My players have a quest to go through a portal and rescue some citizens. They're all apparently thinking these citizens were kidnapped and they're going to visit hell, but I'm thinking they've found some kind of near-utopia and just don't want to leave. At least on the first look.
Beside the obvious lodging and food, what might make a person enamored enough with a place to not even want to return home to say goodbye?
That kind of depends. Magic makes communication pretty easy over distances. It's rather like having a phone. It has to be something incredibly compelling to just drop all contact with a family you loved, or even just one member of that family you loved and not at least try to send a message. I wouldn't do that with friends let along loved ones.
It would have to be Paradise in the literal sense of the word. I'd have to die.
Barring magic, I would say that it would have to be individually suited for each person. Someone who likes eating would have a magically refilling banquet that they just have to finish. An avid reader might come across a library full of lengthy books on their favorite topics. It has to have something that they like so much that they won't stop, but also something that they can never obtain.
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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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no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.
It would have to be an ever-changing landscape filled with woods and streams and ice and libraries, just enough to be novel and breathtaking and yet just knowable and gentle enough to be homely.
Possibly memory... if in this Utopia memory faded after say 48 hours everything would be ever exciting and new, past relationships family exetra they would think they haven't been gone long... that and a general atmosphere of blissful perpetual party euphoria that no one has any recollection of experiencing before... I could well imagine some might prefer to stay then return to a reality of struggle and serfdom conformity you name it even after you made them aware of the situation...
...thinking about it a bit further you could even have it that over time the memories of "before" start to fade
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Either all of their dreams ARE being fulfilled or they are being tricked in some way to believe that they are. Decide which.
The trick with the actual fulfillment is that every aspect would need to be addressed. That is tricky unless they have nothing to leave behind. If there is nothing to leave then they will run to what they think they want. Cutting ties is only going to happen if those ties are weak. So, perhaps those who want to stay are refugees, prisoners, deserters, fleeing from the mob, or something along those lines.
If they are being tricked then determine if the trick is being played on memory or an unreal set of experiences (a la the start of the Matrix, or illusion). There is magic that can be used in both cases. The Fey seem like the perfect folks for this.
Maybe they've been deceived into thinking they're actually doing something very important, like they've been appointed guardians of the tree at the world's root or some other magical BS. It's a lie, of course (unless it's not), but it's convinced them that they have a real purpose here, and can't abandon it.
The ghosts of everyone they know who has died appear to be there, and interact with them in the most joyous of ways. The ghosts are really feeding psychically on them.
The flowers there give euphoric, narcotic highs that make every day a dreamy trip into lethargy. The people are seriously addicted, though they think that they are having a great time. Slowly they forget who they are, or don't care for their children, or the highs are shorter and shorter until they are at each other's throats fighting for the plants.
The people have effectively joined a 70s hippy cult, led by an angellic being that seems like it is a benevolent master. Sometimes people 'ascend' into the light and disappear. The angel is an extra planar being devouring them.
The world there appears exactly like their home location, but far nicer. They think that they are at home. They are in fact mind flayer incubators.
The people are living in a squalid, frigid cave, but a form of mind control leads them to believe it's a beautiful paradise.
Everything there is just incredibly easy. Food is bountiful, honey drips from hives, and friendly gnomes pop by to provide mead and wine daily... for free! But in fact they are carnivorous gnomes, fattening the people up for the spit.
My players have a quest to go through a portal and rescue some citizens. They're all apparently thinking these citizens were kidnapped and they're going to visit hell, but I'm thinking they've found some kind of near-utopia and just don't want to leave. At least on the first look.
Beside the obvious lodging and food, what might make a person enamored enough with a place to not even want to return home to say goodbye?
Literal doppelgangers of their loved ones already there unexplained. Something like their memories have been read and the portal manifests their most inner desires and creates doppelgangers of their loved ones could be and have very interesting hooks.
Probably would have parts of the city in every biome, so everyone would be able to choose where they could live. It would have everything the people need and want in their house, it could have a memory wiper to make them think they lived there (credit to justindarkness cos he suggested it), magically created soulmates that are the perfect match for the people if they are lonely, basically, the whole idea revolves around the NPCs personality and traits to make it compelling to them
Balder's Gate: Descent into Avernus sends the player characters into one of the Nine Hells. The adventure goes from level 1 to level 13. They don't reach Avernus itself until chapter 3, and they're probably not in Tier 1 at that point. There's really no way for me to tell what level they are supposed to be at that point in the Adventure.
You gave us almost no information. We don't know the party level, it would be useful to know the party size, but not mandatory as long as there are 3 to 5 of them, we don't know what classes they are, or what resources they have. All we know is that they are taking a portal directly into one of the levels of Hell, we don't know which, to rescue some "citizens". Normally, rescuing citizens isn't something you do after Tier 1, player characters above level 4 are usually on to grander things.
