Brainstorming for my game - Come join in

[BSF]

Well, except for the players in my Friday night game. You will have plenty of opportunity to see what is cooked up during the game. so you can just be on your way now, thank you.



-= Give a little room for folks to mosey on past =-



OK, here is the situation. I am picking up my game from a two week lapse. Recently I have felt like my games are moving a little too slowly and I want to liven things up. A lot!

The group is mostly 5-6th level. The class makeup is wacky with very few core classes. but that is mostly irrelevant, so don't sweat that.

The recent setup was that the PCs were captured by a bunch of goblins. Mind you these are goblins with a lot of organization and many of them have fiendish bloodlines. A few were goblin tieflings. There was a half-fiendish goblin and even a high level Devilish goblin (Green Ronin Devilish template). While captured, the PCs heard enough insinuations of *bad things* happening. A tiefling human even stopped by to pick up some sort of *prize*. The goblins abandoned the ruins they were in since they have more important plots to work on and left the PCs in a cavern slowly filling with water. Did I mention that the PCs were manacled to a water wheel? Yeah, they kept spinning around and holding their breath as their heads passed into the water. All of this should seem vaguely James Bond style.

Anyway, one of the PCs had escaped and he met the replacement PC for Macbeth (Whose PC died in the session prior.) The replacement PC had been tracking goblins that had stolen a holy relic he was supposed to be safeguarding.

With some clever use of Hero cards (Thanks Barsoomcore - for creating Hero cards, and Merak Spielman - for the word file I used to print them) and the endeavors of the uncaptured PCs, the group was saved. They were able to discover that the goblins have stepped up their plans dealing with a nearby city, and that the tiefling human took the *prize*. Leaving the ruins, they could see a black sailed ship rapidly sailing down river. The Shaman's spirit familiar was able to get close enough to identify a figure on the deck of the ship that the group is reasonably sure if the tiefling human.

As it stands right now, the PCs want to warn the city and try to recover the *prize* which they believe is probably the holy relic. This is where we left off last time. Sorry for the long windedness getting here, but I am just trying to give you good depth of background, and perhaps a decent read. The campaign world has steampunk elements and it is time for me to introduce them. For the next session(s) I plan on using material from Bastion's Airships, FFG's Sorcery and Steam, EN Publishing's Steam and Steel, and finally Adamant's Hot Pursuit. (Again, thanks Barsoomcore!)

The next session is going to start off with a Chase. The PC's are going to crest a hill to where they can see the city they want to warn. A bit beyond the hill, they will also see a zeppelin. If they have outrageous spot checks (And this group sometimes hits Spot in the 30's) they might see the smaller dragonfly flyers making a supply run to a nearby (friendly) wizard's tower. That's when the 20 worgs with goblin riders will show up. The chase will be on to see if the PCs can make it to the city and warn them about the goblins.

After that, I am hoping they get the bright idea to try to enlist the aid of the zeppelin to catch up to the black sailed ship. Thie ship has been sailing at 6-8 knots for 3 days at this point, so the PCs have a lot of catching up to do. But that's OK because it is a long way downriver before the ship hits the open sea.

The zeppelin does not use the rules from Airships. This is where it gets amusing (at least for me.) I am modelling the zeppelin and crew off Dola's Pirates from Castle in the Sky. Oh yeah, they are goblins. Neutralish/goodish goblins that have no ties to the fiendish goblin clans in the area. I have already established that not all goblins are evil, so this isn't a big surprise. But the zeppelin captain is a goblin matriarch. Probably an 8-10th level rogue that will help the PCs if they can make her a good business offer.

Any ideas on how I can flesh out the zeppelin and crew? I want them to be slightly comical, but competent. The zeppelin is steampunk so there should be amusing bits with the machinery and keeping the whole thing flying well. But in the end, it can get the PCs to the black sailed ship.

Now the ship is another piece of work. It is running in stealth mode right now since the captain (tiefling human) doesn't want to attract any additional attention. She is taking the holy relic back to her boss. Her first priority will be to get to the ocean. If I have calculated my distances & speed correctly, the zeppelin should catch up to the ship around the same time they hit the ocean. There will be a brief layover in the port city there. The PCs may try to get to the ship during this time, but that is problematic. With flying ships in the game, the city there is very protective of airspace. Dola won't go near the city because she doesn't have legitimate cargo and doesn't want to fight the defenses. So it is likely that the PCs will have to wait until the ship leaves.

Once the ship gets a significant distance from the city, out on the ocean, the tiefling will finally drop all pretense and activate the vampiric engine on board. Yep, the black sailed ship uses material from Airships. Since the ship will soon move much faster than the zeppelin, the PCs will need to make their assault soon. Since the PCs don't have fly spells, I imagine they will get assistance from the dragonfly's to drop onto the ship. I would like this at least.

