I've learned that my writing is not as good as my knowledge of DND lore/ rules/ spells. If anyone has ideas for some mechanics that would get me through this.....
Issue 1: Packaging human cargo:
I've got a need to smuggle people out of the fishing town/ port of Storms End. One option is to drug them and then crate them. Is there a known potion that will do that? Something that will keep them in stasis for say, 6-10 days? Other thoughts?
Issue 2:
Suppose that half the people you've kidnapped off the streets of Storms End are not shipped off but are instead bled dry so the blood can be provided for a local vampire. So you've got this victim, what do you do with the body? I can't imagine the sewer system can handle it with regularity and after a few months the bodies would pile up. Even if it's a victim a week that's still a lot of bodies.
Issue 3:
I want one of the NPC gangs to have a way to magically mark the PC's for later assisination. Is there a known spell I can put on a coin or gem or other item to pass to them as a way of saying "you're gonna die"?
Your ideas sound pretty interesting. Here's some mechanical tips.
Issue 1: As far as I know, there isn't any official potion like this, but you can homebrew one easily enough by basing it off the sleep and sequester spells.
Issue 2: The easy way to do this is to re-animate them as undead minions. If you don't like that option, you can also have a pet/pets that the vampire feeds the corpses to.
Issue 3: There are multiple ways to do this, though I'm not sure if you're trying to have the players know that someone's marking them for death or not. Is it a threat or a tracking device?
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Your ideas sound pretty interesting. Here's some mechanical tips.
Issue 1: As far as I know, there isn't any official potion like this, but you can homebrew one easily enough by basing it off the sleep and sequester spells.
Issue 2: The easy way to do this is to re-animate them as undead minions. If you don't like that option, you can also have a pet/pets that the vampire feeds the corpses to.
Issue 3: There are multiple ways to do this, though I'm not sure if you're trying to have the players know that someone's marking them for death or not. Is it a threat or a tracking device?
1. Just kill them and cast Gentle Repose on them. When they get through, cast some sort of Resurrection spell on them.
2. What Thauraeln said.
3. What Thauraeln said. If it's just something to let them know they're being targeted, maybe a trinket with Continual Flame cast in it (such as a glass marble).
Issue 3: There are multiple ways to do this, though I'm not sure if you're trying to have the players know that someone's marking them for death or not. Is it a threat or a tracking device?
I want it to be both. My plan is to have one of the gang members toss them a coin with a glare and a "don't waste your time spending this". It's known enough that they can't leave the coin as people will follow them with it if needed as anyone who knows the banshees knows that once you get one of their coins, you're going to die. IT's safer for you to follow the "mark" with a coin than it is let said mark leave the coin near you.
The other issue I'm banging into is this: I don't know what resolution looks like in this game. Here are my rough notes on it: 1) There is no lord or council, the town is controlled by gangs who have beat out an uneasy peace with the HarborMaster acting as a form of "powerless judge". The peace is new since the council was disbanded 20 years ago and the gangs took over.
2) The harbormaster's daughter is a vampire who is being kept in the ruined castle in town. She is half prisoner, half in hiding depending on the day.
3) Said vampire is being fed because the harbor master is having people murdered and drained then telling the daughter (and her guards) that it's animal blood. At the same time, people are being kidnapped and shipped out of town to points unknown.
4) Finnegan of the Faze Spiders is trying to sneak into power by turning these new adventurers into assassins to take out the harbor master for him.
5) Meanwhile the harbor master thinks Finnegan is on his side because Finnegan knows about the vampire and also is feeding him rumors that there is a cure out there somewhere. In truth, Finnegan is a minion of Strahd who has helped create this lovely little situation so that fresh offerings can be sent to him and maybe, if things work well, this young vampire can rule there in his stead someday... if she survives. For his part, Finnegan hopes that he can prove he is more valuable than the harobormaster's daughter.
The other issue I'm banging into is this: I don't know what resolution looks like in this game. Here are my rough notes on it: 1) There is no lord or council, the town is controlled by gangs who have beat out an uneasy peace with the HarborMaster acting as a form of "powerless judge". The peace is new since the council was disbanded 20 years ago and the gangs took over.
