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The Bedtime Man by Jason Miscia (@MuppetofaMiscia)
A dark adventure in the Domains of Dread or anywhere dark adventures may occur for 4 level 3-5 characters. A haunting mystery told beautifully with tension orchestrated superbly!
Synopsis
The Campaign Setting, Ravenloft or anywhere “looking for a dark adventure”, Mood, “Subtle dread. Fear of being hunted. Something is watching you” and Content Warnings, ‘Child death, kidnapping” are all included right off the bat to give you a good impression of what you’re in for.
Children are going missing and it’s starting to spread. No one can seem to identify the culprit/s as the descriptions are disparate save for the name and the warning. “Watch out for the Bedtime Man.”
Adventure Hook
There is a single hook to this rather focused adventure, the party have been sought out to finally try to put a stop to the elusive Bedtime Man, with the the addition of characters having relatives who have been taken if more emotional weight is in order.
Adventure Background
An Oni and its summoned Skulks are terrifying the town, but one child knows the truth though they are unfortunately dead. The only one being trusted with finding the Bedtime man isn’t who they appear to be...
Characters
The dramatis personae includes 5 NPCs, each with their pronouns, their trade and/ ore relation, the reference for the statblock to use to them and their age, including Captain of the Town Watch, the Herbalist his spouse, their adopted daughter, the Innkeep and the Trapper.
Chapter 1 – Invisible Friends
Approaching Schlaflos
A brief description of the town and a short but sweet box text set the foreboding and lonesome tone nicely.
The party are introduced to a number of the players at the Inn with a bullet points and checks covering the necessary information and difficulties for this initial encounter effectively. The manner in which they are set out make particularly well for referencing for prep and in play.
Schlaflos Orphanage
A truly unnerving scene investigating invisible friends and getting more than necessary bargained for. Again, the information is provided simply and effectively. There is something truly unnerving about screaming children and fighting so close to them.
Developments
However they party see our the night, everything seems resolved. That is until the Watch Captain comes to them, hollow from the tragedy at his home, painfully well described in Miscia’s boxtext.
Chapter 2 – The First Victim
The Vadoma Homestead
The party gather information, leading them to an abandoned house, thought by the locals to be haunted, in which the first child went missing.
Abandoned Homestead
If the fear the locals and the evocative boxtext don’t give your party pause, being attacked by various swarms the moment the door opens just might. This is one of numerous examples of Miscia’s knowledge of and adept handling of pace and tension throughout this adventure.
Inside the party find that the house is deserving of its reputation as haunted, but aside from the welcoming committee, it needn’t be a place then to fear, if they can handle interacting with a friendly ghost. The amount of information they can gather being dependent on letting the lost child tell its story, finally with someone to believe them.
Development
Getting to where they need to go next all depends on who the party has with them or who they can ask, but they have a strong lead.
Chapter 3 – Watch Out for the Bedtime Man
Ebel Homestead
Easy to get in, but what will the party find and where’s that ominous laughter coming from? Again, the tension is handled with aplomb and the scene before the party is dependent on their previous actions.
Hidden Lair
So much is conveyed in so few words to set the scene for the Boss Battle with the Oni with some cool additions befitting the persona they had been playing, as well as great advice on how to make the encounter easier or more difficult with ease
Development
There are some nice magic weapons to be and different consequences depending on how you handled your relationship with various NPCs.
Conclusion
Ending A is the happy one with the payment, another cool magic item and making some useful lifelong friends.
Ending B you still get paid and you rescue the child, possibly much more worse off, and the family are left to their reunion and grief.
This is an incredibly well-crafted and written adventure with tension and pacing orchestrated beautifully! The beats seem perfect for ratcheting up the tension, fake outs and truly shocking moments all told with such brief, yet eliciting boxtext and descriptions. The ability to convey so much emotion and dread with so few words is seriously impressive.
The adventure makes use of a range of skills and situations, allowing each player a moment to shine, which is so important in a one shot like this.
I’m seriously blown away, but if I had to be super critical, some further editing could have improved the odd typo and, although the majority of us using DMs Guild will be familiar with the abbreviations referenced after creatures and items are mentioned, it is standard practice and makes things easier for newer DMs. But these are mere quibbles in the face of what is a truly a wonderfully wrought adventure.
