Stopover at the Shelterwood Inn - Play Review
Time for another Liminal Horror session! I'm down to 3 players so back to the horror zone. Everyone had a good time with The Chair so I prepared Stopover at the Shelterwood Inn, the free Liminal Horror introductory adventure that I got in PDF on Free RPG day.
What is this?
Stopover at the Shelterwood Inn is a 24 page statement sized zine prepared by Josh Domanski and Goblin Archives. Illustrations by Zach Hazard Vaupen, layout & design by Josh Domanski and published by Space Penguin.
As a starter module Shelterwood contains an introduction to Liminal Horror and how to use this book. There's guidance on using this adventure as a one shot, starting a campaign, integrating it into a current campaign and a suggestion for using Documentary Mode which assumes the characters are trying to document the paranormal. All of this seems solid and takes up one spread.
The adventure itself begins with players stuck in the area of the Shelterwood Inn after they crash their car. Ahead is the flickering neon of a motel sign, The Shelterwood Inn. The players are drawn to the Inn and the gas station/mechanic that shares this rest stop.
When the players arrive, they find a mostly empty parking lot with a couple of cars parked in front of rooms and a sheriff's cruiser parked out front of the motel lobby. The lights are on in only the lobby but the door is locked despite conversation audible over the rain. Once let in the the players meet three people, a guest at the bar, a priest mopping up a spill and the owner of the Inn. Shortly thereafter the sheriff enters the lobby giving us the full cast. We're off.
Art is limited, focusing on portraits for the four NPCs, heavily pixelated gray-scale photos and a delightful ASCII map of the location. As a starter adventure this includes a set of pregenerated PCs with art as well. What's here fits the mood and is evocative.
At the table
Again, we played in Foundry VTT. Two of the players rolled up new characters and the third kept his character from The Chair. I played it straight out of the book with the crew's van drifting off the road and getting mired in the mud. Just ahead they can see the red light of neon ahead.
I'd say my players took a very passive approach overall. Despite the weirdos in the lobby and the strange cutoff conversation with the sheriff the players focused on booking a room for the night. They spoke briefly with the owner, were brought to their hotel room and promptly locked inside. This made them slightly nervous especially. Finding the external line cut and only the lobby available didn't help. They called in, got room service and "the correct key." Even after being served undercooked food and locked inside again they were only mildly concerned but tension was ratcheting up.
The seven stage escalation chart, the Doom Clock, was the MVP here. Passive players needed a clear path forward and the Doom Clock provided that. I moved from 0 to 1 to 4 at a good clip. The characters mostly stayed in their hotel room and hunkered down. The weirdness was pondered while watching Law & Order reruns. But Doom 4 got them moving when a bunch of shadowy figures exited the culvert outside their bathroom window. Shortly after gunshots from the motel lobby echoed across the courtyard.
The players slid out the window and started exploring the gas station, the mechanic's and the culvert. They meet the lackey's of the main danger, the Toys. These mold infested humans are zombie-like and unkillable. Tension moves up a ratchet and a fire is lit under the players.
Due to the slow speed the party is moving, the four NPCs in the lobby have all been assimilated by Mister Roosevelt into Toys. This avatar of childhood fear is never revealed to my players but they do see the infected forms of the four people they met in the lobby when they crawl down the drain pipe to the cistern.
After a brief conflict they flee to the gas station and are surrounded. Every escape is stymied: The tow truck won't start, their van is stuck, the road is quiet. They concoct a plan to blow up the gas pumps and run away. Things go surprisingly well and some critical successes come in clutch! One player runs in to grab the keys to the police cruiser off the sheriff after he is knocked flat by the gas pump explosion. A true moment of brilliance as that was the one working escape method.
The three of them pile into the cruiser, the only working car, and tear off into the night. Leaving the Shelterwood Inn behind.
Final thoughts
This was super fun to run and even worked well with a pretty passive crew of players. One of character runs a paranormal Youtube channel but it still took a gunfight to push the players out of the hotel. But it did get them out of the hotel. The Doom Clock was a great tool to keep things moving.
None of the history of this adventure really came to the fore: fear avatar Mister Roosevelt, the dead motel owners and guests, the fact that the 4 NPCs are actually agents of the paranormal-containing Bureau. It didn't matter, it was still fun! More nosy PCs would have found this stuff out but it works without.
As it stands this played like a zombie movie and that's not a bad thing. I'd say the Documentary Mode framing would be a great way to push players to get more involved, earlier.