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Fellow GMs - Gimme a Hand Please!!!


Urlord

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Fellow Game Masters,

 

Have you ever had a great hook for a campaign/adventure and when you get into designing it you have get a mental block?

Well that's what is happening to me.

 

Campaign Hook

The characters are pretty low power (75 points: 50 Base + 25 Disads) to start and I'll be rewarding 3-5 XP per game session.

 

The five player characters have adventured together before.  Their last adventure didn't go well and they all died.  When they died, they were judged in the afterlife and were condemned to hell because of one of the seven deadly sins.  After spending what felt like 2-3 years of punishment, torture, and torment in their place of eternal damnation (they were actually only in hell for 2-3 days), they are released for some reason.  They remember their hellish experience and which sin was their downfall (I had each player pick one of the seven deadly sins as the reason their character went to hell).

 

When they are released from hell, they appear back in their mortal bodies along with all their old gear.  They're standing in front of an old man, who introduces himself as Professor Jarill.  Prof. Jarill says he is the one who bargained for their release from hell.  In exchange for this furlough from their punishment, they are to perform a quest for him.  They have 30 days to track down five items which have been stolen from him and return them to him.  If they return all five items within the allotted 30 days, they will be pardoned of their prior transgressions and allowed to live their life anew.  If they fail to return the items, at dawn of the 31st day, they will be taken back to hell.  Before the characters are released to start the quest, they are given a description and a drawing of the five items, along with the known details of when they were stolen.  No information is provided on how the bargain was made for their release, why them, or any other details of the deal.

 

The Twist

Professor Jarill is Lawful Evil and he often consorts with Devils through dark rituals.  In one such meeting, the professor and a Devil named Seloxith got into a debate over if the punishments of Hell are an adequate deterrent to keep people from their sinful ways.  Out of this debate they made a wager.  The wager was to test five people who have actually experienced the tortures of hell to see if they would return to their former nature or if they would change.  Therefore, the location and retrieval of the five items in the quest are vehicles for moral tests for each of the characters.  If three of the five pass their moral test, Professor Jarill wins the bet.  If three of the five fail their test, Seloxith wins.  The looser must be the bound servant of the winner for 10 years.  The player characters and the quest items are actually unimportant in this twisted, diabolical, wager.

 

Here is where I need your ideas...

I'm looking for good ideas for how to test each character against their sin. There should be a definition of success or failure for each test.

The player characters and their deadly sins are:

  • Half-Elf Martial Artist - Deadly Sin: Lust
  • Half-Orc Thief/Bandit - Deadly Sin: Greed
  • Human Soldier - Deadly Sin: Pride
  • Halfling Wizard - Deadly Sin: Envy
  • Dwarf Healer - Deadly Sin: Wrath

There are 6 parts to this adventure (each part is it's own 6-8 hour game session).  Parts 1-5 can be performed in any order. 

The character's tests should be woven into each of the first five parts of the adventure.

  1. The Dark Hartwood Bow - Location and recovery of a composite shortbow made of the heart wood from a Darkwood tree.
  2. The Silver Mirror - Location and recovery of a silver hand mirror.
  3. The Grimoire - Location and recover of an archaic spellbook.
  4. The masterwork Dagger - Location and recovery of a master crafted dagger.
  5. The Elderwood Staff - Location and recovery of an old blackened staff
  6. The Conclusion - Last minute race to get the items to Prof. Jarill before dawn of Day 31.  They will be hounded and chased by the people they retrieved the items from.

All your ideas are whole-heatedly welcomed.

Our first game game session is scheduled for April 15th.

 

Thanks,

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The players may be suspicious that the items are part of a larger plot. (I would be.)

 

Is the character's redemption based on returning the items or passing their test? It seems unfair for a character to demonstrate their redemption, and then be returned to Hell because they missed their deadline.

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The players may be suspicious that the items are part of a larger plot. (I would be.)

 

Is the character's redemption based on returning the items or passing their test? It seems unfair for a character to demonstrate their redemption, and then be returned to Hell because they missed their deadline.

