Tales of the Scarecrow

Tales of the Scarecrow
Module published by Self published
Rule System	Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Authors	James Edward Raggi IV
First Publication	2012

Tales of the Scarecrow is a module for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, written by James Edward Raggi IV. It is, by the standards of most work in that vein, short, sweet, and to the point, that point being to hurt the party as much as possible for the crime of wanting to have adventures. It doesn't even open with an angry rant, so in that spirit let's go!

The Setup

A farmhouse sits in the center of a perfectly-circular field of perpetually lush green corn, even out of season. (The writing notes that this is completely different from the front cover, but he liked the artist's work so much he didn't want to correct them, and really, it's pretty damn nit-picky to complain about that.) The field also features a narrow path, leading up to the farmhouse's front door, and a scarecrow out in the field.

The Referee / GM is encouraged to entice the party to investigate, using whatever tricks they want, so that, like an abusive spouse, they can then punish their players for doing what they asked them to do in the first place.

The Trap

So, turns out, there's a monster under that thar cornfield. It obeys a ridiculously-specific set of rules which essentially boil down to "attacking anyone who isn't in the clear circle around the house, within 20' of the scarecrow, or actively walking from the outside of the cornfield to the center." Also, it allegedly attacks anyone it can perceive, and somehow can only perceive people who're standing still or walking away from its center, but also knows when they get to the center and closes the "corridor" through the corn when they arrive. And the corn is so densely packed that anyone trying to pass through it moves at 3/4 speed, and while it can be cut down or blown apart with magic or gunpowder, it grows back within minutes.

The monster also hates the fresh air so much that its tentacles can only be hit by people who've held their actions to do so or are going on exactly the same initiative number as it, and while the tentacles are chaff it's got a million of 'em. And the monster itself has 1000 hit dice and doesn't come out for any reason, so, yeah. As a small mercy, it only makes one attack per round, but at 1d8 damage a hit and no level recommendation, well...

The scarecrow and the area within 20' of it is a safe haven where the creature doesn't attack, but examining the scarecrow too closely causes it to suck out the examiner's lifeforce. Confusingly, the way the referee is instructed to do this involves counting down from the player's current HP total, even asking for their current HP if necessary, but doesn't tell you to tell them that's what you're doing. Destroying the scarecrow doesn't negate any of these effects, and they don't go away until you leave that 20' zone.

Oh, and the corn's poisonous. It won't, surprisingly, kill you or anything, but any hit points are precious in this gauntlet.

Once everyone's clustered into the farmhouse (and the module basically shrugs when the incredibly-obvious question of where the hell this farmhouse even came from comes up), and figured out they're basically trapped there, barring a dangerous gauntlet to escape, the second leg of the adventure starts up.

The Farmhouse

The outside of the farmhouse has a pump that produces disgusting, thick water. If drunk, the drinker is infested with parasites, which first make them require twice as much nourishment each day, and then, after two weeks, start showing up in their urine (ew) and sap 1d3 points from a physical Ability Score. Again, surprisingly, given the author's prior work, it can be fought off by a player's immune system, but failure to do so makes these losses permanent. There're also a lot of dead and eaten horses lying around, riddled with puncture wounds from the tentacles, containing a bill of sale for Richard Fox, which is supposed to somehow tie this module into an existing campaign.

Inside, there's a lot of dilapidated furniture, two corpses, and a single living man. This man, Richard Fox, has, naturally, given the author, resorted to cannibalism to scrape by, but only after his friends all died from natural causes, and is otherwise a surprisingly decent person, if obviously rattled by his experience and desperate for food and water. If given provisions, he admits to being wealthy, and offers to pay a reward if they can somehow escape. He also admits to having purchased a number of magic items nearby, though he doesn't know what they do, and while he won't pick a fight while trapped by murder-corn, he will press legal charges if the PCs steal any of the cool magic items he paid handsomely for. He is also, surprisingly, a friend to the end, and will attack the PCs or attempt to undermine their efforts to escape, no matter the consequences to himself, if they try to loot or desecrate the bodies of his dead friends.

