The previous session was actually a holiday one-shot I ran for my mom. For the previous Doubley-Doos adventure, click here: PREVIOUS.

After rescuing a handful of goblins from their captivity with the Shrillbeast clan, the Doubley-Doos have agreed to help reunite them with the tribe from which they’d been separated — the Meriadar-worshiping Rockmore tribe. They traveled south toward Opal Town, the last place the goblins saw their tribe. On the way, they witnessed the effect the war has had on the region, leaving families displaced and forced to flee north, away from the conflict.

They approached the town around sunset on the fifth day, and were greeted by an old friend: Uther, who fought alongside Shelby and Shump during the initial Shrillbeast clan raids. Opal Town had changed since their last visit. Due to the number of goblin raids in the region, the Hearing House decided to fortify the humble little town and use it as a central base of operations. Even more surprising, Uther now counted himself among the guard ranks.

Uther greeted them cheerfully and suggested they have a small celebration at the Splintered Cask to commemorate this reunion. He accompanied them to Ristin’s Inn and arranged for rooms on their behalf. However, while getting herself settled in, Shelby was slipped a note by Clairebell, one of the maids who worked at the inn. It was about Uther, and read simply, “Don’t trust him. He lies.” Shelby called a quick meeting to discuss their options, and the party decided to attend the celebration at the tavern so they could try to uncover anything suspicious about Uther.

Shelby spoke to the mayor, catching her up on their adventures since taking the goblin figure to Biel, and the mayor filled her on the changes to the region and how the war had been impacting them. Shelby used the opportunity to bring up Uther. The mayor spoke about how much Uther had changed — going from someone who was known for procuring things through extralegal channels to spearheading Opal Town’s defense upgrades.

Suddenly, the world grew quiet, muffled and distant. Voices filled the space. Whispering. Babbling. Dissonant. They came from every where. And then, all at once, the choices stopped.

Shump caught up with Drake, the first friend he’d made in Opal Town, who’d saved him from an angry anti-orc mob. They talked about what they’d been up to for the past year. Drake was excited about the upcoming midsommar festival, but regretted they were having to deal with this crazy old farmer hollering about things living in his orchard. He’d been going on about it for a couple weeks and everyone had stopped paying him any attention.

As Drake spoke, like Shelby, the sound appeared to drop out of the world and all Shump could hear was whispering. Unlike Shelby, while he wasn’t able to make out what they were saying, he did recognize that the whispers were speaking Draconic. After a moment, those voices faded and things returned to normal.

Dormin spoke with Ophelia, the green-skinned eladrin who had been held prisoner alongside Rose when the goblins first attacked Opal Town. She was a bit cagey about her past, talking in generalities about where she’d lived and things she’d done but avoiding any identifiable specifics. To Dormin’s surprise, he found himself bonding with Ophelia over shared experiences feeling like an outsider — Ophelia not fitting in among the elves in Alahalan and Dormin not fitting in among the dwarves in Gravlimok.

As the night drew to a close, Uther stood and proposed a toast to celebrate the return of old friends and the forging of new ones — a toast which everyone happily joined. With that, the party made their way back to their rooms. On the way back, however, as Dormin took in the sights of this new town, he noticed something shifting in the dark. He looked again, realizing something wasn’t shifting in the dark…the dark was shifting. A chunk of shadow broke off the side of a building and drifted toward him. As it drew closer, Dormin could just make out a gaunt, scowling face. He drew back and screamed, and as the others turned to see what had frightened him…it was gone.

Returning to the inn, Shelby went to check on their goblin companions while Shump went to his room for the night. As he got ready for bed, he heard someone call his name. He ignored it at first, but the calling became more insistent, and they soon began knocking at his door. Opening the door, there was no one there, but a voice came from behind him and he felt a tap on his shoulder. Again, there was nothing there. Climbing in bed, determined to ignore whatever this disturbance was, he soon found his bed overturned.

When Shelby rushed in to check on him, she saw a figure through the window running into the dark. Using her monk abilities, she leaped from the second story window and bolted after the figure, racing into the darkness and fog. Shump woke Dormin and they hurried after Shelby.

Shelby was right on top of the figure when it vanished, leaving her before the entrance to an apple orchard. An old man came to the door with a hand crossbow and a lantern, demanding to know who she was and why she’d come. His name was Talbot, who seemed to be a retired soldier of some sort. As Dormin and Shump caught up with Shelby, they explained what they’d been experiencing. He confirmed that he, too, had been seeing things for weeks. His dog went missing a few days ago, disappearing into the apple orchard. He hadn’t found any sign of him since.

The party decided to investigate and get to the bottom of things, but wandering for an hour or so in the orchard, they only found wicker baskets and scarecrows. As fog rolled in, however, some of the scarecrows came to life, the shadows peeled themselves off of the trees. They tried to smother the Doubley-Doos, drawing their breath from them and leaving them feeling weak and shaky. With those defeated, however, nothing else presented itself. Just whispers and chittering on the distance.

They followed up with Talbot to inform him of what they’d found, but Dormin was unsettled when Talbot turned to him mid-conversation and said, “Why did you push her away?” No one else seemed to hear this or notice it. When Dormin pressed him, he seemed genuinely confused as to what Dormin was referring.

Tired, distressed, and on edge, the party returned to their rooms to try to get some sleep. Shump briefly thought he saw the goblin figure that had been destroyed by the priests of Pelor on his nightstand, but when he turned back it was gone. As Shelby bedded down for the night, she heard someone whisper in her ear just as she drifted to sleep, “You failed him, you know.”