If the character's return all five items as requested before sunrise on Day 31, they will not be sent to back to hell and be allowed to live out their lives until they die again. It isn't until Part 6 of the adventure that they learn about the wager between the professor and the devil.  Regardless of who wins the wager, if the characters fulfill the quest, they are free to go.

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I would not make it easy for them to learn about the wager. As a playwer I would be a little miffed at being manipulated.  I wouild suggest if the players were curious, and do infact, recover the 5 items, that the items might be related to a goal of the Doctor's, past the wager. Such as the items are needed for him to recover the soul/body/ items of a lost relative, and he was going to hire more senior adventurers to do it, and perhaps leave something open for the original party to continue.

Also remember that even Lawful Evil is going to be protective of their resources/ territory/ minions, so they would not  be flagrant in their disposal of the  iorigila party members.  Remember, histoprically that a slave was worth more than a free Irishman in the south, b3ecause Slaves were a capital investment , and Irishmen were a payroll liability. XD.

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Sounds like a game I'd want to play!

 

If the character's return all five items as requested before sunrise on Day 31, they will not be sent to back to hell and be allowed to live out their lives until they die again. It isn't until Part 6 of the adventure that they learn about the wager between the professor and the devil.  Regardless of who wins the wager, if the characters fulfill the quest, they are free to go.

My concern here is that the hidden goal (ie pass the moral tests) seems completely disconnected from the nominal goal (ie recover the items). The last thing you want is to have the PCs spend 5 sessions wondering what's really going on, only to get to the end and say "So some guy we barely know won/lost a bet with some devil we've never met, but it doesn't impact us? Why do we care?" It seems like deciding whether or not to give the 5 items to the Professor at the end should itself involve some sort of moral dilemma. I thought it might be more interesting if the Professor was betting against the PCs passing the moral tests, but again if the outcome of the bet has no lasting impact on the PCs I'm not sure it matters.

 

Is it possible to pass the moral test and fail to recover the item, or vice-versa? Or are the two directly linked?

 

The only other problem I can see is that the moral tests are (presumably) geared towards a single PC, so how does that affect the other party members? Ie if the moral test to recover Item #2 is to not be greedy, does only the half-orc need to avoid greed? If the dwarf gets greedy instead, is that a pass or a fail?

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Sounds like a game I'd want to play!

 

My concern here is that the hidden goal (ie pass the moral tests) seems completely disconnected from the nominal goal (ie recover the items). The last thing you want is to have the PCs spend 5 sessions wondering what's really going on, only to get to the end and say "So some guy we barely know won/lost a bet with some devil we've never met, but it doesn't impact us? Why do we care?" It seems like deciding whether or not to give the 5 items to the Professor at the end should itself involve some sort of moral dilemma. I thought it might be more interesting if the Professor was betting against the PCs passing the moral tests, but again if the outcome of the bet has no lasting impact on the PCs I'm not sure it matters.

 

Is it possible to pass the moral test and fail to recover the item, or vice-versa? Or are the two directly linked?

 

The only other problem I can see is that the moral tests are (presumably) geared towards a single PC, so how does that affect the other party members? Ie if the moral test to recover Item #2 is to not be greedy, does only the half-orc need to avoid greed? If the dwarf gets greedy instead, is that a pass or a fail?

@BigDamnHero - Your concerns are actually the main point.  When they return the items to the professor, right up to the last minute mind you (should be a nail biter), the PCs are told up front about the bet and that they were blind subjects in this most enlightening experiment/wager.  The professor tells them that they are now free to live their lives again, thanks them for their participation, and escorts out the door. This should really piss off the characters and maybe even the players a little bit too.  My players are really experienced and mature, so they'll be okay. I've been gaming with them for 20+ years.

 

However, if (and they will) they start looking into the professor further (post the first five episodes), they start finding little hints and clues indicating, that perhaps the professor and his "friend" aren't as random as they appear.  Could the professor be responsible for their deaths in the first place?  Were the five items really stolen, or "Allowed" to be stolen?  If they hadn't return the items would they have really died and gone back to hell, or was that a ruse? Who was the professor's "Friend" and what role does have in the whole thing?  What long term purpose does all this serve?  As you can see, there are plenty of questions for the players to ponder.  This will set the Professor up as a sinister nemesis for the character to drive future adventures.

