So I'm plotting out my Labyrinth Lord sourcebook, and I'm thinking that the setting - stone age Australia, light sprinkling of Cthulu mythos - is not exactly conventional. I know that only yesterday I was rambling on about role players being incredibly creative, but I also know that the further away you get from genre tropes, games tend to become more difficult to just pick up and play. Beyond the 'standards', things require more thought in order to make them work. (I have my fare share of games that I've really wanted to run but never been able to work out quite what to do with. An example being Changeling: The Dreaming: Great ideas, setting and core rules - but what next? What is a Changeling: The Dreaming game?)
So what I'd like to do is include, in the OzCthulu appendix, a Big List of Adventure Hooks that a prospective DM will be able to glance over and get ideas from. They are going to be a mixture of 'regular' stone age adventure ideas, plus more 'Cthulu-esque' ones. (I mentioned this to Arcona in the comments to a previous thread.) But in order to create this Big List, I'm going to need lots of ideas. This is where you, the reader come in. Give me as many or as few as you like, but give me something! You'll even get a credit in the final free pdf.
I'll start.
- There is a cave in the local range of hills which nobody is supposed to enter by long tradition. Maybe there are rumours that it's haunted, or it's supposed to be sacred, or something like that. But two young children from the band have gone missing, and they were last seen playing around the cave entrance. Someone is going to have to go in and look for them. And it turns out that the cave is really the start of great labyrinth of tunnels....
- A beast has been sighted, which nobody has seen before. It killed a hunter last week, and it has been decided by the elders that the thing has to be tracked down and killed - because nothing is more dangerous than a carnivore which has developed a taste for human flesh.
- Last night, a star fell from the sky and hit the desert some miles away. The elders want to know what it is.
- The peoples far away in the North have exhausted their food supply and taken to cannibalism. The habit has gradually transformed them into ghoul-like wendigos, and they are spreading Southwards.
So let's hear them!
Every so often I hear about or read an idea that just sets of a paint-bomb of imagination in my brain.
An example: Jean-Claude Carrière, in the book Conversations About the End of Time, talking of the supreme Hindu God, Vishnu, and his all encompassing nature. Unlike the Judaeo-Christian God, who is symbolised by light, Vishnu can exist just as much in darkness as he can in the sun; it is said that if one person lights a candle, Vishnu is the darkness surrounding that tiny circle of radiance. If a million people light candles and put them together in one place, Vishnu is the darkness surrounding the blaze of that bright fire. If there are gathered a thousand suns, so bright that their collective light shines for billions upon billions of miles across the universe, Vishnu will be the vast darkness which begins at the point where their light fails. That is how big he is.
I love that image. Suddenly, an idea rises up from the ether; high-level Planescape, and the players are going to find the point where all light fades and the Great God's darkness begins...
Not details on the town and its surroundings as I promised a few days ago; instead three Dragon related ideas pilfered from my rpg.net thread, one of which Will Be Used sooner or later during the course of the campaign:
The Crystal Dragon on the Mountaintop
An ancient Crystal Dragon wyrm lives on the top of a mighty mountain peak and has subdued several white dragons to his icy will. His thirst for knowledge of the world and everything in it is surpassed only by his laziness; he sends out his polymorphed white dragon minions amongst the ordinary people, so that they can abduct the wisest and most knowledgeable humans and bring them to him for "conversation". The most entertaining he keeps with him; the rest he sets free - although they have to make their own way home from the mountaintop.
Rumour has it that the wyrm's knowledge of the world is now so great that he can answer any question he is asked, like an oracle. Of course, there is no guarantee that the answer he gives will be the correct one. That all depends on his mood...
The Parsimonious Emerald Dragon
The players find themselves in the clutches of an Emerald Dragon who has been the victim of too many adventurer-thieves over the course of the centuries. Now it is the last straw; the players are going to track down every item of treasure that has ever been stolen from the beast, down to the very last copper, the very last piece of opal. And the dragon is going to make sure of it by dominating them with mighty geas spells which will drain the life from them if they disobey.
The Topaz Dragon and the Crabmen
On an inaccessible stretch of coastline of craggy rocks and sheer, high cliffs, live a tribe of ignorant Crabmen. They have begun worshipping a local Topaz Dragon who has taken to sunning himself on a patch of rocks near where they live; every few days they bring him some of their babies as sacrifices (they don't mind; they give birth to thousands every year) and in return he goes and attacks the local Sahuagin every so often with his psionics and cones of dehydration.
Then some innocent fishermen - or perhaps not-so-innocent adventurers - happen to kill and eat some Crabmen, and this makes the Topaz Dragon very, very angry. Not because he likes the Crabmen. But if humans go around eating them it means less baby crabs for him to eat...
Too bad I can't use all of them; I think my players would get dragon-ed out if I did.
A concept in fantasy monsterhood which I've always liked is the idea of creatures whose lives once had meaning but no longer do.
