I love it when an unplanned/kitbash session comes together

[Psion]

Well, last week left me with much less time than I would have liked to plan the session. I wanted the players to meet an NPC before they got on to stuff I had planned for later. I figured the players would run into him on an island on the river of world, where some natives knew of him. That's about all I knew before starting the game saturday.

I also had this image of an exotic island with IMMENSE stone monoliths on it (sort of like Devil's Towever, but with a smooth-hewn four sided shape like the Washington Monument), surrouned in jungle.

I wanted to use weresharks from Creatures of Freeport at some point, but not having lycanthropes in my game world, I had to put off using them until I got to the river of worlds. I had no other real conflict planned, so I ran with it.

I wanted to display that the forces of chaos and the yuan-ti conflicted.

Needing a story, I pulled the one in Creatures out about the weresharks coming back for a weak victim in CoF, though I had to adapt it to be a wilderness event vice a city event. I had a crashed yuan-ti slave ship assaulted by chaos, with one survivor in the wreckage.

I figured that the natives would be scared of the weresharks and assume that any sailors on shore would be weresharks, so they pelted them as they approached. One player assumed they were elves... so *poof*, they were elves. I had been reading Advanced Bestiary which includes a sample bramble elf templated creature, which seemed sufficiently alien for the river of worlds, and the stats were handy, so *poof* they were bramble elf.

And it all worked out beautifully. A nicely orchestrated conflict with lots of dramatic potential. The players didn't even suspect that the survivor they found was a wereshark until the other weresharks came for him... while the druid made friends with one of the bramble elves and learned about the "other visitor" in the woods (the NPC seer they picked up).

So, does anyone else sometimes or often patch together great last minute games, riffing off of player assumptions and a few convenient resources?

 

[JoeGKushner]

All the time.

The best part is, since the players are 'egging' on certain aspects of the campaign, it all 'feels' much more cohesive to them. "Man, I can't beleive that it was X all along!" when it was based on some suggestiosn and role playing that happened in game or something along those lines.

Glad to hear the River of Worlds is going good. Weresharks... try to start getting more use out of the old collection?

 

[Voadam]

Not so much whole game sessions as elements at a time.

I'm running Demon-God's Fane and it has an armory full of old masterwork weapons "made from a blood-red color metal" with no explanation of the material.

One of the PCs is a dwarven cleric with the metal domain who worships a dwarven god of knowledge and came from a smithing clan.

So I had to come up with an explanation for what this metal was if I was going to use it as written.

So I started a thread here asking for suggestions. The responses proposed lots of different things like 2e red steel, tanari red steel from planescape, iron ore from the abyss, lots of different qualities for the metal with special effects, some demon blood mixture, and arsenic bronze.

I have Lord of the Iron fortress which has Baatorian green steel the baatezu counterpart to tanari red steel, but I didn't like the qualities as presented there, although it would have led into other plot hooks to the arms dealer in that module which I plan to use later. After googling historic arsenic bronze that had so many elements I liked that I went with that for the cleric's knowledge info.

Later it had a confrontation with bodaks but I don't like the mechanics of their death gaze so I swapped them out for advanced plague wraiths from a freeport web enhancement and their disease touch fit into the story arc of disease evil superbly.

 

[Mystery Man]

I blew off 2 weeks of getting something ready for last session and just decided to wing it and be entertaining. I think I only ran two short spur of the moment combats, one of those the ranger singlehandedly took down a dire bear. The rest of the time was detective work, enteracting with NPC's etc. None of which I had any script or planning for. I was told afterwards that it was one of the best that we've had. So...screw planning.

 

[devilish]

About 13 hours ago

Players were "supposed" to go to "level 2" of the dungeon.
Instead, they picked up, headed back to town,
and ran into 3 campaign threads that were whirling around
in my head, that _they_ managed to connect together, not I!

Whew! I love when the PCs do the work for you

-D

 

[Psion]

Glad to hear the River of Worlds is going good. Weresharks... try to start getting more use out of the old collection?

Something like that. Might as well use it what it's meant for, eh?

But it's not so much "trying to get use out of it so I can say I used it" so much as "trying to at last use an idea or image I thought was really cool."

It occurs to me I have yet to use the Hordes of Gehenna section of book of fiends...

 

[Psion]

I was told afterwards that it was one of the best that we've had.

I love it when that happens.

Last time I did that on a big scale was when the players took an option I wasn't expecting them to take. I had a map of a castle, and I just got the MMII... I threw in some creatures, combined it with some fledgeling idea I had, and presto! They loved it.

So...screw planning.

I'll say that my most complimented adventure in the 3e era was rather thorouhgly planned. And usually when I do run these little winged adventure, they turn out best when I at least had a bit of an idea of what I wanted to accomplish. Filling in the details seemed to work best when I kept goals in mind and looked for opportunities.

But it's a lot of fun when it pans out. In a way, more fun than the fully planned adventure because, well, the players aren't the only ones enjoying seeing the adventure unfold.

 

[diaglo]

broke out my old copy of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil yesterday.

the party decided to visit the nearby Village of Hommlet.

i hinted at it for months now.

as soon as they saw me dig in the closet....


well they got drunk or lingered around town.. and avoided all of the hooks.

 

[Psion]

well they got drunk or lingered around town.. and avoided all of the hooks.

Are the players familiar enough with the module that they might have been doing so deliberately?

 

[diaglo]

Are the players familiar enough with the module that they might have been doing so deliberately?

most definitely... i think the Computer game has influenced them.