 

The moral tests and the items are not linked at all.  Passing the tests are completely based on the choices made by the characters while searching for and recovering the items.  The five items MUST be found and returned to the professor before the deadline or they WILL die again and are sent back to hell. The items are the adventure timer that keeps them on the right track and moving forward - like a ticking time bomb.

 

Each character will be tested against the opposing virtue of their sin.  That character must pass the test individually, regardless of what the other characters do.  For example, the character with Greed as their deadly sin, they will be tested against Charity...  

 

In the first episode, the characters leave their big city home and visit a tiny village where they encounter a little girl living on the street. The girl is 8-10 years old. She has a terrible stutter and has a deformed left hand. She takes a liking to the "greed character" and starts following them around like a little puppy. The players learn from the locals, "Her name is Wei and her mother died about nine months ago during the winter cold.  She has no other family and no one will take Wei in because they believe she is possessed. She will probably die in the coming winter like her mother." The Greed character knows of a school in the city that will take her in, but it will require a significant payment for her tuition (almost all of the gold the greed character has). This is the test: Does the Greed Character leave Wei homeless or does he provide for her in a significant way - maybe not the school, but something to get her off the streets and keep her alive through the next winter?

 

There will be similar tests for each of the characters, but hopefully they will be subtle enough so they won't catch on.

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Fellow Game Masters,

 

Have you ever had a great hook for a campaign/adventure and when you get into designing it you have get a mental block?

Well that's what is happening to me.

 

Campaign Hook

The characters are pretty low power (75 points: 50 Base + 25 Disads) to start and I'll be rewarding 3-5 XP per game session.

 

The five player characters have adventured together before.  Their last adventure didn't go well and they all died.  When they died, they were judged in the afterlife and were condemned to hell because of one of the seven deadly sins.  After spending what felt like 2-3 years of punishment, torture, and torment in their place of eternal damnation (they were actually only in hell for 2-3 days), they are released for some reason.  They remember their hellish experience and which sin was their downfall (I had each player pick one of the seven deadly sins as the reason their character went to hell).

 

When they are released from hell, they appear back in their mortal bodies along with all their old gear.  They're standing in front of an old man, who introduces himself as Professor Jarill.  Prof. Jarill says he is the one who bargained for their release from hell.  In exchange for this furlough from their punishment, they are to perform a quest for him.  They have 30 days to track down five items which have been stolen from him and return them to him.  If they return all five items within the allotted 30 days, they will be pardoned of their prior transgressions and allowed to live their life anew.  If they fail to return the items, at dawn of the 31st day, they will be taken back to hell.  Before the characters are released to start the quest, they are given a description and a drawing of the five items, along with the known details of when they were stolen.  No information is provided on how the bargain was made for their release, why them, or any other details of the deal.

 

The Twist

Professor Jarill is Lawful Evil and he often consorts with Devils through dark rituals.  In one such meeting, the professor and a Devil named Seloxith got into a debate over if the punishments of Hell are an adequate deterrent to keep people from their sinful ways.  Out of this debate they made a wager.  The wager was to test five people who have actually experienced the tortures of hell to see if they would return to their former nature or if they would change.  Therefore, the location and retrieval of the five items in the quest are vehicles for moral tests for each of the characters.  If three of the five pass their moral test, Professor Jarill wins the bet.  If three of the five fail their test, Seloxith wins.  The looser must be the bound servant of the winner for 10 years.  The player characters and the quest items are actually unimportant in this twisted, diabolical, wager.

 

Here is where I need your ideas...

I'm looking for good ideas for how to test each character against their sin. There should be a definition of success or failure for each test.

The player characters and their deadly sins are:

  • Half-Elf Martial Artist - Deadly Sin: Lust
  • Half-Orc Thief/Bandit - Deadly Sin: Greed
  • Human Soldier - Deadly Sin: Pride
  • Halfling Wizard - Deadly Sin: Envy
  • Dwarf Healer - Deadly Sin: Wrath

There are 6 parts to this adventure (each part is it's own 6-8 hour game session).  Parts 1-5 can be performed in any order. 

The character's tests should be woven into each of the first five parts of the adventure.

