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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertsconley" data-source="post: 9626917" data-attributes="member: 13383">Perhaps my Scourge of the Demon Wolf as a more detailed example can help better illustrate how the pre-planned style of mystery works out in play.For those who don' t know the Scourge of the Demon Wolf is a sandbox adventure I released a few year ago. Although currently out of print, I expect to have a second edition released by the end of summer this year.So here is the summary of the initial situationThe PCs can get involved in a number of ways due to the rumors spreading about how the peasants of Kensla are refusing to bring in the harvest. I list a few in the book, but when I playtest, I have the players make up characters that would be hanging around the Baron's court looking for jobs.  A fairly common occurrence during medieval times.With the Baron, the group is hired to go to Kensla, deal with the f*#@ wolves, and get his peasants to bring in the damn harvest. Afterwards, the Baron's Steward will pull the group aside and tell them that while they have a lot of latitude, a harvest needs living peasants.So what going on here?All of this started at the Golden House, a conclave of mages several miles away from the village of Kensla. Like Convocations in Ars Magica, conclaves are group of mages banded together for support and security and part of a larger order of magic. Arbela is an apprentice there. Among her master's possessions, she found a book about demon, how to summon them, and how to control them. Very illegal, her master kept it after finding it on an adventure, as it is also a trove of useful but hard to get information about demons. He has no intentions of using any of the spells inside.Ambitous, Arbela took the manual late in the spring, went into the surrounding wilderness, and tried to summon a demon. From her point of view the spell failed, so she left the summoning site. While she took the book back with her, she didn't bother keeping up the remains of the ritual and she lost a satchel with her master's sigil on it that the book was originally in.[ATTACH=full]401390[/ATTACH]What she also didn't know was that beneath the place where she did the summoning was a wolf mother with her newly born pups. Nor Arbela knew that her ritual was a partial success; it managed to summon a wrath demon from the abyss, but failed to give its spirt a physical body in the material world. The spirit found the wolf den and possessed one of the pups, and thus created the demon wolf. The demon wolf grew quickly and killed the mother and the rest of the pups.[ATTACH=full]401391[/ATTACH]The Demon Wolf left the den, gained control of nearby wolf packs, and started terrorizing the countryside around Kensla. The bailiff of Kensla, Sir Anson, requested help from the Baron, who owned Kensla. The Baron sent his chief huntsman and a party of knights, hunters, and trackers to deal with the wolves.While the Baron's hunting party treated the expedition as an excuse for a party, they did their nominal job. However, they were unaware that the Demon Wolf had manipulated them into eliminating the few remaining rival packs. Mostly by creating false trials that led to the Demon Wolf's rivals. With the wolves supposedly dead, the hunting party cheered their success, headed back to the Baron, and offered their pelts as proof of that the deed was done.Meanwhile, for the rest of the summer, the Demon Wolf built up his strength and his pack. Mostly keeping to the mountains terrorizing a tribe of orcs that lived up in the mountains. In addition, a group of bandits decided to make some wolf costumes and tools to disguise their robberies as wolf attacks.Then a few weeks later a group of wandering Beggars, dishonored horse tribesman reduced to using wagons instead of horses, arrived near Kensla as part of their normal travels. They know about the bandit group, although not about disguising themselves as wolves, and one of the reasons for stopping here is to fence some of the bandit's ill-gotten gains.Late Summer near the Autumn Equinox, the Demon Wolf resumed its attacks around Kensla. One of these attacks killed the Beggar Chief's son caught unawares while hunting. The Beggar Chief vowed to find and kill the wolves responsible, although he and his clan were unaware that they were dealing with a demon.A week afterward, the presence of the Beggar Clan was discovered by villagers from Kensla. The parish priest gets it in his head that they are responsible for the wolf attacks.  Sir Anson disagrees but knows about the role the Beggars play in the rural criminal underworld. He rides out and orders them to leave. The Beggars pack up their encampment and move a short distance away still intent on hunting down the wolves.Then the Demon Wolf kills and dismembers Sir Anson, the bailiff of Kensla, while he was out inspecting the fields. This and the other attacks were the final straw for the villagers, who drafted the letter to the Baron recounted above. However, one of the attacks on an outlying cottage occupied by an elderly couple was done by the bandits, not the Demon Wolf.As the letter is on its way to the Baron, a peddler left Denison Crossing heading towards Kensla. He was attacked and killed by the Bandits, and his goods stolen.  Also the Beggars are discovered by the villagers to be still in the area. The parish priest wants to go after them, but the village Reeve has managed to convince everybody that it is not safe and they should wait for whoever the Baron sends.When the Baron got the letter, he was incensed; he also summoned the huntsman, berated him for his incompetence, and had him thrown into the stocks.[ATTACH=full]401394[/ATTACH]This is the situation prior to the start of play. What the players know is the geography of the land, that there have been wolf attacks, and that the peasants are refusing to bring in the harvest until the wolves are dealt with. Also, if the adventurers start out within Westower, the baronial seat, they know that the huntsman who led the original hunting party is in the stocks in the middle of the town square. Next is what happened with the dozen or so more groups that tried to handle this.</blockquote>

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