Wand in the Library, Stirges in the Conservatory. "It's like Clue!"

[canyonwalker]

My D&D group made great progress in our session this past weekend. It was a short session, just a bit over 3.5 hours, but they got through several combat encounters. That's great compared to past groups I've DMed which would spend the same amount of time on just one encounter.



After getting the skinny on the situation from the butler, realizing they're in a dead guy's mansion filled with escaped monsters— aka The Collector's Menagerie— they prioritized what they'd do.

Given a choice between "Wand in the Library", "Chirping from Drawing Room", and "Calls for help from the basement", they decided to check out the chirping first. I thought for sure they'd go for the free magic wand first but I'm the DM, I don't make these choices.

As they entered the sitting room the sound of bird calls grew louder. They were coming from an adjoining room with sliding partitions hanging slightly ajar. Light streamed through the cracks. Two PCs, Herran the ranger and Leoghnie the fighter, prepared to continue into the next room while Kiarana the cleric stayed in the Drawing Room. It was at that point they noticed that Ryuu-Han the mage and Otonio the rogue had disappeared. They were back in the Hall scouring the owlbear's makeshift nest for loot!

Herran and Leoghnie slid open the doors and moved forward. They found the Conservatory, a room with various musical instruments such as a harpsichord and a standing harp. Light came from an intricate, glass-paneled ceiling. It was like a greenhouse. And up in the eaves of the glass roof were a number of brightly colored, loud exotic birds. Except not all of them were birds....



Some of the flyers in the Conservatory were stirges, a classic bloodsucking monster from D&D lore. Two flew down and attacked. One bounced off Leoghnie, unable to get a grip; but the other latched its talons onto Herran's shoulder and plunged its needle-like beak into his neck.

"Fuck this shit!" Jersey-girl Leoghnie grumbled as she stepped back through the door and closed it behind her. Herran did the same.

I thought the rest of the party would rally to Conservatory and fight the stirges. Instead they just said "Nope!" and closed the door on the monsters. Well, except for the one stirge that hooked a ride on Herran. Herran pulled it free, and Leoghnie turned it to pulp with a blow from her massive sword.

"The Hall, the Library, the Conservatory, this place is like Clue!" Herran's player, Barbara, exclaimed.

"With an owlbear in the Hall and stirges in the Conservatory it's like cursed Clue," I chuckled.

Comments

[sorcyress]

I quite like the idea of Cursed Clue (but then, I'm a big fan of basically all the clue media properties).

I think I'd be headed straight for the cries for help in the basement, but I'm a softy like that.

[canyonwalker]

The players did prioritize responding to the faint/distant "Help me!" call over the other 3 clues/leads I gave them, but then somehow they decided they'd investigate the bird-like chirping first. I didn't press them to explain it to me because 1) constructing adventures in a connected graph fashion is my style (so it's not *critical* that they do "A" before "B") and 2) it's not my style to disagree with their rationale unless I see them making a mistake with major in-character consequences. I think their rationale was something like, "The chirping that sounds like a couple of macaws could be a dangerous monster, and we don't want a dangerous monster following along behind us."

[merhawk]

I didn’t want an unknown monster at our back. That would have really hurt us if we’d gotten surrounded.