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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barendd Nobeard" data-source="post: 1186667" data-attributes="member: 960">Sure - all roads lead to Rome.Or, in other words, set up several different investigative avenues that all lead to the same source (which eventually leads to the final encounter).The trick is to have a bunch of clues that only reveal the final location when the PCs have most of the clues in their possession.  Plus whatever knowledge and items they need to have a chance of survival.There was a great <a href="http://www.livingdeath.org" target="_blank">Living Death</a> module called "Insomnia" that did this.  [spoiler]Set in the 1890s (as all LD mods are), the PCs are sent to a small town. From there, it's almost totally free form, with the author putting in *time sensitive* information (as opposed to the more traditional *location sensitive* information).  Clues at each obvious location point to other locations, including one that's a veritable clue gold mine--which ultimately holds clues which point to the final location.  Halfway through the mod, the text says: "Calmly take up a PC's sheet, and lightly cross off a skill.  If the player asks what's going on, simply explain that he doesn't remember having that skill any more."  This has a very disturbing effect on the player--players hate losing abilities!In addition to memory loss (which spread to other PCs, too), there were "vingettes" that could take place almost anywhere, at almost any time:  a cryptic message in a mirror which only one PC can see; partial deafness (-2 to Listen checks); a sensation of being watched; a vision of a little girl saying something menacing (in this case, "They're going to eat you. They're going to eat you"); a stranger stopping the PC to say, "They're right behind you."  An important note for running the mod, is that only a few (2-3) of these vignettes happen, and they're just to set the mood--don't let PCs get side-tracked by them.Then, as the mod progressed, the NPCs started acting stranger and stranger.  When I played this mod, eventually the inn-keeper did not even remember that my PC had a room at the inn.Basically, the mod involved ethereal alien beings that ate memories and took possessions to "catalog" the objects.  So, if the PCs went to encounter #1 early in the mod, the NPC had one reaction ("my wife is at our antique shop").  But, if they went to encounter #1 later in the mod, the reaction was very different ("I'm not married; I'm not related to the people who run the antique shop--we just share a surname") and some things were missing from the house.  This sort of thing worked great when we went back to "re-interview" an NPC, saw furniture missing, and got totally different answers to the interview questions!There was even a sort of red-herring location--the local asylum, where the PCs can't really help, or learn much--just waste time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />This was a one-round (four hour) RPGA event which was almost *all* investigation.  But creepy as hell, too.  And I think it worked because of the  location (small town--not too many options to explore), and the exposition of the story wasn't dependent upon learning the clues in order A-B-C-D.[/spoiler]Sorry to ramble on so much.  Hope this helps.</blockquote>

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