Need to add some flavor/role playing ideas for after next session

[NewJeffCT]

Ok, after the next session, assuming the players finish off the goblin threat, they will return to their local town as triumphant heroes. They were already pretty well thought of in town for helping defeat a goblin raid on the town itself a month ago (in game) and for then successfully navigating a skill challenge related to their reputation in town (i.e., helping save a man from a stray goblin that remained hidden in town; avoiding a delicate situation with a popular local merchant and his ‘assertive’ daughter, etc)

This time, the players took the fight to the goblins in hopes of stopping an even larger attack on the town.

The players will be coming back to the small town not the good first level warriors they were when they stopped the raid, but nouveau riche fourth level adventurers. After several tough sessions in a row with tough combat, I want to have some role playing and player development.

Obviously, a young adventurer would spend some of his newfound wealth on wine, women and song. They will get to dance with the prettiest girls, get free drinks and dinner at local taverns, have bards sing about them, etc.

The town is mostly human, with a few elves, half-elves and halflings around. The party is a human wizard, human fighter, elf ranger and human shaman (natives to the area), as well as an eladrin rogue. The party also had a charismatic bard, but the guy playing him had to bow out of the game – his character was the one that managed to avoid any incident with the merchant’s daughter.

What I am looking for are any suggestions to add some flavor to a week or so of in game “down time” – rather than just hand waving it with “and you guys enjoy the attention of the pretty young girls and you get used to people patting you on the back whenever you enter a shop or tavern…”

I am trying to build some player attachments to the town. The wizard’s father owns a shop in town and is a retired adventurer whose wife died giving birth to the wizard; the shaman is a farmer whose wife recently died, which led to his awakening as a shaman; the fighter’s family are also farmers, but he was not fit for the farming life; while the elf ranger’s aunt is a respected local ranger who will play a role in some future adventures, but is currently not around. The eladrin rogue is the only one without a real attachment.

The wizard & his father relationship has been worked out a bit so far in game - the father initially did not want him to become an adventurer, but has grown to accept it after seeing his son perform heroically in the goblin raid.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[kitsune9]

I like this.

For down-time, you can roleplay out some of the every day problems of the town folk. For example, two villagers are having a dispute over a pig. They look to the "wise" advetnurer of the group. If the PC's are successful, they are going to open the flood gates the villagers coming to them with problems such as:

1. Make the lifestock fertile
2. Bless the crops / purify the water
3. Assist the local merchants get a good deal from the traveling merchant caravans
4. Use their money to help restore Ol' Farmer Jed's farm / ranch / horse stable / whatever. The PC's not only become do-gooders, but are a charity too.
5. Mundane "danger" such as chasing off / hunting wild dogs killing lifestock, clearing out snakes in the fields, etc.
6. Villagers will want to sell their wares to the PC's as they view them as young lords and ladies since they are nuveau rich. Expect the PC's to meet (i.e. get hassled by)farmers offering to sell them goat cheese, milk, eggs, a good horse (even though they probably got one already), mundane equipment (even though they got enough), and so on.
7. Help on the farm / shop /etc. Someone is sick (cleric get in there!), so they cannot tend the forge, farm, etc. The PC's are asked to step up to the job since they are smarter, stronger, and wiser.
8. PC's are looked up to so they will be asked to give their blessings for marriages, births (in which they find that some of the babies born have their first names), and kids following the PC's around (think of the annoying kid sidekick trope, this time it involves all the village children).
9. Offers of marriage (they do need to pay the dowry though) by both good maidens / grooms (they are looking for a good provider) and bad ones (gold diggers or those who see the PC's as a status symbol).
10. Expect the villagers to hang onto every word the PC's say about their adventures when everyone is gathered at the local inn for an evening of drinking and pipe smoking before going home to sleep. They will ask the PC's to tell their stories again and again each night and the PC's can rehash it into any exaggerated way they want to.

In general, the village council / elder will want to include the PC's in their day-to-day administration, may be even ask the PC's to join in whether they want to or not as the village elder / council constantly shows up at their doorstep.

Eventually, the PC's will be seen as patrons to the villagers and a source of income. Sure, the villagers will throw a feast in the PC's honor and buy them free drinks, but once the celebrations have died down, the PC's should be going back to buying their supplies and gear so the villagers can eat.

 

[Gilladian]

Do I detect echoes of Sand Point in your adventure?