If you want a relatively short one shot that has genuine horror, emotion and expert timing, you can’t do much better than The Bedtime Man.
I reached out to Jason Miscia with a few questions about the adventure and his other works:
CoS: The two elements at the heart of this story; something unknowable and monstrous stealing away children and the difficulties of children not knowing what to believe and/ or not being believed are both visceral ideas that hit home, pinpointing some of the greatest fears of adults and children respectively. What inspired this tale of horror and dread?
JM: The Bedtime Man is a combination of two things. The first is the basic skeleton of the plot was part of a one-shot I ran for my wife, Lisa. When I signed up for the Workshop, I already knew I wanted to take that a develop it into something more. The second is the Bedtime Man itself. That name is courtesy of my older daughter doing something really creepy when she was around 4 years old. She told mom (my lovely wife) that the Bedtime Man came and visited her at bedtime. Lisa asked where the Bedtime Man was and our daughter had a brief conversation with the other side of the room and announced he was in the closet. My wife spent the rest of the evening extremely freaked out. When I wrote the adventure, I realized this was a great villain and I knew exactly what the Bedtime Man would be.
CoS: I noticed some interesting use of language in the story with the town Schlaflos being the German for word for sleepless (apropos as I was writing the review during a bout of insomnia), the Vadoma family share their name with a semi-mythical people in Zambabwean folklore known for being hard to find, living among the trees and being magical, and Ebel, the surname of the Trapper/ Oni is the name of a watch company. Have these words been chosen for their allusions to elements of story and, if so, how do you go about including these words and still have them seem as natural with the setting as they do here?
JM: Schlaflos was absolutely meant to be name connected to the story. I like to play around with names and think that they can offer lots of potential with character creation. The NPC names, actually, were a happy coincidence. I wanted to keep a similar feel with the town and the honestly just felt right. Lots of times, I’ll just hit Google and look for names in different cultures and pick what seems to fit the character or place I’m trying to build.
CoS: The tension and pacing throughout the adventure are orchestrated beautifully! The beats seem perfect for ratcheting up the tension, fake outs and truly shocking moments all told with such brief, yet eliciting boxtext and descriptions. How has your writing background helped you with this and do you have any particular authors or movies that inspire you and/ or this adventure.
JM: I’ve been writing on and off for many years, but I actually went to school for theatre. I’ve dabbled in playwriting with very mixed results. I think things like beats and pacing are pretty important whether it’s fiction, plays, or ttrpg modules. As far as horror is concerned, I’m honestly kind of picky. I tend to have little interest in slasher stuff and nonstop jump scares. But I love gothic, dread themed stuff. Frankenstein is a book that has stayed with me. Neil Gaiman has lots of work that is beautifully terrifying. And folklore itself it a goldmine.
CoS: I believe this was your first adventure, which is frankly ridiculous considering its quality. What was your experience like with the RPG Writer Workshop? How did it differ from your previous writing and supplements?
JM: This was absolutely my first adventure. My previous Guild offerings were subclasses. I actually want to go back and develop those a bit more. When I heard about the Workshop, I’d already become a huge fan of the Uncaged project Ashley Warren started. It was one of the things that made me get back into writing and the Workshop was something I needed to be involved in. I’m actually finishing up my next one-shot, Knights of the Hours, with the winter session of the Workshop. I highly suggest it to both new writers and writers who want a really great support system.
CoS: Looking at your more recent release, Ravenloft Gazetteer: Verbrek, your love of Ravenloft shines through in a great deal of tour work. What was it like going from your own work and first adventure to collaborating with the bad boy of the DMs Guild, Oliver Clegg, on such a prodigious supplement?
JM: 5) I think it’s pretty clear Ravenloft is one of my favorite settings. When Oliver started publishing his Gazetteer project, I snagged the first portion of Darkon and kept going. I love that his goal has been to update this great setting while addressing that there are things in the earlier versions that are problematic/downright cringe-worthy. There’re some domains that are just crap, but most of them have great potential. Ravenloft is more than Barovia. When Oliver started looking for other writers to help, I pitched Verbrek. Because I’m a sucker for a classic monster and I love lycanthropes. I quite like working with Oliver and he absolutely knows his stuff. It looks like I’ll get to dive back into the Ravenloft Gazetteer for 2020 and I’m very excited about it! It’s a very different vibe from Verbrek.
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