der_kluge
Adventurer
So, in today's game, I found a great way to lighten the pockets of my PCs: Send them to a slave auction. lol
Long story short: My players were trying to get to island A, but ended up (through no fault of their own) on island B, which happened to be known as "Slaver's Bay" - a sort of hive of scum and villainy for all things evil, and it happens to have a slave auction house.
The PCs were more or less stranded here with a boat that they stole by virtue of killing the previous captain and crew, but lacked the means to man it. So, their only recourse was to go to the slave auction and buy slaves whom they hoped would have enough expertise in trying to get to island A.
They only needed about 10 crew members, and ended up buying 20. Bidding against them was a contingent of dwarves from one of the players' home city - which raised some eyebrows as to why they were getting slaves, and a mind flayer - who until today, NO ONE had ever bid against, for fear of reprisals, but my PCs surely did.
In the end, one poor sap was bought by the mind flayer (who will promptly eat his brain) and the dwarves got about 6 slaves. But the PCs took home the majority of them. Now they have to manage about 20 slaves. lol
So, if you want to do this, create brief profiles for as many slaves as you'd like, and then to up the ante, create some other bidders who will bid up the prices. For added affect, I put in portraits for every slave, and then had the auctioneer sort of describe their talents and skills, and then started with an opening bid price. I rolled a percentile for the other bidders to determine if they were interested or not, based on what their criteria was (a good strong back, in order to do some mining). The mind flayer's primary motivation was to bid on individuals with high INT scores, etc.
Long story short: My players were trying to get to island A, but ended up (through no fault of their own) on island B, which happened to be known as "Slaver's Bay" - a sort of hive of scum and villainy for all things evil, and it happens to have a slave auction house.
The PCs were more or less stranded here with a boat that they stole by virtue of killing the previous captain and crew, but lacked the means to man it. So, their only recourse was to go to the slave auction and buy slaves whom they hoped would have enough expertise in trying to get to island A.
They only needed about 10 crew members, and ended up buying 20. Bidding against them was a contingent of dwarves from one of the players' home city - which raised some eyebrows as to why they were getting slaves, and a mind flayer - who until today, NO ONE had ever bid against, for fear of reprisals, but my PCs surely did.
In the end, one poor sap was bought by the mind flayer (who will promptly eat his brain) and the dwarves got about 6 slaves. But the PCs took home the majority of them. Now they have to manage about 20 slaves. lol
So, if you want to do this, create brief profiles for as many slaves as you'd like, and then to up the ante, create some other bidders who will bid up the prices. For added affect, I put in portraits for every slave, and then had the auctioneer sort of describe their talents and skills, and then started with an opening bid price. I rolled a percentile for the other bidders to determine if they were interested or not, based on what their criteria was (a good strong back, in order to do some mining). The mind flayer's primary motivation was to bid on individuals with high INT scores, etc.
