Are your Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate tough enough to face the horrific tortured denizens of a haunted demon house? Do you have the fast fists and wuxia mastery to survive the buzzing demon wasps and leather skinned martial artists of the House of Paper Shadows?
House of Paper Shadows is a soft cover horror wuxia adventure for the free Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate by Bedrock Games. The adventure works well for an ongoing Ogre Gate campaign or, with a few tweaks, as a one-shot adventure. I received a free copy of the adventure to review. Please note that this review contains spoilers!
For an ongoing Ogre Gate campaign, the adventure offers many options. Its eighty-eight pages is packed with setting information on the Society of Leather Shadows, well detailed NPCs, excellent maps and new monsters, techniques, equipment and substances. The adventure even provides a view into the past and offers PCs a way to travel there. The House could be entered more than once and serve as a capstone for an ongoing campaign. Even if you don’t run it as written you can easily lift pages of detail for your own campaign.
The adventure also comes with four pre-generated characters of Qi rank 4. For me, new to Ogre Gate, running the adventure for high Qi rank characters did not work well. I ran a one-shot adventure and I struggled. Qi rank 4 characters are highly skilled and possess many kung fu techniques. The NPCs also have many techniques to sort through. With counters interrupting many attacks, I easily lost the thread of initiative. And I could not easily challenge the PCs.
However, if you have Ogre Gate GMing experience, this won’t be a problem for you. When I rerun this adventure I have a plan to make it easier. And I do want to run it again. The adventure overflows with horror, kung fu battles, haunted house terrors, and even time travel.
For a one-shot, I would have players create brand new characters and have the Southern River Sect (Ogre Gate page 196) hire them to steal fruit from each of the three Orchard Halls in the House and recover Jingyi’s hair brush from the studio (which is guarded by one or two Society of Leather Shadows agents). The fruit goes to the Sect while the hair brush needs to be delivered to Jingyi in the Phoenix Cave.
The focus will be on the entrance to the House and rooms 11-14 and 54. The PCs will face some wasps and bees and have a kung fu fight with the agents. They will have to move quickly to accomplish their mission and get out before rousing more powerful guards. When they move to the cave to deliver the brush, they face the Gui of Qixia and Gao, terrifying ghosts who guard the entrance. Jingyi is grateful and tries to seduce one of the PCs. She could also insist they return to the House and try to rescue Guanyu, her servant. And the mystery of how are the Sect and Jingyi are connected remains.
The House of Paper Shadows overflows with useful content and horrific scares. If you are new to Ogre Gate you could easily run a few rooms as a one-shot or two-shot to try out the game and scare your players with wasps, skinned martial artists, and Jingyi the Spider Demon. If you have an ongoing campaign you can pull multiple pieces out, have your PCs visit the House several times, and/or run the adventure as a capstone to a long campaign. Those who visit the House will be haunted by the memories and scars of the experience. If they survive.
This article was contributed by Charles Dunwoody as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. Please note that Charles is a participant in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to DriveThruRPG. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
House of Paper Shadows is a soft cover horror wuxia adventure for the free Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate by Bedrock Games. The adventure works well for an ongoing Ogre Gate campaign or, with a few tweaks, as a one-shot adventure. I received a free copy of the adventure to review. Please note that this review contains spoilers!
For an ongoing Ogre Gate campaign, the adventure offers many options. Its eighty-eight pages is packed with setting information on the Society of Leather Shadows, well detailed NPCs, excellent maps and new monsters, techniques, equipment and substances. The adventure even provides a view into the past and offers PCs a way to travel there. The House could be entered more than once and serve as a capstone for an ongoing campaign. Even if you don’t run it as written you can easily lift pages of detail for your own campaign.
The adventure also comes with four pre-generated characters of Qi rank 4. For me, new to Ogre Gate, running the adventure for high Qi rank characters did not work well. I ran a one-shot adventure and I struggled. Qi rank 4 characters are highly skilled and possess many kung fu techniques. The NPCs also have many techniques to sort through. With counters interrupting many attacks, I easily lost the thread of initiative. And I could not easily challenge the PCs.
However, if you have Ogre Gate GMing experience, this won’t be a problem for you. When I rerun this adventure I have a plan to make it easier. And I do want to run it again. The adventure overflows with horror, kung fu battles, haunted house terrors, and even time travel.
For a one-shot, I would have players create brand new characters and have the Southern River Sect (Ogre Gate page 196) hire them to steal fruit from each of the three Orchard Halls in the House and recover Jingyi’s hair brush from the studio (which is guarded by one or two Society of Leather Shadows agents). The fruit goes to the Sect while the hair brush needs to be delivered to Jingyi in the Phoenix Cave.
The focus will be on the entrance to the House and rooms 11-14 and 54. The PCs will face some wasps and bees and have a kung fu fight with the agents. They will have to move quickly to accomplish their mission and get out before rousing more powerful guards. When they move to the cave to deliver the brush, they face the Gui of Qixia and Gao, terrifying ghosts who guard the entrance. Jingyi is grateful and tries to seduce one of the PCs. She could also insist they return to the House and try to rescue Guanyu, her servant. And the mystery of how are the Sect and Jingyi are connected remains.
The House of Paper Shadows overflows with useful content and horrific scares. If you are new to Ogre Gate you could easily run a few rooms as a one-shot or two-shot to try out the game and scare your players with wasps, skinned martial artists, and Jingyi the Spider Demon. If you have an ongoing campaign you can pull multiple pieces out, have your PCs visit the House several times, and/or run the adventure as a capstone to a long campaign. Those who visit the House will be haunted by the memories and scars of the experience. If they survive.
This article was contributed by Charles Dunwoody as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. Please note that Charles is a participant in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to DriveThruRPG. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
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