  1. The Dark Hartwood Bow - Location and recovery of a composite shortbow made of the heart wood from a Darkwood tree.
  2. The Silver Mirror - Location and recovery of a silver hand mirror.
  3. The Grimoire - Location and recover of an archaic spellbook.
  4. The masterwork Dagger - Location and recovery of a master crafted dagger.
  5. The Elderwood Staff - Location and recovery of an old blackened staff
  6. The Conclusion - Last minute race to get the items to Prof. Jarill before dawn of Day 31.  They will be hounded and chased by the people they retrieved the items from.

All your ideas are whole-heatedly welcomed.

Our first game game session is scheduled for April 15th.

 

Thanks,

 

Wonderful idea. I really like it. The tricky part is dealing with genre-savvy players. After all, the players themselves are not on trial and with moral quests, there's the problem of the player just saying: "I resist the temptation" because the player themself is not the one actually being confronted with wealth, adulation, sexual satisfaction, whatever. The two ways of getting round this are (a) a dice roll based on Willpower or whatever or (B) hiding the true nature of the test. The latter is increasingly difficult because audiences are so bloody genre-aware these days. But it's by far the more satisfying. The trick is to make the players really believe something. For example, the professor is actually evil. Perhaps what will get the players out from Hell is NOT bringing him the items but doing the right thing even though they KNOW it will condemn them to Hell. Have you ever seen the old movie Constantine with Keanu Reeves? It has a gorgeous fake-out along these lines. A twist like this would be a wonderful finalé to the story - after all, it's not the Devil who gets to decide who is imprisoned in Hell, it's God. This is a fact that they should all know, probably do, but you can never mention at any point letting them merrily believe that their only hope to escape is to please the demon / professor / Devil without actually misleading them unfairly.

 

On specific quests, again the trick is to set things up so that it can't be a simple "I do what I know is right" task. So for example, the soldier tasked with Pride finds the bow they are questing for, the opponent is dangerous and they may or may not be able to beat the opponent (they're not sure). But the opponent regards the bow as worthless and will cheerfully give it to the PC if that PC acknowledges to others that they don't think they can beat the opponent in a fight. And this is a real decision because the player knows they have a shot at winning, maybe even that they probably can. But the trick is that there's a way to get the bow without having to, with nobody dying or losing anything. The ONLY reason for them to fight is pride. If they do, they probably win the fight but the bow gets destroyed during the battle. Perhaps the opponent is a fire mage or dragon or something and sets the place on fire during the fight. It should never be spelled out until afterwards that the only reason they fought was pride. Don't oversell it by making the opponent they have to concede defeat to be a kobold or something. Make it plausible so that the player knows they have a good shot of taking the bow by force and the only reason for them to beg for it really is because they're not certain they can win. The player wont know that the bow gets destroyed in the fight.

 

Similarly you can set up other situations for other weapons. Say there is some special bonus they get along with the weapon that makes them more powerful. You could set it up so that they actually fail their quest but someone else passes it for them. The quest will succeed but someone else is going to get "their" bonus because the other player was the one that saved the day and retrieved the object. If they allow the other player to succeed, they have passed. If they risk everything so that they are the one that gets the prize, jeapodizing the group's success for their own profit, they have failed the Greed quest.

 

All of this is difficult to pull off because you have to be very subtle about it and good at misdirection. However, it could be a lot of fun.

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If the character's return all five items as requested before sunrise on Day 31, they will not be sent to back to hell and be allowed to live out their lives until they die again. It isn't until Part 6 of the adventure that they learn about the wager between the professor and the devil.  Regardless of who wins the wager, if the characters fulfill the quest, they are free to go.

