One Night In Windsong

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April 2022

Earlier this month I found myself with an unexpected burst of DMing energy and so ran One Night in Windsong, a 5e adventure written by Penny Blake. It’s meant to take 2-3 hours to play, and can be scaled for any level so wherever your party finds itself in its journey, there’s something here for you! In all, I had a great time running this one-shot and my players were excited by the vibes not only of the adventure, but Windsong itself!

If you aren’t already familiar with Windsong, you’re missing out. I can’t introduce it better than Penny can, so I invite and encourage you to read more about this upcoming lawless 5e setting which is heavily inspired by Penny’s Romani culture, history and folklore here! You can follow her on Twitter to keep up with all the exciting projects she’s putting out, including interviews with other TTRPG creators and reviews of some great and inclusive games like INSPIRISLES (an all ages TTRPG which promotes storytelling, empathy and Deaf awareness with an emphasis on cooperation).

To be very clear: I was not asked to write this! I did, however, ask if I could because I had a great time and wanted to share that excitement with everyone. I think Windsong is an incredible setting. The love and care that has gone into its creation is immense and there are so many stories I want to tell there.

Want to pick up a copy for yourself? Welcome to Windsong is available as PWYW! Get it here.

So! How did it go? Let’s get into it. Spoilers ahead!

The Story
“Your party wake up after a wild, wild night to realise that their host has been murdered and they have been framed for the deed! As they find themselves entrenched in the affairs of the Windsong guilds, they must locate the hidden city and the real culprit or find themselves swinging for a crime they did not commit.”

The Group
First things first! And this is important: I don’t DM by voice.

My background as both a player and DM comes from text, first on forums and then through World of Warcraft. It’s much easier for me to get my thoughts out coherently and quickly by text than it is for me to speak them. My players are accustomed to this, given I met all of them through WoW, and it is what works for us all.We also aren’t running in 5e, but a homebrew system I made based on two other homebrew systems I used while DMing in WoW. It’s still based on a D20 so things like skill checks function the same way as 5e, even if sometimes I’m calling them something different. It works for us.

We’ve discussed moving to 5e and decided that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, so stick with what we’ve been using!What does all that mean? A few things! Mainly: expected run-times need to be tripled, and enemies need to be adjusted. I gave myself 3-4 hours to run this adventure, and wound up running for five hours with a 15 minute break. I can’t really comment on enemy scaling as I’m always making adjustments to fit our system. But I can talk about how engaging the story itself was!

How It Went
The group wakes up in the Du Galous mansion after a wild night and the smell of breakfast entices them downstairs. After spending a bit of time eating and recalling memories from the night before they notice that it is really quiet and nobody else appears to be in the house. A short investigation reveals their hosts have been murdered and when the guards show up moments later it isn’t looking fantastic for the group. They’re taken into custody, manage to convince the guard captain of their innocence and, ultimately, agree to help Sergeant Nathan McGill find the actual culprit since gold is a good motivator (even if helping guards very much was not). The one really actionable clue is simply ‘Windsong,’ a place McGill is convinced exists and everyone else in town thinks is just legend, myth, and superstition.

Up until this point, we’re following the story presented in the text! That’s Chapter 1 complete, so far so good! The characters involved are asking themselves questions and are motivated to find the person who framed them – the gold is definitely a factor, but so is the “you framed us for murder and we take offense to that”. I loved seeing the party asking questions in character, it was really satisfying (and even more satisfying to see them putting clues together)!

The party was very specifically only willing to help for 24 hours, and Chapter 1 ran long for me so I skipped Chapter 2! That Chapter sees you at an inn just outside Windsong Wood and offers the chance to build suspense around the woods proper as well as potentially lead to a combat encounter. In my run, I had McGill run off to find a mage who was willing to teleport them to the edge of Windsong Wood. I used this brief encounter with the mage to underscore how nobody in this place believes McGill, and actively make fun of him for his belief in Windsong.

Chapter 3 sees the party entering into the woods and discovering it does, in fact, come across as incredibly haunted. While the party knows they’re looking for Windsong, they don’t know where that might be, how to get there, if it even exists, and the paths through the forest aren’t at all clear. Through a clever use of spellcasting and some great survival rolls, however, they encountered no real difficulty! There’s an option for a forest encounter provided in the chapter, and also one to meet other characters, but again with time constraints (combined with excellent rolls) I went to “after X hours you find…”

This is where we took our break!