That will make them engaged in melee on a flying ship over the ocean. Plenty of opportunity for swashbuckling action. Bullrushes over the railing, swinging from ropes, pitching decks, etc. If the PCs win, then they are confronted with the quandry of the vampiric engine. If they disable it and free the captives, they crash. If they don't, they doom the captives to death. I want that moral quandry and the solution is their problem, not mine.

So a few things I would appreciate input for.

• Is this too railroady? I don't think it is because I am leaving a lot of places where the PCs can derail the events. But I am trying to plan for high action and that requires a certain degree of plot.
• Anyone have ideas on fleshing out the goblin matriarch modeled after Dola? I am thinking UMD, some social skills, etc.
• Ideas on fleshing out the crew and the zeppelin?
• Ideas on how I can keep the combat on the flying ship high action/tension?
• Anything else wacky that I ought to do?

Thanks!

 

[DM_Matt]

You know your players a lot better than I do obviously, but I dont so much think its railroady as its very hard to guess what looks to most likely be the only solution. If its the sort of thing they would think of, though, go for it.

 

[BSF]

A week ago I was thinking that the PCs had lost too much time to have any chance of actually recovering the relic. That seems unsatisfying to me. Sure they know where the destination is, but that is over 1000 miles away. I wanted to give them resources that would give them the chance to recover the relic before it arrives in the demonically controlled city of Borgash. So it is dicey, but it is a better plan than I had last week which basically amounted to "You can travel to Borgash if you want to try to retrieve the relic."

 

[Rel]

Neat plot. I wouldn't say it's too railroady but I'd also be ready to roll with the punches in case the PC's do something unexpected.

My first thought when you mentioned that the enemy ship will be docked in this city but the zeppelin can't land there would be to have her put us down along the river and obtain a boat somehow to assault the vessel while in dock. It is going to be an order of magnitude more complicated for them to try and take her while she's at sea so that's what I'd try, knowing that if we failed we might get a second crack later.

But of course your players don't know that the ship is going to be so difficult to catch once she's on the ocean. I still think I'd come up with the notion of attacking while she's in port. That would be a good time to catch some or all of the crew away from the ship.

One other question: What do the PC's know about the bad guys plans and how they would be impacted by the loss of the ship. If I thought I could buy myself some time then I'd see about finding a way to scuttle her in port.

 

[BSF]

I'm definitely ready to roll with the punches. I hadn't expected the PCs to have this much information on this particular story for 2-3 levels at least. And since I use your exp system, you have a rpetty good idea how long that would take.

There is a place that the zeppelin will consider putting down, but it isn't close enough to the city to be very helpful. The PCs are familiar with the city, but they have been away for over a year in game time. A lot has happened and they left early in their careers. Trying to get on board the ship, or even scuttle it will be very problematic. But the players are creative, so anything is possible. As far as the city proper is concerned, the Pcs would be trying to disrupt trade. While some elements in the city would care that a holy relic is on board, there are probably just as many elements within the city that would gleefully help the ship out of port if it meant their faction would gain influence. The PCs don't have any significant political chips to pull in, so it would be a very interesting turn in the campaign.

The PCs are rather underprepared in terms of dealing with the bad guys plans. All they really know is that the plans are probably not good and the *prize* is going to Borgash. The goblins don't entirely trust the tiefling captain and have packed the prize well to assure it reaches it's destination.

Of course, that's what the PCs "know". It isn't necessarily the truth. Unfortunately for the PCs, the fiendish goblins serve a devil lord that is a master of deception. They aren't sure of that yet, and they don't quite know how much truth has been revealed to them.

I think I have the framework of those contingencies covered since I anticipate some thoughts from the players along those lines. Specifics will have to wait until I see exactly what they try.

 

[BSF]

Oh hey, here is another question. What should I make the Holy Relic be? None of the PCs know what it is so I have a lot of wiggle room here. It shouldn't be artifact level yet. The relic is of a god named Pter the Crusader (or Pter the Protector). Pter protects the mortal races from evil in the world. His domains are Good, War, and Protection. Favored weapon is a bastard sword. This is an important relic, but not as important as a couple of other artifacts/relics for Pter in the game world.

