In this dungeon; ancient indigenous ruin shrined there is a room where there are 2 monks who are in in endless slumber due to poison gas/potion/something. If the players interact with them they get annoyed n ask for 500gp or a magic item or attack.
I'm trying to add more RP elements as well as make other things throughout the entire campaign make more sense/more of a logical motive.
Does anyone have a better reason why a pair of monks or anyone for that matter would be upset of being woken up out of an eternal sleep? Idc whether the group fights them or not, comes up with a way to return them to sleep or anything else.. Just any ideas to make this into a better RP situation?
Also wouldn't mind more advice on increasing the RP or even the puzzles in thia dungeon as a whole if you're familiar with it
Sounds like poor writing to me. Change the whole outcome of the Situation:
The Monks awake in a state of trance and attack on sight. If under 1/3 of Hitpoints they come to a clear mind and gratefully thanks the Group for saving them, granting a reward if the Player's don't fall in rage and kill them.
The Monks awake and tell the story of their monasty which struggle for survival. In an attempt to rescue the Monasty they followed a quest, that lead them here. The PC's can help them to finish their quest. But maybe their magical slumber was longer than expected. This could be a nice point for a future adventure.
The Monks are old rivals and are bound by a spell to fight each other for eternity, and only sleep to recover. The old enemies had become friends, because they have talked a lot in their recovery time and wished to be freed from their curse. The Curse can be broken in more than one way. The PC's could kill them if they want to. This is fine for the two monks, who have fought for centuries and are tired but warn the players, that the curse may force the Monks to defend themselves. Or the Player's may come up with a creative way to break the curse or the Monks tell of the being that cursed them.
Adding to point 3 above. Perhaps one made a sacrifice to trap the other for eternity since they were mad/evil/whatever appropriate and thus one is a jailor and the other the prisoner. The party can then RP to find out which and why. The jailor is upset because they thought they had imprisoned the other for eternity.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Have you seen Inception? That scene where Cobb is taken to the basement under the pharmacy that looks like an infirmary? All the people stay there, safely drugged into sleep 18 hrs a day, because their realities have flipped. Dreams are the real world, and being awake is the dream. So I guess the RP hook in that situation is they awaken, declare the party projections of their subconscious in a dream world. Maybe a high Persuasion roll or successful Charm Person would convince them otherwise. Maybe they ask for a specific magic item or potion ingredients that will need to craft more potion to help them “wake up” again (“because frankly, your faces are nightmarish.”) Then if the party refuses to freely hand over items, they say “Then we will destroy you and take what you have to trade for what we need. It’s not like you really exist anyway.”
I think you're going to find yourself pretty dissapointed in this module overall if you're looking for good RP. It's really just a bunch of random traps/tests thrown together in a gauntlet style death race with very little in the way over overarching theme or story. I just recently ran it for the first time since it was originally published and found it to be pretty lackluster.
First and foremost, this module was originally published in 1979, a time when folks adventured because it was there, and they killed because, well, it was in there. With that out of the way. Let's go back to the original and bring it forward to this new "enlightened" era of DnD... The original module was made for Origins, and was for "tournament" play. It used pre-gens and a scoring system:
Monks back in the day, had the Feign Death ability, which meant they appeared dead, but were aware of their surroundings, and it required the party to not draw any weapons and/or sheathe weapons, basically make no threatening moves to get to the demand payment part. Originally the potion was used to enhance this ability, now, the potion simply does this ability. Now, as to WHY this was done, the module itself gives no clues, however, at GenCon 20 Johnson alluded it was a nod to Romeo and Juliet with a Sleeping Beauty twist. So how's this for a go:
If questioned about themselves, the monks explain their vow of celibacy can only be broken by 5,000 years of continual sleep, so they chose love or the world they knew.. The party has reset this clock by awakening them, so they are a tad upset. Why they want money or magic items to go back to sleep? They need to use it to make the potion stronger overcoming their immunity to poison. Should be enough to flesh it out from there. If you want an evil twist, put a Doomsday twist on it. Remember, they have been here longer than practically everything besides the walls.
