Hello!
Right, it's been 6-ish years since I DMed anything and I've foolishly said I'd have an adventure ready to go for a small gaming con in September.
I've never run a con style adventure so I'm a little short of ideas for the format. Clearly a full blown adventure is going to be way too long, and I'm not sure where to find mini-adventures on the web. I came up with a semi-decent idea while I was asleep last night with a bit of quirkiness and some pre-gen character ideas too; I don't want the players to be duking it out or anything but a few cross purposes should make for some good fun character interaction.
So I throw my ideas open to the fertile ground of ENWorld and hopefully some of you who've done this style of game before can help me round out my idea or tell me it's crap and I need to start over! Anyone is of course welcome to steal anything they like (except Mrs Chorlston; she is mine).
The Idea So Far
The party is commissioned to rescue the daughters/sons of the local lord who were abducted by an ogre who attacked them while hunting.
Encounter one - A warm up against some goblins/kobolds/etc to get people in the swing of things. Takes place in the wilderness on the way to Ogre House(tm).
Encounter two - The ogre who "attacked" the hunting party; in actual fact the ogress was just looking for some new friends, talked into it by encounter five. She's a bit confused about everything as she's just trying to play house the best way she knows how (I don't normally like encounters like this but I do like throwing things in that the players don't expect and no one expects an ogress playing house). Unfortunately a few days after bringing the children back home the kobolds tricked her and stole what she had rightfully kidnapped. The area where the ogress lives is much larger than the kobold tunnels, thus she is unable to rescue her "friends" from the kobolds. Talking with her will reveal encounter five, which can happen in the wizard's tower in town or if they miss this information the wizard will attack them on the way back with the children. Clearly the party choosing to fight the ogress would be ... foolish.
Encounter three/four - A small dungeon with two groups of kobolds, the second of which includes the kobold boss and the sweet children in a pot ... I mean cage. The children will reveal that the ogress treated them as well as could be expected; even ogres have some kind of mothering instict it would seem.
Encounter five - back in town or on the way back to town (depending on encounter two), the evil gnome wizard who persuaded the ogress to attack the hunting party; his grand plan was to "rescue" the children of the lord and get a fat reward so as to fund his evil undead raising research. The players undercut him and he's most irked.
The Cast
Human wizard/sorcerer (Mrs Chorlston) - widow of a merchant who was recently killed by a monster attack. The stress of her husband's death triggered latent mystical abilities. Has a strong case of vengeance going against evil humanoids. I particularly want to include this character as I have a friend who always wants to play the girl in the party; he won't be expecting a slightly overweight 40-something widow.
One human paladin - who has a drinking problem, which wouldn't be a problem if he was a dwarf paladin; something that annoys him and makes him want to drink more.
One dwarf fighter - who carries large amounts of alcohol (hey, he's a dwarf). Further motivations/background to be decided; ideally something that will make him encourage the paladin to drink lots.![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Clearly I need to vet the players and make sure none of them are on the twelve step program!
One cleric - no inspiration so far.
One rogue or ranger - no inspiration so far.
Thoughts
It's possibly too long, especially as I am (a) out of practice with DMing and (b) not massively familiar with the ruleset I am using (or any ruleset for that matter!). I'm anticipating an afternoon/evening of play and maybe running it twice over the weekend. I definitely need the characters rounded out.
Right, it's been 6-ish years since I DMed anything and I've foolishly said I'd have an adventure ready to go for a small gaming con in September.
I've never run a con style adventure so I'm a little short of ideas for the format. Clearly a full blown adventure is going to be way too long, and I'm not sure where to find mini-adventures on the web. I came up with a semi-decent idea while I was asleep last night with a bit of quirkiness and some pre-gen character ideas too; I don't want the players to be duking it out or anything but a few cross purposes should make for some good fun character interaction. So I throw my ideas open to the fertile ground of ENWorld and hopefully some of you who've done this style of game before can help me round out my idea or tell me it's crap and I need to start over! Anyone is of course welcome to steal anything they like (except Mrs Chorlston; she is mine).
The Idea So Far
The party is commissioned to rescue the daughters/sons of the local lord who were abducted by an ogre who attacked them while hunting.
Encounter one - A warm up against some goblins/kobolds/etc to get people in the swing of things. Takes place in the wilderness on the way to Ogre House(tm).
Encounter two - The ogre who "attacked" the hunting party; in actual fact the ogress was just looking for some new friends, talked into it by encounter five. She's a bit confused about everything as she's just trying to play house the best way she knows how (I don't normally like encounters like this but I do like throwing things in that the players don't expect and no one expects an ogress playing house). Unfortunately a few days after bringing the children back home the kobolds tricked her and stole what she had rightfully kidnapped. The area where the ogress lives is much larger than the kobold tunnels, thus she is unable to rescue her "friends" from the kobolds. Talking with her will reveal encounter five, which can happen in the wizard's tower in town or if they miss this information the wizard will attack them on the way back with the children. Clearly the party choosing to fight the ogress would be ... foolish.
Encounter three/four - A small dungeon with two groups of kobolds, the second of which includes the kobold boss and the sweet children in a pot ... I mean cage. The children will reveal that the ogress treated them as well as could be expected; even ogres have some kind of mothering instict it would seem.
Encounter five - back in town or on the way back to town (depending on encounter two), the evil gnome wizard who persuaded the ogress to attack the hunting party; his grand plan was to "rescue" the children of the lord and get a fat reward so as to fund his evil undead raising research. The players undercut him and he's most irked.
The Cast
Human wizard/sorcerer (Mrs Chorlston) - widow of a merchant who was recently killed by a monster attack. The stress of her husband's death triggered latent mystical abilities. Has a strong case of vengeance going against evil humanoids. I particularly want to include this character as I have a friend who always wants to play the girl in the party; he won't be expecting a slightly overweight 40-something widow.
One human paladin - who has a drinking problem, which wouldn't be a problem if he was a dwarf paladin; something that annoys him and makes him want to drink more.
One dwarf fighter - who carries large amounts of alcohol (hey, he's a dwarf). Further motivations/background to be decided; ideally something that will make him encourage the paladin to drink lots.
Clearly I need to vet the players and make sure none of them are on the twelve step program!
One cleric - no inspiration so far.
One rogue or ranger - no inspiration so far.
Thoughts
It's possibly too long, especially as I am (a) out of practice with DMing and (b) not massively familiar with the ruleset I am using (or any ruleset for that matter!). I'm anticipating an afternoon/evening of play and maybe running it twice over the weekend. I definitely need the characters rounded out.