How about local drunk/bully challenges fighter to a duel? Can he reduce it to an arm-wrestling match, and avoid spilling blood?

What if a local rogue in town starts trying to frame the party rogue for HIS crime spree?

The local astrologer publicly offers to cast each PC's horoscope. If they agree, she tells it privately - it has lots of good fortune predicted. If they refuse or in any way publicly ignore/diminish her, she'll publicly warn them of bad fortune to come, and continue to badmouth them whenever possible.

A con-man starts selling small items he claims were "owned" by various party members, or were touched by them, used by them, etc...

 

[NewJeffCT]

Do I detect echoes of Sand Point in your adventure?

How about local drunk/bully challenges fighter to a duel? Can he reduce it to an arm-wrestling match, and avoid spilling blood?

What if a local rogue in town starts trying to frame the party rogue for HIS crime spree?

The local astrologer publicly offers to cast each PC's horoscope. If they agree, she tells it privately - it has lots of good fortune predicted. If they refuse or in any way publicly ignore/diminish her, she'll publicly warn them of bad fortune to come, and continue to badmouth them whenever possible.

A con-man starts selling small items he claims were "owned" by various party members, or were touched by them, used by them, etc...

Why yes, you do detect Sandpoint in there.

I just want to have them fat, drunk & stupid for a week or so in game when I spring The Skinsaw Murders on them. (the human fighter, with a great finish to the goblin raid, was the one that impressed Foxglove...)

Good suggestions!

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Now that the PCs are famous and powerful, some people are going to want a piece of the action. A desperate girl might claim one of the PCs is her unborn child's father. A farmer might claim that because the PCs spilled goblin blood on his field during a battle, ankhegs were attracted to his farm, ruined his crops, and now he wants restitution. A mentor may claim he is owed something for his tutelage. Townsfolk might want the PCs for advertising: stay at my inn, no stay at my inn, come to my temple, no come to my temple, resulting in no end of solicitation and proselytizing. A priest might even resort to capturing some of his religion's iconic monsters and setting the monsters loose in town so the PCs have to destroy them, all so that he could "prove" the PCs are X-slayers and therefore worshippers of his one true god.

You could have the established authority figures become leery of the PCs. They wine and dine the PCs, but it's an attempt to get the PCs drunk and talkative so the town officials can learn what the PCs are doing. Or, more likely, one of the town officials wines and dines the PCs and then puts one or more of them in a very compromising position so that he has some blackmail material just in case.

And of course there are all the tavern and tournament games that the PCs could be playing while carousing. Arm-wrestling, stacking wine glasses on Tenser's floating disc, polo with a goblin skull for the ball, dancing competitions, etc.

 

[DumbPaladin]

I'm not familiar with Sand Point, but it sounds like you want to make the city that is their current base of operations a character within the overall narrative. This is usually a great idea. I'd recommend a couple different tacks:

1) Get involved with the leadership or the power base in the city. Who's the mayor? Is there a ruling council instead? Have one or two of the adventurers be singled out by the leadership as being "the leader" of the group -- whether they are or not -- and have this somehow set this adventurer apart from the others, in the eyes of the leadership. Will the newly elevated adventurer resist this? Welcome the attention? How will the other adventurers respond? This can be played for comedy, or not ...

2) A couple of the characters already have ties in town. How about putting two of them in conflict in a way that the adventurers can help smooth over with a Skill Challenge or two? The families of the shaman and the fighter are in contention for a particular animal / feed / item that will benefit their farms, but can't simply be shared or split in two. Or the ranger get approached by the wizard's father and asked to speak to his aunt and tell her that he's no longer interested in abiding by the ban she imposed upon him of selling X in the village. Something like that...

3) Since the eladrin rogue has no particular ties, have a bunch of people suddenly try to make them one of theirs. Numerous villagers can come forward seeking different things: one asks him for a magical cure to a grandmother's ailment (which the rogue will have no way of curing); one wants to know his secret for the success of his family's farm (and since he doesn't have one, he can't help); one wants to learn how to break into peoples' houses and asks for lessons picking locks (up to him how to handle that); one wants to bed an eladrin because "it sounds interesting and no one else in this backwater town has ever done it, and I want to be the first" (again up to him) ... The people you send him that he CAN'T help, can eventually be taken to the people in the party that CAN help, giving him a way to work with another party member in solving this villager's particular problem.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What I am looking for are any suggestions to add some flavor to a week or so of in game “down time” – rather than just hand waving it with “and you guys enjoy the attention of the pretty young girls and you get used to people patting you on the back whenever you enter a shop or tavern…”

You know, just because the PCs are now heroes, it doesn't follow that everything will confirms way.

