Ideas for a Swashbuckly Montage

[Blue Sky]

I was taken by the idea that Gabe from Penny Arcade had of making each game have a "hook", and tonight I'm trying one out.

My players are all Swordsmen in a 7th Sea game, trying to take a Ussuran (Russian) mob boss in a fantasy version of Venice. They're almost through with him, so tonight I'm going to have them hunt down his four remaining henchmen, and take out the boss next week. They know he has control of most of the Docks, and that he has a few priests/sorcerers working for him.

My gimmick is this. The players don't know where the henchmen are hiding. I'm drawing a map on a large piece of poster board, with markers where the henchies are hiding. On the other side, I'm writing up 12-16 mini-encounters that the players can complete in 5-10 minutes. I'm then cutting up the map, and letting the players pick which encounters to complete. When they do, they get the piece of the map on the back of the encounter.

So, I need some ideas for mini encounters. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: This weeks game got cancelled, so I have an extra week to finish this.

 

[Wik]

Hm. Never played 7th Sea. But it sounds like a really cool idea.

If there are gonna be fights, make 'em short. You'd know how to do this better than I.

Throw in a few chase scenes, maybe apprehend a guy working in a soup kitchen (so he tries to run, and tips over a tub of boiling hot soup at the PCS), and there should be a few where PCs come in on the henchmen about to do something really bad (ie, kill someone, or throw a body into the water).

 

[Andor]

Scenes from Venice in 7th sea....

Cassanova on his way to an assignation.

Smugglers smuggling.

Jugglers juggleing.

A cock fight.

A gondola maker.

A low class bar.

A high class brothel.

An unpopular figure being pelted with rotten vegetables/chamber pots.

A duel.

A mysterious fortune teller.

A shadowy figure swimming under the canals.

A couple of nobles conspiring. One disappears by teleporting, the other by glamour.