The Goblin Caves (My players stay out!)

Hey everybody, my normal D&D game is off for the summer, and the desperate D&D withdrawal has driven me to trying to put together my own adventure for myself and some friends. This will be my first ever attempt at DMing, so I was hoping to get some more experienced people’s comments on my basic idea. If it’s fundamentally flawed please tell me so I can ditch it and start on something else. Any other comments or suggestions would be much appreciated too.

The premise for my adventure is this. The heroes are starting out on a pilgrimage. After a few days travel they come to a little town on a river, it’s pretty far from any major cities. The town is run, and was pretty much built by a business man. This man’s idea was to buy flax (well, actually they buy stricks of line, but I won’t go into that) that was shipped down the river from the agriculturally strong kingdom in the north and turn it into linen. Then sell the linen to merchants.

The mayor of the town will try to get the heroes to attack the goblins who live in a cave a few miles up the river. Thing is, the goblins are actually pretty inoffensive, they haven’t killed anybody and they aren’t running around doing evil things. What’s happened is that one of the unusually smart goblins has over a few years managed to learn enough about the linen making business to get them set up. Since the goblin chieftain doesn’t really need to pay his workers too much they’re rather nasty to compete with. The mayor would really like them out of the picture.

I’m thinking that the mayor is a rather dark character. Secret worshiper of the evil god of success. He recruited his workers by looking for people with pasts that they’d rather leave behind, and giving them a chance to come work for him out in the middle of nowhere. He takes in runaways so he can put them to work, then sacrifice them sometime if he ever really needs a spot of good luck. That sort of thing.

Few things I’m wondering are, is it a lot harder to set up encounters in a town than in a dungeon? Seems like the party could just walk around encounters sometimes since there is more room to maneuver. Would it be more fun it if was really tricky to tell who was good and who was evil, or it if was pretty obvious? Will it just be too hard to get into a game about fighting to defend the poor little goblins?

That’s about it. Thanks in advance for any sage opinions you want to offer.

That's actually a great setup for an adventure, so consider it *yoinked* for future use

In my opinion, it can be fun when it's harder to tell good from evil, or when the bad guys are actually nicer than the good guys. It keeps the players on their toes and can provide for a lot of good role-playing opportunities.

However, since the real world is filled with moral ambiguity, a lot of people prefer their fantasy to be closer to the "good guys wear white hats, bad guys wear black hats" view of the world. It just comes down to a matter of preference.

In this circumstance, I think that keeping things ambiguous at first would lend a nice air of mystery and flavor. Imagine the PCs' reactions when they go to kill the nasty creatures, and find a bunch of unarmed goblins sitting around making cloth. I'd love to see the reactions on the player's faces when they realize what sort of situation they're now entangled in.

The question of whether to plan a city adventure or a dungeon crawl is a very valid one, though. City adventures tend to be more event-driven -- things happen and the PCs must react to them. Site-based adventures (like dungeon crawls), on the other hand, are good for combat, searching out traps, etc. There's less room for choice, but the path to the goal is often much more clear.

Read the beginning of Chapter Four of the DM's Guide for a good comparison of site-based and even-based adventures. Heck, read the entireity of Chapter Four for some really good advice on how to run a good aventure. I would say that, for a newer DM, a site-based adventure is often easier than an event-based one.

I hope that helps!

Edit: If you need a map for the goblin caves that's appropriate for 1st level use, you can feel free to use one I've already prepared: http://www.thehumanproject.org/trinis/files/goblin_cave_map.jpg

Yes, nifty set-up!

Personally, I'd use kobolds instead of goblins, because kobolds are associated with industrious work and are IMHO more morally ambiguous. (They don't ride NE Worgs, etc.) The following suggestions aply equally well to kobolds as they do to goblins.


1) Goblins have Darkvision. What if the evil mayor wanted them dead because he fears they might have seen some of his late-night demonic sacrifices? What if they had, but didn't understand the significance -- the ones who saw it don't know human culture very well, don't speak Common, etc.


