Swashbuckling plot help! (My Players Out!)

[rei jin]

try this for an idea:-

both are looking for work, hear about a job through the thieves guild.

job is to steal said voodoo bone from a well-to-do mansion on the other side of town.

both take up the job, unaware that the other has taken it up as well.

both go to break into the mansion on the same night, run into each other, have an argument, wake up the owner of the bone, and are forced to work together to beat him and get the bone. make him a swashbuckler as well, and he can be a reappearing NPC in your game, after the PC's for revenge for the theft, he too is hunting the voodoo bones.

i dunno, maybe that would work?

 

[Hand of Evil]

More random thoughts...

What if the item is cursed - if taken from owner the party falls under the spell BUT the catch is the curse is not passed to anyone GIVEN the item. This means the guys were set up to take the fall. Now they have two reasons to work together, one to get the curse lifted and one vengenance. Yes, it does sound like the curse of the black pearl.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Sounds like a really fun game!

Some random thoughts in no particular order:

Pets make a great hazard for burglars. An eccentric noble might let their hunting cats have free reign of their house?

As a Voodoo Assembly Toy - perhaps the whistle is part of some ceremonial regalia - it can offer some varied challenges to acquire them. Some of them are pretty normal - whistle, fancy hat, special paintbrush, funky knife, brazier?

Perhaps some of them are a little odd - e.g. how do you steal a 2 ton sacrificial altar - especially now the priests of Hextor have adopted it for their own use?

A living component - a huge, ancient and still living turtle (tojanida?) possibly?


Places to hide the items... if there's likely to be more than 1 of them that the PCs retrieve:

I had a thread a while ago about hiding places for a tomb:

Inside a large Library was the one I went with: Had an 'Indiana Jones style' floor map, partially broken up and used to pave a road. It was buried under a room with some guarded archives - was good fun. They could hunt the streets for funny coloured cobbles (although they did something else instead!), get past some guards - with digging gear in tow and then fight a tomb load of undead. Enjoyed that session a lot - went really well!

A military base of some sort.

A haunted house.

In the possesion of an infamous pirate with a serious gambling addiction.

Everybody loves sewers. With Wererats!

Some possible 'player twists'!

What would happen if the PCs decide not to break and enter... they bribe a servant, pretend to be 'harpiscord tuners', set fire to the house or some different method of getting access to the building?

Another one I've seen from players beforehand - they may try to 'play funny' with their client. Hold out for more money, investigate their employer, hock it to the highest bidder or otherwise throw a spanner in the works. Given they know the local thieves guild I'd be suprised if they did, but you never know!

 

[Hand of Evil]

Places for the item:

You never heard the story of The Skipping Maid? She was a beautiful ship, wide in the bottom, tall in the mast, quick she was. Some time ago she was racing before a storm, the Big Blow of XX...let me tell you that was a storm, the gods were at it...sorry, the Maid was running for the habor when the storm hit, driving her down the coast. The Captain saw the shoal islands and decided to try his luck to wait out the storm, luck was not with him that day! The Maid was picked up and dropped right into the Cyprus Swamp!

Only one man made it out, snakes, crocs, and lizardmen got the rest. Some have said the have seen the maid, still floating in that swamp, moss for sails, strange lights and noises coming from her.

 

[randomling]

Hmm, lots of cool ideas here.

Whistle - my thought is that it's one of many similar-looking whistles which all play subtly different notes. It's the harmony (plus magic of course) that opens the gate, although this is a legendary-magic sort of world, I'm not making magic available to the PCs, not yet anyhow.

Haunted house idea might be really cool if they go on another "whistle" mission, decide to keep the whistle, etc.

I was thinking of placing the whistle in the house of a noble who, yes, lets his pets (maybe dogs rather than cats) wander the house for intruders. Probably be asleep if they do a night raid. The noble's wife is dead, and the guy himself deserted the Alexandrites (evil Church for whom the "client" is acting) and took a whistle (morality attack?).