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I love Dungeons and Dragons, but there are specific things in it that I find lacking. They feel a bit tacked on. I’m always looking for ways to gently tweak the existing rules so that they can codify something that I feel should be codified, or smooth something out that feels a bit clunky.

When Jaz created Dormin, they wanted him to have narcolepsy — the name was actually a tweak of the Spanish word “dormir”, meaning “to sleep.” This was not meant to be a joke, but something that Jaz wanted to explore with their character in game. And so I treated it seriously. I didn’t have any mechanics for it — there isn’t anything like that in 5e — so I tried to just keep in mind that if their character experienced a particularly traumatic or stressful event, roll a CON save or fall asleep.

Now, anyone familiar with narcolepsy knows that’s not actually a good understanding of it, nor is it a particularly well-thought out implementation of mechanics, even if that was how narcolepsy worked. So I went fishing around on the internet for disability mechanics. I found a wonderful tumblr post where someone took a long list of disabilities and medical conditions and mapped them to existing D&D 5e mechanics. They act sort of similar to feats — an optional mechanic that can be added to your character and employed when appropriate. I messaged Jaz about it to see if they were comfortable employing these mechanics going forward, and they thought it was a great idea.

That got me thinking about some other mechanics in D&D that seem…tacked on at best. Semi-recently, my character in our ongoing Curse of Strahd game was killed. He was brought back with a quick Revivify, and my DM rolled on the Indefinite Madness Table to see what lingering effect the experience would have on my character. My character is now “paranoid,” and has disadvantage on CHA and WIS checks.

I was stoked for the opportunity to explore how my character would deal with something so traumatic as a second near-death experience, but besides the disadvantage on checks…the description was really vague. I’m sure that was intentional, with the idea to leave me the freedom to choose how to role play it, but…it was TOO vague. What is my character paranoid about? Is it that my friends are out to get me? Is it that they’re secretly my enemies, or just that they don’t like me? Or is it something outside of our group, like a fear or sense that we’re being watched or followed? Is the paranoia constant, or is it something that comes and goes? Or is it triggered by stress or further trauma?

It’s such a cool idea in concept, but in execution, it’s a bit exhausting because I’m not given an guidelines beyond a few skill checks. The rest of the time…I’m on my own figuring out how often and how much it affects me.

The “D&D Disability Mechanics” post doesn’t have a general “paranoia” entry, but that is listed as one of the possible afflictions of schizophrenia:

“paranoia: at the end of each short rest, make a wisdom saving throw. on a fail, the hero must behave in accordance with being paranoid and suspicious. the hero cannot be surprised and has disadvantage on wisdom and charisma saving throws.”

d&d disability mechanics

That’s much better because it 1) tells me that the affliction isn’t constant but comes and goes, 2) tells me how often I should roll to see whether I’m afflicted, and 3) sets out not only the specific skill check conditions, but also provides a tad more insight into how I should act. Granted, it’s not much more, but “paranoid and suspicious — hero cannot be surprised” is way more to work with than “I dunno…you’re paranoid. Figure it out.”

That got me thinking about the madness table in general. The concept has a pulpy, cosmic-horror-esque appeal to me, but D&D’s execution is lackluster. One of my favorite video games, which I’ve written about before, is the GameCube survival horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. It was incredibly cool how it turned the earth-shattering effect that Lovecraft’s monsters had on his protagonists into a game mechanic.

In short, you had two health meters — an HP meter, and a Sanity meter. As you experienced horrific events — visions, monsters, etc. — your sanity would go down. The lower it got, the more the visions increased.

The REALLY cool thing was the execution of these “hallucinations.” Sometimes, you’d enter a room where the controls were reversed. Sometimes, you’d enter a room full of monsters and immediately get attacked. Sometimes, cockroaches would crawl along the inside of the screen. Sometimes, the game would get extremely meta — error messages popped up saying the controller was unplugged, or saying that instead of saving your file, you were deleting it from the memory card.

These events were always triggered when you changed environments — either going to a new screen, entering a new room, or something similar — and they weren’t lasting or permanent. The game screen would always flash white and reset you where you last were before the hallucination started. But they added to the experience of paranoia and not being able to trust what you see.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something similar in D&D. I looked around a bit and found where someone homebrewed some sanity mechanics that were inspired by the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG. I loved it, so I decided to take it and run with it.

I should note that these mechanics aren’t something that I would want to incorporate all the time. They’d be too cumbersome to try to constantly track that on top of everything else. But for a short mini-arc? That could be fun.

It was a lot of fun having everyone write down their Sanity Points total at the top of the paper, but not tell them what the number meant or why it was relevant. I held back that info 1) to mess with them, and 2) to see if they’d figure it out. Jaz was the only one that eventually did. After failing a WIS saving throw after seeing shadows moving in the orchard, they incredulously asked if we’d suddenly started playing Call of Cthulhu, which kinda gave me the giggles for a bit.

There actually IS a reason this stuff is happening. It’s not just an excuse to trot out new mechanics and mess with everyone. I don’t have the whole thing mapped out beat for beat or anything, but I know the why and how. I don’t want to railroad the players through the adventure, so I’m trying to anticipate some of the paths they might pursue in my prep. And I actually have a guest player that will probably be joining us for the next session. He’s a friend that also plays in our Strahd game, and I thought he might enjoy popping in for a session, so he’s fleshing out an NPC the players have already met.

But what is going on here? Will our heroes get to the bottom of this spookiness? I guess we’ll find out next time.

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