Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3300325" data-attributes="member: 2205">OK, here's the adventure framework that I worked up in a chatroom with Rel, Enkhidu and a few others.  It gives a nod or two towards the original King Kong story, but that actually seems like a good thing to me.  Anyway, this looks very similar to Stormborn's idea too.diaglo--yeah, you poked your head in for the early part of that chat too, didn't you?  Anyway, here's the finished product of the brainstorming.  I'll troll through the other responses for other great ideas to add to this.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PC's patron is a vampire.  Years ago he made a deal where he sold his soul to a fiend, but then he discovered the secret of undeath and has so spared his soul from being taken.  The fiend is really pissed about this, naturally, and has been trying to send fiendish "collection agents" against the vampire for some time.  Finally, the vampire is able to renegotiate a new deal with the fiend; he'll get off his back if the vampire completes a ritual that summons him to possess a suitably large and nasty beasty in which he can rage around town and kill lots of people, harvesting their souls instead.  This is all backstory, though.  What the PCs "know" is that the vampire (it's not known that he's a vampire) has extensive shipping interests in the area, but one of his ships was attacked by a tribe of savage cannibals who killed his crew, shrunk their heads and ate them.  As a punitive gesture, he hires the PCs to make sure that they're not a threat anymore by killing their "god" a T. rex that roams around the island.  They need to bring the body back, but the cargo hold is big enough to make that doable.  The game starts in media res as they're arriving at the island. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The cannibals come out in their canoes and attack the ship.  Big fight. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PCs track the T. rex to it's lair and fight and kill it.  If they're smart, they can do this with some cleverly laid ambush or trap that makes the fight considerably easier.  Since T. rexes are CR 8 and I doubt I'd have the PCs be more than 5th level (in a much less magic saturated setting too, making their effective level probably even less) they had better, come to think of it.  Maybe I should use Allosaurus stats or something instead to make it not a death trap for the PCs. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Handwave through the passage back to the main city where the vampire is based.  It's a harbor town not unlike Port Royale is the idea.  Anyway, they take the T. rex body, which is now fairly decomposed (although agents of the vampire have come along with the PCs to try to preserve it as best as possible.  Perhaps mummified rather than zombified is what we're looking for here) to the vampires big estate away from town up on a cliff. He starts a ritual that will summon the demon to possess the body. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCs figure out they've been had and try to fight the vampire.  He's got enough undead around (zombies, I presume, although I can do better if needs be) make it impossible for them to stop the ritual, but they can fight through the undead and maybe even fight with the vampire itself before he makes himself scarce (or gets killed.)  The vampire's not really the climax of the adventure though, as the fiend-possessed undead T. rex starts rampaging through town. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Not sure yet how to plant this idea in the PCs' heads, but they can get on their ship and fire cannon at the T. rex in an attempt to save the town before it's too late.  The idea of shooting broadsides from a pirate ship at a half-fiend mummy T. rex is just too cool to pass up.  While they're doing this, an entire flock of winged demons of some kind attack the PCs to harass them. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Finally the T. rex turns into town out of range of the cannons, and the PCs have to go on land to attack it.  If they want, they could get a hastily rigged together wagon and donkey team with a cannon or two on them and take after the T. rex that way.  Otherwise it's mano a mano with that bad boy. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">PCs win, probably minus a few of their original number.  The end.</li> </ul>Anyway, that doesn't sound terribly exciting the way it's written up, but I think that's a damn fine framework for an adventure already.  Now I just have to go and worry about the particulars and details.  It's also more railroady than I typically like, but one shots have to be, where you don't have the luxury of letting PCs amble around doing whatever they want to.</blockquote>

Verification