(Continued from part one)
On the other side of the painting, the explorers walked past the donation box into a cafe, where a group of art students were drinking ouzo from a bottle with a pickled mandrake inside. They didn't know where the Fire Cult was, but they knew that Clarissa had dealt with them. Her apartment was on the West side of the gallery, past the livingroom.
The first exhibit the explorers had to get through was completely dark. Something whistled and clicked as it slid around in the dark room. Sax couldn't see it, but Cassie had darkvision. The enormous olm scurried around the walls, floors and ceiling. When they entered, it rubbed against their legs, brushing them with its electrical sensors and smearing them with slime.
The next exhibit was a living room, with walls of skin and chairs of bone. Eyes in the walls watched the players, and a mouth greeted them when they entered. Clarissa probably wasn't home, but they were welcome to bang on her apartment door. Their best bet was to find Ryan, he'd know what was going on.
The explorers stopped by the gift shop for directions, then got waylaid by a magical film that compelled them to watch it to its conclusion, wasting an hour. They met Ryan in the library, and explained their dilemma: they needed to find the Fire Cult, did he know where they were? He said he'd "boxed" them as payback for incinerating the gallery. The players explained that the fire cult had burned the gallery down to get rid of marauding Renfields who were shooting the place up. Ryan agreed to let them leave, and told the explorers how to find the painting where they were held captive.
The route they chose took them through another interactive exhibit. A set of airlocks with HAZMAT suits, leading into a plexiglass box filled with brightly colored ooze. A display inviting visitors to suit up and "swim with the slimes". Slogging through the glass chamber was like stuffing a gloved hand into a slimy garbage disposal, multiplied by an entire room. But they got to the other side unscathed, thanks to the protective suits.
Room after that had paintings. Classical paintings, of everyone they had ever killed. Sax couldn't resist stealing the painting of Thomas the Fat, the first person he ever clipped. He stuffed it under his jacket and they ran out of the room. The next gallery was dimly lit by windows that looked out over an alien moonscape. Impressive, but not what they were after. The room after that had paintings and objects d'art, which they also ignored. The chamber after that had an enormous window that looked out into a giant art gallery filled with giant people. Sax realized the painting they were looking for was in the previous gallery. They returned to the room, pursued by the ominous sound of giant feet.
The explorers hid behind furniture. A trio of giant marble statues came in. One was of Thomas the Fat, the other two were Cassie's miscellaneous victims. They were clearly looking for the players. Cassie grabbed the Fire Cult painting and snuck out of the room, while Sax lured the statues, juked them and then ran after her. They led the statues on a chase back to the Living Room. The flesh-wizard in the walls told them to give back the painting they'd stolen to get the statues off their ass. Sax reluctantly relinquished the painting he took from the murder gallery, and the pursuit ceased.
With the Fire Cult painting in hand, the explorers returned the way they'd come, to the showroom. They declined to purchase the painting, but did pick up a couple items bequeathed by Lester, the deceased dungeon butcher: A special butcher knife and a book of recipes. Then they went to the bank's cafe: a long lost franchise of Flowers Coffee. They briefly engaged an elderly Jewish couple in a discussion about the quality of the bagels, then left for home.
Cassie scouted the cistern ahead of Sax, and what she discovered wasn't good. A group of tattooed vampires wearing masks and carrying flamethrowers were taking a break outside the entrance to the burned tunnel. They complained about the number of slimes they'd encountered and the difficulty getting through to the lich's sanctum on the other side. Then they drank some of the polluted viscera-water from the cistern and went back to work in the tunnel. Cassie and Sax snuck through to the exit and ran for home. The rest of the journey to the surface was uneventful, save for some newly bored holes and the stench of burnt metal coming from the vampiric gangsters' hideout. They made it back to the Occultists' hideout at about 9:00 PM, and dropped off the painting in exchange for the reward.
The custom areas were fun, but not as exciting as the previous ones. The Spider Nest and the Abattoir are dangerous, while the Underworld Vault and Gallery are safe unless you go out of your way to start shit. I think sprinkling treasure and threats liberally around a dungeon is more engaging than putting all the riches and danger behind a sheet of glass that's up to the players to break.
The timetable, the weakness of the player characters, and the hazards of the dungeon make them laser focused on getting to the objective, completing it, and getting the hell out. They don't want to pick fights or explore new areas, both dangerous activities with no promise of reward. Completely sensible given the number of casualties they've taken, but the result feels a bit sterile and low energy. I think this is a common failure mode for games where the objective is to get rich and death lurks around every corner.
It's also hard to have intense, player driven plots when you average two or three players a game, most with only a couple sessions at the table. It's not my job to make the world safe or balanced. But it is my job to present the players with at least a few jobs that two people could realistically accomplish, and that's getting harder and harder. I'm a little worried Cow Town is going to peter out, because I won't get the same critical mass of players who know what's going on and have the power to change it as I did with Coal City.
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