"The Author and the Sea": Vaesen Community Content Review

 "The Author and the Sea": Vaesen Community Content Review

Having run out of Free League published scenarios to run, and too busy designing original scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, I decided to buy a bunch of community scenarios. I will take the chance to review them one by one. I will start with “The Author and the Sea”, which was one of the most interesting mysteries I read, but has many issues. This is a pre-play review. I will post an update once I have brought it to the table. 

Edit: I added comments based on the results of running the scenario.

Let us start with a tl;dr spoiler-free review. After that, you will get a detailed review with spoilers (clearly marked).

Hook: Artists are mysteriously disappearing from an artist’s retreat at a village by the sea. Can the Society figure out what is happening?

Positives:

• An interesting new Vaesen.

• A creepy and engaging mystery that ties in well with the Vaesen.

• An evocative location, well described.

Negatives:

• Numerous typos.

• Long stretches of text without breaks.

• The writing follows a half-baked structure, not adhering to the structure of published Vaesen mysteries or other well-known structures for mystery RPGs (like scene-based or node-based structures).

• Excessive filler investigation with no impact on solving the mystery.

• Too few and unclear clues about what is happening and what needs to be done.

Overall: If you can get through the filler text, edit out unnecessary clues and investigation, and add a few extra clues to clarify what the Vaesen is doing and how to stop it, this can be a great mystery. However, the presentation is weak, and the Game Master has to do a lot of preparation work that wouldn't be necessary if it were presented properly.

Detailed Review with Spoilers:

Summary of the plot: The mystery involves a local girl, Lise, who was seduced by a writer staying at artists’ retreat on a seaside village. Lise becomes pregnant, but when she tells the writer about it, he beats her up, and runs away. She becomes catatonic with the shock, but still delivers the child. A double of her, who calls herself Elise, starts appearings at the retreat, seducing writers (all men) and driving them  to kill themselves. 

During the scenario, the Society will be sent on wild goose chases just to make time for one of them to start being seduced by Elise. Eventually, they will find Lise, and realise that there is a connection between the two, and hopefully figure out how to banish Elise before she kills one (or more) of the Society members.

The plot is fine, except for the wild goose chases. I understand the need to allow Elise the time to (try to) seduce one of the player characters, but you don’t need to actively delay the investigation to achieve this effect. You could have Elise be present at the arrival of the Society, at the morning breakfast, and at the eve of the first day. You would only need to delay the appearance of Lise by one day. 

Edit: while running the scenario, I realize that meeting Lise can itself be a challenge. The father keeps the catatonic girl inside the house, and will not easily allow anybody to see her.

Another issue is that the text describing the doppelganger contradicts the scenario on what ritual is needed to defeat it.

There are many typos and strangely constructed sentences. A simple spelling and grammar checker would catch most of these. The presentation is messy; and given that one of Vaesen's strengths is proposing a clean, simple way to structure a mystery, it is baffling why almost none of the community content scenarios I have read follow this simple and efficient structure. Although this work is far from the worst I've read, it is not easy to consult during play or to understand the story during preparation, making the life of the game master much more difficult than needed. Content is not organised by location or scene, there is no plot overview, and the scene diagram is at the end, as an appendix, without being referred to in the document - just having this diagram shown and explained closer to the beginning would make the scenario structure much easier to follow (although the diagram itself could be a lot cleaner).

Another issue is that an NPC invites the Society to investigate but withholds important information to avoid bad publicity, thereby sabotaging the investigation he himself requested. This illogical approach unnecessarily extends the time the Society wastes on red herrings. It wouldn't be surprising if a character shoots the "quest giver" NPC in the face in frustration after being lied to repeatedly (it is a game, afterall, not real life). The author however thinks that withholding information in this way makes the scenario longer, and that seems to be seen as a good thing.  Which brings us to the greatest problem.

Edit: when I ran the scenario, I changed it such that the “quest giver” is the father of the most recent victim. In that way, the Society can opt to work either openly or in secret and the owner of the inn can more logically try to keep some things secret from them. Making him open up becomes one of the scenarios challenges.

The scenario has too much filler content,  sending investigators in several wild goose chases. This wastes players' time on dead ends, making the scenario longer without adding value. In my educated opinion, long fruitless investigations mostly frustrate and confuse players.

The author argues that there is one clue - ie, that there is a catatonic girl in town resembling the Vaesen - that will suffice to precipitate the conclusion of the scenario and, therefore, it must be delayed. 

But the truth is, that even when a relation between Lise and Elise is known, the mystery is far from over. Players still need to discover the nature of the relation between Lise and Elise, what happened to Lise, Elise's involvement in the disappearances, the fate of the missing men, and how to stop Elise. Moreover, a Society member could already be haunted by Elise by that time.

This part of the story, i.e. solving the actual mystery, is underdeveloped. There are two possible ways for the Society to figure out more about what is happening. One is a Learning test about doubles and the other is finding a German dissertation about doubles. Unfortunately, both are very unclear about how to stop the double or in explaining the relation between Lise and the double. The author makes it too difficult for players to know what needs to be done. For example, the phrase from the dissertation "The priest in Herbom drove out the evil one in a purifying holy fire, which devoured the mirror image of the double", is the only actual hint for what needs to be done (Learning doesn’t provide any) and to me it suggests taking a photo of the double (Elise) and burning it, rather than placing a mirror in front of Lise and burning it with blessed fire (which is the right option). And I should note that I had a rather extensive catholic upbringing, going as far as becoming an altar boy, and I had never heard of a church ritual to bless fire - it does exist, though.  In another example, only 3 successes in the Learning test hint at the type of relation between Lise and her double beyond their identical appearances, and even then that comes without any idea on how to stop the Vaesen.

Edit: when I ran the scenario, the players didn’t have too much trouble in figuring out how to get rid of the Vaesen, but needed to get the cooperation of the priest. Furthermore, the most climatic scene happened before, when one of the player characters was attracted to the well and almost died.

Understanding why the double acts as it does and how it relates to Lise's intentions is crucial to make the scenario interesting and providing the players with actionable information. Either the learning test or the manuscript should inform that a double may act on the hidden emotions and unspoken needs of the original person. 

I haven’t run the scenario yet, but intend to do it soon, because, even with all these issues, I find the story compelling and the Vaesen original - one of the few community scenarios I ran before was The Double (and it was a very pleasant one shot), which explores an altogether different type of doppelganger, so it will be interesting to see how the players react to this variation.

Edit: After running the scenario, I asked the players what they thought about it. Everybody liked it, especially the fact that there is one employee of the inn that can only be seen by the Society. I played this up quite a bit. Elise starts being exceedingly friendly towards one of the player characters, the others in the beginning find it funny, and eventually start finding it creepy. When they ask anybody else in the inn about Elise, they don’t know who they are talking about… of course, it is up to the GM to try to keep this as a secret for a while, so that when the revelation lands, it is meaningful.  Also, in my run, the whole investigation of the 3 murders was rather short and didn’t spend more than a day and a half.

I realise I should review The Double soon…

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