The Pale Lady

NOTE: The following session write-up works under the assumption that you're familiar with the LotFP adventure, "The Pale Lady". A link to this excellent PDF is at the end. What follows however is a review of how not to run it - I made a few rookie mistakes but like to think I've learnt and developed from them, or something like that.

The last LotFP adventure I ran was also by +Zzarchov Kowolski (see more info here) and it had gone down a treat so we all had high hopes for The Pale Lady. Sadly however the session lacked a certain something and I firmly place the blame at my feet as a GM in this instance! There was one instance in particular that, had I been thinking clearly/quickly, would have given the session a bit more of a kick up the behind.

The build up went well; the players seemed intrigued by the tale of the Pale Lady and asked the escaped victim a few logical questions. We had Sarah playing her thief called "Patricia", Victoria playing her cleric called "Evelyn", and Kat playing her exceptionally dense fighter simply known as "V" (anything more complicated than that was beyond him). I had to translate the secret phrase into English however as neither myself or the players could begin to pronounce "Tóg dom ar fud an mhurascaill mór leis an talamh ar an aimsir cothrom.".

Upon entering the realm, they decided to send Patricia out as a scout but a roll of 6 resulted in lots of general twig cracking, alerting one of the rabbit-men. I played the rabbit-man as being more inquisitive at first, croaking a strangled guttural sound (which hurt my throat but I was committed to the sound by that point and carried on) and gesturing towards the palace with his truncheon, so naturally the thief tried to kill him.

I say tried, but another bad roll followed the initial abysmal stealth roll. The other players were alerted however by the rabbit-man crying out a howl and charged into the action. The fighter took care of things very quickly and they swiftly hid the body in the forest (ad-hoc use of Stealth to determine how well it was hidden). By this point the fields were crawling with rabbit-men so they decided to act like they were supposed to be there, attending to see the Pale Lady.

The rabbit-men ushered them to the palace (while some peeled off to search for their missing comrade) where the players were suitably awed by the Pale Lady, and a really good reaction roll left her feeling vaguely favourable too! As she stepped down from her chair to examine them, the throne ceased to be (with the water fall continuing its merry tinkle) while the walls seemed alive with the eyes of the rabbit-men outside staring in. It was a great atmosphere with the throne room itself generally being an ace setting. I think on replays, I may show a magic user leaving dejected, or perhaps an incredibly old elf grinning - something to give a bit more of a hint to what was going on (and also explain why the Pale Lady is just sitting there).

The players stated why they were here; they wanted access to the Word of Creation. Due to the favourable roll, I decided to give the player's a non-combative chance to handle the Pale Lady; despite there being no elf or magic-user present, I allowed the exceptionally strong V a chance to "satisfy" her - Patricia and Evelyn were cordially invited as well (but the fighter was to be the target in this). Before they attended her chamber however, the Pale Lady allowed them the chance to rest up - the party naturally used this chance to surreptitiously loot what they could.

The hour of passion flew by, as did a large chunk of V's life as he found himself to be over 100 at the end of it, but boy did he have a great time!

The now heavily pregnant Pale Lady led the party to the room of the cube and explained briefly the process to get inside, taking time to advise once more not to go ahead with this before waddling off and leaving them in peace. The cleric, unsure of what dark magic was at play here, refused to enter but the thief and the fighter wasted no time.

Entering inside, they were suitably awed by it all though didn't immediately click as to who the skeleton with the long white hair in the corner was. They decided to leave, having learnt the word (or rather received the effects), at which point I explained the conundrum - outside the cube, we now had two Vs, two Patricias, and one confused Evelyn.

Without letting them discuss the situation, I got them to write down the number of the version they wanted to play - surprisingly no one chose to play the copy stuck inside the cube - and let me know. V decided to be the new enlightened V while Patricia decided that the original Patricia was the best.

V however, confused at seeing a copy of herself, immediately attacked her original which became a fairly close battle, while Patricia shrugged and dispatched her imposter quickly - both showing no signs of remorse, the hardened adventurers that they are.

The Pale Lady wasn't in the throne room when they came back out (in reality she was giving birth to 9 more rabbit-men) so they decided to make good their escape. It was here that I made my most frustrating mistake of the evening - I let them escape without hassle. On hindsight, it would have been perfect to have the rabbit-men outside stop them, having found by now the deceased guard they killed upon entering the realm! That would have given the end of the session a perfect finale, going out with a bang as they tried to push through a small mob of rabbit-men! They could have then had a wonderful scene of the Pale Lady emerging behind them furious, a litter of freshly born rabbit-men around her, as she demands the characters be seized for looting so much stuff from the other rooms.

The other thing that occurred to me is that I didn't do nearly enough to drum up the despair or even the presence of the children captured by the Pale Lady. The party couldn't give a shit, entirely focussed on getting the Word of Creation. I think in future play-throughs I'll definitely be putting a stronger focus on the children in order to heighten the "this is a pretty fucked up situation" vibe.

Overall the feedback was positive. The players seemed to really enjoy themselves (though the smiles at the end could have been that of relief to having characters to play in the next session) but I was left feeling pretty negative about it all. The story itself though is excellent stuff, definitely one that Im tucking away for future use, but the consensus was that Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess had a lot more excitement in it.

I think this is largely in part due to the Pale Lady being a more sombre adventure - there is no trace of silliness here, no fun mushrooms to muck around with, or terrifying teddy bears. This adventure is one of death, death and despair. I said in a G+ post yesterday that I was looking forward to having a night with no character deaths but in reality the session ended with at least two characters killing copies of themselves and another three characters starving to death inside the cube. If you take a moment to reflect on things its pretty depressing!

"The Pale Lady" is by Zzarchov Kowolski and is available to purchase at DriveThruRPG in PDF format only.