Chapter 4 was our introduction to Windsong and the party were really creative in the different ways they were looking for clues. We didn’t explore any particular location, but I did set us up on a walkway somewhere above the hex slinging rings. This was fun to drop mention of with someone’s perception rolls – the character was absolutely entranced, which was great fun to see as honestly? Same. Fast paced acrobatic magic combat? I’m so here for that!

The party gathered their clues and met some of The Merry Wives, on of Windsong’s guilds, and with a lucky perception roll caught a glimpse of their target through the crowd. From there it was an immediate chase scene! There was no difficulty in tracking the culprit down once they locked onto her, once again through clever spell use and strategy! Immediately got into combat and while the guilty party did try to escape, that did not happen!

While McGill was with them the entire time, I had him hanging out in the background and literally being dragged around by the vampire in the party by the shirt collar at one point. He was very distracted writing down absolutely everything he was seeing for his report, and trying to remember everything – he spent years being made fun of for his belief in the city but he knew he knew it was real and now he is there himself!! During combat I had him hang back as well, taking notes on the party’s actions for his detailed report back to the guard captain.

The party got their payment directly from McGill, and went their separate ways! What they did after that remains a mystery, and if they ran into any trouble from the various guilds in Windsong, well, that’s just part of the fun that maybe we will return to sometime down the line!

Thoughts
Even with having skipped an entire chapter and cut out parts of two others, this was still really solidly done and I think that speaks entirely to the strength of what Penny gives DMs to work with in the one-shot itself. Did I also benefit from having read the Windsong setting book itself? Absolutely! I did, and was inspired by the vivid descriptions woven into it.

Getting to drop a mention of hex slinging into the game made me VERY happy, it’s a system I’m excited to test out and have a story idea based specifically around it. You can read more about the hex slingers, and other guilds of Windsong, over here! (They’re so cool.)

If I were to run this again in the same format, I would make it three sessions. Each session would cover two chapters, nice and easy! This would be easier for me as 2.5 hours is about the most I’m able to focus on in one go when running games for groups, and easier for my group as I know they prefer to take their time!

With that in mind, I think I’d need to add a random encounter or two into Chapter 4 when the party first reaches Winsong to add some length but that is very easily done with the available material. This would also be delightful for having them get a bit more time in Windsong proper, which is just such a rich environment that I think my only regret in this run was that players didn’t get to see more of it.

I also know that my groups would absolutely benefit from time to talk things over in character, so by making it three sessions they’d have more time to make a plan once they determine who the culprit is, and where to find her. Chapter 6 offers some choices of endings which I didn’t wind up using as my group dispersed naturally after being paid on the spot! These characters didn’t know each other previously and once the job was done they had their separate interests to return to!

I think One Night in Windsong is a great introduction to the setting, and was really easy to prepare. It took me 90 minutes to gather image references, get character tokens made and uploaded to R20, and read over/prep some text while answering questions from my players. There’s a lot of flexibility within the adventure which keeps your time limits in mind, and I think it’s a great length for a one-shot!

The first chapter has the most material laid out, so there’s a lot to ‘get through’ especially if your PCs don’t know one another, but after that things are punchy and moving at a quick, satisfying pace throughout. I also think this adventure could make for a great one-shot to later return to, or even to serve as an introduction to a campaign set in Windsong itself. Maybe after arriving the PCs decide to, you know, stay in the city – or maybe after getting a glimpse of how cool it is, someone wants to roll a character who is from Windsong already – I know I would!

This one-shot makes for a great introduction to the city, and allows for interesting situations to later develop between the PCs involved in the one-shot and some of the various guilds operating within the city’s bounds.

Welcome to Windsong released in September 2022, and I couldn’t be more excited about it! This setting is something really special, and I can’t wait to see more people getting to experience what I think is a unique and lovingly crafted setting. You can find it on DMsGuild here. To keep up with Penny and what she’s creating, be sure to check her out on Twitter!

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