Frex: they drink and dance with all the local cuties...how do their fathers, brothers and (former?) betrotheds and boyfriends feel about that? Not all of them are going to be happy.

And Hell hath no fury like a cutie scorned- what happens when someone DOESN'T catch a PC's eye tells a little story about wandering hands and innocence lost?

Oh yeah- what happens when a PC goes into the bar and sits in Big Rudy's seat?

 

[steenan]

What I would do is giving the PCs an opportunity to form attachments - that is what really drives character developement. Don't force them into it, but encourage to care about people and about what happens in town. To do it, one needs three components:
- a few NPCs that are distinct enough to be easily identified and either sympathetic or unsympathetic enough to evoke an emotional response
- a situation that gives a reason to interact with them
- enough screen-time for the NPCs that players may get to know them

It's good to create interesting situations that require players to choose and take sides in something that is not black-and-white. Not challenges that one can win or lose, where tactics and rolls are necessary, but situations where the choice itself is what matters.

I would also, although it sounds unintuitive, reduce the amount of purely "color", "flavor" scenes (tavern games etc.). A few are necessary to help players imagine the town, but too much may be boring, and they do nothing to really encourage RP. It's better when what happens has real consequences. This way you'll let them know that it's not only combat and loot that matters - and create plot hooks to be used in the future.

A few examples of what I'd use:

1. The wizard's father wants to marry a woman that came to the town a few months ago. They love each other, but she seems to be hiding something about her past.
If PCs investigate a little, they'll find out that she was a thief before, worked for a guild for some time and then betrayed them. It's all years in the past now and she'd rather forget about that - but one cannot be sure if it will come to haunt her again some day, putting her husband in danger.
What will the wizard (and the rest of the PCs) do? Will he tell the father? Will he oppose the marriage? Will he dig deeper in the whole guild business in future adventures?

2. Fighter's brother's girlfriend becomes interested in the fighter ("Your brother is such a nice boy, but you're a real hero now!"). How will he handle this? Return girl's affection and risk alienating his brother? Persuade the girl that he's not interested? Use her and forget? Will he tell the brother what's happening or try to solve the problem without him knowing?

3. A boy asks the eldarin to help him recover money that the inn owner owes him. The boy worked at the inn for month or two and then was fired. The innkeeper feels within his right in what he did - he saw the boy drinking during work. The boy agrees that it was the case, but it was only one time, and even if he's fired, he should get the money for the time he worked before that.
We are talking about sums that are laughably small for a 4th level adventurers - but meaningful for the innkeeper and really big for the boy. Who, in eldarin's eyes, is right here?

4. Town leaders want to borrow a big part of PC's money for some very important investments. They, of course, won't do anything that could antagonize the heroes, but will approach them with many persuasion attempts and may be a little irritating in that. Will the PCs help their town (they can expect getting the money back, with interest, but in few years' time - and that's a lot for adventurers), or keep the money to themselves?

 

[NewJeffCT]

You know, just because the PCs are now heroes, it doesn't follow that everything will confirms way.

Frex: they drink and dance with all the local cuties...how do their fathers, brothers and (former?) betrotheds and boyfriends feel about that? Not all of them are going to be happy.

And Hell hath no fury like a cutie scorned- what happens when someone DOESN'T catch a PC's eye tells a little story about wandering hands and innocence lost?

Oh yeah- what happens when a PC goes into the bar and sits in Big Rudy's seat?

thanks - good point. The initial encounter with the local merchant with the daughter could have led to a beat-down of the PC, as her father & a couple of his men would have thrashed him without some great Bluff rolls on the part of the bard. But, going the opposite way could be interesting (the woman scorned...)

 

[NewJeffCT]

A lot of excellent ideas so far - thanks. And, good point on not doing too many of them. To start the adventure, I had a quick Skill Challenge for the party to enhance/maintain/lose the reputation they gained during the first goblin raid... I had quick (out of game) role playing or one-on-one combat encounters for each PC that seemed to go over pretty well at the table. Besides the merchant's daughter & the hidden goblin, I also had a drunken bully, an archery contest for the elf ranger and the group's shaman was asked to help bless the opening of the town's new church.

And, this is what I love about enworld - being able to get some good ideas for these sorts of situations!