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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8286089" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 26: Nov/Dec 1990part 3/5Operation - Fire Sale: The non-D&D adventure this issue is a Top Secret/S.I. one. The recent fall of the Berlin wall has substantially changed the geopolitical balance in Germany and the various espionage agencies present are working overtime to adapt and wind up on top. Someone is leaking military secrets at the NATO base in Bremen. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to plug that leak ASAP. The result is very much in the style of a mansion murder mystery, only on an army base, and just maybe everyone will get out alive. The real culprit knows you're onto them and will do their best to frame someone else. Everyone else is just going about their day to day lives, with a timeline of what will happen if you don't interfere. Will you find the real clues, or fall for the red herrings? If you do catch them, it turns out they're being blackmailed in turn, and you have to go and kick the ass of the real mastermind to solve the problem for good. That obligatory shooty climax aside, it's a combat light, roleplaying-heavy adventure that gives you plenty of opportunity to ham up the various NPC's personalities. It also means that if you get the wrong end of the stick you could fail completely while surviving, and get amusingly chewed out by your superiors later when further evidence emerges that disproves your conclusions. That's something you don't get to see very often here, regardless of system, so this definitely wins my approval. Caravan Guards: Sometimes, you can choose whether or not you accept an adventure or not. Sometimes, you don't get that choice, or at least not obviously. While on the road from one place to another, the PC's come across a group of merchants travelling in the same direction. It can be dangerous on the road, so they'll offer to pay you to act as guards. You continue on your way, have a few conversations, face a couple of random monster encounters, maybe even the start of a romance subplot, then night falls and they all turn into Bhuts and try to eat you. Just can't trust anyone, can you? It's a hard life being an adventurer. Seems like more than half your potential employers are either disguised monsters, are lying to you & using you as pawns even when it would be easier to achieve their objectives honestly, or simply plan to stiff you on the deal to get out of paying afterwards. Oh well, I guess it all just means more XP in the long run. One of those kinds of adventures that you don't want to use very often, because otherwise the players become too paranoid to form emotional bonds with the NPC's and engage with any apparent roleplaying encounters because they know the other shoe is going to drop eventually. Not that it's bad individually, as it puts plenty of effort into building the individual personalities of the NPC's before they reveal their true colours, and talking about how their powers and hungers affect their day-to-day lives, but diminishing returns will rapidly set in if you overuse adventures of this type. Starscream might have been able to get away with betraying Megatron every week, but somehow I doubt your players will be as slow to learn their lesson.</blockquote>

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