 

I would plant VERY subtle hints as the game went on that the items were going to be used for some bad purpose. If at the end, the players choose to hand over the items to the diabolist, they are returned to Hell. If they destroy the items even knowing they fail the quest, then they are granted redemption. Pull out all the stops at presenting this as something you hadn't thought of, didn't intend, so that the players actually think they are making a sacrifice. As I said earlier, it's not the Devil who chooses who is turned away from Heaven. I'm pretty sure your players have forgotten that and opportunities where you can pull a turnabout where the players will react with "I should have known..." rather than "the DM is cheating!" come about too rarely to give up. ;)

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In the first episode, the characters leave their big city home and visit a tiny village where they encounter a little girl living on the street. The girl is 8-10 years old. She has a terrible stutter and has a deformed left hand. She takes a liking to the "greed character" and starts following them around like a little puppy. The players learn from the locals, "Her name is Wei and her mother died about nine months ago during the winter cold.  She has no other family and no one will take Wei in because they believe she is possessed. She will probably die in the coming winter like her mother." The Greed character knows of a school in the city that will take her in, but it will require a significant payment for her tuition (almost all of the gold the greed character has). This is the test: Does the Greed Character leave Wei homeless or does he provide for her in a significant way - maybe not the school, but something to get her off the streets and keep her alive through the next winter?

 

A lot of groups will make committee decisions and actions. For example, they might all decide to chip in to pay for the young girl's enrolment; or a more generous PC might prematurely offer to take it on saving the Greed character from having to actually make a choice. These are the things that can make a GM's grand plans come falling down. PCs will also try very hard to find a way around it by, for example, figuring at least one villager might believe she isn't possessed if they offer enough incentive. (PCs tend to be a lot richer than villagers and a lot of people will overlook a girl being a little odd for their year's wages in gold or because a half-orc has just threatened to bash their brains in if the girl isn't safe and sound when they return next month). So I would consider upping the stakes and making the girl's life in danger from villagers who hate her. Hell, maybe she is possessed and the school becomes a church that can exorcise her. Now you've taken a lot of work-arounds off the table that the PCs might have come up with. Also, consider tying helping the girl not to giving up existing wealth, but passing up an opportunity for more. Maybe a bandit party is offering a share in some lucrative raid that happens tonight, but the PC can't trust the villagers to not harm the girl. This puts the emphasis more directly on the Greed player who is a bandit to help prevent another PC stepping in to handle the girl situation.

 

Now Lust. Lust is going to be a tricky one to pull off in-game.

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It's been suggested that the items could be used for an extreme evil - bringing the demon/devil involved to the mortal plane in its true form, rather than its limited avatar it must adopt, etc. - as well as making the claiming of the item a moral dilemma, and yes, actually -not- returning the items is the true test. For instance, the bow is in the hands of a dryad trying to save her forest. She's -very- beautiful (test for the half-elf), but an arrow shot from the bow is inordinately accurate (bonus to location shots), and perhaps can "always" find the heart of an enemy that's named (test for the half-orc, dwarf, and warrior as what greedy sob wouldn't go after that, what prideful warrior wouldn't want a bow that makes him nigh invincible, and what cleric full of wrath wouldn't want to be able to absolutely smite his enemies?) In short, taking the bow now renders the dryad and her forest dead. Without it she simply cannot defend her forest against the powers arrayed against her. Several characters are tested against their sin, and they are given the test of returning the bow despite the cost, or leaving it where it is, or even finding someway of rendering the powers arrayed against the dryad defeated and moot, and thus taking the bow won't be a hardship. (Ah, but will following such a path tempt the dwarf to wrath, the warrior to pride,....)

 

The above scenario can be altered to put the mirror in place of the bow. (Perhaps it allows the dryad to see where the enemy will strike from, and with what forces, and so she can marshal her own strength to always be able to counter.) Probably it could be altered to fit any of the items, and this scenario isn't unique. I'm just not sure that people would appreciate a five page post for me to synopsis all of the possibilities.  :tsk:  The long and short is that there are truly numerous ways that acquiring each item can be a test of multiple sins in and of itself, but can also be just an overall test of "right vs. wrong," with multiple "outs" for how to fix it so they can take the item or they can just choose not to hamstring the entity currently holding it. Finally there's the biggie: knowing what they all do, possibly even finding out what the ultimate goal of acquiring all of them is, do you actually turn them over and say that the Big Evil is just none of my business, bringing Hell on Earth, (but at least you're not in the real Hell!) or do you hold onto them (assuming you took them in the first place), and risk the trip back to torment or use the last hours to try and lay down the smack on the Professor and his hellspawn pal!

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