2) Goblins are Small creatures. They can produce woven goods of a quality as high as the mayor's factory can. However, the mayor uses human labor... what kind of human has hands small enough to make such fine fabric? Children, of course! Hints:

- Human fabric and Goblin fabric weave is of the same size, but human fabric has more errors.

- Children have been going "missing" for years, and the mayor blames this on the goblins -- but before the goblins moved in, he blamed the disappearances on ghosts, and before that on something else, etc.

- Children who grow too old to serve in the factory are "recycled" -- sacrificed to the demon-god, animated as undead guards, or both!

- If the townspeople are in on the mayor's corruption, then children disappear from nearby villages, and mayor tries to divert blame as above.


Now, about city encounters: there are basically three kinds:

1) The Party comes looking for it;
2) It comes looking for the Party; and
3) The party just happens to step in it.

Number 3 shouldn't be tied to anything more than you, the DM, deciding that they step in it. Don't make the encounter depend too much on any one specific location -- give yourself some leeway.

Number 2 shouldn't happen until the party does something to make itself "noticed". Once someone has a reason to look for them, decide what that person is doing to find them, then give the guy some probability of success (depending on his skills, etc.) and roll some dice for him. Then, allow the party to feel the reprecussions of his actions -- if he tried to Gather Information, the bartender may tell the party that "some guy was askin' 'bout you last night"; if he tries to shadow them through the streets, they should get Spot checks; etc.

Number 1 relies on the party following up on clues. Don't make the clues too hard.

-- Nifft

This sounds like a really fun game.

Have the set up be a bit more sinister... Have the Mayor recruite the players as a bargin with a devil or demon.

the old "If I get them to preform this evil task thier souls are yours and I get power kind of thing"
Won't it be fun for them to learn of this as the last goblin falls under thier blade and they don't know if they belong to a demon or not...? <insert evil laughter>

I agree this is a brilliant set-up *Yoink #2*

As to Town Adventures my advice is treat them like Dungeons!

A dungeon is a set of rooms with monsters, treasures and clues
A town is a set of buidings with people, resources and clues

The problem with towns is that its harder to herd the PCs to where you want them, but then again the PCs also have more time to wonder around as generally noones trying to kill them

The other thing of course is that NPCs in town can move around too - so if the PCs 'need' to meet Old Man Hodges at the Boot Shop but keep going to the Flax Mill instead - then have Old Man Hodges make a delivery to the Flax Mill and meet the PCs there.

I think the hardest part of this adventure will be making it clear that the lines between good and evil are blurred in this scenario without giving too much away. Yes the Mayor has to be potrayed as a good and righteous soul, the goblins just have to be goblins

and Niffts ideas about kidnapped children is deliciously sinister MWAHAHAHA!

I really like this idea! *Yoink #3!*

It might be interesting if the goblins did some things that were good/kind. Like maybe a human child has wandered away from town and into their caves. Instead of killing it, they try to return the child, and maybe the villagers think they were actually kidnapping it?

There's also the case of how do the goblins sell their linen? The mayor could warn the PCs that the goblins are bandits raiding caravans, when they are actually just trying to trade their goods.

Perhaps he doesn't know where their caves are, but he knows where they meet caravans and tells the PCs. If the PCs come upon a stopped caravan surrounded by a unit of goblins, will they shoot first or ask questions?

-Dave

*YOINK #4*

That's it. Nothing more to add, it's all been done for me, but thanks for the pilfer guys.

Thanks a bunch for all the ideas and suggestions people, very good stuff. I feel a lot better about this adventure now. *gets to work writing.*

Not to rain on the parade, but I just wanted to add a little to what Carpedavid said about some people preferring their fantasy more black and white.

Before running an adventure like this, I'd think about the players and whether they'd enjoy the plot twist, or would they be put off by the notion of "good goblins"?

I know some of the players I game with would be, and it would spoil their fun.

Just something to consider...