First Draft Complete
Night at the (Contemporary Art) Museum
An adventure for D&D 5e and Dungeon Crawl Classics
The art museum is a strange and liminal space. A place lost in time, which mixes and matches the artifacts of past years and adheres them to walls, podiums, and floors. People flock to briefly stare, examine, and dissect the meaning behind a piece before moving on, the previous piece forgotten. Appreciation of art is everlasting, but appreciation of a single piece of art is fleeting. From a statue’s perspective, we are simply an unending line of inquisitors, each making the same droll comments, one after another, person after person, forever.
What if that statue could comprehend? What if, by some twist of fate, malice, or curse that statue could hear and understand?
These are the thoughts I kicked around on my recent visit to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, where Simon Leigh’s work was on display. In the midst of the crazy, the provocative, and the outright weird sat the golden woman, flanked on one side by another feminine statue that resembled a huge spoon, or swiveling satellite.
I spent a lot of time in this exhibit, staring at all the weird and wonderful creations Simon had imagined. The golden woman is without ears, eyes, and arms. Surely, she couldn’t hear my fiancée, Casey, and I talk about her, examining her form, commenting on the skill of her creator. All the same, I imagined her turning her blank face towards us, a silent scream upon her lips.
But she is not alone in the room. Nearby is the “satellite”, who the golden woman seems inextricably bound to. What if this was her “ear”, her mode of listening? What if, by thinking she had no senses to hear us, I had simply fallen into the trap of feeling safe. Not only could she hear us, but her senses were most likely far more delicate than our own.
We joked about the Night at the Museum movies, which seems unavoidable when talking about art pieces coming to life. How much more horrifying would it be if this golden woman had awakened instead of the friendly characters in the film? What if she wanted blood, or revenge? What if she desired to kill?
The conceit was born, and I couldn’t wait to get writing!
After the immense amount of work that went into Cult of the Cave Crickets, I decided to limit my scope for this adventure and set some hard rules for myself, using the lessons I learned during writing that module.
The adventure should feasibly be runnable as a one-shot, meaning within one four hour session.
Once I have a first draft I am happy with, I will run it. No polishing, no narrative text, and no preemptive balancing.
Every enemy in the adventure should look and feel unique. It was during the writing of this first draft that I committed to never repeat a monster in any of my adventures.
With these simple rules I got to work. Research began with a mood board of different weird art. Along with each I took time to brainstorm what the art is and how it acts when it comes alive. This mood board would become crucial in the decisions I made throughout the rest of the adventure.
In the adventure, 4-6 level one PCs are hired as guards at a Contemporary Art museum for the museum’s yearly open house. As event staff, they are stationed outside. They check tickets, give directions, and ensure that the outside of the building is secure.
A scream rings out. Then another. The flow of people from the museum is a wild torrent. Nobles trip over their elaborate clothes and are trampled, careening down the steps and into the street. Inside, paintings fly onto the windows, shattering and barricading them. The screams from within become muffled. The rush of people slows to a trickle, and then ends. Patrons are in the street, bleeding and crying. The statues! The art! They’ve come alive! My wife? Where is my wife? My son? Henry! Help! Help!
It isn’t long before the curator finds the PCs amidst the crowd. With the promise of additional pay, he urges them to find their way inside, and save the trapped guests and staff hiding within the museums halls before they are killed. They must hurry. Time is running out.
The first draft is complete, and my friends are on their way over for an in-person game to playtest it very soon. After that the map, art, and refinement!
Want to run the second playtest for your own group? Let me know!
Stay turned for more info, and, as always stay weird!
