Abstraction
First Post
Hi, guys
Just restarted my game on Friday. Decided to take a different approach to character creation and group integration. The group elected one person to be leader. That person recruited the other 3, and also chose the adventure. Everyone created a character and all that worked fine. I asked the lead character what kind of adventure he wanted, and he chose a Quest.
Well, looking at the character, I saw that he had Favored of a God as one of his advantages (we use homemade advantage/disadvantage cards). He chose W'Yim, the Dreamer, as the god that favored him. W'Yim is the god of pleasure, music, dreams and has bamboo as a significant material for him. Okay, so far so good.
I tell him that he has been having dreams for the past 7 nights. He sees himself in a bamboo forest. He hears whispering all around. It is distant and indistinct, but each night it becomes clearer and clearer. After several nights, he hears the voice tell him that "the Gate is about to be opened". The next night he hears "They are trying to open the Gate. They must not open the Gate." On the final night of the dream, he hears "Go South. Leave in the morning."
So, the character meets up with a lass he knows in town and they travel south, encountering the other two players (there will be a fifth player also, but he wasn't there). The group is:
Rural Hobbit Warlock 1
Human Female Wizard 1
Hill Gnome Female Druid 1
Feral Elf Ranger 1
I use custom races in my world, but they aren't significantly different to mention.
They all meet up, the hobbit explains his dreams and they agree to join him. They keep traveling south. They camp for the night and are attacked by feral dogs. They slay 3 of the 4, the last one runs off. In the morning, the ranger investigates a little. He finds that the dogs show a lot of old wounds and he finds a significant sliver of bamboo in the flank of one. Although they decide it's a significant clue, they simply stash it and continue following the road south.
They come to a tiny village. The human woman knows of an old widow who lives outside town that they can stay with for cheap. They spend the night. The next day, the old lady tells them about a few different things of local news. They show her the bamboo. She tells them that she had never seen such a plant before, but says that there had been earthshakes a couple weeks back and a neighbor informed her that some new plants began growing in the area. They question her about it, but she doesn't get out much and doesn't question the will of the gods to change things.
After helping with chores, the group heads east in the direction of these new plants. After a couple hours, they find an area where it appears the ground is subsiding. The angle is very slight, maybe 1 degree, but it continues on downhill for quite a ways. They keep going until they reach a small copse of bamboo. There is a spring that comes up here and fills a natural basin with water that the bamboo grows out of. The overflow trickles out and forms a small stream that goes northeast. They investigate the area and find some of the bamboo has been broken, some cut. The hobbit prays for divine guidance and bamboo stalk cracks and lays in a line, pointing northeast. They follow the stream. After an hour, they come to a place where the ground has totally given way. There is a (ravine? canyon? crater? roughly circular large area) with 70 foot walls. The stream forms a little waterfall that flows down to the bottom. The group asks if there are caves in the cliff walls and I inform them that there are many. The warlock investigates with his spider climb ability. Near the bottom he finds that the water forms a pond or marsh at the base of the cliff. The watery area doesn't extend far, this side of the ravine is lower than the rest. The area down here forms a lush, almost rainforest place. In the middle of this growth, seen from above, are tumbling down stone buildings. On the far cliff from the waterfall they can see some kind of construction going all the way up the cliff wall. They can't make out what it is, exactly. If they had investigated, they would have found a crude scaffold of bamboo and vines that someone could use for climbing up or down the cliff.
We called it a night and made plans to meet for the next game this Sunday.
Here's the problem. I was ad-libbing the entire time. I have no idea what should be in that ravine, what this "Gate" is and what happens when the Gate is opened. I guess whatever is in the ravine should be a step leading toward the Gate, because a Quest should lead them from one place to another over many levels.
Any brainstorming out there? I was thinking of maybe using kobolds. They might have a good reason to build the scaffold to get to the top. They are miners and maybe they caused the land to sink like this? On the other hand, I would love to come up with an idea that uses more "monstery" monsters. I have used a lot of humanoids, vermin and mindless undead and would like to really scare the players with something they aren't used to. Is there much that could fit with first level characters?