 

[Felikeries]

I'd say this series of events cries 'brute NPC joins',as the party trys to disable
you're campiagn motif,they find an unstable yet smart about issues barbarian or
some sort,now as a trap or reward for the parties actions what is achieved by this will be left to portences...ha ha get it 'port'

The fact that the zep is a flying machine,could leave the unrestrained vanity that if the group knows their to take on the boat this way,that there is some effect they could use,that's new or at least unknown to the golbliness....earstwhile,if they get some bad rolls,the NPC will sabotage efforts once the air fight begins,for neither side really,but it falls in the party's favour

OH,i think they'd know that the chance of the boat crashing,durring the after effects is
plausable,so to sway this effort as a trap,you may want to make a cause and effect that will happen iether way,they can't get the zep tied to it because of....the gobliness's long lost lover is on the boat and she won't cooperate unless a mutiny happens,or the tiefling
has the deck sealed off,they have to break the hull to board,and this undoes it's flying effect,as wind wipped they fight on while the ship plummets from a strangely atmospheric altitude

 

[BSF]

Anybody else got ideas? I game in a bit under 3 hours.

I'm looking forward to the game. I'm hoping we can get a long ways into the game tonight, but we will see how it turns out.

 

[Rel]

Anybody else got ideas? I game in a bit under 3 hours.

I'm looking forward to the game. I'm hoping we can get a long ways into the game tonight, but we will see how it turns out.

Sorry I didn't get back in time to provide more input, BSF. I'd be curious to hear how things went and maybe I could offer a suggestion or two about where to go from there.

 

[BSF]

No worries.

The game didn't go as smooth as I would have liked. There are a few factors in this. Certainly one of the factors was players slowly dribbling in for over an hour. I was tempted to just start with the first three that arrived, but that seemed likely to turn out poorly for the chase.

The chase rules in Hot Pursuit are cool and it was nice to get familiar with them. But I erred by having so many individuals involved with the chase. Due to the dynamic nature of distances, it would have been much better to treat the entire group as one "vehicle". Maybe use the ride skill of the best rider with the speed factor of the slowest mount? Not a perfect solution, but if the goal is to keep a dynamic, exciting chase then you don't want to have 8 horse/rider combos. You really need a chase leader to keep the relative distances easy to compute.

Unfortunately, my wife had just gone out to spend time with her best friend who is visiting town and we got a little exuberant over a bad die roll. That woke my 6-month old daughter up and we ended up with some downtime while I tried to get her back to sleep.

The PCs made it to the city. They could see the zeppelin in the air out near the wizards tower outside the city, but they didn't know what it was. One of their goals had been to locate and recover the corpse of the baron's son who went missing 5 years previous. They had him wrapped in canvas and brought him to the keep. They had to speak with the seneschal and there was some tension when one of the PCs reused to hand over the signet ring to the seneschal. He wanted to insist on handing it over to the baron personally. The rest of the PCs were frustrated by this, but in the end he handed it over. It was nearly a conflict though.

Though the Zeppelin was too far away for the seneschal to see, the PCs did ask him about it. He expressed a little distaste at the airship and offered the opinion that the wizard (Kelust from Ronin Arts' Forbidden Arcana PDFs) was probably receiving more materials for his work. After asking about ways to get word downriver about the black sailed ship, some of the PCs decided to visit Kelust's Tower to see if Kelust or his apprentice would have any way to sending word.

As they neared the tower, they could see one of the dragonfly ships fly down and then fly back up a short time later. This did pique their interest. They had quite a conversation explaining the situation to the apprentice (Parvis, Kelust's assistant) and learning a bit more of the politics involved. Parvis suggested assort magics to travel that distance, but all are beyond the scope of the PCs right now. Then the fifth delivery from Dola's crew arrived, delivered by two goblins. There was some nice squirming around the table as many of the PCs had just been fighting goblins on worgs a short time earlier. Parvis assured them that Dola and her crew were not the same as the goblins near the city. While he didn't think they held to the same high moral standards as he and Kelust (both Lawful Good), they had never been able to prove that Dola was of low moral character either. The PCs decided that this was ambiguous enough and Dola might be less concerned about politics. Perhaps they could talk her into taking them downriver on her airship so they could try to catch the black sailed ship. Parvis setup a meeting so negotiations could begin.

That's where we left off.

One problem I have been trying not to smile too much about is that Macbeth's PC has goblins as a favored enemy. Dealing with these morally vague sky pirate goblins is going to be tough for him. Alas, one of the party members specializes in Diplomacy. Many others have high Cha and a couple of ranks in Diplomacy. I'm sure they will owrk it out without offending too many people. Besides, the PCs are already planning to point out that this is the best way to get to the black sailed ship with the relic he was trying to recover.

Right before everyone left, I told them that all they are really trying to do is make Dola an offer she will accept. The shaman's player smiled and said the only thing they want is the relic and they could offer her everything else of value on the ship. Very interesting! I didn't realize I had made this personal enough that they just want to get the relic out of the hands of the bad guys and are willing to sacrifice greatly to achieve that goal.

We didn't get as much done as I hoped, but it was pretty good overall.