An example to explain what I mean: the first Viriconium book (I do rather seem to be harping on about the series recently; it must be getting around time for me to re-read it) contained a three-eyed, horribly powerful race of monsters who were discovered hidden in the icy North. The things were stronger and quicker than any human, and once reawakened they ravaged the entire world, killing anybody they came across and always leaving behind a corpse with the top of the skull sliced off and the brain removed.
Eventually over the course of the book it became clear that the things were automatons, created by an ancient, forgotten society for whom war was a kind of game. Part of the rules of that game were that the brains of the dead could be harvested and given new bodies, ready to fight on; the three-eyed automatons were vehicles for that brain-harvesting process. Even though millennia had passed, the society in question had faded into oblivion and the task had lost all meaning, the automatons knew nothing else except their gruesome work and once reawakened from the ice continued to pursue it with mindless efficiency.
At the same time, I'm reminded of the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. A central facet of that story is that the evil computer, AM, hates humanity at least partly because humanity created it for a purpose which is no longer relevant. It has lost its original purpose and now has no reason left to exist, but it has no choice but to continue to exist, for eternity.
These two different lines of thought have merged with another parallel line in this post I wrote, on Doppelgangers, and given me the idea for a small group of Doppelgangers who were created centuries ago by an evil archmage for some purpose or other. That archmage long ago died, but the Doppelgangers live on, still trying to perform the tasks - assassinations, spying, arson, theft - that he set for them even though they know that he is dead. They do this simply because there is nothing else for them to do and they know no other way to live; the desire and ability to create, to love, to enjoy, is not in them; it is not why they were created. Time has made them increasingly bitter and spiteful, as they have come to hate their dead maker for dying and depriving their life of any real meaning, and to hate the humans they live amongst for their weakness and frailties. At the same time jealousy for ordinary humans' simple and contented lives threatens to consume them with self-loathing.
The Doppelgangers
Flick, the Leader
Chaotic Evil Doppelganger
HD: 6+1
THAC0: 14
AC: 2
Number of Attacks: 2
Damage/Attack: By weapon, or 1d4/1d4
Flick has become the ostensible leader of the group. Stronger and more intelligent than the others, he controls them through a combination of manipulation, cruelty and magnanimity. He takes a horrible pleasure in spreading the chaos that his dead master desired, especially in murder; the power to take life is a heady drug to him.
Gin and Bear, the Twins
Chaotic Evil Doppelgangers
HD: 4+1 / 5+1
THAC0: 16 / 15
AC: 2 / 3
Number of Attacks: 2
Damage/Attack: By weapon / By weapon +3
Gin and Bear were created on the same day by the archmage, and so are called the Twins. They are bonded to each other in some sense, though not by love or loyalty - made from the same stuff, they act like two halves of the same soul, much as they wish it was not so. Gin, the female, is small and quick; Bear, the male, is strong and tough.
Rat, the Runt
Chaotic Evil Doppelganger
HD: 4+1
THAC0: 16
AC: 3
Number of Attacks: 2
Damage/Attack: By Weapon
Rat is the youngest of the four. Bullied incessantly by the other three, he takes his frustrations out on his victims in turn; he is a brutal sadist, even more so than the others, and his worst excesses have occasionally almost led to his discovery.
Qwerty made an interesting comment in this post about starting a campaign at a funeral. Now, I happen to think that's a capital idea, and I absolutely refuse to let it be said that I don't know how to steal a good idea when I see one. A funeral provides both an instant link between the players (to the dead person) and, what's better, a plethora of options for getting them together for some sort of quest. It also gives me another chance to make up a random dice roll table, which I've discovered an inordinate liking for. So, without further ado, I bring you:
The Random Funeral Quest Table
The players start off the campaign at the funeral of a mutual acquaintance; they may or may not know each other. Before beginning, roll a d20 on the following table, and use it for the basis for the campaign, or the first adventure of it. (NB: For simplicity's sake I've assumed the dead person is male, but needless to say it could just as well have been a woman.)
1-3: The dead man was murdered, but nobody knows by whom.
4-6: A note was found amongst the dead man's possessions which apparently contained his last will and testament, and his last wishes. Unfortunately, aside from the title, the entire contents are written in a code and nobody knows how to decipher it.
7-9: When the dead man's corpse was discovered, a body part was missing.
10-12: The dead man was murdered, and everybody knows by whom. Unfortunately, the murderer is extremely powerful, extremely rich, and otherwise beyond the remit of the law.
13-15: The dead man's body was discovered in a room whose door and windows were locked from the inside.
16-18: The dead man was discovered hanging by the neck from the rafters of his attack; however, no suicide note was found and he had always given the appearance of being completely content with his life.
19-20: The dead man was discovered lying in the middle of a half-scrubbed out chalk circle.
Further suggestions welcome!
Realism and D&D make for uncomfortable bedfellows, as we all know. We probably shouldn't devote too much time to trying to make the game emulate reality. Even so, I've occasionally wondered why more DM's don't include the sort of background flavour events - weddings, festivals, religious ceremonies - that can really add to the feeling that the players actually are in a world, not just in a crudely drawn dungeon map.
