The coming week, and running 5e (sigh)

Things are a little crazy, so I’m not buckling down to do a real meaty post just yet. My in-laws are in town, we’re getting tons of bad weather because of Helene, so now they’re just sitting at the house driving my wife crazy, work is very busy right now, I’m going to travel (business) to Texas this week to visit some suppliers just across the border, my wife is getting ready to go to DisneyWorld with a friend of hers, so when I get back from Texas I’ll be on my own for a little while, etc. I doubt that I’ll make Front #2 and more on my Cult of Undeath 5x5 until I get back at the end of the week, but maybe after that I’ll be good to do quite a bit of updating, actually.

In addition to all of that, I’m running for this reddit/game store group that I came up with. Two guys, and one of their fiancés, is what I hear. They’re interested in D&D 5e, so I agreed to run that for them as a quick “mini-campaign” trial run. Friday when I get back will be our first session. I have no idea what the fiancé is playing, but one guy is a mountain dwarf barbarian, and the other guy is a halfling rogue. At least, I think he’s a rogue. He never actually told me that, but the backstory sure sounds rogue-like. They seemed to be all into the idea of fantasy X-files, when I described that, but then the barbarian asked if they could all start with bags of holding. That kinda threw me for a loop. Is that a common thing that groups do? I’ve never heard of anything like that before. That seems kinda like; hey, can I start the game with some cheat codes on? Needless to say, I said no. I’m not actually anticipating having a great time, but maybe it’ll be good enough that we’ll all want to continue after the mini campaign is over. And I don’t really know the system very well, so I’ll be pretty handwavey and run it the way I used to run 3.5. It’ll be close enough, but unless they know what they’re doing systemwise, it could be a little rough. Actually, it might be better if they don’t; then I can just make sensible rules-light style rulings like I prefer to run anyway, and not worry much about it. 

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to be doing for the session, to be honest with you. Finalize any character creation and start them off outside of a large city, in fact, outside of a small town that’s outside of a large city, and there’s ghouls up on crosses kinda like scarecrows that will immediately be a threat to them. Or modified zombies or wights or something; it doesn’t actually matter exactly what kind of undead they are. They’ll be recruited to help out the small town with a rash of murders that are undead related, and then have to deal with a haunted house of some kind. I’m thinking of loosely running the first half (or maybe two thirds?) of The Skinsaw Murders, at least as a general concept, but winging anything that isn’t fleshed out or that I don’t’ remember very well in the moment. I guess I need to reread that again very soon to make sure that I’m good to run it! I also need to make sure that I have an outline that will get me past a couple of sessions or so, at least, and then I can figure out what (if anything) will follow.

But I’m not really thrilled to run 5e. I’m also playing now in a 5e game, so I went ahead and bought a like-new copy of the book for less than $20, but I wasn’t thrilled with that session either. Or rather, the group seemed fine; the system isn’t anything wonderful, though. Had almost all of the problems that I had gotten tired of with 3e, except that I wasn’t as familiar with the system, so I was more confused about a few basic things instead. I’d honestly rather just be playing 3e at this point. Not that I’d be excited to do that either.

So, let me talk very briefly about what I foresee in this session. Which, I think, we’ve only got 2½-3 hours to do before the store closes anyway. 

• The three characters all meet, after I get the rest of their backstories and backgrounds enough so that I can do something with this, at a crossroads outside of town. The small town of Brackwater (which will stand in for Sandpoint from the module, except without all that context from the earlier module, so it makes sense to change the name and not even pretend that it’s the same place), a coastal town near big tidal marshes, as you can guess, is where they’re headed, but they’re all coming from three different directions. They first get attacked by some kid of crazed wild animals or rabid feral dogs or something. Something is seriously wrong with these animals. Nearly zombified, or diseased, or blighted, or something. Not clear exactly.
• Head into town. It’s pretty subdued; but normalish. People are maybe a little extra suspicious or unfriendly, but once they get going in taverns or whatever, they find them normal. People are upset because there have been reports of deaths and strange behavior by farm animals, and a few local country boys have been injured. They’re worried about some kind of animal plague or something.
• Local sheriff or constable type guy is in the tavern. Yeah, yeah… this is pretty cliché, but he asks the PCs for help, because he’s heard something about them from someone (again, need to create some kind of tie to whatever backstories I end up finally getting) and he doesn’t want to involve the locals. There’s been a double murder at the local sawmill. It’s bad, looks occult, and he’s worried about getting the locals in a panic. The murders out in the boonies are starting to come to town. But they don't know much about the murders out of town until below...
• It looks like the murderer has come out of the swamp. There’ll be some clues to suggest as much, if I can think of them ahead of time.
• There will be calls, if they can’t figure out where to go, to help some farmers, who are showing up in town reporting strange things afoot (at their Circle K. Heh.)
• This is where they get into running battles with ghoul scarecrows. Or rather; like I said, ghouls are what the Pathfinder module originally wrote but a kind of ad hoc wight kind of thing might be more appropriate. Or even modified zombies. I’m actually thinking of making them more like the barrow-wights from Tolkien than the D&D wights of… well, of the Monster Manual. Strong, and have a freezing touch which stuns (as per the condition) save DC 15. Wights in D&D have some kind of life-drain, which I don’t want to mess with. Stunning attacks, or even dropping characters into the unconscious condition would be more Tolkien-like. 
• The ghouls/wights/whatever are taking their victims into a well, which is mostly dry, and connects via a short tunnel to the basement of a haunted house.  Here, I can use the haunted house section of the Skinsaw Murders module, maybe combined somewhat with The Haunting of Harrowstone, the first module of the Carrion Crown adventure path. 

I’m not going to worry about detailing the haunted house yet; that will absolutely not be part of the first evening’s game, no matter what else happens. So I’ll worry about detailing exactly what will happen there later—including what was the point of it all. Meanwhile, depending on how much time I have in the evenings while traveling, or when I get back from traveling, I’ll mostly be reading, but I might make another YouTube video; it’s been a good two weeks I think since I did an updated one describing the updates to my races for DFX. But first priority is the game I need to run, and second priority is the copy of Manual of the Planes as well as my second Hawk & Fisher Omnibus, which I'll be bringing with.