This is part of my campaign report for Horror on the Orient Express.

This chapter needs a lot of work, so definitely apply the suggestions from Reddit. Using Tosca for the opera instead of Aida works well, just remember to update all the handouts accordingly. I also really enjoyed using Andre/Andrea as the investigators’ translator for this chapter (none of them knew Italian). They ended up being one of my player’s favorite NPCs!

Despite the fixes, this chapter does end up very linear if your investigators miss some of the clues. I dropped some heavy hints about the death of Ennio Spinola being connected, but my players were so focused on recovering the simulacrum that they spent all of their time investigating the opera house. This had two negative effects: they never had a chance to link Conti or Faccia to the disappearance and it gave me very few options for letting them cleverly find the Torso in an interesting way. This meant that Conti and Faccia were equally unaware of the investigators, giving me no chance to ratchet up the tension during the investigation. Instead, we spent much of the session painstakingly searching La Scala. Luckily(?), the investigators never thought to directly corner and interrogate the props manager, the only person who knows where the Torso is, so they came up empty handed and the opening night scene played out pretty much as the book says.

The only change I made due to the missed connection was having Conti and Faccia show up together to the opera, giving the investigators even more clear clues about what happened since both men have similar strange scars around their throats. I suppose it was still an exciting and fun chapter in the end, but my players fairly pointed out that most of their actions during the chapter were irrelevant since they were going to run into the Torso regardless. On that note, I really wanted to reward their dogged investigation of La Scala with something, but the book really doesn’t give you anything to go on and the explanation of “The Torso cannot be found” feels very unrealistic. The only interesting thing I could come up with was the Torso itself, but if they simply nabbed it before the show and skipped town, I feared it would be an awful anticlimax seeing as literally none of the major NPCs know where it is either.

If I ran it again, I would try to come up with more clues to find in La Scala. Perhaps the Torso is truly lost backstage and other people are searching for it too, and it will only be found (by the investigators or someone else) right before the scene in which it is to go on stage. Perhaps the investigators can learn in which scene the Torso is to be used, further incentifying them to sneak their way into the cast or crew. Maybe (through Andre/Andrea) the investigators should be encouraged to view it as more of a heist, and the time before the show can be spent planting tools, planning escape routes, etc.

I also really wanted to drop some heavy hints about Fenalik in this chapter, having him brutally murder some of Faccia’s goons within earshot (or maybe even with sight) of the investigators, but once again they cleverly avoided running into any circumstance where that would be plausible. I’d try to come up with more opportunities to have that happen. Maybe have Fenalik do some murders early on in the chapter, perhaps putting Faccia on the lookout for enemies, increasing the chance of a run-in with the investigators.

Regardless, the vibes were still pretty good in the chapter, helped by lots of opera music and a fun chase at the end. Finally, remember to introduce Maria Stagliani and Bice, her maid, from the next chapter when departing from Milan.

Next: Ch 5: Death (and Love) in a Gondola