NOTE: The following session write-up works under the assumption that you're familiar with the LotFP adventure, "Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess". A link to this excellent PDF is at the end.
Ever since I saw this on the store, I knew I had to run it at some point and tonight I got my wish granted. Sadly for the players, they also got their wishes granted.
By now the players had notched a few games of LotFP under their belts and they knew what to expect. When I presented them with some pregens for this evening they spent considerable time trying to work out if I was throwing them a bone of some sort (I wasn't).
So, a quick run down of some memorable moments...
I took great delight in the Mandatory Maypole dance, though when one of the characters tried to put the halfing out of her misery by sending an arrow her way it ended up causing her more pain (and the cupids to erupt in laughter). To taunt the players further, the cupids then ripped the halfling into two pieces and shook the remaining insides over them.
One character, Jane, looked through the glass door of the tower and pushed her face right up against it to squint through. The disastrous results? She failed her save, so.... I had her eyes partially burn out, accompanied by streams of blood. Her vision was now insanely blurry. This is an important detail because when the players came up against Buttons, Jane tried to fire her rifle and ended up blowing off another character's head (firing into melee while partially blinded and crying tears of blood was never going to end well).
Its ok though, because the remaining players later used the wish book to wish the character alive again ... with the follow on being "as a bear". Confused at how it was working, another character wrote that she wished for an understanding of how the book worked.... with the following being "And nothing else", turning her into an imbecile.
They took on the Fairy Princess but I sure as hell wasn't allowing a Heroic Ending so when they managed to defeat her, nothing changed. After getting frustrated, they decided to toss the sleeping girl into the intergalactic void where the idol existed. I had previously describe the void as being bottomless, with the statue floating just out of reach. Looking down/around/up, they could see other doors and other statues with versions of themselves doing things (the leading character saw herself step out into the void and plummet down into the depths, giving her the idea).
With such a heartless resolution to their predicament? The reality collapsed, dumping the characters back to the hedge and the corpse of the girl flopped in front of them. One character tried to crawl back into the hedge (she found herself tumbling into the void) while the remaining two (one nearly blind and unable to comprehend anything without extreme concentration, and the other a walking bear) decided to go eat more mushrooms, unable to handle the scope of what had just happened. The remaining halflings were nowhere to be seen, but their imaginations generated the sounds of several hundred halflings screaming in agony.
Quote of the night;
Jane: "Quiet, if you're good I'll get you some milk and cookies, and we all know what that means!"
Victoria: "Blood and death! I don't want them!"
Overall, lots of happy faces. I felt I peaked too soon personally; when the players slept in one of the gingerbread houses before taking on the tower, I'd described these horrific dreams of what lay in the tower and the run up to the battle with Buttons had been quite dramatic (my Buttons had a giant blade stitched into one arm, and his other arm was a mashed collection of halfling arms that were twitching away with their little fingers grasping fruitlessly at nothing). Sadly the rest of the battles were just... meh in comparison to Buttons (even the Fairy Princess just felt like I was going through the motions).
I think if I was to run it again, I'd place Buttons in the room with the Fairy Princess, up the tempo a bit. Ultimately, I still had a blast running it and would happily run it again.
"Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess" is by Zzarchov Kowolski and is available at the LotFP store.
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