I may be a bit harsh and pessimistic here. I’m sure that most DMs can run this adventure relatively smoothly and most adventuring parties can pick up the clues and figure out whodunnit. Of course a certain amount of improvisation will be needed by the DM, both when PCs get into conversation with NPCs and also when they want to explore the city, perhaps taking their investigation into corners the module author had not considered. This requires a different set of skills, both character skills and player skills, and indeed DM skills, than those required for traditional dungeon crawls. And sometimes I’m not entirely confident in my own skills here. 

One of the ways I have approached this style of plot-based adventure is to not enforce a strict order of events - or at least if the events do happen in an order, it is not dependent on the players and their characters doing the expected thing. It is more of a sandbox but with things going on around the PCs that (hopefully) the PCs will notice and get involved with. You've heard of dungeon crawls and wilderness hex crawls? I introduce to you the street crawl. I don’t like the idea of PCs being expected to follow a specific storyline and having to be guided back on track if they stray. Strict storylines in a relatively free and open environment like a city impinge too much on player agency - are the PCs allowed to make meaningful choices about how they solve mysteries and deal with complex situations? Admittedly this still requires considerable improvisation from the DM, but I suspect they were going to need to do that anyway. 

Regardless of my hesitations, fantasy cities have been a major part of fantasy worlds, whether in the Hyborean age of Conan the Barbarian, Lankhmar where Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser call home, Immyr, the dreaming city that is the capital of Melnibone where Elric used to rule or Greyhawk City where the first D&D games were set or Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. It is cities where politics, crime, trade and magic are most concentrated and therefore are the obvious place for so many adventures above ground.