I'm not sure why, but this idea for a short vignette as part of a sandbox campaign popped into my head last night:
The Hillfern Wedding
As the players approach the town (Hillfern, population 750, swollen to over 1,000), they realise that something is going on - they can hear the distant noise of laughter, music, and merrymaking. Finally they arrive and discover that most of the population of the town and the surrounding countryside is celebrating a wedding. (If they ask around, they'll find out that it is between the son of the mayor and the daughter of a prominent merchant, whose fathers have put on a feast for the entire town in a show of magnanimity.) It's mid-afternoon, so the population is in an advanced stage of drunkenness, as they've been reveling since morning. There are stalls everywhere hawking wares, ribbons and pennants festooning the houses, young couples getting up to who-knows-what in the alleyways, and vomit in the gutters.
Roll a d20 on the following table every so often while the players are in the town:
1-2: The players come across two men having a fight that has gone too far, as one of the combatants is just about to draw a knife...
3-5: One or more of the players spot a pickpocket stealing from a middle-aged woman's purse.
6-8: Passing a narrow alleyway, one or more of the players notice that somebody has dropped a pouch a few yards into the entrance, out of which a few gold coins have spilled. This is a trap: Two cutpurses (1+1 HD, Club) are waiting in the shadows to ambush anybody who tries to pick up the gold.
9-12: A pickpocket targets a random party member.
13-16: Close by, a horse takes fright, suddenly cantering off down the street while the panicked young noblewoman who was riding it clings on for dear life.
17-19: Somebody tries to assassinate the father of either the bride or the groom.
20: The party run across an old enemy.
Of course, this has limited mileage. Probably you could only make one roll on the chart as it stands before the players start to think, "Just what kind of a wedding is this?" - and a roll of 17+ will obviously lead to something bigger than just a vignette. The chart could do with expanding, too; I jotted it down roughly in the space of five minutes. But you get the idea, I think.
I'm going to go ahead and post what I was mulling over while at work yesterday: I bring you the bare bones low down on an adventure location called Old Johnny in the Lake - the Crayfish Demigod.
(This idea first cropped up here, and was elaborated upon by kelvingreen and Milk.)
Old Johnny is a crayfish who has lived in the same lake for millenia, over the course of which he has grown slowly bigger and bigger; he is now roughly the size of a blue whale. The lake is a big and deep one - a Loch Ness or a Lake Champlain - and while Old Johnny used to live close to the shore he is now big and tough enough to roam the murky depths of his watery realm.
The people living around the lake worship Old Johnny as their god. They have worshipped him for so long, and done so in sufficient numbers, that he has actually become a god of sorts; an unthinking, voracious, alien god, but a god all the same. Old Johnny "knows only his own cold hunger" (Milk's line) and unconsciously wills his worshipers to assuage it. They do this by spreading rumours around the neighbouring lands that there are several giant crayfish, ripe for the eating, in their lake - and all are welcome to try to catch them for a small price in gold. Old Johnny then feasts on the unwitting adventurers, fishermen and thrill seekers who are attracted by these rumours.
Old Johnny: Neutral Gargantuan Crayfish
AC: -2
Movement: 6, Swim 12
Hit Dice: 16+6
THAC0: 4
No. of Attacks: 2
Damage/Attack: 4-24/4-24 (on a natural 19 or 20 on Old Johnny's 'to hit' roll, his claws have severed a limb; roll 1d4 to determine which)
The village itself is situated in an old, abandoned castle by the lakeside. There are around a hundred and fifty permanent inhabitants and worshipers of Old Johnny, forty or so of whom are combatants. They sometimes operate as bandits in the nearby hills, killing wayfarers or capturing them alive in order to feed them to their shellfish master.
Villager: Neutral Evil Human Bandit
AC: 8 (boiled leather)
Movement: 12
Hit Dice: 1+1
THAC0: 19
No. of Attacks: 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6 (spear)
Their current leader is Chief Graham, a tall, thin man with icy green eyes and a pallid complexion. He dominates the rest of the community, calling himself the Voice of The Claws and bullying or cajoling or bribing the other villagers to do Old Johnny's will whenever their faith wavers.
Chief Graham: Lawful Evil Human fighter
AC: 6 (studded leather)
Movement: 12
Hit Dice: 3+1
THAC0: 17
No. of Attacks: 1 or 2
Damage/Attack: 2-7 (spear) or 2-9/2-7 (broad sword and hand axe)
Chief Graham's wife, Lucinda, is the village wise-woman, shaman and priestess of Old Johnny - she guides worship and prayer to the crayfish and also functions as a kind of hedge witch and healer.
Lucinda: Lawful Evil Human Cleric
AC: 10
Movement: 12
Hit Dice: 2+1
THAC0: 18
No. of Attacks: 1
Damage/Attack: 1-4 (club)
Functions as a 3rd level cleric
A picture of Old Johnny's Lake with the abandoned castle in the foreground:
Old Johnny's lake can be part of a mid- or low-level adventure. If the former, the players will face combat with Old Johnny and the villagers; if the latter, it is more likely that the players will be trying to escape with their lives.
