RangerWickett
Legend
TL;DR - how do I make "arranging a marriage" into an adventure for a D&D party? Love is ineffable, but political marriages don't need love. So what sub-goals should the party need to achieve to make the marriage work?
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In a Bronze Age Mesopotamia-esque setting where stone tablets have magical powers (think the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code, but nearby them you must obey them), the party is opposing Kalumum, the priest-queen ruler of a mighty city called No-Ostalin. She has an artifact-level stone called a Testament that is graven with the words of a god. It lets her do a miracle once per day (but only within some limited spheres of influence). She is growing increasingly tyrannical, and is trying to bring the river valley's second largest city (Eshkital) under her control.
The party has three months before Queen Kalumum gets a second Testament, which will double her power. The second Testament was lost a century ago in a distant valley after a great disaster, and it weighs several tons. When the rainy season fills the rivers, her servants will load it on a barge and convey it to her city. She was trying to do this secretly, however, because the river's course takes it right past Eshkital, and she doesn't want them to know it or try to get their hands on the stone before it reaches No-Ostalin.
Since the second Testament is from a different divine source, it grants access to different sorts of miracles. Right now Queen Kalumum can use her miracles to create law tablets that affect reality in a radius around them, but the new Testament would let her control beasts and create life (including fearsome monsters).
The party originally went to the second city (Eshkital) to try to find allies to plan a heist. The thought was to hijack the barge and steal the Testament. But then the problem of any great heist arose: what do you do with your prize once you have it? The queen getting the Testament would let her pressure Eshkital to join her. Stealing it would surely provoke a war between the two cities.
The stones are allegedly indestructible, so you can't just break the thing. They thought maybe just keep sailing the barge all the way out to sea and dump the Testament in the deep. (To my surprise, nobody said, "Well why don't we use the power for ourselves?")
But last session the party met an influential member of Eshkital's government, who is a cousin of the queen's royal family but also opposed to the queen and loyal to Eshkital. That guy has some kids, and the queen has a son and a daughter - all adults and able to be married off. And so now the party thinks the best course forward is to try to arrange a marriage between that guy's son and the queen's daughter. They can then have the new Testament in Eshkital, and try to build a balance of cooperative power, instead of one city being subservient to the other.
I think that's neat and all but, like, how do I turn that into a D&D game?
What will probably happen, honestly, is that the party will want to meet the prospective groom from Eshkital, and then bring him to where the daughter is right now, to get them to meet to make sure they don't hate each other. (Right now the queen and her daughter are traveling to one of the few sources of large trees in the region. The daughter wants to take a small town there and establish a temple for her to oversee. She expects her brother the prince to inherit control of No-Ostalin, and she wants her own place to rule but not to look like she's actually contesting his authority. The queen is going to give the town her blessing and perform a couple miracles to accelerate its development.)
I figure the party will try, the daughter is maybe amenable, but then the party is still going to plan to heist the Testament. They'll want to have the Eshkitaler groom to propose to the princess first, and to maybe tempt the princess with the power of her own Testament, and somehow persuade her that her mom needs to be stopped. Then we can have some initial battles as Queen Kalumum retaliates, but then the daughter can do a miracle or something to cow the No-Ostalin army. And maybe the queen refuses to yield, so the party has to fight her (or she pretends to yield, then tries to kill everyone at the wedding, and we've got a fight there).
But before all that, how do I make a D&D adventure out of 'introduce a guy to a girl'? Any ideas?
The party is a shapeshifter acolyte of a nature god (ranger), a cat-person swindling merchant (fighter), the queen's former illegitimate lover who wants to stop her descent to tyranny without killing her (barbarian), a githyanki nomad whose tribe believes the testaments are going to cause a cataclysm (rogue), and a magical scholar who wants to use the stones as a power source (alchemist).
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In a Bronze Age Mesopotamia-esque setting where stone tablets have magical powers (think the Ten Commandments or Hammurabi's Code, but nearby them you must obey them), the party is opposing Kalumum, the priest-queen ruler of a mighty city called No-Ostalin. She has an artifact-level stone called a Testament that is graven with the words of a god. It lets her do a miracle once per day (but only within some limited spheres of influence). She is growing increasingly tyrannical, and is trying to bring the river valley's second largest city (Eshkital) under her control.
The party has three months before Queen Kalumum gets a second Testament, which will double her power. The second Testament was lost a century ago in a distant valley after a great disaster, and it weighs several tons. When the rainy season fills the rivers, her servants will load it on a barge and convey it to her city. She was trying to do this secretly, however, because the river's course takes it right past Eshkital, and she doesn't want them to know it or try to get their hands on the stone before it reaches No-Ostalin.
Since the second Testament is from a different divine source, it grants access to different sorts of miracles. Right now Queen Kalumum can use her miracles to create law tablets that affect reality in a radius around them, but the new Testament would let her control beasts and create life (including fearsome monsters).
The party originally went to the second city (Eshkital) to try to find allies to plan a heist. The thought was to hijack the barge and steal the Testament. But then the problem of any great heist arose: what do you do with your prize once you have it? The queen getting the Testament would let her pressure Eshkital to join her. Stealing it would surely provoke a war between the two cities.
The stones are allegedly indestructible, so you can't just break the thing. They thought maybe just keep sailing the barge all the way out to sea and dump the Testament in the deep. (To my surprise, nobody said, "Well why don't we use the power for ourselves?")
But last session the party met an influential member of Eshkital's government, who is a cousin of the queen's royal family but also opposed to the queen and loyal to Eshkital. That guy has some kids, and the queen has a son and a daughter - all adults and able to be married off. And so now the party thinks the best course forward is to try to arrange a marriage between that guy's son and the queen's daughter. They can then have the new Testament in Eshkital, and try to build a balance of cooperative power, instead of one city being subservient to the other.
I think that's neat and all but, like, how do I turn that into a D&D game?
What will probably happen, honestly, is that the party will want to meet the prospective groom from Eshkital, and then bring him to where the daughter is right now, to get them to meet to make sure they don't hate each other. (Right now the queen and her daughter are traveling to one of the few sources of large trees in the region. The daughter wants to take a small town there and establish a temple for her to oversee. She expects her brother the prince to inherit control of No-Ostalin, and she wants her own place to rule but not to look like she's actually contesting his authority. The queen is going to give the town her blessing and perform a couple miracles to accelerate its development.)
I figure the party will try, the daughter is maybe amenable, but then the party is still going to plan to heist the Testament. They'll want to have the Eshkitaler groom to propose to the princess first, and to maybe tempt the princess with the power of her own Testament, and somehow persuade her that her mom needs to be stopped. Then we can have some initial battles as Queen Kalumum retaliates, but then the daughter can do a miracle or something to cow the No-Ostalin army. And maybe the queen refuses to yield, so the party has to fight her (or she pretends to yield, then tries to kill everyone at the wedding, and we've got a fight there).
But before all that, how do I make a D&D adventure out of 'introduce a guy to a girl'? Any ideas?
The party is a shapeshifter acolyte of a nature god (ranger), a cat-person swindling merchant (fighter), the queen's former illegitimate lover who wants to stop her descent to tyranny without killing her (barbarian), a githyanki nomad whose tribe believes the testaments are going to cause a cataclysm (rogue), and a magical scholar who wants to use the stones as a power source (alchemist).
