Company of the Random Encounter DM / Plot Thread (CotRE Players Stay Out!)

[Thomas Hobbes]

Another thought- if the fact that they're Goblins isn't critical, you could throw in another fairy tale and have the Pied Piper of Hamlin take his force of dire rats and raze the town.

 

[Capellan]

Thanks for the ideas.

My current reasons for having them not following the goblins is that they (the goblins) deliberately left the town in several different directions, using different routes to return home. This means that they seem to have scattered after the battle, making tracking them harder and possibly meaning they haven't all gone to the same place (the goblins are led by some NPCs with the intelligence and power to formulate and enforce this kind of discipline. It's amazing how a half-fiend boss can do that )

One other thing that might dissuade the PCs is the condition of at least one of the bodies in the village: said half-fiend is a bard with access to the song of festering ruin (or festering death ... don't have my BoVD with me)

My copy of the 3.0 PH had a demo of a character creation program on the CD, rather than an adventure. Which is a pity, because the northern reaches of Galiban are actually semi-arctic, and getting colder (not that the PCs know that last bit, yet).

The attackers do indeed need to be goblins - one of the purposes of his session is to set up the fact that an abandoned keep near the Brightstone Mines has been occupied by humanoids, so that next session the PCs can be offered ownership of the keep, in exchange for cleaning it out (which is basically a case of me taking the Base of Operations adventure from the WotC site and re-stocking it with monsters of my own selection).

However, a pipe of the sewers is definitely a 'fairy tale' style item, so I might well include it, or something like it.

 

[(contact)]

As can be seen, there is a 'fairy tale' theme to a lot of the encounters: I'd welcome suggestions for reinforcing this theme, both in terms of monster selection, encounter ideas and suggestions for treasures.

Do they hack stuff to pieces in fairy tales? 'Cause they sure do in D&D.

It would be cool to play with the idea that characters go in and out of faerie (or an alt space/time continum) in the middle of battles. That PCs could be transported to another place, spend several rounds there, then return to the original scene where no time has elapsed.

 

[Capellan]

Do they hack stuff to pieces in fairy tales? 'Cause they sure do in D&D.

Well, in the original version of Cinderella, at her wedding, the birds fly down and peck out the eyes of her ugly step-sisters, so I'm not sure it is all that different ... I'm certainly not planning to do a sanitised 'Disney' version.

Updates

The group has been confirmed as:
Mnk4
Pal3 (light armour, greatsword)
Rog3/Brd1
Clr3 (light armour)
Ftr2/Wiz2 (finesse fighter)
Drd4


The adventure itself is starting to come together quite nicely. A couple of times I've winced over the sneaky/nasty things I'm doing, and more than once I've chortled over the trouble the PCs are likely to cause for themselves (two words: cursed confectionery).

It should be a fun session. Hopefully they'll even survive

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Well, in the original version of Cinderella, at her wedding, the birds fly down and peck out the eyes of her ugly step-sisters...

I <3 Grimm's fairytales.

That is all.

 

[Relic]

One way to prevent the goblins from being tracks is weather. A nice rain storm will obliverate any tracks...

 

[Capellan]

We've now had the game, and in the event, they never even looked at the goblin tracks. They found Brok's soot-stained tracks and took off after them without a second thought.

Thanks for your ideas, folks, they helped stir up some new ideas of my own, and a good time was had by all.

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Can't wait to read about it.