Questions about very "low" level adventures.

[Death_Jester]

Hello Everyone,

I have decided to start building a new campaign way before I ever announce that I will be running anything to my players. I want to get things together beforehand so that there is less pressure on me while actually running the game.

I want to come up with some adventures that 1st level commoners could have before even taking up an adventuring career. My ideal is just to have the players take on the roles of some children in a village/small town and lead them into the campaign. I will post the adventure Ideas I have here. What I would like from the members of this board is some feedback on input on making the adventures better or possibly more fun.

The players will basically be teenagers. I will have all the players roll for stats and then have them take points off according to age. This is assuming that they are all human, if they play one of the longer lived races I will let them keep most of the rolled stats.

Not sure about the stats as of yet but I’m thinking –2 for every age category below mature for the physical and –1 for the mental stats. So they will be very fragile to say the least. What I want is some day in the life kind of adventures that are NOT combat intensive. I don’t mind a bear knuckle fight that is mostly subdual damage and possibly the main boss bad guy with a dagger or something. So these should be pure role-playing and or mostly non-combat type situations that young kids could get into.

OK my ideals for the games.

1st a haunted house that some thieves(very low level) are using as a base of operations. When the players find the house it will be empty but the players will find some treasure. Hopefully this will lead to a chase though the woods with some angry thieves.

2nd A local group of Bullies try to start something with the players. They will beat one of the characters up and cause the others some grief. The players will have to resolve the issue without killing the bullies for now.

3rd During a local faire day the players get into some adventures following a skulky stranger around as he visits various shady people in town.

4th The players’ parents decide to go camping and something attacks. The players have to get back home and get some help before it is to late.

These are presented in no particular order if anyone can think of other low level stuff that I could use for this game it would be appreciated.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Well, I played in an apprentice-level campaign once. We were playing kids, age 6-8, so our stats were pretty low, too. You can just have fun with it; there's no huge world-threatening crises to deal with, no hideous magical abominations to fight. People don't go into battle with enough magical auras to be seen from orbit, most don't even know what the word "cohort" means, and their items rarely have names or personalities.

At those levels, anything is a threat. Blind Kobold with a bucket of snails? Random animals? A good, stiff breeze? These all work well.

So, you could do stuff like:

> As the players are heading home, they see a house on fire. (Helping the people get out without taking even 1d6 fire damage is a challenge... or do they run for help?)

> The elder druid of the village gives the group "a powerful magical artifact" (the infamous Quaal's Feather Token: Tree) to deliver to a wealthy merchant who asked for one. Along the way, it gets stolen by a pickpocket. Now, the group needs to recover it before the guy uses it or sells it to someone else. If they succeed the merchant buys a second one for them as a reward.

> Or, take the plot of any episode of Scooby-Doo. It works remarkably well. The Ghost turns out to be Old Man Johnson, who would have got away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids and that dog... of course you have to be careful, because a Great Dane could beat an apprentice-level fighter more often than not.

And at these levels, rewards are easy. A potion, a cantrip scroll... even a masterwork item.

 

[Death_Jester]

Thanks for the ideas Spatzimaus I really like the pickpocket idea. I will definitely use that one and maybe even use it as a lead in to the haunted house story. The characters lose something and try to find it. After admitting defeat they have to face their mentor or worse their parents with the truth about losing whatever.

Later on they find the "haunted house" and there is the item lost along with some other things that have disappeared in the last few weeks.

Thanks again for the feedback.

 

[Wraith Form]

As soon as I saw the haunted house idea pop up, I was going to suggest a "twist" on the Scobby theme--have the thieves disturb a real haunted house.

You can have a double-pronged plot: help the ghost by putting it to rest (you won't want the ghost to be attacking your low-level commoner PCs), and also expose greedy Old Man Johnson (that dirty, rotten scoundrel).

You can play up the "eerie" aspect of the ghost, but also lay the sob-story aspect on thick so that the ghost is a sympathetic NPC that the players want to help. Especially if Johnson was actually the one that disturbed the ghost in the first place and brought it out of it's "hibernation".....

 

[Nifft]

For "Commoners", consider stuff that's really mundane:

- A wolf got in to the pig-pen. It's stuck, and it's freaking out the pigs. Can you "help" it out without getting bitten?
- A cow has gone missing. Can you find it? (The cow actually: wandered off; was eaten by a Wyvern; followed a Dryad into the forrest; got spooked by a non-Dryad spirit; etc.)
- Dire Rats are in the barn! Can you get them out?
- A sightseer wants to see the sights. Get him around safely, accomodating his schedule and impulsive requests.
- Get thingy X from person A to person B. (Complications: X is bulky; X is heavy; X is obviously valuable & must be disguised; B isn't where A said she'd be; X is intelligent and has its own ideas about where it would like to go; etc.)
- Your baby sister wanders into a magical wardrobe, and you need to save Narnia! (Wait, maybe that's a bit advanced...)

-- N

 

[Death_Jester]

Thanks for the feedback guys. This haunted house is starting to really seem like a hot bed of activity. I really like the cow wandering off bit too because it is just so mundane that it could happen anytime and it's an easy hook to get the players into the game.

I can see the one player coming home and the rest of the players coming to meet him so they can see a bard. Then he discovers that 'ole mesiru' a cranky older cow has gone missing and the party has to track it down. The fun starts from there as the players rush against time to find the cow and not get to messed up to see the bard.

Excellently done guys you have my imagination working, wonderful.
I would ask what would you do with a character's parents splitting up?

