I'm considering running E1 for a group of players who I don't think will take well to the generally visceral nature of its horror scenes.
I like the module a lot, but I think the table will turn against me if I present them with the abattoir described. Any ideas on scaling back the general level of graphic nastiness while keeping things scary?
Some of my initial thoughts:
CT1: Death masks are replaced with hanging, wreaths of skulls, and tickets are still made of parchment, but are written in blood. Inside the ticket booths are buckets of blood, and some corpses that, on closer examination, have been bled like stuck pigs, though this does not happen on camera.
CT2: As described (most of the horror here happens off-camera anyway), though Sathelbry's entire body is dragged on a length of rope, and most of his injuries are from blunt trauma (he is still dead, obviously).
CT5: Instead of the nasty squishyness described, the brownies are tying victims to the wheel and spinning it, while other villagers take pot shots at the victims with crossbows in a nasty parody of the archery contest.
CT6: As written; the trees are not incredibly anthropomorphic after they are changed.
CT8: A number of brownies bring"trees" from CT6, while newcomers are offered free beers; Victims fed into the machines have already been turned into trees, and meet a nasty, but less sticky end.
CT15: Instead of being incased in ice, the villagers have been turned into ice, and can be shattered or broken, or whatnot without things getting too gooey. This is tricky, as I'm not sure what could have caused such a transformation. Theoretically, I could modify the chiselers to allow them to do this, but maybe a better idea is to give one of them a different kind of Cerulean Ice Shard that makes this possible. If I make the chiselers able to "ice" victims, I run the risk of making them too powerful; if I use a shard to do it, I run the risk of confusing the PCs into thinking it is the ice shard . . . which could yield odd results
Anyone else have other thoughts? Just to restate, the last thing I want to do is castrate the module's scare factor, but I think scenes of violent torture will probably illicit poor reactions from some of my more conservative players.
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Much of why I love this adventure is the sheer grisliness of it. It's rare to find a module that makes me cringe just reading it, but Nick Logue did it here in spades. Well done!
I can see that a table not into the extreme horror might not like it so much, though, and think that your scaling is good for the most part. For the chiselers, if you keep the turning to ice off-stage, it might be possible to take it for granted that doing so is just something they can do. Perhaps it's a fey ritual that takes long enough that it wouldn't threaten the PCs. I agree that throwing in a different ice shard will just confuse players, so I'd keep that out of it. You can also reduce the gore if you assume that the encased individuals are frozen so much as to shatter rather than just be slowly chiseled away by loved ones. There might be a lot of frozen fingers and body parts lying around, but as long as their blood and guts are frozen solid it would just be red ice and not quite so messy.
I don't know if it's all about the grisly but THIS defintely hits that vein for some of its products.
I can see that a table not into the extreme horror might not like it so much, though, and think that your scaling is good for the most part. For the chiselers, if you keep the turning to ice off-stage, it might be possible to take it for granted that doing so is just something they can do. Perhaps it's a fey ritual that takes long enough that it wouldn't threaten the PCs.
Yeah, this is definitely a table-specific concern. Some like their dark-fey-chaos with horror, others with tea and crumpets ;).
Good idea on the ritual! I can also see putting some sort of dark fairy circle in the woods that could facilitate the transformation . . . that would make a good set piece for if the PCs ever take a sled ride out of town. Hmm . . . ponderponderponder.
Also, nice website, Nick!
(and thanks for making Carnival of Tears a great module too!)