2) The harbormaster's daughter is a vampire who is being kept in the ruined castle in town. She is half prisoner, half in hiding depending on the day.
3) Said vampire is being fed because the harbor master is having people murdered and drained then telling the daughter (and her guards) that it's animal blood. At the same time, people are being kidnapped and shipped out of town to points unknown.
4) Finnegan of the Faze Spiders is trying to sneak into power by turning these new adventurers into assassins to take out the harbor master for him.
5) Meanwhile the harbor master thinks Finnegan is on his side because Finnegan knows about the vampire and also is feeding him rumors that there is a cure out there somewhere. In truth, Finnegan is a minion of Strahd who has helped create this lovely little situation so that fresh offerings can be sent to him and maybe, if things work well, this young vampire can rule there in his stead someday... if she survives. For his part, Finnegan hopes that he can prove he is more valuable than the harobormaster's daughter.
You shouldn't plan out a resolution before the game begins. That will come in time. If you already know what will happen before the players do anything, that's railroading. I've found that things seem to work themselves out as the campaign progresses. Let the players feel like they were the ones who caused the ending, not that it was inevitable.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
You shouldn't plan out a resolution before the game begins. That will come in time. If you already know what will happen before the players do anything, that's railroading. I've found that things seem to work themselves out as the campaign progresses. Let the players feel like they were the ones who caused the ending, not that it was inevitable.
Eh... disagree a little. So far our first two campaigns have more or less lead up to a "point of choice". Resolution wasn't pre-determined, but the "climactic choice" more or less was and the players have been giving me good feedback. What adds another wrinkle is that I target 4-5 sessions for the full campaign so a certain amount of "theme park style DM'ing" is expected.
That said I can also open up the reigns a bit. We've been playing for about 4 months now and no one really wants to quit so a campaign taking 8 sessions won't be the worst. I do want to at least, though, have some ideas about when we can say "and you did it! You're done!"
What I don't want to have happen is the players all shrug, look at each other and say "well.. I guess we should move on now". I want a moment where they look at each other and say "We did it; it's DONE!" Maybe not totally prescribe that ending but at least have some sense of where it might all go.
Your ideas sound pretty interesting. Here's some mechanical tips.
Issue 1: As far as I know, there isn't any official potion like this, but you can homebrew one easily enough by basing it off the sleep and sequester spells.
Issue 2: The easy way to do this is to re-animate them as undead minions. If you don't like that option, you can also have a pet/pets that the vampire feeds the corpses to.
Issue 3: There are multiple ways to do this, though I'm not sure if you're trying to have the players know that someone's marking them for death or not. Is it a threat or a tracking device?
1. Just kill them and cast Gentle Repose on them. When they get through, cast some sort of Resurrection spell on them.
2. What Thauraeln said.
3. What Thauraeln said. If it's just something to let them know they're being targeted, maybe a trinket with Continual Flame cast in it (such as a glass marble).
Adding my two cents for what it's worth:
1. Resurrection would get pretty costly depending on the numbers of bodies. You could also homebrew a potion/drug based on Feign Death too.
2. I like both of Thauraeln's suggestions here, but if I could riff on that pet feeding idea... You mentioned the sewer system as a dumping ground and that could remain viable if you had a "cleaning" kind of pet a la Shambling Mound or varieties of oozes. Heck, you could link in the Mound's tendency to play dead to a key ingredient for the drugging potion.
If you’ll excuse me, I think you’ve written a background of essentially a failed state and that’s going to inevitably cause problems in finding an heroic ending. When the vampire has been dealt with and the harbor master exposed and Finnegan neutralized, your party is going to be looking around at a town divided up by gangs WITHOUT an unofficial arbitrator. It’s what the town looked like at the BEGINNING of Fistful of Dollars, rather than the end. Now, you can get a noir ending, or a call to action ending, where your guys end up good and mad and pointed at Strahd; but you can’t get an organic feel-good ending out of it. I think the best way is where at least everyone knows that they’re done here and moving on to the next place: Finnegan’s ties to the mastermind have to be revealed, and Strahd probably should make a physical appearance to save at least the daughter, if not his loyal henchman.