Yeah, the original scoring of the module was mostly bonus points for ignoring everything you didn't absolutely have to mess with. It was essentially a race to the exit before the toxic air killed you.
I really like what Pedroig brings up especially with going back to the original. I would though like to point out that they are named after characters from Indigenous Mythos so they technically are more relevant to the dungeon them than just easter/asian monks from a monastery
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
In this dungeon; ancient indigenous ruin shrined there is a room where there are 2 monks who are in in endless slumber due to poison gas/potion/something. If the players interact with them they get annoyed n ask for 500gp or a magic item or attack.
I'm trying to add more RP elements as well as make other things throughout the entire campaign make more sense/more of a logical motive.
Does anyone have a better reason why a pair of monks or anyone for that matter would be upset of being woken up out of an eternal sleep? Idc whether the group fights them or not, comes up with a way to return them to sleep or anything else.. Just any ideas to make this into a better RP situation?
Also wouldn't mind more advice on increasing the RP or even the puzzles in thia dungeon as a whole if you're familiar with it
Sounds like poor writing to me. Change the whole outcome of the Situation:
Just some ideas. Hope they're of some help!
Adding to point 3 above. Perhaps one made a sacrifice to trap the other for eternity since they were mad/evil/whatever appropriate and thus one is a jailor and the other the prisoner. The party can then RP to find out which and why. The jailor is upset because they thought they had imprisoned the other for eternity.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
Have you seen Inception? That scene where Cobb is taken to the basement under the pharmacy that looks like an infirmary? All the people stay there, safely drugged into sleep 18 hrs a day, because their realities have flipped. Dreams are the real world, and being awake is the dream. So I guess the RP hook in that situation is they awaken, declare the party projections of their subconscious in a dream world. Maybe a high Persuasion roll or successful Charm Person would convince them otherwise. Maybe they ask for a specific magic item or potion ingredients that will need to craft more potion to help them “wake up” again (“because frankly, your faces are nightmarish.”) Then if the party refuses to freely hand over items, they say “Then we will destroy you and take what you have to trade for what we need. It’s not like you really exist anyway.”
I think you're going to find yourself pretty dissapointed in this module overall if you're looking for good RP. It's really just a bunch of random traps/tests thrown together in a gauntlet style death race with very little in the way over overarching theme or story. I just recently ran it for the first time since it was originally published and found it to be pretty lackluster.
First and foremost, this module was originally published in 1979, a time when folks adventured because it was there, and they killed because, well, it was in there. With that out of the way. Let's go back to the original and bring it forward to this new "enlightened" era of DnD... The original module was made for Origins, and was for "tournament" play. It used pre-gens and a scoring system:
Monks back in the day, had the Feign Death ability, which meant they appeared dead, but were aware of their surroundings, and it required the party to not draw any weapons and/or sheathe weapons, basically make no threatening moves to get to the demand payment part. Originally the potion was used to enhance this ability, now, the potion simply does this ability. Now, as to WHY this was done, the module itself gives no clues, however, at GenCon 20 Johnson alluded it was a nod to Romeo and Juliet with a Sleeping Beauty twist. So how's this for a go:
If questioned about themselves, the monks explain their vow of celibacy can only be broken by 5,000 years of continual sleep, so they chose love or the world they knew.. The party has reset this clock by awakening them, so they are a tad upset. Why they want money or magic items to go back to sleep? They need to use it to make the potion stronger overcoming their immunity to poison. Should be enough to flesh it out from there. If you want an evil twist, put a Doomsday twist on it. Remember, they have been here longer than practically everything besides the walls.
Yeah, the original scoring of the module was mostly bonus points for ignoring everything you didn't absolutely have to mess with. It was essentially a race to the exit before the toxic air killed you.
I really like what Pedroig brings up especially with going back to the original. I would though like to point out that they are named after characters from Indigenous Mythos so they technically are more relevant to the dungeon them than just easter/asian monks from a monastery