Quote:
Originally Posted by Andor  Katamari Damarcy the RPG
Leisure Suit Larry the CCG
Jehovah's Witness the MMORPG |
Granted that "brevity is the soul of wit" -- I must be witless, because my "bad ideas in gaming" are all Encounters, hence verbose and extensive, thus:
1. POISON ALERT. With the coming of the autumn rains, the mushrooms have begun to sprout -- and Grogax the stone-arch dragon has found them. He has left his usual haunts in the alpine meadows above the tree-line, descending instead to the mushroom patches in the forests around the high lakes. He has already consumed a whole stand of swirly dream-caps, and the mind-warping toxins within the dream-caps have given Grogax illusory mental visions of things that are not really there, and that only he can see. He lunges and snaps at iffy gryphons, shaded dark-blights, and creeping bandoleros; he slashes his claws and tail at pervious mock-weeds, skittering lamp-stakes, and heightened gorges; he snarls and bites at dancey flash-fires, dervish wisps, and rumbling oomschlaugs. (Don't worry about those, they aren't real.)
Unfortunately, Grogax is not standing still in his drug-induced delerium; he is constantly on the move, knocking over trees as he goes; and the sloping terrain is guiding his furious exertions closer and closer to the small town of Highdike, near the flood-control reservoir. Your job: Protect the town. Either guide Grogax away from the town and the dike, or stop him from moving altogether, or kill him, or knock him unconscious until the mushroom season is over and he returns to his senses. Grogax can fly, so if you wound him then you might have to find him again. (It shouldn't be difficult: he has no Stealth when stoned.)
(Stone-arch dragons bear a striking resemblance to aqueducts, and are often mistaken for them, sometimes fatally.)
[DM: At the start of this adventure, begin play with the wilderness side of the poster-map showing, not the town side. If things go badly and Grogax reaches Highdike, flip the poster-map over and use the town side of the map until either Grogax destroys any part of the town or the player-characters manage to prevent that.]
2. RESCUE. Goron the gear-mangler has mangled his gear. He has bashed and nicked his sword against rocks in wild swings meant to decaptitate kobolds; he has buckled his buckler under the weight of tottering marble columns as he rolled out of the way of their collapse in the nick of time; he has shredded his bedroll by using it to push aside thorny vines as he forced his way straight through the underbrush. Fortunately for Goron, his DEX is high, and his Skill Focus on Stealth allows him to hide well; but Stealth will not get him safely past the bandits who watch the mountain passes on the way back to civilization. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to find Goron and help him.
Finding him will be the hard part. Once you find him, you could either sell him some of the gear you take with you (with an appropriate price increase to cover expenses), or try to escort him back to town for a shopping trip. The bandits at the mountain passes do exercise the discretion of Risk/Reward Analysis -- one of them studied Moneymancy for a year at his local Wizards Guild -- so they usually melt out of sight into the rocky copses whenever they spot an approaching party that either is notably large or else carries more weaponry than baggage.
Another alternative is the skill-based one: if anyone in your party has high Nature skill, you might try to climb straight over the mountains without going through the passes, thereby avoiding the bandits; but that approach hardly seems worthwhile, because the bandits would probably try to avoid your heavily-armed party at the passes anyway.
Another alternative is the social one: if you want to increase the size of your party, you could take Goron along with you as a new (NPC) party member if he can be persuaded to abandon his solitary ways. Then you wouldn't have to go back to that particular town at all, and the bandits would not directly affect your plans. (However, it would be wise to carry an ample supply of extra gear if you choose to exercise this option, because Goron tends to mangle any gear he has.)
3. SHOP DISPLAY. Zoatard Canefloorque is expecting a large shipment of innewbriators from his supplier, Creighton Baughsman, and would like to have your help unloading and stacking the goods in an appealing display in his shop window. (What, do you look like a bunch of stevedores?) Zoatard is foppish enough to dislike the prospect of doing any of the actual work himself, so he is offering an entire gold piece to each of you if you will help him. (Standard pay is a silver piece, so he is not being particularly cheap at this time. This is a noticeable change from his usual practice.) Zoatard will be especially pleased if the display that you help to create is attractive enough to draw more than the usual trickle of customers into his shop.
To contribute to the display effort without doing any of the actual work, each party member has the option of Posing Impressively. Any party member who wishes to make this nominal contribution must succeed on a Low-DC Insight check to know what poses Zoatard would find impressive; then succeed on an unaided Low-DC Dexterity check to be able to assume the indicated pose; then succeed on a Medium-DC Charisma check to project real impressiveness with that pose; and finally succeed on an unaided Low-DC Endurance check to hold that pose for hours.
To contribute to the effort by working, any party member only needs to succeed on a Low-DC Strength check. (Crates of innewbriators aren't very heavy.)
You may choose to believe that Zoatard is stocking the innewbriators in order to imbue the newbs with brio. You might otherwise choose to believe any of several different things about his motives, including that he has gone quite mad and has no rational motives at all.
If you succeed on a High-DC Perception check, you will notice Zoatard's hidden collection of unusually exotic tatami mats; but it won't do you any good if you do, because there is no extra reward for noticing them, and they aren't worth much on the black market should you steal them from him.
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