As for your original questions: 1) These are unwilling people? Unless someone is snooping around the docks, you don’t bother with magic. You pick someone no one will look for and you grab them right before the tide comes in. Once they’re at sea, they can scream all they like. If you really want a potion, the harbormaster (many years ago) confiscated a shipment of a rare blowfish toxin from the east from a smuggler on the docks. It was sitting in the impound lot in a file drawer until he found a use for it; 2). Body disposal, like all waste management, is mainly a question of what tradeoffs you’re willing to accept - the more messy you’re willing to get, the more options you have. Use your imagination. Also, the action apparently takes place next to the ocean, which has occasionally been used to conceal bodies; 3) I think a writing-focused DM’s greatest strength is the freedom to ignore “known” rules about what spell produces what effect. As long as your players understand that the coin is a death sentence and a tracking device, that’s probably enough.
If you’ll excuse me, I think you’ve written a background of essentially a failed state and that’s going to inevitably cause problems in finding an heroic ending. When the vampire has been dealt with and the harbor master exposed and Finnegan neutralized, your party is going to be looking around at a town divided up by gangs WITHOUT an unofficial arbitrator. It’s what the town looked like at the BEGINNING of Fistful of Dollars, rather than the end. Now, you can get a noir ending, or a call to action ending, where your guys end up good and mad and pointed at Strahd; but you can’t get an organic feel-good ending out of it. I think the best way is where at least everyone knows that they’re done here and moving on to the next place: Finnegan’s ties to the mastermind have to be revealed, and Strahd probably should make a physical appearance to save at least the daughter, if not his loyal henchman.
Well and that's been a halmark of the game so far. Each story arch has built to a moment where the PC's have to pick between the least crappy options. There is no Clear Happy End but rather shades of grey to say "okay, how do we not make this worse?"
The first campaign built to "but the zombie lords have a point".
The second built to "but what do we do about the banshee sister who didn't ask to be a banshee?"
This I'm hoping will build to a "we need to get SOMEone in charge or it'll be chaos.. but who?"
Maybe that's just what I need to present to them near the climax: How are you going to "make this right" and not have the town turn into open warfare?
Okay, well an organic way to have that happen is by showing the gangs that they have a mutual enemy; maybe they even get into a fight alongside one another. They build enough trust that it feels natural that they agree to some power-sharing scheme.
1: pigs will eat anything. I have toyed with the idea of an incredibly inept gang who misheard this common trope as "Sheep will eat anything", and are the cause of several bodies being found in the sheep pens at the local farm. Because sheep won't just eat anything. But that's another thing entirely!
2: An Otyugh will also eat anything, and lives in a mound of rotting flesh. This could easily be a disused section of the sewers beneath town.
3: In egypt people used to literally burn mummies as fuel. I imagine a dried-up corpse with no blood left in it would quite quickly become burnable. They might even have a sideline business selling firewood to vampires and others who don't care that it's got bones in it. Perhaps a servant stole some "wood" for her poor father who needed it to burn in their tavern, and that's where the adventurers find out about the scheme.
For point 3, go to the point. Give them a scrap of cloth with a skull on it. when they look at it, they see the skull become branded onto the palm of their hand, like the black spot.
2: soylent green deal, the players notice these posters going up in lower-class areas " people feed, ' food for people' " make the vampire have a deal with the mayor, the mayor supplies blood, and he gets a low-cost way to feed the people, ( food shortages have been rampant as of late ) done-done ( you can have this lead anywhere you like )
3: idk sorry
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
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I've learned that my writing is not as good as my knowledge of DND lore/ rules/ spells. If anyone has ideas for some mechanics that would get me through this.....
Issue 1: Packaging human cargo:
I've got a need to smuggle people out of the fishing town/ port of Storms End. One option is to drug them and then crate them. Is there a known potion that will do that? Something that will keep them in stasis for say, 6-10 days? Other thoughts?