The end of the low level game will be that they get into a forgotten dungeon near their homelands. By that time they should be apprentice level adventurers and ready to take on the world, or so they think. What they will not realize is that imprisoned in the dungeon is a minor demon that will become the main bad guy in the first arch of the story. I would like to keep him around till about level three or four and lead into the second arch of the game. Any ideas about leading up to it or special things that you would want to see if you were the players in that situation? The players will not know what they are doing as I intend to keep things a secret till they break the seal that binds the demon then all hells gonna break loose.

 

[Wraith Form]

I would ask what would you do with a character's parents splitting up?

From a "real world" standpoint, this is nearly unheard of. Rampant divorce wasn't common until the 20th century. There would have to be a REALLY extenuating circumstance for it to happen--people even endured spousal abuse without considering divorce. Even as recently as the '20's and '30's, divorce wasn't openly discussed--it was kept under wraps and out of daily conversation when it did happen.

Having said that, 1) this is a fantasy game--"reality" doesn't have to apply, 2) you're the DM--if you want to allow it, then it can happen.

Certainly from a meta-game standpoint divorced parents add more optional plot hooks for you to manipulat--err, design adventures around, plots that can be very personal and emotionally driven, possibly even sensitive. (As an aside, be careful/aware of gamers that have suffered divorce in some way and how they might react to this topic. Even in a so-called game like D&D.)

Do you want to have one (or both?) parents estranged from their child? Look to Anakin and Amidala Skywalker: Luke was often torn up over not knowing his father/parents, whereas Leia was blissfully unaware of her real parents. Eventually, Luke won his father back over to the "light side"--but your game doesn't have to do this.

The other direction (that Hollywood in particular has seemed to take) in recent years is the "adventure that brings the family back together" concept (Liar Liar immediately comes to mind on this). The parents begin the movie divorced, but by the end of the experience/adventure/ordeal, they realize that they've grown and changed to the point where they "give it another try". While dubiously satisfying in the movie world, this isn't what I've experienced as a realistic end result.

As a kid, I watched my mother divorce both my biological father and my first stepfather, and watch my father marry and divorce two more times after that. I can't blame all my life's problems on those events, but it didn't help me become a "warm and fuzzy normal person".... Your player should understand that this type of character can (but doesn't have to) be very emotionally conflicted, suffering from guilt complexes or using "escapist" behaviors (drugs, alcohol, role playing games) to avoid dealing with the sad, hard truth.

OK--a little more info than I intended to write, but hopefully that helps you!

 

[Nifft]

Don't be afraid to hit them with something REALLLY over their heads, just make sure that they don't have to FIGHT anything over their heads.

For example: they go into the haunted house and discover a box at the bottom. It's got a powerful Fiend in it. A really big, nasty one, that they have no hope of fighting for quite a long time.

If they free it, it will laugh, and Curse them before teleporting away. Now, they have to journey to get the curses removed, and they have a good long-term villain to fight. As "penance" for freeing the Evil One, they should have reason to go set right some of the wrongs it's perpetrating, and eventually -- and with a real sense of accomplishment -- they should be able to kill it.

-- N

 

[Wraith Form]

Don't be afraid to hit them with something REALLLY over their heads, just make sure that they don't have to FIGHT anything over their heads.

For example: they go into the haunted house and discover a box at the bottom. It's got a powerful Fiend in it. A really big, nasty one, that they have no hope of fighting for quite a long time.

If they free it, it will laugh, and Curse them before teleporting away. Now, they have to journey to get the curses removed, and they have a good long-term villain to fight. As "penance" for freeing the Evil One, they should have reason to go set right some of the wrongs it's perpetrating, and eventually -- and with a real sense of accomplishment -- they should be able to kill it.

Personally--this is an opinion statement--I feel that demons are a bit...no, a LOT...cliche as a Big Bad Evil Guy.

Although what Nifft said above is certainly a plausable and fun spin on it if you decide to pursue the demon angle, and I was going to suggest something very similar. Well said, Nifft!

 

[Rel]

All of this "Haunted House" talk got me to thinking about one of my favorite AD&D modules: U1 - The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (it even sounds like a Scooby Doo episode). I think that with some modifications this could be the perfect setting for your low level adventure.

I'm about to post some spoiler type material so stop reading if you want to play this 20 year old module some day.






Ditch the assassin guy in the haunted house and replace him with a group of teenage bullies (the same ones from your pickpocket plot line). They've been hired by a Bad Guy to make the house look more haunted. They use a weird colored lantern (blue continual flame) to cause "otherworldly lights" at night. And they've got a big bullhorn that they make ghost noises through.

The Bad Guy would prefer that they stay at the house hidden by day but they're bored teenagers so you can't keep them anywhere they don't want to stay. Instead they pickpocket the townsfolk and sneak back to the haunted house by night to count their ill-gotten gains.

But this is all just a cover for the fact that the Bad Guy is using the caves beneath the haunted house to smuggle weapons to a tribe of Kobolds. He's got a couple of burly Orcs (or half orcs) helping him with the heavy lifting.

You can keep adding on to this adventure using the same progression as the original modules: The Kobolds are gathering weapons but not (as the players and the mayor might initially think) to attack Saltmarsh, but to stave off an invasion of Goblins led by an evil Sorcerer. Yadda yadda yadda...they're heroes.

If you want to keep more with some of the "Juvenile Adventures" early on, just intersperse the adventure ideas above with more "kid stuff". For example, once the threat of the Kobolds is known, the local constabulary thanks them, pats them on the head and sends some "real adventurers" to deal with the problem. But when they don't return, the party of kids take matters into their own hands...

Fun idea. Let us know how it turns out.