Caravan adventure ideas

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In an upcoming adventure, I need to get my characters from City A to City B, with a brief stop at Town C, which may be visited later on in the campaign, in a ruined state, but which it would be nice for them to see ahead of time.

I would like for them to have a Western-style adventure, where orc tribes shadow them and maybe are responsible for the mischief (and murder) that happens along the trail and in Town C.

This is obviously a very rough sketch at this point, as there are at least two adventures in line ahead of this one.

Any suggestions for what kind of stuff would work well with this adventure? I'd love to get stuff that's classic D&D wilderness adventure in here, along with some classic Western movie elements.

Thanks for your help.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Well, as you already mentioned. There is the roving bands of X that may be shadowing the caravan - which will raid for plunder, booty, or slaves. And depending on the strength of the caravan, these raids will be either skirmish events or full on assaults. And deriving from that, there is always the possibility for lost livestock, or wagons, or persons, that could fall victim to said bandits - especially if they get lost further away from the caravan or inadvertantly are left behind after the night's camp.

You could also have unrelated events such as the caravan route coming within eye-shot of ruins or an old fort or tower. This would give the PCs a choice of mayhaps giving in to their inner curiosity and investigating the ruins, and having to decide how long they could do so and still catch back up with the caravan. Playing into this same idea, that distant item could even be another caravan under attack, a hamlet being overrun, or a natural formation (hill, cave, etc.) that the caravan drivers swear wasn't there the last time they came through the area.

Ghost towns can be usefull too. Especially if they were way-stops on the route that had been used before for food and a night's rest. Depending on the frequency and duration of the caravan, these places needn't be any bigger than maybe a tavern/saloon and a merchant or so. (In the horse trader days, camps and towns were often no more than a day's ride apart by horseback and often consisted of nothing more than a church.) So, such a place that was fine on the last trip, may now be abandoned - or haunted.

Of course, wandering encounters.

And, at least for right off the top of my head, I can't think of much more. Hope that helps some!

 

[Mark CMG]

Grab one of these -

http://paizo.com/products/btpy8oya?GameMastery-Map-Pack-Caravan

And perhaps make the NPCs for each wagon thematic to the style of artwork used. If you're familiar with the movie Stagecoach (any version, though John Ford is tops, IMO), you might also use some of the characters from there as NPC types.

 

[Madmage]

The other suggestion is that along the way the caravan could stop at a way town that is terrorized by the orcs and the PCs are asked to stay and fight them off and abandon the caravan or better yet the orcs could surround the town and the players must mount a defense of both caravan and town.

On that same theme, what if the townsfolk are working in complicity with the orcs such that the orcs force caravans to spend way more time in the town to affect repairs, pay for clerical healing at the local temple, and spend more time using the local services. If the orc chief (unknown at the time) is a half-orc and say the town's mayor is his/her parent could throw them for a loop and make for a good reveal.

 

[sabrinathecat]

I did this last year.
So, the goblin bandits along the caravan were there to loot it. I had some soldiers, a couple of skirmishers, and a bunch of minions.
If the PCs bunched up, the goblins had 2d4 rounds of free access to looting and sabotaging the caravan.
If the PCs spread out, one (random roll) would be near the attack on round 1, with 1 more PC arriving each round.
(my players decided to bunch together)
For every round the goblins had free run of looting and damaging the caravan, the progress for the day was slowed by an hour. If they had 5 or more rounds, the caravan would lose a whole day to repairs and recovering the cargo.
The soldiers and skirmishers would deal with the PCs (2 diverting from the looting for each PC that arrived). The minions were focused purely on looting until attacked.
Round 10 (if the fight lasted that long) would see the surviving goblins retreating if possible with whatever they could carry. Same thing if only minions were left alive or other failed morale check.
Successful tracking, nature, and endurance checks after the fight would allow the party to chase down the goblins that ran away with whatever they could carry. Otherwise each fleeing goblin who escaped would be carrying 10GP worth of valuable equipment.

I ran three variations of that encounter, with a couple of other encounters (territorial Owlbears and a nasty couple of necromancers after something the party had stolen--um, claimed as spoils of conquest after killing another necromancer of the same cult).