The Collector's Menagerie - Or "Cursed Clue"?

[canyonwalker]

I've been writing about a D&D adventure I created and DMed recently, The Collector's Menagerie. I shared in my last blog that a player noted the names/types of rooms in the mansion setting— The Hall, The Library, The Conservatory— and remarked, "This is like a game of Clue!" And how I quipped, "With monsters lurking in the rooms waiting to kill you, it's like Cursed Clue!"



You might wonder, given the setting in a dead guy's mansion and the (twisted) murder mystery element to the story if I conceived this adventure as, "It's like Clue, but things in every room are trying to kill you." Frankly it would be awesome if that's how I came up with it. Alas, I did not. Not this time.

I have, in the past, created memorable adventures that started with the simple idea, "What if X, but also Y?" Or to be more specific, "What if something culturally familiar to us players in the modern day were the setting of a swords-and-sorcery fantasy story?" and fill it with in-jokes to see how soon the players figure it out. My greatest hits in that vein have been "The heroes traverse a magical Gate to a Renaissance Faire circa 1995 (pre-cell phones) but think it's actual early Renaissance" and "All the traps in the lich's lair form the lyrics to The Eagles' Hotel California." 😆🤣🤘

Yeah, it could have been epic if I started with "Cursed Clue". But I think it is kind of epic even though I only kind of backed in to the story being Cursed Clue.

My kernel of an idea for this adventure was simply, "Monsters are in a city mansion". I used AI to flesh out the idea. That got me to the point of it being a variety of exotic monsters (read: magical beasts and aberrations) that had escaped their cages after the owner of the house, a reclusive collector, died recently.

For the mansion itself I already had a map of an actual English city mansion I'd used as a setting in a previous game. I grabbed that to use again here. The names of the rooms on the map reminded me of a mansion map I know well from my childhood....



Yes, Clue! And it was because of the maps that I made the connection. The real-life mansion floor plan had rooms marked Hall, Ballroom, Conservatory, Drawing Room, etc. Those reminded me of the rooms in Clue. BTW, the Drawing Room is the Lounge. The terms are basically interchangeable in historic wealthy Western homes, indicating room a full of lavish but comfortable furniture for withdrawing to after a meal to impress guests.

Once I made the connection myself I thought about how to lean into the idea of "This is Cursed Clue". I tried to think of a way to stash treasure items, some analogue of the candlestick, rope, knife, etc., in various rooms that the heroes would need to recover to complete the challenge. Ultimately I punted that because it seemed too complex. Simplicity was one of the things I was after with this adventure idea. But I did put in some ridiculous secret doors connecting rooms on opposite sides of the map. Shh, the players haven't found those yet!