How would you run a defend-the-building type oneshot?

[Emka]

Hi
My novice band of players just finished the Kobold Hall which I fluffed up to some extent, and I'm going to have them summoned to Harkenwold for the whole Reavers business. Unfortunately, these guys are about 50xp short of lvl2 and they are all itching to gain new powers and skills.
Now I want to avoid spending 70% of the session levelling up so I was thinking of running a short filler oneshot to push them over the 1000xp mark and have them all set and ready for the Reavers in the next session.

Right now I really don't have any hooks for them to do anything else than what I command them (my bad, I know) so I figured I would incorporate this oneshot as a prologue to the Reavers. My idea is that Harkenwold is a long ways away from Fallcrest so they would have to spend the night in a lone tavern somewhere along the way. Once there I thought I could have a classic barroom brawl going on, but that seems a bit too generic?
Perhaps something unrelated like undead coming out of the woods and attacking the tavern; or should I indeed have a few Iron Circle bandits come in and shake down the tavernowner. In both scenarios the presence of the Heroes in the tavern feel like a happy accident which is kinda what I'm going for.
That said, a single standard encounter would end the session early I think. What are some ways to make this a more interesting if not longer encounter without dragging it out?

I would love to hear some of your ideas, see if I can go somewhere with that. Mind that it's still lvl1 and after clearing the Hall they might be a bit battleweary so skill challenges are also very welcome.

 

[S'mon]

Eh, my advice would be to give them the 50 XP. Tell them they all start next session at level 2 with 1000 XP, and get them to level up in advance. IME your players will thank you.

Edit: OnlineDM's XP made me a SuperHero! Yaay!

 

[Colmarr]

If you have DDI or some back issues of Dungeon, check out Dead by Dawn.

It's a low level one-shot involving the PCs holing up in a church and beating off waves of zombies as they wait for the sun to come up. It garnered a lot of praise when it was published, both for its non-standard adventure structure and for the adventure itself.

Edit: Dungeon 176, March 2010 (Sheesh, was it that long ago?!)

 

[delericho]

Assuming a standard-sized party and a 4-hour session, and assuming you don't run hugely fast, you're probably looking at 3-4 encounters plus a bit of roleplay/investigation. So...

Start with a short "arrival at the tavern" scene. Drop a few hints that something isn't right, but don't dwell on it too much. At most, allow the PCs to rack up a success for the upcoming Skill Challenge...

Edit: I just realised that this makes no sense, since the SC doesn't track successes. Instead, I would suggest this - if the players realise something is wrong, and pre-emptively reinforce the tavern, this should negate the first failure scored in the SC.

Introduce several NPCs in the tavern. 8 would seem to be about right, ideally with some competing agendas amongst them, and perhaps with one or two the PCs just don't like (but probably don't want to simply kill). Ideally, one of them has been meddling with things left undisturbed.

Anyway, the PCs turn in, only to be disturbed in the night...

Proceed then to the first encounter, in which the tavern is attacked by zombies/bandits/renegade fae/whatever. Several of them have made it inside, and are tearing up the place. They seem to be looking for something, and can't be reasoned with. There are more outside; the NPCs are holding them back for now.

Once the PCs have dealt with the first encounter, proceed to the "Defend the Tavern" Skill Challenge. Basically, the PCs have to reinforce the entrances, encourage the NPCs to fight together, and try to work out what is going on. Likely checks are Diplomacy/Intimidate (for the NPCs), Religion/Nature (for the undead/renegade fae), and so on.

Each round of checks represents half the night. Don't bother tracking successes, but do keep a note of the number of failures...

After the first round of checks, have two things go wrong at once. Perhaps the zombies start bursting through the floor, and then one of the NPCs tries to escape in the confusion, letting more zombies in through an upper-floor window. Two small encounters, here - how do the PCs split their attentions?

The consequence of these encounters: for each failure the PCs suffered in the first round of the Skill Challenge, one NPC is dead (select randomly). Also, if the PCs didn't split their forces to deal with the two mini-encounters at once, another NPC is dead.

Then a second round of the Skill Challenge. Some of the NPCs are freaking out and need calmed (some sort of Empathy skill), the damage to the tavern needs repaired (Engineering?). Also, if they had some success in the investigation part of the first round, this unlocks Streetwise, allowing them to identify the culprit and recover the McGuffin. Not that it will help them much...

As the night (and session) nears its end, open up with the climactic encounter. The tavern gets hit by all the remaining bandits/zombies/fae (mostly minions, but with a couple of 'normal' monsters - probably aim for a level 3 encounter). After a few rounds, the enemy are then reinforced by an appropriate leader (essentially, another level 2-3 encounter).

