Saffron House - How Would You Run It?


Carrion Crown

Silver Crusade

I'm currently running the Carrion Crown Adventure Path for my group, and In addition to the Carrion Crown Campaign itself, I'd like to explore some of the more interesting Gothic Horror elements of the country of Ustalav, and one that seized my interest was the Saffron House, detailed in both The Rule of Fear, as well as the inside cover of The Haunting of Harrowstone.

Well, The Rule of Fear got me a map and some details, the boss is known as the Laughing Man, a kyton, with it's "interpreters" whatever that means, the place is filled with gremlins, hounds of Tindalos, juju zombies, Shining Children, Totenmaskes and animate dreams, features endless rooms and halls, malingering psychic traumas and slowed time, as well as a "stained Planchette" as its most notable haunts, has been described as a blot on both nature and time, a location that "leaks wrongness" with the house feeling claustrophobic and tight, evil things skittering and crawling through the walls, with unnecessary, maze-like twists and turns, that a "Clied Thord" owned the house and that a "thousand suicides" never freed him of it's influence, every surface is covered in a sickly, pale yellow, suggested reading consists of C.P Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons From Hell" and Stephen King's "Jerusalem's Lot."

So, what I am asking is, how would you design this adventure? What horrible things would crawl from your mind and roost themselves upon your paper, lying in wait for hapless PCs? How would you interpret it's rather vague phrasings on some things?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Probably have an SU effect on the house equivalent to guards and wards. Ensuring that the pcs are totally lost. I would also not map it on a battle matt so the players can't meta game their way around. If we went tactical I'd bring out dungeon tiles and take them away after.

Just push this into people's imagination as much as possible.

Silver Crusade

Galnörag wrote:

Probably have an SU effect on the house equivalent to guards and wards. Ensuring that the pcs are totally lost. I would also not map it on a battle matt so the players can't meta game their way around. If we went tactical I'd bring out dungeon tiles and take them away after.

Just push this into people's imagination as much as possible.

Keep them guessing and nervous is SOP for my Ustalav games already. :)

I mean how would you interpret this Laughing Man buisness? I get that Kytons are not technically devils, but, a "stain upon reality"? Would you call that demonesque? Cthuluish?

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