Bath Imaginable

Last night I played Liminal Horror for the first time, opting to run the starting scenario Stopover at the Shelterwood Inn for 3 of my friends. Generally, it went pretty well and after so many years of running Into the Odd-likes, the rules were pretty easy to wrap my head around.

*I only read the rules once before playing: it seems to me like the main difference was the way the game handles critical damage. In Liminal Horror, critical damage causes wounds that are rolled for on a table (like in Mothership). Damage against a target’s WIL–in this game called CTRL–is referred to as stress and if a PC suffers critical damage from stress they roll on a fallout table and suffer a thematic effect. I was impressed to see that the starting adventure included its own fallout table unique to this scenario, which is something I hope is included in every Liminal Horror adventure.

All of that is to say that like in Mothership, Liminal Horror PCs are normal people who might panic and break down. This is handled really eloquently with the bones of Into the Odd and, in my opinion, is far superior to the way it’s handled in Mothership.

I ran the adventure with very little prep, even by my own standards. Specifically, I read the adventure for the first time the morning of my session and then I skimmed it once more about 15 minutes before we played. I didn’t take any notes during my prep; the adventure is so well-formatted I’m not sure what I would have even written if I had.

I did spend about 30 minutes drawing a more printable map, though.

I loved the pixel art one included in the adventure, but when I tried to print it with my black and white printer it turned into a formless blob. Like I’ve said before–drawing the map helps me meditate on how I will present the adventure to the players. But still, I made a crucial mistake that cut a lot of the tension from my session…

The mistake? I made the undercover agents too approachable, when they should have been a deadly threat. A shoot-first, ask questions later kind of threat. Think, the Working Joes in Alien: Isolation.

*** I’m about to spoil the adventure below but I think if you’re planning on running the adventure, it’s worth learning from my mistake.

So my players had just entered the A-frame lobby of the Shelterwood Inn. They found the door locked, and one of the undercover agents lets them in. He’s posing as the motel owner, but he’s actually an agent of the bureau here to clean up some Stephen King shit that’s going sideways in the basement. The actual owners of the motel are mold-people now, kind of like in Resident Evil 7, lurking in the dank waters of the cistern below the motel’s basement.

So the man posing as the owner, Otis, locks the PCs in the Honeymoon Suite. Presumably to keep them out of harm’s way. They quickly broke out and snuck around to the back of the motel. After exploring for a while, discovering Otis is lying about being the owner, and seeing the so-called Sheriff acting really shady, they eavesdrop on a conversation between Otis and Claire.

This is my missed opportunity: Otis tells Claire that he locked the PCs away, and he insists on making them a meal because he can’t let them go hungry. Nice guy. That was my mistake.

The adventure directed me to have him lock up the PCs, and that’s a great idea, but how Claire should have responded is this: “Otis, you were supposed to kill them. This is why they shouldn’t send the PR team into the field…” and give explicit orders to kill the PCs on site.

That would be scarier, and consistent with a clandestine agency bent on keeping more people from turning into mold.

Once my players caught on to the idea that there was a bigger horror, they convinced the surviving undercover agents to team up with them and torch the big bad–Mr. Roosevelt–with Molotovs and shotgun blasts.

In the end, we had a great session. My players loved the highway setting–truly liminal, like the game promises, and the thrill of playing regular people in a ttrpg is really thrilling for most of my players.