Puppetmasters of the Tarrasque Project

[takasi]

I'm thinking of writing a series of adventures that would have previously been known as an 'Adventure Path' were it not for trademark issues.

I provided this as a suggestion to Paizo for improvement to their future APs. Differences between the style of this and what Paizo currently delivers:

1.) The endgame is apparant in the first session. In PotT you're going to kill the Tarrasque, in AoW, you're going to kill Kyuss, in Savage Tide, you're going to kill Demogorgon, etc. In this 'Campaign Saga', players know this upfront.

2.) The cast of villains is known by all. In PotT, one of the Puppetmasters is an infamous evil wizard named Morgahi who has enslaved an entire city. Another Puppetmaster is Lord Varinton, a despot who claims to own the homeland of the PCs. The party also knows of Thunderstone, a great blue wyrm that terrorizes the barbarians to the east. The moors are infested with lizardfolk ruled by Sorantis the Most High, a yaun-ti priest who demands blood sacrifices from all travelers to the great Scaley One. All of these powerful characters will hopefully fall at the hands of the PCs, but their presence should be known by everyone in the game world even when the PCs aren't able to stop them yet. If the world knows of the atrocities of the villains and hates them, it will make their defeat much more meaningful to the PCs.

3.) The PCs see their progress towards the end goal as they're making it. In the first adventure the PCs discover that the Tarrasque avoids Lord Varinton's troops, so King Storringard tasks them with exploring the dungeon underneath Varinton's Keep for clues using a hidden underground system. The PCs defeat the despot and obtain an item that can be used to slightly alter the Tarrasque's path of destruction. The PCs are then able to try to pick some of the places the Tarrasque will avoid in the immediate surroundings (the devices are tied to each region of the world). They also discover that in order to destroy the Tarrasque they need to possess all of the puppetmaster items.

A few questions. First, what do you think? Second, has anyone ever written an adventure path like this by themselves? I mean, other than what all DMs do when making their own home campaign. Third, I'm only writing this because I plan to run it, but I may commission some artwork and maps for it. If I wanted to make this a free, open source project, with a wiki or something for maps and whatnot, what is the best route to go? What have others done in the past?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

First off, I think structurally, this isn't a bad idea, with the caveat that the players, with all the info before them from the beginning, are guaranteed to go through it in ways you won't predict. I wouldn't write up an Adventure Path that assumes they'll go from A to B to C to D. Since they'll have the map in front of them, they may go A to D to B to C or something else. So I would write this up as a setting with detailed location information and then, as an afterthought, write up adventure hooks to lead players who don't consistently take the initiative on their own.

 

[takasi]

I was thinking of using the path of the Tarrasque's rein of destruction to guide where they will go. If they go to the city of Morgahi while the Tarrasque is laying waste to Borrakus Bayou, they will find a.) they aren't powerful enough to defeat a city of magically enslaved creatures and b.) they will lose the opportunity to save the resources and villages in the swamp. The key is that each device will only effect the Tarrasque in the land it is tied to, so going after Thunderstone while the Tarrasque is laying waste to the Hillburrows is fruitless.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was thinking of using the path of the Tarrasque's rein of destruction to guide where they will go. If they go to the city of Morgahi while the Tarrasque is laying waste to Borrakus Bayou, they will find a.) they aren't powerful enough to defeat a city of magically enslaved creatures and b.) they will lose the opportunity to save the resources and villages in the swamp. The key is that each device will only effect the Tarrasque in the land it is tied to, so going after Thunderstone while the Tarrasque is laying waste to the Hillburrows is fruitless.

I think that's a recipe for irritated players. While I would arrange areas in tiers of difficulty, I wouldn't make it impossible for them to jump around. I'd put, say, two locations/keys on each difficulty tier, or decide it dynamically based on what the players want to do.

"OK, we traveled halfway around the world to be here. We can't succeed. Let's travel somewhere else" isn't fun or even very interesting. It's mostly a way to smack the players around some.

 

[Nellisir]

...they will find a.) they aren't powerful enough to defeat a city of magically enslaved creatures...

In common parlance, TPK.

 

[DungeonMaester]

I have toyed with such a idea for a long time for 1st ed in till I found out that Slayers did it already. It being:

Every three years, a village must make a sacrfice to a powerful mage who threatend to unleash a engine of disctrution upon the world. In reality, the sacrafices where so the mage could attempt to control the beast him self. Long after the death of the mage, the tradition of the blood sacrafice lives on. Possible paths for the adventure to take are:

1) The villagers are baited into being the sacrafice.
2) Some villagers are talking about how much of a farse it is and looting the temple.
3) A wizard found the tome of the wizard and wants to use the monster for his own gain only to find out he can't control it.
4) There is a ledgend that the temple disapears 2 out of three years (the year the sacrafice needs to be made) and a mage guild hires the party to invesagate it.
5) More I havn't thought up yet
6) All of the above.

I sat on the idea for quite a few years before giving it up though.

---Rusty

 

[delericho]

Funnily enough, one of the end points of my current campaign is likely to pit the PCs against the Tarrasque. And they're about to run afoul of some of the puppetmasters...

1.) The endgame is apparant in the first session.

2.) The cast of villains is known by all.

I think there's a danger to this, in the form of the PCs. On the one hand, they're likely to take a perverse pleasure in doing exactly what they shouldn't do, simply because they shouldn't do it. And, equally, they're liable to accuse you of railroading them. Probably both at the same time!

One way to deal with this is to make the campaign deliverately open-ended. Perhaps their goal is to enslave the Tarrasque rather than kill it, or perhaps they want to stand on an even footing with the puppetmasters - and it's all up to them.

Similarly, I would be inclined to make the various villains morally ambiguous, or building in lots of politics, so the PCs aren't necessarily going to take them all out, but either ally with some, or play both sides against the middle.

 

[lin_fusan]

There might be a problem if the PCs know exactly who the Big Bad is and know all the minor villians.

Without some plot turns and twists, they might feel the story to be too linear.