D&D 5E D&D 5E Ideas with running a Faire/Carnival scenario?

[MichaelArkAngel]

I am a DM for a group of 5 adventurers just wrapping up Hoard of the Dragon Queen and on their way to Waterdeep for Rise of Tiamat. It had been literally a year since we started and I felt as a celebration to have one session of nothing but fun and games for the players. In the same sense I can intertwine this with Rise of Tiamat as a celebration in Waterdeep for "The Heroes of greenest!"

I have a few set ideas (Archery, Jousting, Bear Wrestling, and a race incorporating running, horse riding, swimming, and an obstacle course)

Has anyone ever ran a fair, or games during any of their campaigns? any ideas for games for the magic user in the group?

 

[jayoungr]

In my HotDQ campaign, I ran a day of games at a harvest festival in Elturel using the rules in this post:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ble!)/page11&p=6622889&viewfull=1#post6622889

For the final event (catching the pig), I made use of the chase rules in en5ider #8. Catching the pig was a grapple attack, with additional grapple checks every round to hold onto it and bring it back to the starting point.

[mention=1]Morrus,[/mention] it seems the question of how to run festival games comes up fairly regularly on the board; maybe an idea for a future edition of en5ider??

 

[Tony Vargas]

Has anyone ever ran a fair, or games during any of their campaigns? any ideas for games for the magic user in the group?

I've rarely seen these things go well, I'm sorry to say.

In one campaign, we were all excited to go to a 'joust' with a lot of competitions. They boiled down to single-elimination rounds with a roll per round, just with tons of modifiers. PCs mostly got knocked out the first round due to a few bad rolls. One went a few rounds and won a side-bet with an NPC rival who went one round fewer. The rest was the DM determining which NPCs won each event.

Somewhat more fun was the dwarven drinking game "I'll Kill You!" Which amounted to a series of FORT saves leavened with extravagant death threats.

Going back further I recall DMs handling games of chance and contests with a roll behind the screen. ( "I'm going to join the dice game" :rattle: "You lose 6 gp." )


Of course, you can just run an arena duel or battle as a combat. That worked out well, later, for the same DM who ran the disappointing joust, above.

But where he really pulled it off was a chariot race. I don't remember all the details, but we had our minis out on plastic bases, two to a base to represent the chariots, and they edged forward or fell back each round as a sort of leader board, rather than actually moving around an elaborate track. Each round, there were random 'complications' that you could avoid or leverage using a choice of skills to pull ahead, and/or you could attack other drivers, ram chariots together, or whatever you could think of. It was 2 characters per chariot, so there was both intra party competition and competition with NPC rivals - and a political element, because we were trying to curry favor with the local nobility.

I'm sure your could run something like that by dressing up the chase rules. Make sure everyone watches Ben Hur, first.


I don't think I've ever seen a satisfactory archery contest. Bounded Accuracy would make it a fairly random event.

It might go better leaning more heavily on narrative instead of making a lot of checks. Narrate success in early rounds and describe a capable rival winning several matches, before bringing in the dice, for instance.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

We had a search and rescue adventure, with the fair as the terrain.

The punters were packed in, forming difficult terrain. The area nearer the designated beer tent presented the risk of a punch up and the chance of winning gold through card games.

The big top featured lots of NPC carnies, hawking their wares, blowing fire and otherwise providing distractions for those stuck in the long ques to the main event itself. It was also the site closest to the guard tent. Overall, this area provided less cover but had many a distracted punter for thievery, with the consideration that the guards could respond quickly here if caught.

The target itself was located in the Freaks area, where pockets of punters clustered around displays and guards watched on, bored and underpaid.

There was also an area somewhat removed from the fair area, where the Ringmaster's airship was anchored, along with the mercenary camp. Said mercs were employed after the Ringmaster caught wind of some near-do-wells planning to break out his prize freak (kobold, re-fluffed as a Dragonkin sub species).

