Thoughts on B6 - The Veiled Society

Hooded figures and dark corners, oh my!

The Veiled Society is, for its time, an ambitious and innovative adventure, presenting the characters with a series of set events that accompany a choose-your-own-adventure game. It has an urban setting, but also includes two half-dungeons, if such a term is to be used for these types of underground locales (a series of recently dug tunnels and the secret hideout of the Society). But it has also been described as a dull and uninspiring adventure, one that relies too much on key events to move the adventure forwards. Taken to the extreme, it can lead to a fairly linear game, where the characters are forced to experience a chain of events, without being able to change the course of the story. Whatever the case, The Veiled Society offers a few interesting ideas that a DM can work with to make the adventure shine.

My group seems to have enjoyed this module (at least, none of them has since made any complaints about it); most of the characters made it all the way through to the end, even though the first party was nearly decimated. In total, we had four character deaths, but that never deterred the players from venturing forth and unfolding the conspiracy behind the murder mystery. I can also say that there were moments that felt kinda disappointing. Overall, I have mixed opinions about this module that I share below.

1. The introductory scene helped setting the mood and the situation in the city, by having all three factions come into conflict from the very beginning. In my campaign, Coruvon has two supposedly rivalling factions, the City Garrison and the Red Lanterns, with the third (the Brotherhood of the Writhing Arm) being a secretive cult aimed at bringing a certain Old God back. While it shows a sample of what power struggles there are in the city, the introductory scene runs the risk of not engaging the characters. My group, being the cynical and impartial lot, decided to keep their distance from the event, at least inquiring the folk around to learn more about the opposing groups. Another party could potentially ignore the whole conflict altogether.

2. While the hook that lead the characters to the underground tunnels and, subsequently, to the location of the murdered woman (in my case, she was a high-ranking official of the city garrison) would classify as your typical introduction, sort of "monsters at the cellar" hook, it was placed in such a way that felt seamless to the rest of the particular scene. Players were exploring the underground tunnels out of curiosity, and not because they were forced to, and collected the pieces of information from almost all keyed locations (the slave business running in the shadows of the city, the Brotherhood's sinister plan of digging tunnels under specific buildings). A simple errand to investigate the "demons" under the poor lady's cellar turning into an exploration through the dark tunnels under the city and the discovery of a murdered person was certainly a surprise for the party. What I really liked in this section was its open-endedness, with tunnels branching out to unknown areas, left to the DM to insert a dungeon of their own making. This section I believe was one of the strongest in the module.

3. On the other hand, while the riot scene was chaotic (as intended), it had stuff I deemed unnecessary or maybe a bit too complicated. Had it been a scene were the opponents of the Red Lights decided to take matters into their own hands and thus raising an uproar against them and their city garrison allies, only for the revolt to die out a few days later, it would be understandable. But the scope of this scene stretches far beyond a mere riot being quickly suppressed. The characters are charged into commanding a restless crowd to clash with the city garrison, and details are given as to how to run such a battle. There's plenty of stuff going on and it can get confusing to implement them in-game. 1st-level characters facing a dirty-fighting 3rd-level thug? That's suicidal an action, let alone having a single character fighting that brute. Getting in the middle of the riot? My group wanted to stay away from any trouble, so they tried their best to keep their distance. At least, they decided to go after the orator but, unlike what the book proposes, they befriended him and he instead offered them the job to kill or capture the statesman from the next scene (that was my twist to link this to the next scene, since the early meetings with members from both factions turned sour - they were weak enough, anyway). It is also stated in the book that the Duke (in our case, the city commander) gathers hundreds of troops against the rioters, slaughtering anyone who looks suspicious or is rumoured to have been involved in the upheaval.  It would be very interesting to see the characters lead a mob against the town's rulers, but this would turn the whole campaign on its head. I agree it would still make for a great adventure, but had the renegade characters managed to plunge this land into turmoil, DMs would have to ditch this module and design something new.

4. After the characters help the Brotherhood of the Writhing Arm (the Veiled Society of my campaign) dealing with the statesman and his troupe of bodyguards, they are told to wait a few days before the Brotherhood contacts them again. But then the book jumps to the Chase event, where the Brotherhood inexplicably wants the characters out of the picture. I can see the reasoning had the characters opted instead to help the statesman and protect him from the Brotherhood's ambush, but it seems the designer forgot to develop the story where they side with the other faction. It is only stated that members of the Brotherhood identify the party as the investigators of the earlier murder and their leaders order an ambush. To fill this gap of inconsistency, I ruled out that the party was framed for the disappearance of the afore-mentioned statesman, and when the orator (the party's new friend) wished to warn them of such treachery, he was assassinated. The characters just happened to be moments after the orator was shot to death so this "ambush" was unplanned.

5. The chase scene was likewise poorly designed. The characters weren't surprised by the crossbowman's attack and won initiative, so they closed in on him; as a result, the "ambusher" was trapped and couldn't escape, thus triggering the next scene. I decided to let the bowmen approach the scene, since they heard commotion but couldn't see their fellow ambusher running for his life. They actually triggered the chase action scene. In addition, certain spells could turn the whole scene redundant. The party's magic-user cast her sleep spell on the bowmen, rendering all but one unconscious, due to her rolling badly. If this wasn't the case though, and the magic-user had rolled well enough to send all of the bowmen into torpor, there wouldn't be the need for a chase. As I anticipated such an occurrence, I used the note found in one of the ambushing bodies, that pointed to the Brotherhood's hideout. The party still managed to pick up the note and interrogate the surviving bowman, learning more about the Brotherhood.

Concluding, the Veiled Society can be labelled as a railroad-sandbox hybrid. The set events are meant to happen, and the characters are sort of forced to interact with the subjects presented in each event, but there's enough space to deal with them in a creative way, or try and avoid them (where's the fun in doing that, though?). Each scene is loosely connected with the previous and the next one, giving both the DM and the players the opportunity to go wild and develop their own story. Surely the module suffers from inconsistencies and a weak plot at times, but DMs can accomplish something worthwhile, with a little bit of prep work.