Issue 2:
Suppose that half the people you've kidnapped off the streets of Storms End are not shipped off but are instead bled dry so the blood can be provided for a local vampire. So you've got this victim, what do you do with the body? I can't imagine the sewer system can handle it with regularity and after a few months the bodies would pile up. Even if it's a victim a week that's still a lot of bodies.
Issue 3:
I want one of the NPC gangs to have a way to magically mark the PC's for later assisination. Is there a known spell I can put on a coin or gem or other item to pass to them as a way of saying "you're gonna die"?
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Your ideas sound pretty interesting. Here's some mechanical tips.
Issue 1: As far as I know, there isn't any official potion like this, but you can homebrew one easily enough by basing it off the sleep and sequester spells.
Issue 2: The easy way to do this is to re-animate them as undead minions. If you don't like that option, you can also have a pet/pets that the vampire feeds the corpses to.
Issue 3: There are multiple ways to do this, though I'm not sure if you're trying to have the players know that someone's marking them for death or not. Is it a threat or a tracking device?
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
1. Just kill them and cast Gentle Repose on them. When they get through, cast some sort of Resurrection spell on them.
2. What Thauraeln said.
3. What Thauraeln said. If it's just something to let them know they're being targeted, maybe a trinket with Continual Flame cast in it (such as a glass marble).
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I want it to be both. My plan is to have one of the gang members toss them a coin with a glare and a "don't waste your time spending this". It's known enough that they can't leave the coin as people will follow them with it if needed as anyone who knows the banshees knows that once you get one of their coins, you're going to die. IT's safer for you to follow the "mark" with a coin than it is let said mark leave the coin near you.
The other issue I'm banging into is this: I don't know what resolution looks like in this game. Here are my rough notes on it:
1) There is no lord or council, the town is controlled by gangs who have beat out an uneasy peace with the HarborMaster acting as a form of "powerless judge". The peace is new since the council was disbanded 20 years ago and the gangs took over.
2) The harbormaster's daughter is a vampire who is being kept in the ruined castle in town. She is half prisoner, half in hiding depending on the day.
3) Said vampire is being fed because the harbor master is having people murdered and drained then telling the daughter (and her guards) that it's animal blood. At the same time, people are being kidnapped and shipped out of town to points unknown.
4) Finnegan of the Faze Spiders is trying to sneak into power by turning these new adventurers into assassins to take out the harbor master for him.
5) Meanwhile the harbor master thinks Finnegan is on his side because Finnegan knows about the vampire and also is feeding him rumors that there is a cure out there somewhere. In truth, Finnegan is a minion of Strahd who has helped create this lovely little situation so that fresh offerings can be sent to him and maybe, if things work well, this young vampire can rule there in his stead someday... if she survives. For his part, Finnegan hopes that he can prove he is more valuable than the harobormaster's daughter.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
You shouldn't plan out a resolution before the game begins. That will come in time. If you already know what will happen before the players do anything, that's railroading. I've found that things seem to work themselves out as the campaign progresses. Let the players feel like they were the ones who caused the ending, not that it was inevitable.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Eh... disagree a little. So far our first two campaigns have more or less lead up to a "point of choice". Resolution wasn't pre-determined, but the "climactic choice" more or less was and the players have been giving me good feedback. What adds another wrinkle is that I target 4-5 sessions for the full campaign so a certain amount of "theme park style DM'ing" is expected.
That said I can also open up the reigns a bit. We've been playing for about 4 months now and no one really wants to quit so a campaign taking 8 sessions won't be the worst. I do want to at least, though, have some ideas about when we can say "and you did it! You're done!"
What I don't want to have happen is the players all shrug, look at each other and say "well.. I guess we should move on now". I want a moment where they look at each other and say "We did it; it's DONE!" Maybe not totally prescribe that ending but at least have some sense of where it might all go.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Adding my two cents for what it's worth:
1. Resurrection would get pretty costly depending on the numbers of bodies. You could also homebrew a potion/drug based on Feign Death too.
