Compelling festival session

[lukelightning]

My campaign has the Great Pickle Festival, featuring pickles, sausages, and cutthroat competition to put on the best Pickle Pageant telling the story of the Pickle Bandit (a Robin Hood-esque figure). The PCs have been shanghaid into performing in one of the pageants.

 

[Corsair]

This is your chance to introduce...

"THE NEMESIS"

The nemesis is that NPC adventuring party which the players keep butting heads with. They chase the same bad guys and bounties, seek the same treasure, and routinely cross paths in tourneys and challenges.

Perhaps the Nemesis is a group of 4th level adventurers who don't look kindly on upstart do-gooders trying to move in on their territory. They want to keep all the profitable adventuring for themselves.

 

[birdchili]

This is your chance to introduce...

"THE NEMESIS"

Awesome. I'm so doing this. A week and a half to plan and craft the structure of a genius session. Lets hope I feel more smiley than terrible when it's over.

Now I just need to figure out why these folk are already irritated at my PCs... they haven't really *done* much yet, and are hardly well known. Maybe I'll just create them and go with the flow - I can't imagine my players spending a whole day in town without annoying *someone*. A rival team during one of the games perhaps...

hmmmm...

 

[birdchili]

I'm going to bump this one up once more before my session on Saturday.

So I've got a few encounters planned:

the "Nemesis" party is going to debut hassling a PC friend at the games (mulleted "vestplate" dude with "compensation"-sized sword, arrogant fashionista mage archer, and observant, silent albino dwarf). I'm also planning a secondary encounter with "Nemesis" hiring a tracker/guide to help them find a treasure of legend in the wilderness.

a couple of encounters that centre around the plot of a competing tavern-owner to sully the rep of the proprieter of the place where my pcs are staying.

some misc stuff (a chance to barter some recently acquired magic items for some other stuff, a speech by the Church high priest (normally given by the high paladin - hmmmm...), and a missing barmaid (the kid of the owner out carousing with some thieves guild pals).

the night will culminate with the attempted release of a box of roaches in the bar, and a big brawl. It should be possible for my players to prevent one or both of these events if they're smart (which is a bit worrysome as it leaves me without a climax).

planning continues, but it looks pretty disjointed still on paper. I'm tending away from giving the pcs a city guide, and rather letting them do whatever, but some more suggestions on making this flow would be good.

also: anyone who could point me in the direction of some lists of nifty non-magical "stuff" for adventurers online? I plan on handing out a page of "stuff to buy" that's cooler than the basic PHB standards. I think there was a thread or two here on this subject, but I can't find presently.