One Shot Concept (Help, please) - Bastards Kill a Dragon and Take its Hoard

[Paka]

The initial e-mail:

Thieving Bastards

You are the leader of a group of heartless bastards. You're the head of your guild, chief of your ninja clan, captain of your pirate ship or just leader of the gang back in your home town.

But out here on the edge of a mountain range where the Gods were supposed to have been born, all that doesn't matter. What matters is that you have a piece of the map and the map leads to the Dragon's lair.

Entering a Dragon's lair can mean whatever you want it to. A dragon can be a dangerous god, a revered spirit or just a big monster sitting on a hoard of gold under a mountain .

There's a sit-down at the Dragon Pass Inn with all of the other bastards with their map fragments and then you'll plan the biggest B & E job since Prometheus stole fire.

This is a one shot game in which the PC's are 8th level.

The PC concepts: a pirate, a noblewoman, a druid of the seas, an Orc chief and one more undetermined. These will be created by the time we sit down to play.

The adventure concept: The Dragon itself is an accomplished thief. They will run across various displays of its thievery on their way to the meeting in order to display their elements that will allow them into the beast's lair, located in the heart of this monstrous mountain range that even Dwarves avoid due to it being a barren wasteland.

Only a small tribe of mountain folk live there, having exterminated the other tribe hundreds of years ago.

TWIST

The other mountain tribe isn't extinct, they worshipped the Dragon while raising it from a hatchling and it has taken it into its lair to live out its days.

TWIST

The mountains are barren but are one of the last portals to the hollow world and the broken remnants of the underdark.

TWIST

The hollow world is the Diamond Throne world.

TWIST

The Dragon's lair is a vibrant city, a center for trading between these secret lost worlds inhabited by this lost mountain tribe, Underdark refugees and Diamond Throne traders.

The players won't have pieces of a map but will have different pieces of the lair such as a suit of full plate of the Dragon's Lair Guard or a scroll detailing his vault doors or a Demon summoning scroll of the Demon that built its traps, etc.

TWIST

The Dragon put these pieces out into the world to be taken by a group of bastards in order to recruit them (or is this too far, should I just keep it simple?)

Help, thoughts, comments are appreciated.

 

[Paka]

Gotta make the PC's hate this Dragon.

Two of the PC's will be arriving to the mountain range by boat. They will arrive in teh port to find a beached whale, not just any ole humpback but an Awakened Humpback who was a friend to the town, aiding fishermen, warning about storms, fending off undersea threats.

The beast had a magical pearl set between its eyes that aided in its powers and it was stolen by the Dragon, who left it here, beached.

a friend of mine, Jeff, suggested that there be a place where no children were born, hundreds of mass graves because the Dragon stole the souls of the unborn children...that is evil.

The mountain folk will call a meeting of their chiefs and in order to divine something the ancestral artifact that allows these people to communicate to their god will be taken out...a gilded ram's horn or something.

The Dragon will take it right out from in front of them...first combat ensues.

Any ideas?

 

[clark411]

I liked all the twists except the last one... if I was a player and I had been geared up to kill the dragon, I'd be all DOH when I didn't get the chance to do so.

Even if it's the dragon is planning to have the players do other amazing and nifty things, the fact that you present him as an antagonist from the get go, and base their meeting around this antagonist... and also lead them up to the very moment of victory over (or defeat at the hands of) this foe... will make them want to thoroughly smash it or get it back in some way. It sounds like great fun, something to not be taken away lightly without accepting the potential for disappointment.

 

[Paka]

I liked all the twists except the last one... if I was a player and I had been geared up to kill the dragon, I'd be all DOH when I didn't get the chance to do so.

I agree. I'm nixing that particular twist.

Agreed.

 

[RobNJ]

This is set initially in some "standard" D&D world, right? A place with dragons and elves and rangers and stuff. And then they go through the rabbit hole to The Diamond Throne?

What if the dragon isn't a dragon? What if people call it a dragon because it kind of looks like one? Because they don't know its true name? I mean, it would be a dragon, except for those weird spidery legs, so of course most people are going to call it a dragon.

What if the last dramojh had to hide out in this over-world to hide from Giant divinations?

It might be cool if you could somehow work into it the fact that it would be social disaster for the fact that there's still an existing dramojh got out, and the PCs have to choose to reveal that fact (knowing the consequences), or suffer some serious setback. For example, if it could be engineered that the only way they could get home would be to reveal this.

 

[Paka]

I'm hesitant to have extensive Diamond Throne plot stuff as the center-piece of the game. It would lead to too much explaining.

But thanks .