2. I like both of Thauraeln's suggestions here, but if I could riff on that pet feeding idea... You mentioned the sewer system as a dumping ground and that could remain viable if you had a "cleaning" kind of pet a la Shambling Mound or varieties of oozes. Heck, you could link in the Mound's tendency to play dead to a key ingredient for the drugging potion.
If you’ll excuse me, I think you’ve written a background of essentially a failed state and that’s going to inevitably cause problems in finding an heroic ending. When the vampire has been dealt with and the harbor master exposed and Finnegan neutralized, your party is going to be looking around at a town divided up by gangs WITHOUT an unofficial arbitrator. It’s what the town looked like at the BEGINNING of Fistful of Dollars, rather than the end. Now, you can get a noir ending, or a call to action ending, where your guys end up good and mad and pointed at Strahd; but you can’t get an organic feel-good ending out of it. I think the best way is where at least everyone knows that they’re done here and moving on to the next place: Finnegan’s ties to the mastermind have to be revealed, and Strahd probably should make a physical appearance to save at least the daughter, if not his loyal henchman.
As for your original questions: 1) These are unwilling people? Unless someone is snooping around the docks, you don’t bother with magic. You pick someone no one will look for and you grab them right before the tide comes in. Once they’re at sea, they can scream all they like. If you really want a potion, the harbormaster (many years ago) confiscated a shipment of a rare blowfish toxin from the east from a smuggler on the docks. It was sitting in the impound lot in a file drawer until he found a use for it; 2). Body disposal, like all waste management, is mainly a question of what tradeoffs you’re willing to accept - the more messy you’re willing to get, the more options you have. Use your imagination. Also, the action apparently takes place next to the ocean, which has occasionally been used to conceal bodies; 3) I think a writing-focused DM’s greatest strength is the freedom to ignore “known” rules about what spell produces what effect. As long as your players understand that the coin is a death sentence and a tracking device, that’s probably enough.
Well and that's been a halmark of the game so far. Each story arch has built to a moment where the PC's have to pick between the least crappy options. There is no Clear Happy End but rather shades of grey to say "okay, how do we not make this worse?"
The first campaign built to "but the zombie lords have a point".
The second built to "but what do we do about the banshee sister who didn't ask to be a banshee?"
This I'm hoping will build to a "we need to get SOMEone in charge or it'll be chaos.. but who?"
Maybe that's just what I need to present to them near the climax: How are you going to "make this right" and not have the town turn into open warfare?
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
Tips, Tricks, Maps: Lantern Noir Presents
**Streams hosted at at twitch.tv/LaternNoir
Okay, well an organic way to have that happen is by showing the gangs that they have a mutual enemy; maybe they even get into a fight alongside one another. They build enough trust that it feels natural that they agree to some power-sharing scheme.
It's also worth noting for point 2 that:
1: pigs will eat anything. I have toyed with the idea of an incredibly inept gang who misheard this common trope as "Sheep will eat anything", and are the cause of several bodies being found in the sheep pens at the local farm. Because sheep won't just eat anything. But that's another thing entirely!
2: An Otyugh will also eat anything, and lives in a mound of rotting flesh. This could easily be a disused section of the sewers beneath town.
3: In egypt people used to literally burn mummies as fuel. I imagine a dried-up corpse with no blood left in it would quite quickly become burnable. They might even have a sideline business selling firewood to vampires and others who don't care that it's got bones in it. Perhaps a servant stole some "wood" for her poor father who needed it to burn in their tavern, and that's where the adventurers find out about the scheme.
For point 3, go to the point. Give them a scrap of cloth with a skull on it. when they look at it, they see the skull become branded onto the palm of their hand, like the black spot.
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1:
homebrew something, shouldn't be too hard
2: soylent green deal, the players notice these posters going up in lower-class areas " people feed, ' food for people' " make the vampire have a deal with the mayor, the mayor supplies blood, and he gets a low-cost way to feed the people, ( food shortages have been rampant as of late ) done-done ( you can have this lead anywhere you like )
3: idk sorry
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.