So with these fixed terrain elements, we then introduced dynamic elements. We had bored underpaid Fair Guards, who were big, strong but generally clueless. They'd give chace but could be lost relatively easily and represented a low level threat for consideration. Fewer in number and scattered around the fair were also well trained, keen eyed mercs, working in pairs, who would raise the alarm and attempt to coordinate the guards if a threat presented. For the most part, characters would be wary of the guards while actively trying to avoid the mercs.

All of this was set within clearings within a forested area, so there was plenty of opportunity to hide and regroup, the forests themselves did have bored guards wandering through it/up to mischief seeded within them.

There was also dragon-themed ice-cream, face painting and fire breathing.

Session went really well, played like a heist. I made sure to make design the event as a terrain with lots of fair-themed features, rather than a series of mini-games that the players could engage with. In my experience, it's often better to RP these unless the outcome really is that important to advancing the campaign.

 

[jayoungr]

I don't think I've ever seen a satisfactory archery contest. Bounded Accuracy would make it a fairly random event.

It went well when I ran it. Just for easy reference, here are the rules I used:

You must hit the target within 3 rounds, 3 tries each target.
The target becomes increasingly difficult to hit.
At the 5th and final target, you only have 2 attempts.
1st Target - AC 12
2nd Target AC 14
3rd Target AC 15,
4th Target AC 15, Disadvantage (moving target)
5th Target AC 17

I later thought of another tweak I could have added. Players may aim and add an extra D6 (or maybe a flat bonus?) to their rolls, but if you do this, you only get two tries at the target instead of three (or one instead of two in the final round). If/when I run this again, I may try out that rule.

 

[Imaculata]

I had a circus in one of my sessions. And part of this circus was a massive fire show involving dueling wizards. The fight was entirely staged, and most of the spells were illusions or harmless cantrips. But it looked real and felt real, because the audience could feel the heat of the spells. The show took place on a large floating platform in the harbor of the city, with an elaborate wooden set that could break apart to simulate a crashing tower during the show's spectacular finale.

 

[Eltab]

inexplicable double-post from Quick Reply

 

[Eltab]

How creative is your magic-user's player? Prestidigitation and Mage Hand allow him to run a game or mess up somebody else's.
"Now I need a volunteer from the audience; who can lift this table one-handed?" -mage places Mage Hand over Barbarian's head pointing down and bobbing to draw attention -
Prestidigitation can make even tasteless slop (lima bean soup, imho) taste good - so quietly interfere with the Soup-Eating Contest so one contestant's tastes like a Campbells Chunky soup

Fun physical contests need some good descriptions, even when "walk a tightrope' comes down to an Acrobatics check.

Introduce a group of kids just running around and having fun; at the end of the night one has fallen asleep (exhausted) somewhere outside, and the parents are searching frantically for him.

Garishly-dressed Pickpocket doesn't take your money, he puts candy IN your coinpurse. He's really a salesman for the candy booth. Opportunity to RP in a non-hostile environment.

 

[Eltab]

Players may aim and add an extra D6 (or maybe a flat bonus?)

DEXmod or STRmod or Proficiency Bonus all are intuitive flat bonuses to indicate "I take careful aim".

 

[jayoungr]

Just to add, contests work best when multiple PCs enter. Do what you can to encourage that. Otherwise, there's only one chance for the group to distinguish itself, and all those who aren't the focus of attention just have to watch.

By the way, of the games linked in my earlier post, I think the most successful was possibly the drinking contest. The reason for this was because the players got to choose their strategy and how much they wanted to risk in any given round.

DEXmod or STRmod or Proficiency Bonus all are intuitive flat bonuses to indicate "I take careful aim".

As I see it, those bonuses represent what a PC does when s/he spends no more than 6 seconds aiming. By taking even longer to line up the shot, the PC could get an extra bonus. (From an out-of-game standpoint, I'm trying to integrate the risk and player choice aspect of the drinking contest into the archery contest.)