Roleplaying
Ok, we got a map, how about the plot?
I know, but the plot is already in place, so lets wrap up the plot and get working.
Adventure Summary
In the late summer, after the fields have been harvested, the week long festivities of Marda-Zam takes place. After one long week of markets and hard labour, the week culminate with the grand carnival. At the carnival, every person in the city wear a costume for the masquerade. They eat, drink and play the traditional card game of Bladdish. Every inn, every tavern are full of happy people in colorful costumes.
Preparations you need to do before the start of this adventure.
- Give every PC a reason why they are in the city. Below are several reasons listed, but any good reason will do.
- – Performing at the carnival.
- – Live and work in the city.
- – Selling or buying goods at the market.
- – Sees the carnival as an opportunity for quick hands in someone else pockets.
- – To make a purchase at the market.
- – Just to be at the carnival.
- Every PC needs to have a costume for the carnival, so let the players imagination go wild here. Anything will do, but to get the players started, tell them that there is a costume competition with nice prices.
Costumes can either be crafted by the PCs, or purchased at at the market from any of the over a hundred different costume makers attending the market. The price for a costume will be from a few silver to a bucket of gold for something really extra. The price and the quality has a pretty good relationship.
If a PC is very poor, for example a monk, citizens will gladly help him or her by offering to lend a costume, as it is believed that helping someone to get a costume will make your year good and prosperous.
Remember that the PCs don’t know each other, so here after, always refer to them by their costume until they have got to know each other.
The adventure starts at the inn The Golden Fox. Some party members even might be working at the Golden Fox as a barmaid, entertainer or even as a guard/bouncer. The rest are just here as to happily celebrate Marda-Zam. All the PCs not working at the establishment, will by pure coincidence be seated at the same big round table in the large room, where the game of Bladdish is to begin.
Background story
In the most expensive room at the Golden Fox, the Baroness von Kettling is trying to get some sleep. She is here in the city to handle a delicate diplomatic matter, and tomorrow she will bring some very important evidence to the city council. This is a DM hook, where you as DM can figure out what those important matters are, to tie that into your campaign.
The problem is that a shady figure who listen to the name Kerrick, has been ordered to kidnap the Baroness, and plan to do this right during the carnival, when even the city guards are drinking one too many of those beers.
The plan is not simple. He have hired a Half-Orc rogue named Zwesch, to set up a diversion, that should lead any persons trying to intervene, in the wrong direction. In the meantime the actual kidnapping will be performed by a Nesting Mattress, brought here for this specific task by Kerrick.
But, every great plan will have a weak link, and the weak link here is the Nesting Mattress, who just happened to be put in an abandoned warehouse close to the docks, that was inhabited by another Nesting Mattress, a female.
Forgetting all orders, the Nesting Mattress will perform the first phase of the kidnapping, but will instead of bringing the Baroness to Kerrick, he will mate the female and use the body of the dead baroness as nursery for the Nesting Matresslings.
So, this is a good start, now we need to make the DM map for this, and the encounter battle maps. And, as this adventure will have two different levels for which it will work, every encounter has to be in two versions, the level one version and the level seven version.
And I hope I will get some good critics on the text here, as English isn’t my first language, I would really appreciate some good proofreading or editing.
This has been a good day, I’ve introduced my personal favorite monster creation, the Nesting Mattress, which has its roots in D&D back from the early 80s.
Btw, how did our map turn out? This is how our stairs now look after we applied the stair shadows.
As you see, I had to make a small adjustment to the map here, as the staircase led both up and down.
Tomorrow, we’re gonna make DMs map, with all the numbers and lines and other information that DM needs to be able to run the adventure at least close to what our basic intensions are.
I remember when I was designing adventures that were to be run in D&D competitions, how you had 3 hour gatherings with all the DMs explaining who different things were supposed to be run, and still were some of the DMs making fatal mistakes.
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