Author Topic: Planning an intro adventure  (Read 1756 times)

Offline slayersamelia

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Planning an intro adventure
« on: July 12, 2010, 03:15:31 PM »
Hey there, loving the RPG as a budding GM!

Below is the outline of a small adventure I am planning and wondered if anyone had any thoughts as to whether this might make a good introduction? I appreciate this is just a brief outline and would be happy to provide more details. Also happy to hear any thoughts/ideas people might have to improve this?

When the third mysterious death occurs within a month at St Giles Hospital, it is only a matter of time before the police need to broaden their search. <The PC’s> are reluctantly brought in to consult on the case and see if anything is spiritually amiss. What they discover leads them on an investigation into animated prosthetics, a sorcerer with a penchant for limb removal and their first brush with the White Council.

I'd also love a Jim Butcher-ish title if anyone can think of one! ;)

One point of note for the gameplay side of things, they won't be up against a real sorcerer, I'm guessing more a focused practitioner (appendageomancer?).

Once this is written and playtested, I might try and pdf it for others to use - if that would prove useful?

Offline CMEast

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Re: Planning an intro adventure
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2010, 04:01:30 PM »
Very cool idea, sounds like fun :). Two things quickly:

1) Did you call it the St Giles Hospital for a reason? Is it related to the Fellowship of St Giles and the Red Court?

2) I was trying to think of a reason why someone might animate limbs and I came up with an interesting idea, perhaps not usable but I thought I'd say it anyway. The sorcerer might well be chopping off limbs to fuel his dark magic, however he might not be the one animating them. Perhaps one of his previous victims is in a coma but his latent magic is animating arms and legs, both prosthetic and dead, in a desperate attempt to 'wave' for help and take revenge.

That way they've got the typical bad guy to kill, but they've also got a bit of a puzzle to solve and a moral quandry too; the comatose patient is a danger to those around him (perhaps a doctor is strangled to death by accident during the chronicle) but it's not a conscious choice of his. A ward would contain his power for a while but it will easily be broken by the doctors and nurses as they care for him. Can they afford to leave him alive? Can they communicate with him somehow? etc etc.

Hope that helps :)

Offline Saedar

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Re: Planning an intro adventure
« Reply #2 on: July 12, 2010, 04:07:35 PM »
Sounds like a fun idea. I think you could run with the idea of an individual who started out trying to do something good (help sick people with magic) and ended up manipulating people's bodies for experiments (breaking the Law a number of times). It would be a nifty kind of tragic villain that the PCs might have conflicting feelings about. My personal GMing style: Mortal Dilemmas!

As for a JB-esque title.... Perhaps: Broken Bodies?

Offline slayersamelia

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Re: Planning an intro adventure
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2010, 04:35:17 PM »

1) Did you call it the St Giles Hospital for a reason? Is it related to the Fellowship of St Giles and the Red Court?

Not intentionally no, but that does leave it open to have some connection there - perhaps a good way to get the PC's involved? The Hospitals Administrator might be able to call on a favour from the White Council to get them involved and without a Warden available they get the PC's to check it out? Although the name in itself might make it an obvious target for the Red Court?

2) ...The sorcerer might well be chopping off limbs to fuel his dark magic, however he might not be the one animating them. Perhaps one of his previous victims is in a coma but his latent magic is animating arms and legs, both prosthetic and dead, in a desperate attempt to 'wave' for help and take revenge.

That way they've got the typical bad guy to kill, but they've also got a bit of a puzzle to solve and a moral quandry too; the comatose patient is a danger to those around him (perhaps a doctor is strangled to death by accident during the chronicle) but it's not a conscious choice of his. A ward would contain his power for a while but it will easily be broken by the doctors and nurses as they care for him. Can they afford to leave him alive? Can they communicate with him somehow? etc etc.

Hope that helps :)

I like this, it fits in very well with the AAAA's idea from the "Our World" book and gives an additional layer to the story.

Have the Sorcerer be what appears to be the main threat, a surgeon who works at the hospital who has been harvesting limbs - initially with the idea of creating prosthetic limbs for patients that "feel" like their old limbs (because essentially they are the old limbs?). Where he went wrong... perhaps he started amputating patients who didn't need amputation so he could refine the process/ritual and therefore maybe planted suggestions in patients heads to enable him to get away with it? When they find/defeat him, they discover that he wasn't directly connected to the murders.

Perhaps by looking at his recent patient list (?) they find that someone he operated on is in a coma and like you said is animating limbs to cry for help (or could this latent ability be creating ectoplasmic limbs)? Maybe during the investigation they discover this particular patient came around during the operation and was in a semi-concious state. He could be eliminating those that he saw thereby exacting his revenge?

The plot thickens! :)