Black Mask of the Shadow Serpent is a Shadowdark RPG adventure by Fenris-77 who goes by Adam Laforet in meatspace. Adam sent a PDF of his adventure to me for possible review. One delightful read later and I asked for a more in depth interview instead and here we are.
Adam wrote the adventure as part of the Weird Tales Shadowdark Game Jam. Shadowdark player characters of levels five to seven go in search of wonderous golden masks with a scrap of a map taken from a dead man.
Charlie Dunwoody (CD): Adam, thanks for sending me your adventure and for talking about it with me and for being a Community Supporter of EN World. Why did it have to be snakes? I find it interesting that the three covers you took inspiration from didn't feature snakes. What was your inspiration to have an adventure centered around snakes and was it always snakes or did the adventure mutate from something else first like some monstrous serpent shedding its skin as it grows in power?
Fenris-77 (F7): I'm going to blame this entirely on Indiana Jones. It started with the House of the Golden Masks cover, which made me immediately think 'temple' and then the Ooze cover, which made me think 'jungle'. As a child of the 80's the imagery of Indiana Jones is deeply embedded in my memory banks. The two previous ideas mutated into 'jungle temple', at which point Indy just kind of took over and filled in a lot of the blanks. Even the pressure cooker theme is at least in some part a love letter to the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once I had 'jungle temple' my pulp sensibilities made the easy leap to mad scientists in the jungle and the whole rough outline of Black Mask had taken shape. At the point I just leaned hard into the snake thing to see how far I could take it in an interesting way.
CD: How did you envision GMs using the serpents? As straight monsters, perhaps something a bit more horror focused, or something else?
F7: I tried to give GMs a couple of different possible approaches on the snakes thing. The base approach is the Indiana Jones "why did it have to be snakes" approach where you play them pretty straight as monsters with just a hint of snake phobia around the edges. However, you also have the alchemy and mutation angle, which you can hack about with for a more horror/weird science sort of approach. The last stop on the creepy train is to lean into the amorphous snake goddess and head right for full on Horror. Shadowdark has some strong tools in its pacing and torch timer to support more horror themed play, and I wanted to provide options in that direction. Personally, I'd start off pretty straight to begin with and then start ramping up the weird and horrific once the players enter the Temple Below (which where some of the other horror elements are anyway).
CD: What GMing advice would you suggest for GMs running your adventure?
F7: I'd suggest humming Under Pressure by Queen constantly. This adventure works best when all the various countdowns are pushing the players hard to make difficult decisions. So, for example, you take the Viperian reinforcements arriving topside and make sure the players know they're there and coming down. Don't just leave them sitting around having a picnic and waiting to be a gotcha when they party gets back up top. In the temple below the encounter table goes up a notch and the GM has wandering Ooze Zombies that they can freehand to keep the party on its toes. Once the players unlock the puzzle and (perhaps) start the final countdown it should all get very sticky, very fast. A caveat, at least one I follow, is that the faster I'm asking the players to think, the more generous I probably need to be giving their clever ideas full weight.
CD: The idea of an RPG jam (with some proceeds going to charity) based on Weird Tales covers is amazing. How did you discover the jam and what made you decide to join in the process of creating this adventure?
F7: I spend, ahem, rather a lot of time on Discord. The jam was announced on the Arcane Library (Shadowdark) Discord and I thought it was cool idea. I has also just started to teach myself how to use Affinity Publisher and the jam seemed like a good excuse to grow some skills on a fun project. I heard about the jam really late though, so instead of the month that I would have had, I actually only had three days to get the project from concept to layout, which was a challenge. One of the best parts was how mutually supportive and engaged a lot of the designers were on the Discord. A lot of the first jam participants went on to participate in a Knave game jam, and we ended up spinning off our own little Discord for mutual design help and appreciation. It's been a warm and inviting group of folks to spend online time with: The Jammers on Discord.
CD: You have excellent maps and layout along with a succinct and engaging writing style. Any insights into the design process itself? What was the most challenging part of creating this adventure for publication?
F7: In this case it was the layout and maps, especially because of the time crunch. Sometimes the writing process itself is the manky bit, but Black Mask almost wrote itself (thank goodness). Good layout is about getting a lot of little details correct: from typeface, to font, to grid layouts, to, well, you get the idea. There are a lot of balls in the air and it can seem overwhelming to someone new to that end of the game. One of the reasons I remastered Black Mask was to fix a lot of the wobbly bits from the jam release with a significantly more robust skill set on my part. The maps were done on Dungeon Scrawl, which is a great free mapping program with minimal cognitive overhead for the new user. On the writing end I write what seems like fun at the time. In the last couple of months I've also written a Knave adventure, an historical-ish adventure set in Akira Kurosawa's samurai Japan, and I've started in on a Monster of the Week project. I'm very much a magpie attracted to whatever is currently shiny.
CD: Vac Suits and Duct Tape is your next RPG project coming soon to Drivethrurpg. Maybe we can talk more about it soon, but for now what is the coolest thing or your favorite part of VSaDT?
F7: To pick one thing to start I need to give a shoutout to the artist I worked with, BrotherFel (they're on Instagram). They went way, way, above and beyond on the art side and I couldn't possibly be happier, or luckier, that my first bought art was such a source of awesome sauce.
CD: Anything else you would like to share with the readers of EN World?
F7: Nothing in particular. ENWorld is a great community and they should keep on playing games and being awesome. Well, perhaps this – if you think you want to write and design, just go ahead and do it. It's worth finding out if it’s something you're going to love.