Both friends do have a lot of valuable swag on them (and one of them was a thief, unbeknownst to his friends, who'd swallowed his ill-gotten gains, though how the PCs are supposed to figure that out from the fact that he's chipped a tooth on a gold piece is beyond the scope of this article, to say nothing of opening him up like a fish in front of his traumatized buddy to get at the loot in his guts), and there's also a valuable harpsichord in the farmhouse, inexplicably untouched by time and the elements. It's worth a lot, and while a skilled player plays it, the tentacle monster won't attack, so it can theoretically be a way out... but, again, how the players are supposed to figure that out is unknown. Especially since if an unskilled player plays it, it whips the monster into a frenzy instead, giving it extra attacks.

In addition to a couple of books, Richard Fox's magical swag includes a neat magic sword that hits all foes as if they were armor class 14, but on a total attack roll of 16 or 17 hits a random other target instead, rerolling the damage on such a strike and "banking" it until the next attack if no other targets are in range. The book, with uncharacteristic generosity, describes a few ways which players can turn this to their advantage without ordering the GM to punish their creativity. That said, again, taking it means robbing ol' Richard, who won't be crazy about it after paying a fortune for this sword and those books.

You know, so far, while unnecessarily cruel and weird, this module's almost been tame, by Raggi standards. Maybe ol' James is mellowing out a little?

Oh, hey, Richard Fox also has two books in his possession.

The Books

The first book, Malleus Deus, is a top-secret tome, known to every magic-user and cleric in the world as something that rends order and understanding from the world. It contains a huge array of spells, which magic-users can learn, and all but one of them of each level is actually a cleric spell, only a cleric spell a magic-user can cast. If a magic-user learns such a spell from the tome, and uses it in the presence of a cleric who notices what it is and what they have done, that cleric must save vs. magic or lose the ability to cast that spell ever again. If it's of a higher level than the cleric can currently cast, they lose the ability to ever cast cleric spells of any kind again. And if they describe what happened to another cleric, that cleric must save or lose that spell / all spells.

Because of the potential of this book to unmake all clerical magic forever, every religious organization in the world has pegged owning, or even being aware of the existence of a copy of this book as a capital crime, worth any amount of horror and expense to find and destroy or contain. The best thing to do, is just to leave it where it is and never mention it again... but, well, while both cleric and magic-user players know the insane lengths the authorities will go to to get rid of it, they don't actually know what it does, do they?

The second book, Tales of the Scarecrow, kicks off the game mechanic that makes this module its name. The GM / Referee stops the game, explains that it is an anthology of spooky folklore stories about scarecrows, and then lays out the mechanics of what's going to happen next. Each of them will, secretly and without collaboration, propose what powers or abilities the scarecrow will have, and in the end, the most-dangerous one will receive a random experience point reward (potentially meaning they gambled giving it some deadly power for a naff payout). Said dangerous set of powers and abilities will then become true. The game recommends transparency on this point, and further lays out that it doesn't just have to be the scarecrow, but could be something to do with the cornfield or the area inside it. It also points out that such proposals should work within the context of a book of spooky tales, and not single out individual other PCs for punishment.

Conclusion

On the whole, this module is a bit of a mess. It presents a situation that's a ridiculous contrivance and more of an exercise in putting together a meat-grinder trap to slaughter PCs than anything sensible; most of the treasure is either gated behind common decency and/or will only be found by doing horrible things for no reason; most of the "escape hatches" are obtuse and weird; and it throws a magical item an entire campaign could be based around in as an afterthought.

In other words, it's probably one of the better modules James Raggi's ever written.

Seriously, while the situation is pure dick, and occasionally confusing, the advice it gives the GM / Referee, outside of instructing them to entice their players into the deathtrap of a cornfield and the weirdness involving examining the scarecrow, mostly revolves around transparency and respect, and the times it tells them to fuck with the players are in situations where said players richly-deserve to be fucked with. ("Just not noticing" that the magic-user is throwing around cleric spells; are you shitting me?) And it tones down many of his worse impulses by, for example, making the poisoned corn and parasites potentially detectable and less lethal than they could be, or making the corn grow back in minutes rather than seconds so a party could blow and chop their way out with the right tools and spells.

And while that "design the finale" bit isn't perfect (as presented, it works only on a meta, not an in-game level), it's not a terrible idea on paper, in a "pick which fist I hit you with and how hard" kind of way.

Still probably not worth running out of the box, but there're more ideas here worth pillaging than usual.