D&D General need help developing an adventure: Gneiss City Grit: A Rock Noir Mystery

[Shades of Eternity]

not sure if this goes here, so feel free to move it.

My party decided to take me up in my crazy idea for a game.

For starters, this is a 5e edition hack.

a good friend of mine wrote up Savage Settings: savage lands

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/237265/Simple-Settings-Savage-Lands

I mixed it with Ultramodern 5 (redux)\

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/302992/Ultramodern5-REDUX-5th-Edition

and came up with My legally distinct Gneiss City

https://docs.google.com/document/d/...ouid=110934633446374496170&rtpof=true&sd=true

<this link is my city document that breaks it down>.

My premise is Rock Noir over all in feel.

I want to start them at 1st level and have them progress, eventually leaving the city where it will have a feel more so like leaving the vault form fallout.

but we need to start somewhere.

so here is what I want to build off of for the premise:

The Mysterious Disappearance: A prominent citizen has vanished without a trace, and the party is tasked with finding them. As they delve into the case, they uncover a web of deceit, betrayal, and intrigue that leads them to the highest levels of Gneiss City society.

So with that in mind. where do I begin? I get that pushing it through 5e might make it difficult, but I want to keep it more monster stompy then full procedual.

I might mix in some metropolis as well.

So with that in mind. Where should i begin?

I kind of want to give it a bit of a homlet feel to start up with.

What locations should I have and how should it go?

What monsters should I use to balence the overall feel?

 

[aco175]

An evil city clerk wants to take control over the local dock gang. He already has contacts in the police to look the other way, but needs to get the professor to sell him some robot constructs. Colleagues of the professor noticed that he missed his lectures and put out an APB with the police, but nothing is happening.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

ooh will check it out.

alrighty the party has been selected.
1. a halfling ranger named: Gift Raptor. She wants to be a little orphan annie type that was adopted by a rich halfling family (in gneiss city, halflings are the 1%), but then got disowned and got in survival mode in the mean underground racing scene (so fast and the furious). She wants to reskin the drake warden subclass to be a giant space hamster and her constant companion.
2. a massive orphaned gorilla folk barbarian that was raised by appliances (because you know flintstones) where he wants to hit things with a big stick.
3. this last one started with the request: I want to make dinobot from beastwars into a film noir detective. We took the sauren folk bit teeth from savage settings and gave him the face class from ultramodern 5. so the dinosaur is the face of the party.

so my framing device is they were delinquents that met in juvi and opened up a bare bones detective agency where the adventure will begin.

so no spellcasters and 1st level.

I've already been requested to create a doctor named: doctor bones, so open to any and all suggestions, otherwise I might just take the great doctor mccoy from star trek and reskin as ...well something (open to suggestions).


also trying to figure out a descent opening scene based on this material. open to ideas.

also with 1st level as a basis, which monsters should I use from any of the 5e monster manuals that fit this feel? also open to suggestions at opponents at high leverls.

Fun fact: in the last season of the flintstones, fred flintstone was technically a warlock (patron great kazoo).

 

[Ancalagon]

a few ideas and notions:

1: this party, at level 1, is green and unimpressive. They are not the people you ask for a delicate mission.

Now this sounds like I'm poo-pooing your setting. I'm not! Rather, they have been asked to do something they are (in theory) not qualified for... why? Why ask them? Are they being set up to fail? Is there internal corruption and the asker wanted "outsiders"? Whatever reason you come up with to explain this discrepancy will help inform the plot

2: Make Dr Bones a skeleton. You know in Star Wars if a droid is left on too long without a reboot they develop a personality, become sentient? Same thing happened to Dr Bones!

 

[LordEntrails]

This is a mystery. First things first, have you mapped out the clues to get you to the solution? HAve you read about the Three Clue Rule? Three Clue Rule

Here's another discussion you should read so that you don't design a railroad;
Have you created a local map? Have you listed the major factions/organizations in that area? Have you given them motivations and resources? (I'm talking bullet points, not pages of text).

Here's another perspective from @SlyFlourish , again, worth reading; Managing Mysteries and Plot Twists

 

[Shades of Eternity]

honestly I'm still at the "holy @#$@#$@, they have buy in for one of my crazy idea" phase.

Gneiss city has been mentally mapped out with key locations and factions (see the google drive link for details), but I don't have an actual map yet. I guess that's where I should begin. it is underground as far as anybody knows, it is the last place of habitation.

I was intending to have a base premise and let the pcs decided whom done it and then tweak accordingly as they continue, but realizing that is going to require a lot of work just to get options and suspects.

any tips on doing it relatively quickly?

 

[LordEntrails]

Yea, don't go overboard

For a map, you can use an online random generator if you don't want to create your own. You do not need lots of details etc. Just a general layout Even a photo or scan of a sketched out pencil drawing is enough. But there are a lot of mapping tools these days that can be pretty cheap and easy.

Other than a map, factions with motivations and resources, you have almost everything you needs to start. When it comes to adventure time, you need a couple of hooks and the a few possible encounters. Something like this (I'm making all this up w/o reading your stuff):

The Red Munchkins

• Fanatics that believe that Munchkins are holy and must be protected at all costs. Their goal is to make Gneiss City into a paradise for Munchkins. They only fight to the death if it is to protect a Munchkin.
• Resources include about 80 believers, 2 dozen militants, and a handful of warlocks of the patron the Red Munchkin and are led by Bob the Red.
• Typical encounter is; 4 believers (commoners) and 2 militants (guards), and occasionally a warlock

Hooks:

• The party overhears a group of Red Munchkin believers talking about burning down a warehouse so that they can turn it into a haven for Munchkins.
• A friend of a friend contacts the party as "prominent citizen" (from your plot) is looking for some reliable folks to explore a cave that is for sale to see if it would be worth purchasing for a refinery. (and it happens to be a munchkin breeding ground).
• a third hook

Now when you present hook #1 to the party and they don't take it up, you can ask them what else they do. Then a few days later hook two is presented to them, and finally hook 3. This gets them interacting with your world and you can then start to interact with the other factions you have created and the plot can start to develop.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

alrighty

I used worldographer to make a random dungeon to use as the basis of gneiss city (see attached)

Open to any and all suggestions for placement of locations as I figure out what's what.

 

[aco175]

3. this last one started with the request: I want to make dinobot from beastwars into a film noir detective. We took the sauren folk bit teeth from savage settings and gave him the face class from ultramodern 5. so the dinosaur is the face of the party.

All I can picture is a t-rex wearing a Sherlock hat with a magnifying glass, but his arms are too small to be able to use it.

I do like Bones being a robot. I can also see him as the plain vanilla human fresh out of college and full of optimism.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

updated map
open to suggestions.

edit: sweet, somebody already did a lot of the ground work for most animals. so using this.