I'm thinking that the whistle itself will be around the neck of the noble's sleeping five-year-old daughter - is that too cruel?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I was thinking of placing the whistle in the house of a noble who, yes, lets his pets (maybe dogs rather than cats) wander the house for intruders. Probably be asleep if they do a night raid. The noble's wife is dead, and the guy himself deserted the Alexandrites (evil Church for whom the "client" is acting) and took a whistle (morality attack?).

The wife bit is a nice touch... Could it have some implications. The obvious is she's 'not very dead' and haunts the house - but that's been done...

Perhaps he has a secret mistress, who only visits him at night? Someone he shouldn't be seeing - another persons wife? Possibly even a 'lady of the night'. It could make for an interesting late night disturbance if they decide to go for breaking and entering...

I'm thinking that the whistle itself will be around the neck of the noble's sleeping five-year-old daughter - is that too cruel?

Sounds like a good difficult hiding place to me I can just imagine the thieves fleeing from a screaming 5 year old!

Although, the guy is definitely a nasty piece of work if he did that with an item he thought someone might want back? Especially one he stole from an evil church...

A possible alternative: perhaps it's hung on the collar of his favorite dog. Which also happens to be the largest and meanest. A champion, famed on the dog fighting circuit. Are the rumours true, that it was sired by a Hell Hound?

 

[randomling]

The wife bit is a nice touch... Could it have some implications. The obvious is she's 'not very dead' and haunts the house - but that's been done...

Perhaps he has a secret mistress, who only visits him at night? Someone he shouldn't be seeing - another persons wife? Possibly even a 'lady of the night'. It could make for an interesting late night disturbance if they decide to go for breaking and entering...

Ye-es... knowing their background... yes, the lady of the night is very likely to be someone that both PCs know quite well.

Sounds like a good difficult hiding place to me I can just imagine the thieves fleeing from a screaming 5 year old!

LOL yeah!!

Although, the guy is definitely a nasty piece of work if he did that with an item he thought someone might want back? Especially one he stole from an evil church...

True true. I'd quite like to put the 5-year-old in it though somehow!

A possible alternative: perhaps it's hung on the collar of his favorite dog. Which also happens to be the largest and meanest. A champion, famed on the dog fighting circuit. Are the rumours true, that it was sired by a Hell Hound?

Another very nice idea indeed - how to get the collar off the dog without waking up/disturbing the whole house?

 

[Guillaume]

Ye-es... knowing their background... yes, the lady of the night is very likely to be someone that both PCs know quite well.


LOL yeah!!


True true. I'd quite like to put the 5-year-old in it though somehow!


Another very nice idea indeed - how to get the collar off the dog without waking up/disturbing the whole house?

How about this : the dog might be the biggest and the meanest of all the dogs, but it is also the favourite pet of the fore-mentionned 5-year-old. While the other dogs roam the property, the dog «sleeps» (read guard) the child at night. You therefore have the collar-removal problem and the 5-year-old screamer !

 

[CCamfield]

My personal preference for a swashbuckling game would be to inject politics and duelling...

If the evil church gets their hands on the whistle, what next? What are their ultimate plans for it/them - use magic from the Fey realm to take over the kingdom? And are they really going to leave loose ends lying around like the PCs? (I'm thinking they might send a swordsman or two (church swordsmen?) after them to "clean things up")

 

[randomling]

My personal preference for a swashbuckling game would be to inject politics and duelling...

If the evil church gets their hands on the whistle, what next? What are their ultimate plans for it/them - use magic from the Fey realm to take over the kingdom? And are they really going to leave loose ends lying around like the PCs? (I'm thinking they might send a swordsman or two (church swordsmen?) after them to "clean things up")

Well, there are a lot of whistles left - I'm imagining a large number of whistles all playing different notes, which when all played together awaken the demon who laid waste to the Fey lands, and was imprisoned there about four thousand years back. I can picture the church using them again to collect more whistles or other paraphernalia for the ceremony, especially if they don't ask too many questions. Of course if they do ask too many questions they might find themselves up against more than they can handle...

Mhm mhm!