Just restarted my game on Friday. Decided to take a different approach to character creation and group integration. The group elected one person to be leader. That person recruited the other 3, and also chose the adventure. Everyone created a character and all that worked fine. I asked the lead character what kind of adventure he wanted, and he chose a Quest.
Well, looking at the character, I saw that he had Favored of a God as one of his advantages (we use homemade advantage/disadvantage cards). He chose W'Yim, the Dreamer, as the god that favored him. W'Yim is the god of pleasure, music, dreams and has bamboo as a significant material for him. Okay, so far so good.
I tell him that he has been having dreams for the past 7 nights. He sees himself in a bamboo forest. He hears whispering all around. It is distant and indistinct, but each night it becomes clearer and clearer. After several nights, he hears the voice tell him that "the Gate is about to be opened". The next night he hears "They are trying to open the Gate. They must not open the Gate." On the final night of the dream, he hears "Go South. Leave in the morning."
So, the character meets up with a lass he knows in town and they travel south, encountering the other two players (there will be a fifth player also, but he wasn't there). The group is:
Rural Hobbit Warlock 1
Human Female Wizard 1
Hill Gnome Female Druid 1
Feral Elf Ranger 1
I use custom races in my world, but they aren't significantly different to mention.
They all meet up, the hobbit explains his dreams and they agree to join him. They keep traveling south. They camp for the night and are attacked by feral dogs. They slay 3 of the 4, the last one runs off. In the morning, the ranger investigates a little. He finds that the dogs show a lot of old wounds and he finds a significant sliver of bamboo in the flank of one. Although they decide it's a significant clue, they simply stash it and continue following the road south.
They come to a tiny village. The human woman knows of an old widow who lives outside town that they can stay with for cheap. They spend the night. The next day, the old lady tells them about a few different things of local news. They show her the bamboo. She tells them that she had never seen such a plant before, but says that there had been earthshakes a couple weeks back and a neighbor informed her that some new plants began growing in the area. They question her about it, but she doesn't get out much and doesn't question the will of the gods to change things.
After helping with chores, the group heads east in the direction of these new plants. After a couple hours, they find an area where it appears the ground is subsiding. The angle is very slight, maybe 1 degree, but it continues on downhill for quite a ways. They keep going until they reach a small copse of bamboo. There is a spring that comes up here and fills a natural basin with water that the bamboo grows out of. The overflow trickles out and forms a small stream that goes northeast. They investigate the area and find some of the bamboo has been broken, some cut. The hobbit prays for divine guidance and bamboo stalk cracks and lays in a line, pointing northeast. They follow the stream. After an hour, they come to a place where the ground has totally given way. There is a (ravine? canyon? crater? roughly circular large area) with 70 foot walls. The stream forms a little waterfall that flows down to the bottom. The group asks if there are caves in the cliff walls and I inform them that there are many. The warlock investigates with his spider climb ability. Near the bottom he finds that the water forms a pond or marsh at the base of the cliff. The watery area doesn't extend far, this side of the ravine is lower than the rest. The area down here forms a lush, almost rainforest place. In the middle of this growth, seen from above, are tumbling down stone buildings. On the far cliff from the waterfall they can see some kind of construction going all the way up the cliff wall. They can't make out what it is, exactly. If they had investigated, they would have found a crude scaffold of bamboo and vines that someone could use for climbing up or down the cliff.
We called it a night and made plans to meet for the next game this Sunday.
Here's the problem. I was ad-libbing the entire time. I have no idea what should be in that ravine, what this "Gate" is and what happens when the Gate is opened. I guess whatever is in the ravine should be a step leading toward the Gate, because a Quest should lead them from one place to another over many levels.
Any brainstorming out there? I was thinking of maybe using kobolds. They might have a good reason to build the scaffold to get to the top. They are miners and maybe they caused the land to sink like this? On the other hand, I would love to come up with an idea that uses more "monstery" monsters. I have used a lot of humanoids, vermin and mindless undead and would like to really scare the players with something they aren't used to. Is there much that could fit with first level characters?
