Scourge of Tikbalang - Session Report & (Very) Short Review

This sunday, I ran Zzarchov Kowalski's Scourge of Tikbalang for a party of three - here's how it went!

This of course contains heavy spoilers for the adventure, so heh, you know.

The Player Characters
Everyone was part of the Obra Dinn's crew, an East India Company ship that somehow ended up lost in Polynesia. After a pirate attack and a terrible storm, they found themselves on a foreign beach, three survivors with nothing but rags, sand and alguae for equipment.

Soloman Syed (S), Homer Langstroth (A) & Nathan Peters (G)

Having already read the adventure, Lu decided to stick around as the crew's Unnamed Dog.

What Happened?
• Upon waking up, Homer and Nathan went into survival mode immediately and wanted to craft some basic gear and go find some water to boil and hopefuly some edible fruit, while Soloman, with his measly 5 CON, could barely manage to crawl under a palm tree for comfort. Climbing up a tree to survey their surroundings revealed a nearby village further up the beach, so the two englishmen grabbed their indian friend and walked there.

• Quickly discovered by the villagers, the PC were glad to see these were welcoming and even understood english, instead of the blood-thirsty savages they were expecting given the dark skin and strange tattoos of these strong and fair people. After enjoying some food and water, they got to meet with the village's Elder, who let them know of the Tikbalang Problem.

The Tikbalang Problem 
Two girls from the village were raped by a mythical folklore creature and they'll give birth to more Tikbalangs unless the creature is slain. The village might need to kill them to avoid having two more monsters, and nobody really wants that - plus, apparently they'll give birth to normal child if the original Tikbalang is killed.

As it happens, the Elder put a gold bounty on the monster's head, hoping that outsiders would deal with it to avoid anyone from the village getting hurt or worse.

The players, needing gold if they're ever going to get back home, agreed.

• They went around the village for the next two days, talking with everyone who was even remotely involved - two "witnesses", the two victims, the senile old woman who served as spiritual advisor, etc. What quickly transpired was that this was not a tale of monstrous rape, but something way more banal: the first "victim" was cheating on her betrothed and came up with the story of the tikbalang to protect herself from his wrath. The main witness and the village Elder figured it out and covered her with matching stories, since they did not want her to be shunned. The second victim is a teenager and pathological liar, who thought she'd get more attention by claiming to have also been attacked - she has no idea how sex works at all, in fact. Having figured out that the victim's boyfriend was hiding at the local abandoned gold mine, the party headed there to talk with him.

This covered about 3 hours of gameplay, extremely rich in character interaction - there were funny moments, dead serious moments, bittersweet and sad moments (playing an old woman who's slightly aware that she's losing touch with reality is heart-breaking). There was a lot of speculating and a lot of great social play.

What Happened Next?
In Game? Almost nothing - the party reached the boyfriend, learned of his plan to steal the head of a horse from a local pirate crew that is "resting" in a village close by, and pass the head as that of a Tikbalang since these animals can't be found in these islands, and then Nathan decided he wanted to kill the guy for making him waste his time.

Out of Character, this is the point when everyone was now certain that this was a story of adultery, superstitious paranoia and social damage control gone wrong. There is no monster, no true evil, only people being people. And this meant that any choice the players made reflected way more strongly on their own views and opinions on what was right than with a clear-cut fantasy situation. The next twenty minutes were thus dedicated to the players debating more-or-less strongly about the right course of action, one of them being increasingly bothered by the fact that taking part in this meant at least one of these:

A) Violence on a Horse
B) Protecting an adulterer and fooling her cuckold
C) Betraying the trust of said adulterer and seeing both lovers killed

And that worse: not taking part in it at all would still lead to tragedy.

Sadly, we didn't have enough time for so much debate and in the end, since noone had reached an agreement, we had the end the one-shot without actually seeing a resolution to these events.
The possibility of a follow-up session has been raised, but for that we'd need the players to actually reach a consensus first.

So, That's it?
Yeah. It was a great session in my book: not only were the first hours very fun and fast-paced (plus there was almost no dice rolling besides reaction rolls and a short encounter with a wild hog in the jungle) but even the end, where sparks flied and suddenly the fictional world was really alive and real as everyone had to pitch in their very serious opinions to solve the crisis (Nathan wanted to kill a guy!), while not appropriate in the middle of the game, was an interesting end to the game. Nothing feels rewarding for a Referee more than players who actually care about what's going on in the game.

At the Debrief, all involved said they had had a great time, and everyone being friends before being gamers, there was no actual issue with how the game ended.

Scourge of Tikbalang - What Do I Think?
I love Zzarchov Kowalski's writing - it's terse and informal, but evocative. It makes you want to run his adventures, and it immediately strikes images into your head. Your prep happens by itself while you read his stuff. Information is easy to find and well-organized, I didn't need to take any notes or refer to the adventure during the game after reading it twice in the week before the game. The few illustrations are like his writing - evocative yet "simple", with only enough details to get your imagination running. I think every adventure should be written as system-neutral, with stuff like "Armor as Leather (High DEX)" for stats. Referees can come up with the details, and it leaves more space for interesting stuff - if, as a Ref, you can't actually come up with that stuff, you don't have enough experience to run other people's modules - go invent stuff from scratch for a few years first, you'll learn better this way. Don't even read modules. Stay away from them.

Obviously the themes involved may create SERIOUS BUSINESS reactions from people, as the end of the one-shot illustrates well. If you're playing with grown-ups, worst case scenario, discussions may get heated for a short while, but it shouldn't get too bad. Again, obviously, don't run this for kids or people who might get seriously upset by twice fictional rape or adultery. Other than that, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

I give it 4 out of 5 horse heads - as always with Zzarchov, it leaves me wishing for some bigger project from him. Please Mr. Kowalski, make some kind of sourcebook or megadungeon in your human and strange world. I'd buy it.