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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8885407" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 68: May/Jun 1998part 4/5The Trouble with In-Laws: If you're going to break the law, you need to be doubly sure that the people you're breaking the law with can be trusted otherwise the odds of getting away with it go way down. When the son of a lord married a commoner (shock, horror!) his father hired ruffians to kidnap & ransom the girl to teach him a lesson. Said rogues promptly turned around and blackmailed him for more money to keep who was ultimately responsible for this misfortune a secret. Then adventurers get involved and who knows what's going to happen next. So here we have another detective story where you might solve the obvious problem but miss the more subtle one, leaving the true villain free to try again in the future, have suspicions but be unable to pin conclusive proof on the lord, forcing you to choose whether to solve this extra-judicially or leave it for now, or find solid evidence, get the best ending and send everyone involved to prison. It manages to pack 2 little dungeon areas plus a decent amount of opportunity for investigation & roleplaying into 11 pages, making it feel pretty dense but still with plenty of room to add more detail. Another fairly good one if you like that very 2e writing style. Side Treks - Al-Kandil: Everyone knows that when you get a magic lamp with a genie in you should be very careful with the wishes you make. The genie is rarely in there willingly and you may have to deal with them either trying to pervert the wishes or escape. So it proves here, only with an interesting twist. The "genie" isn't actually a genie, but a regular wizard trapped inside the lamp. If someone frees him they'll wind up taking his place and having to do the job instead. So he'll be as helpful as he can with his powers (no world-changing wishes this time folks) and try to form a friendship with the PC's before eventually asking them to free him, then either get out of there or kill them depending on how badly the PC's treated him. The kind of plot hook that's short in page count but could play a substantial part in your campaign over two different arcs - the time with the genie, and the time where one of the PC's is trapped in the genie role and the PC's have to figure out how to solve that. (if indeed they do, as the job does come with at least modest reality warping powers, plus immortality. If the PC's agreed to do a regular timeshare on being inside the lamp and not abuse their power to order the occupant around it would be a substantial asset to the group. ) This could definitely have some interesting ramifications on a campaign depending on how well the PC's handle it and how smart they are at figuring out and manipulating the rules of the lamp. So it's another one that has an interesting mechanical challenge that isn't combat and doesn't neglect the roleplaying opportunities either. I strongly approve of this development, and would definitely like to use it at some point.</blockquote>

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