I’m missing a player this week. It’s a party of 4. 1st level. They are in the sewers under Sharn and about to enter the area they’ve been seeking. It’s the final set of scenes and I don’t want to run it without the missing player unless the party really wants to go for it without him.
I’ve established that the sewers are used for trafficking illicit goods and such under the ever expanding leadership of the medusa Gasslak.
I‘m creatively tapped on how to give the players some options for a 3-4 hour session. I‘ve had a few ideas, but none of them resonate and all seen pretty rail roady:
1. The missing player was snatched by a carrion crawler or maybe giant trap door spider or some such. The party can track it only to find he partially recovered/escaped and is wandering blindly in the sewers. Dungeon delving hilarity ensues.
2. Their presence in the sewers has been reported up the command chain and they get intercepted by agents of Gasslak. They will permit access to the party’s destination, but only if they pay for passage. Possibilities include things like acquiring a mcguffin from Margrave University (which they’ve been linked to) that will allow the lieutenant to oppose Gasslak, or perhaps they are an expendable meat cannon to be fired at an opposing faction.
3. I could give them a moral quandary where they can choose to save the life of a capture investigative who has been trailing them (ties into the story) - I’d probably tie this into one of the other ideas
4. I could just have them captured and have to escape slavery or suffer hours of role playing as servant slaves
Not knowing anything about your PCs' style of play, I'd suggest going with #2 with #3 as a close second for possibilities. They seem the least railroady. 1 would be third since it would create the shortest distraction from the main goal. Depending on your PCs they may gripe about the lack of opportunity for them to have prevented what happened (i.e. you never asking for perception checks or the like for them to spot the traps, the spider, etc. They might still complain about this with the person tailing them, depending on whether they are watching for tails or if you asked for general perception checks as they go through the sewers.)
I’m missing a player this week. It’s a party of 4. 1st level. They are in the sewers under Sharn and about to enter the area they’ve been seeking. It’s the final set of scenes and I don’t want to run it without the missing player unless the party really wants to go for it without him.
I’ve established that the sewers are used for trafficking illicit goods and such under the ever expanding leadership of the medusa Gasslak.
I‘m creatively tapped on how to give the players some options for a 3-4 hour session. I‘ve had a few ideas, but none of them resonate and all seen pretty rail roady:
1. The missing player was snatched by a carrion crawler or maybe giant trap door spider or some such. The party can track it only to find he partially recovered/escaped and is wandering blindly in the sewers. Dungeon delving hilarity ensues.
2. Their presence in the sewers has been reported up the command chain and they get intercepted by agents of Gasslak. They will permit access to the party’s destination, but only if they pay for passage. Possibilities include things like acquiring a mcguffin from Margrave University (which they’ve been linked to) that will allow the lieutenant to oppose Gasslak, or perhaps they are an expendable meat cannon to be fired at an opposing faction.
3. I could give them a moral quandary where they can choose to save the life of a capture investigative who has been trailing them (ties into the story) - I’d probably tie this into one of the other ideas
4. I could just have them captured and have to escape slavery or suffer hours of role playing as servant slaves
Any suggestions?
Not knowing anything about your PCs' style of play, I'd suggest going with #2 with #3 as a close second for possibilities. They seem the least railroady. 1 would be third since it would create the shortest distraction from the main goal. Depending on your PCs they may gripe about the lack of opportunity for them to have prevented what happened (i.e. you never asking for perception checks or the like for them to spot the traps, the spider, etc. They might still complain about this with the person tailing them, depending on whether they are watching for tails or if you asked for general perception checks as they go through the sewers.)
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