However, at this point, if the PCs have the McGuffin, they can use it (to weaken the BBEG, to drive off his minions, or to negotiate, as you wish), making that last encounter much less deadly.

As before, for each failure in the second round of the Skill Challenge, one of the NPCs is dead.

Give out suitable treasure for the encounters (either directly as loot, as a reward from surviving NPCs, or even simply in the McGuffin). Give XP for the encounters as normal, plus a bonus for each NPC who survived (if half the NPCs survive, this should be equivalent to a level 1 encounter - obviously, the better they do the more XP they get).

Two notes:

- I don't have my PHB to hand, so I've had to take my best guess at skill names. You'll need to insert appropriate ones yourself. The DCs for checks should be taken from Page 42 (or equivalent) of course.

- The encounters, and especially that last one, might be too deadly. Use your judgement.

I hope that helps!

 

[delericho]

Eh, my advice would be to give them the 50 XP. Tell them they all start next session at level 2 with 1000 XP, and get them to level up in advance. IME your players will thank you.

Or you could do this, of course!

 

[Shadus]

I'd give them the XP, and then prepare an optional one shot just for fun.

While traveling abroad, PC will get the option to either stay at an over priced inn in the middle of no where, or just make camp. If the PCs talk to someone at the inn, or make a history check they will hear (or have heard of) rumors of a small time local gang. The inn prices are so high because the thugs are collecting protection money from them, but the inn keeper won't say anything.
If the PCs decided to spend the night, the will awake too load noises in the main room. The thugs have come to collect from the poor innkeeper who simply doesn't have the money. The thugs will then atempt to loot and burn the place. Luckily, heroes just happen to be spending the night...

 

[Emka]

Exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.
I thought about just handing them the XP, but these guys have been counting down to 1000 for two sessions now and giving them free XP off-session may feel like a hollow experience. Hence the tiny interbellum encounter.

Good suggestion about levelling in advance. I'll probably do it for them and have levelled charactersheets and powercards at the ready so they can level in a matter of minutes. It's basically +1 to every d20 roll and an extra power or two at second level, right?

I like the overpriced inn idea, and I have been looking at Dead by Dawn. Both seem like very fun situations. There's only 4 characters and because of their newbieness sessions don't progress very fast so I might have to trim some fat.
Either I go for the overpriced inn as a small diversion before having them tackle Reavers' epilogue encounter, or go with a scaled down and reskinned Dead by Dawn and fill the entire evening.

Awesome stuff guys, this is exactly why I go to enworld


offtopic;
After the Reavers - probably a few months from now - I'll run the Winter King but reflavored to be a sequel to the Kobold Hall. The seed for that has already been planted as I made a few changes to Kobold Hall and have the heroes find a secret room with a chute in the floor. The room also contained the diary of the long-dead Lord of the mansion, decribing a maddening pact with a Dragon. He was to take care of one of her babies in exchange for more wealth and power he could possibly dream of. He fed the dragon fledgeling via the chute, dumping bodies and material trinkets through it. Including his family sword (the Lifedrinker) and his wife and daughter.

While the Lord has been dead for years, the Dragon still lived there. The party killed the dragon, as the Kobold Hall dictates, and it's mother will come back to Fallcrest for revenge; enter the Cairn of the Winter King (Winter Dragon, in this case).
fairly pleased with myself there, teehee.

 

[Rechan]

It sounds like you have a real fun campaign Emka, and have a DM's head about you.

My concern for the Inn getting shaken down by Iron Circle bandits is that it steals the thunder from the beginning encounter of Reavers. So it sounds like you have some ideas of your own.

Good suggestion about levelling in advance. I'll probably do it for them and have levelled charactersheets and powercards at the ready so they can level in a matter of minutes. It's basically +1 to every d20 roll and an extra power or two at second level, right?

+1 to attacks, initiative, defenses, skill checks.
A new feat.
A new utility power.

 

[MarkB]

If the next thing on the menu is travel to another venue, you could build the journey as a skill challenge, with checks to achieve things like stay on the right track, shelter against storms, and press on quickly. Success gets them to the town by market day, and they earn some XP, get better prices for their loot, and have a wider choice of vendors for whatever they might need to stock up on.

 

[Emka]

It sounds like you have a real fun campaign Emka, and have a DM's head about you.

yea, we're having a great time with this. I like cooking up stories and the players love running around in it, from both the tactical battlegrid and the flavor roleplaying point of view.
the synchronous *gasp* all players let loose when I plopped down the young dragon mini was classic
as was the victory lap around the table the wizard ran when he rolled a critical on his daily.

I'm spending this weekend on my mother's farm while she takes care of my 1 year old so lots of time to reskin dead by dawn!