Mandog Session 1: Silent Night of The Lambs

14 Sep, 2026

I had the privelege of running the module Mandog by Gromb for some friends this weekend. It's been on my module bucket list for a long time and I'm happy to say it didn't disappoint. Schedule permitting, we're hoping to get at least one more session in

Players

7 friends, students at Miskatonic University, found themselves stranded in Bullock's Neck, RI, after Black Moon Syndrome was detected. They had been visiting for fall break, staying at the vacation home of Brayden's cousins, Julia & Victor Shaw at 100 Riverview Ln.

• Jacob played Ash Bunderwall, Tanner Bunderwall, and Riley Whangerine
• Eliot played Brayden Squimp and Cameron Box
• Landon played Colton Oub and Brooklyn Rosenkrantz

Summary

Oct 21, 2018: Morning

While Ash was on the front porch enjoying a leisurely wake-&-bake, they heard police sirens pass the blockade to the north and pull onto Cedar Lane.

Bored and curious, the group of friends walked toward the sirens. A police car was parked outside 11 Cedar Lane, and a rent-a-cop from SecuTech Solutions LLC was arguing with a distraught young woman in pajamas about the bill for police services.

Cameron brazenly hopped the fence and explored the yard. Seeing a dog-door in the back, he poked his head through and saw a horrific gory mess on the kitchen table.

After the rent-a-cop departed (shouting, "you'll hear from our billing department"), the others approached the woman (Laura Bath) to comfort and question her. She let them inside, where they examined the body of Gary Sedgewick, decapitated and torn open. They offered to let Laura stay with them, and spent some time investigating the premises. Cameron took Gary's laptop.

Oct 21, 2018: Afternoon

Cameron searched the backyard of 11 Cedar Lane, having surmised that the killer probably entered via the loose fence boards and dog-door. His search led him south, where he met Yul Herman and explored the condemned Clam Shack. In the latter, a ghostly apparition appeared, intoning "RESTROOMS ARE FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY......". Cameron placed a $10 bill by the till and explored the premises, uncovering Yul's slowly-thawing food supply.

Colton & Brooklyn canvased the neighborhood, pretending to invite neighbors to an open mic night. This did not endear them to Dr. Alan Wunsch, who complaned about the occasional noise of the band at 5 Richter St. It did appeal to lonely Lewis Alger, who serenaded them with his highly original spin on Silent Night. And at the Burtons' house on 5 Cedar Ln, the Lawful Judy Burton asked Brooklyn to give Laura Bath an icon of young Vance Fisher, purported prophet, for her protection and healing.

They then retired to their home to watch Ash's pirated copy of Isle of Dogs with Laura Bath. Brayden spent his bitcoin on password-cracking software and gained access into Gary's laptop, but little was learned except that he was a mediocre Rocket League player.

Oct 22, 2018: Morning

The day began with little Emily Bauch screaming (literal) bloody murder at the sight of an enormous blood spatter in the window of the Waterman Residence, just a few houses up from the students' erstwhile home. Knowing better than to seek help from the police, they rushed in to investigate.

They found the decapitated and eviscerated bodies of the Waterman couple, and identified the bathroom window as the likeliest point of ingress. The safe door (left ajar) and its contents of $150,000 were taken after a brief debate. For much of the rest of the day, Cameron amused himself by placing stacks of $10,000 into random mailboxes.

While investigating, they met Vince Cash-woods from across the street, clad in his "Grotto of the Moistened" t-shirt. Though he attempted to play it cool, he was obviously disturbed by the murders. After boasting about his own interest in Chaos, he alluded to the existence of a "legit Cthulhu cult" that once existed among the town's older residents. He pointed them to "a cool old chick" named Angie Koepp for more information.

Oct 22, 2018: Afternoon

Ash, Tanner, Cameron, and Riley visited Angie Koop. She gave them some background on the Cthulhu cult that was active in the 60's and 70's, as well as its dissolution, and pointed them to some other members they could question. She denied any knowledge of magical rituals that involved harvesting hearts and brains, however. In the basement, she showed them a jar of quivering black liquid, apparently the result of an old ritual, but denied that it could be responsible for the murders ("if it got out, I'd be dead").

Brayden, Brooklyn, and Colton went to meet the purported Lawful messiah at the Fisher residence. Feigned nightmares were concocted as an excuse for Brayden to seek an exorcism from young Vance. Brayden and Brooklyn sat on a plastic-wrapped couch and sipped iced tea in awkward silence while Vance brought Brayden up to his room. There, he whispered that the "dog-saint" had told thim that a group of outsiders would expose his father, who had "killed a lot of people", and begged Brayden to accept this destiny.

Taken aback, Brayden agreed to help. Vance cast Bless and Protection from Evil on the three visitors.

Oct 22, 2018: Evening

After eating dinner and watching Ash's pirated copy of Annihiliation, they ventured out into the dark streets. A pair of Black Moon Coyotes lurked in the shadows, but were repelled by the Protection from Evil aura.

Colton's maglite was used to waken Vance, who unlocked the back door and led the investigators into the basement, where Stanford Fisher's grisly lair was exposed. Unfortunately, the noise caused by withdrawing the wooden false-wall woke up the Ocean State slasher. Riley cast Hold Portal to keep him out of the basement, but when they investigators tried to escape via the basement window, he rushed out the back door to intercept them. A brief fight ensued, concluding when Tanner bashed in Standford's head with a crowbar. Little Vance began singing eerie hymns in enochian, and the investigators fled back to the safety of their home.

From their front porch, they caught a brief glimpse of a crooked humanoid form lurching northward along Riverview Rd...

Notes

I have many thoughts about Mandog, all positive, but the players expressed interest in another session so I'm going to wait to write a full review. For this post I'll focus on prep, decisions specific to the session, and a few initial reactions.

I spent about two hours prepping. I read the module front-to-back twice, added page references here and there, and heavily annotated the map.¹ I modifed the night encounter table to 1d7 to account for Dr. Nywalls "nighttime stress walks", and (just for fun) made a list of post-Turley Act private police forces.²

Mandog does not specify anything about how players are supposed to engage with it beyond a general understanding that they will want/need to investigate the murders & prevent Mandog from immanentizing the eschaton. I decided to make pregens: college students who went to Bullock's Neck for fall break and got stranded by the National Guard blockade. The characters are a mix of dumb gen-z/zillenial stereotypes and actual memories of people I knew in 2018.³

I ran into one scope limitation: the provided information makes for a robust social sandbox but is light on physical details. One of my players really wanted to find physical clues at 11 Cedar Ln. and while I didn't have a problem improvising⁴ it did feel like the player was pursuing a tack that the module hadn't really prepared me for.⁵ The meat of the module is in talking to people, not doing forensics.

But Mandog's brilliance is in how it deftly spins a tight web of natural connections. With each new conversation, I was able to introduce new rumors and complicate others in a way that felt perfeclty natural and entirely supported by the terse module text. The world that results feels so much richer than what I expected from 16 A5 pages. Moreover, the inclusion of the Vance Fisher / Ocean State Slasher thread is a great red herring that invests players in the setting while complicating the hunt for Mandog. To call this module lacking in "level design" strikes me as laughably obtuse.

Finally, tone: I haven't tried to run a horror game or module before, and because I am the way I am Mandog has ended up feeling campy. I've had a lot of fun playing up the weird quirky NPCs, and decided to portray the former cthulhu cultists as aging hippies who got into eldritch sorcery instead of LSD in the 70s. The gritty aesthetic of Mandog undersells just how funny many of its locations and NPCs are.

#review #session-report