Kicking off Scenic Dunnsmouth

Kicking off Scenic Dunnsmouth

On Wednesday we kicked-off our tour of Scenic Dunnsmouth, using World of Dungeons. It was a great first session, lots of “getting to know you” scenes with the characters, who are quite varied in personality and temperament. We also managed to hit the vibe I was going for, which was a very slow burn, Southern Gothic, swamp horror.

The session was all about gradually building up tension, and then releasing that tension with humor, and it felt really good. The party arrived at Dunnsmouth by ship, and my favorite sequence was this slow, claustrophobic ride in a small boat from where the ship anchored, to the pier. This boat ride was dotted with little side scenes between characters who happened to be sitting next to each other, and each was stuffed with their own mystery & dread. For example, one of the characters was chatting with an NPC, a young woman who was pregnant, traveling with her husband to Dunnsmouth to claim an inheritance. As they spoke, the PC noticed she had a spider crawling out of her mouth. She was fairly laid back about the whole thing, as if it was something she had been dealing with the whole voyage, and that was creepy enough, but to make matters worse, it was unclear if the other characters on the little boat were aware of the spider.

By the time the party reached the pier and met the affably backwood temptress, Zillah Duncaster, they had experienced weird perceptions of the passage of time, which made everything feel surreal and a little “unstuck;” evidence of human sacrifice in the ocean; and strange, feverish dreams. It feels like Lovecraftian mystery smashed up with 1970’s exploitation film, and I kind of love it.

Thanks to my players Christo Meid Fraser Simons Jesse Larimer Phillip Wessels and Chris Wiegand.

Cc: John Harper and Zzarchov Kowolski.