Charlie Dunwoody participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and the Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Noble Knight Games respectively. If you like the articles at EN World please consider supporting the EN World Patreon.
Adam wrote the adventure as part of the Weird Tales Shadowdark Game Jam. Shadowdark player characters of levels five to seven go in search of wonderous golden masks with a scrap of a map taken from a dead man.
Charlie Dunwoody (CD): Adam, thanks for sending me your adventure and for talking about it with me and for being a Community Supporter of EN World. Why did it have to be snakes? I find it interesting that the three covers you took inspiration from didn't feature snakes. What was your inspiration to have an adventure centered around snakes and was it always snakes or did the adventure mutate from something else first like some monstrous serpent shedding its skin as it grows in power?
Fenris-77 (F7): I'm going to blame this entirely on Indiana Jones. It started with the House of the Golden Masks cover, which made me immediately think 'temple' and then the Ooze cover, which made me think 'jungle'. As a child of the 80's the imagery of Indiana Jones is deeply embedded in my memory banks. The two previous ideas mutated into 'jungle temple', at which point Indy just kind of took over and filled in a lot of the blanks. Even the pressure cooker theme is at least in some part a love letter to the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Once I had 'jungle temple' my pulp sensibilities made the easy leap to mad scientists in the jungle and the whole rough outline of Black Mask had taken shape. At the point I just leaned hard into the snake thing to see how far I could take it in an interesting way.
CD: How did you envision GMs using the serpents? As straight monsters, perhaps something a bit more horror focused, or something else?
F7: I tried to give GMs a couple of different possible approaches on the snakes thing. The base approach is the Indiana Jones "why did it have to be snakes" approach where you play them pretty straight as monsters with just a hint of snake phobia around the edges. However, you also have the alchemy and mutation angle, which you can hack about with for a more horror/weird science sort of approach. The last stop on the creepy train is to lean into the amorphous snake goddess and head right for full on Horror. Shadowdark has some strong tools in its pacing and torch timer to support more horror themed play, and I wanted to provide options in that direction. Personally, I'd start off pretty straight to begin with and then start ramping up the weird and horrific once the players enter the Temple Below (which where some of the other horror elements are anyway).
CD: What GMing advice would you suggest for GMs running your adventure?
F7: I'd suggest humming Under Pressure by Queen constantly. This adventure works best when all the various countdowns are pushing the players hard to make difficult decisions. So, for example, you take the Viperian reinforcements arriving topside and make sure the players know they're there and coming down. Don't just leave them sitting around having a picnic and waiting to be a gotcha when they party gets back up top. In the temple below the encounter table goes up a notch and the GM has wandering Ooze Zombies that they can freehand to keep the party on its toes. Once the players unlock the puzzle and (perhaps) start the final countdown it should all get very sticky, very fast. A caveat, at least one I follow, is that the faster I'm asking the players to think, the more generous I probably need to be giving their clever ideas full weight.
CD: The idea of an RPG jam (with some proceeds going to charity) based on Weird Tales covers is amazing. How did you discover the jam and what made you decide to join in the process of creating this adventure?
F7: I spend, ahem, rather a lot of time on Discord. The jam was announced on the Arcane Library (Shadowdark) Discord and I thought it was cool idea. I has also just started to teach myself how to use Affinity Publisher and the jam seemed like a good excuse to grow some skills on a fun project. I heard about the jam really late though, so instead of the month that I would have had, I actually only had three days to get the project from concept to layout, which was a challenge. One of the best parts was how mutually supportive and engaged a lot of the designers were on the Discord. A lot of the first jam participants went on to participate in a Knave game jam, and we ended up spinning off our own little Discord for mutual design help and appreciation. It's been a warm and inviting group of folks to spend online time with: The Jammers on Discord.
CD: You have excellent maps and layout along with a succinct and engaging writing style. Any insights into the design process itself? What was the most challenging part of creating this adventure for publication?
F7: In this case it was the layout and maps, especially because of the time crunch. Sometimes the writing process itself is the manky bit, but Black Mask almost wrote itself (thank goodness). Good layout is about getting a lot of little details correct: from typeface, to font, to grid layouts, to, well, you get the idea. There are a lot of balls in the air and it can seem overwhelming to someone new to that end of the game. One of the reasons I remastered Black Mask was to fix a lot of the wobbly bits from the jam release with a significantly more robust skill set on my part. The maps were done on Dungeon Scrawl, which is a great free mapping program with minimal cognitive overhead for the new user. On the writing end I write what seems like fun at the time. In the last couple of months I've also written a Knave adventure, an historical-ish adventure set in Akira Kurosawa's samurai Japan, and I've started in on a Monster of the Week project. I'm very much a magpie attracted to whatever is currently shiny.
CD: Vac Suits and Duct Tape is your next RPG project coming soon to Drivethrurpg. Maybe we can talk more about it soon, but for now what is the coolest thing or your favorite part of VSaDT?
F7: To pick one thing to start I need to give a shoutout to the artist I worked with, BrotherFel (they're on Instagram). They went way, way, above and beyond on the art side and I couldn't possibly be happier, or luckier, that my first bought art was such a source of awesome sauce.
CD: Anything else you would like to share with the readers of EN World?
F7: Nothing in particular. ENWorld is a great community and they should keep on playing games and being awesome. Well, perhaps this – if you think you want to write and design, just go ahead and do it. It's worth finding out if it’s something you're going to love.
Charlie Dunwoody participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program and the Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG and Noble Knight Games respectively. If you like the articles at EN World please consider supporting the EN World Patreon.
