Playing Gathering Storm at the moment and enjoying all gaming summaries and discussions on this forum!

Tonight we're continuing into "A time to Mourn", right now at the zombie fight at the inn. One thing that struck me as a bit peculiar is the way Adler handles the love affair with Madriga. At the meeting with the PC:S in the scenario as written he stares at her portrait and sighs, saying something like "my dear Madriga". The point is he doesn't seem to try to hide the affair at all. The adventure further states that Sebasten Brenner would be mad if he found out about it.

THose of you who have played the scenario, how have you handled it? As written - with Adler mad and not caring about rumours about the affair coming out? How have you played Kessler (who obviously knows about it all, or does he?)?

Thankful for any advice on how to handle this. It is barely covered in the written adventure. But there are some good seeds here for a town intrigue with deadly outcome.

Magnus

I found that episode very odd too. The politician effectively confesses his scandalous affair in front of out-of-town-sellswords etc.?

Played straight it can only be a sign of "just how far gone he is" (which makes his rapid recovery odd and unwarhammery in my view).

In my own game I was "lucky" enough to be able to rescript it, maybe you can too from where you are. As you can see in my session summaries (not far down message board at moment), I had a PC death so the PC's were all going to cemetery for funeral. That got them there.

I decided Adler would not confess/reveal things in town, instead he would be going to cemetery himself with one guard he trusted to seek Grabbe's counsel on his dreams. All of his "revelations" would come out "in the moment" and he would be an added driver urging PC's to push on to mausoleum and not just run for it when the dead rise. The PC monetary compensation would come as a reward given then (if they kept him alive).

Without a PC death, it's trickier to get them to the cemetery. Perhaps Schulmann (in an effort to make him more human/less cartoony) announces that he suspects another stone such as the one brought from Oberschlecht may be at the cemetery and he sends PC's there/asks them to go/pays them.

Rob

Even if you're not 'lucky' enough to have a PC die at the right place and time, you could still use this basic plot device by having someone else die. It could literally be anyone. It doesn't have to be someone important to the PCs, just someone important to someone who is.

So, if the PCs want some information from someone, you could have them begin investigating that person just as someone close to them dies, and the PCs find out that the person they want to talk with will be going to the cemetery before going into mourning (and therefore not receiving visitors) etc. Perhaps the PCs will think this is their big chance to both get to the person they want to talk with and possibly use their vulnerable state to get them to reveal something. Or perhaps other townsfolk could go to the cemetery too, so the PCs won't feel like they're being very obvious.

Perhaps you could even have another character important to Adler die (perhaps someone who he should care about but strangely seems not to - only when it comes out that he's mourning his love does this make sense)?