The Waking of Willowby Hall is an adventure from Ben Milton of Questing Beast, Maze Rats, Knave, and more. He has the most famous hands in the hobby.
He gracious did an interview here about a year ago (Part I and Part II).
I backed this one during the last ZineQuest and I’m thrilled that I did.
I’ve run this one for younger players almost all the way through (three out of four one-hour sessions complete) over on Outschool, where I’m running all sorts of adventure scenarios for youngsters.
Basically, some thieving adventurers stole a golden goose from a giant. Exhausted and desperate, they reached the crumbling carcass of Willowby Hall, an abandoned estate with an evil reputation. They hid themselves inside, hoping against hope for rescue as the giant rages outside, battering the walls with his bell, its ringing shaking the foundations. The players, of course, are caught in the crossfire.
What a blast.
Some highlights:
- Kids used a couch to ram a rotting wall into the secret grotto area.
- The kids used the “Liquid Childhood” potion to shrink the Death Knight. I gave him a super deep voice which that went comically high once he was 1/3 his regular size.
- The players snuck up on the giant who was busy cooking a cow he stole from them. They got him good with Sleeping Powder and tied him up. Kuddos to them for enacting such a bold and detailed plan.
- One of the players drank the “Gift of Worm” potion and was then chopped into four 10′ worms. A small army of worms! The kids could not stop giggling at the mental picture.
Here are some screenshots of how I run the game (diceless, as with all my Outschool games now).
The layout gets an A. The adventure concept gets an A. The amount of detail for each room with it’s bullet-point format gets an A.
Go buy it for an easy-access adventure.
