Family Tegel Manor Game, Session 2
Ran another session of our family Tegel Manor game.
Session Recap
The group keeps trying to reach the western tower, but don't quite seem to get there. They head south through some servant rooms, finding one of the maid bedrooms. They dig up a fancy silver goblet from a chest, but the room is, unsurprisingly, very haunted and starts to breathe heavily, the walls bulging inwards and threatening to crush the adventurers. Jokel orders the ghosts to calm down, but even his extremely loud voice can't be heard over the head-splitting noise of the heavy breathing and creaking of the walls.
So Polly takes Kala's megaphone and uses it to direct the ghosts in some calm breathing exercises (a skill she had to develop after years of dealing with hyperactive children), and while the whole process gives her a horrible migraine (and she has to suffer 1 out of her 3 hits), it does work and the room calms down, allowing the party to leave.
In the butler's bedchamber they find a strange pool of ectoplasm with treasure inside it, and a dismembered rotten hand scrambling around trying to get to the treasure without touching the pool. Jokel is compelled to approach the pool, which swipes at him with an ectoplasmic tentacle, however Kala's signature spell of making people very bendy saves him, as he simply springs away from the hit and can safely go back. The hand meanwhile tries to pull off one of Polly's boots which the screaming Jokel stops by crushing the appendage with his cane.
Continuing down a singing hallway the group find a curious sight of a bunch of zombies in a mead hall being slowly wrapped in spiderwebs by a group of large (though not huge) spiders. Deciding this was none of their business they head south to try and find a way into the western tower.
After going through another portrait gallery (which this time nobody wants to deal with. Reasonable) they find a nobleman's chamber and see a spectral hunt happening in place. Jokel, for all his numerous shortcomings, is very keen eyed and it allows him to find a magical riding armor, covered by an invisible enchantment.
Observations
Ok so while the terseness of the original Tegel Manor is very emblematic of the Judge's Guild house style, it can be a bit hard to figure out what is where, and what is going on especially with all the portraits, the numerous traps and other features that only exist on the map, but not the key, and so on.
Turns out, there is in fact a solution to that, which is the revised version of Tegel Manor (again by JG themselves) which helpfully lists where each Rump portrait is located next to the portrait itself, and also provides a bit of context about the rooms. Not a lot, mind you, but it's all I need to just run this at the table. The font used in this version is smaller and a bit harder to read, but not by much.
These are only 1 hour long sessions, so not much happens in them, and that is okay. The point of this is to just have a game for the kid, after all, and she's clearly having fun messing around with this spooky mansion. And boy is it spooky, goddamn every second room or hallway is haunted as all hell!