Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Candlekeep: Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme

I'm only about six chapters into Candlekeep Mysteries, but I wanted to throw out a special mention of chapter 5: Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme.

I love this one.  It feels like a Doctor Who episode (specifically, "Midnight").  The adventure features a small cast of characters, confined to a basement beneath Candlekeep.  The party and the NPCs are all afflicted with a killer earworm.  Everyone gets the same nursery rhyme stuck in their heads, and they self-quarantine so it doesn't spread.  

It's the kind of story where things just seem a little off at first, only for the weirdness to escalate to disturbing levels.  Like Midnight, it's the type of story a TV series might pick when they need a low budget episode to flesh out the season, only to find it becomes one of the most beloved episodes of the series.

Unfortunately, it needs the right kind of DM to pull it off, and maybe the right kind of group to enjoy it.  Hack-and-slashers need not apply.  This is a story that requires the proper use of tension, and players who enjoy investigation.  

Candlekeep Mysteries has already proven worth the money, and I'm not even a third of the way through it.  I hope it has at least a couple more stories of this quality.

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