You say that the citizens themselves have been trapped there by running into something so wonderful that they want to stay, but Devils are not known for doing pleasant things, so whatever the plan the Devils have, it's going to be malevolent, so the Big Boss behind this all has to be powerful enough to pull this all off, and his intentions are very unpleasant. You don't say the PCs get trapped, the idea might have been that they were doing a kind of commando raid and would just grab the NPCs and force them to leave. That's a decent plot line, but the power behind it all isn't likely to let them do it, and it's got to be one of the Lords of Hell itself to do this stunt, so you're dealing with a malevolent demigod at the least, if not a fully fledged deity. Clearly the Big Boss doesn't have to show up in the story at all, but you have to wonder just how powerful their agents are going to be. They have got to have a lot of resources available to them, including multiple armies of Devils.
Another problem is that if the place is as wonderful as all that, the PCs themselves might not want to leave either. They would have to have strong connections to their friends and family. I can't count the number of characters I have seen over the years who were orphans with no ties to anyone but the other adventurers, and maybe not even them. There's a lot of "Edgelords" out there, lone wolf types with a tragic backstory that leaves them in solitude. It's a cool character concept. So if they do have those strong connections getting trapped would be horribly punishing, and if they don't, you're rewarding them for not having them. So it's either bad for the players who were kind enough to have strong connections, or it's good for people who don't have them, which is encouraging what I consider poor play. You're pretty much pushing the idea of all players being Edgelords.
There's nothing all that wrong with the concept behind the story arc, but it's almost certainly a Tier 3 adventure, so I've got to know what the level of the party is at the very least to give anything close to good advice. I think we'd all benefit from that.
Thanks to all of you, there have been quite a few helpful suggestions in this thread! I feel like I've settled on abundance of food and fulfilling NPCs interests, as well as some kind of memory issue where the NPCs don't believe they've spent much time at all in the portal - and I'll probably have a wisdom save for the players.
For the record, we're playing a homebrew story, and they're not going into actual hell. My players chose the "save citizens from this portal" side quest themselves, so I'm not pushing them to do not-so-grandiose things either. I always give them 4-5 side quests to choose from in advance, and they choose the ones they feel like playing, and then I work on those. I didn't actually think they'd choose this one because they are scaredycats so I didn't have much of a plan for this one... :') I just want their first experience through a portal to be mostly positive.
I don't feel like this side quest needs much of a battle either, and if it did, I'd prefer to figure that out myself.
Got a few irl weeks before we'll play this, so I'll have a think about how exactly I'll do this.
If you know your PCs backstories, or any important events that affected them during the campaign? If so I say you use that, even if it’s a little obvious.
One thing that I would be likely to find a siren song would be health and lack of pain.
It’s extremely difficult to put severe autoimmune disorders into terms that healthy people, especially healthy young people, understand; the best explanation I’ve ever come across is to describe it like having influenza/pneumonia. Aching muscles, stiff joints, nausea, vomiting, pain, weakness, fluid in the lungs, difficulty breathing, coughing, hypersensitive skin, headache, dizziness, hot/cold flashes, swelling of the joints, muscles, and skin, and on and on and on. Combine that with hair loss, vital organ damage, joint damage, sores on your skin and scalp, numbness in the hands and feet, brain fog, lack of sleep due to pain and sickness, etc. You’re in constant pain, you’re always sick, you can’t keep up with your loved ones, you become home bound. This is your whole life, and there is no cure. It’s going to be like this forever.
Now imagine how it feels to take a strong dose of flu medication. The pain evaporates. It’s sheer ecstasy. The lack of pain is a narcotic all by itself; you can’t decide if you want to get up and do something to enjoy it, or to doze off and get the first real sleep you’ve had in days. Weeks. Years…
If somebody offered me a way out of this pain, I doubt I’d have the willpower to refuse, and I’d do everything I could think of to justify my choice. Maybe the people in this alternate dimension are sick/crippled, and prefer the fake reality because it doesn’t hurt. Maybe they even made a deliberate choice to lure others in, to “repay” whomever is controlling the illusion. After all, they’re offering a quality of life that these people can’t get from reality; isn’t that a kindness?
It’s like that episode of the original Star Trek. Maybe the “prisoners” prefer their illusory life of bliss.
Edited to add: I just reread this post, and good god does it ever sound edge lord-y!
My players have a quest to go through a portal and rescue some citizens. They're all apparently thinking these citizens were kidnapped and they're going to visit hell, but I'm thinking they've found some kind of near-utopia and just don't want to leave. At least on the first look.
Beside the obvious lodging and food, what might make a person enamored enough with a place to not even want to return home to say goodbye?
That kind of depends. Magic makes communication pretty easy over distances. It's rather like having a phone. It has to be something incredibly compelling to just drop all contact with a family you loved, or even just one member of that family you loved and not at least try to send a message. I wouldn't do that with friends let along loved ones.
It would have to be Paradise in the literal sense of the word. I'd have to die.
<Insert clever signature here>
Barring magic, I would say that it would have to be individually suited for each person. Someone who likes eating would have a magically refilling banquet that they just have to finish. An avid reader might come across a library full of lengthy books on their favorite topics. It has to have something that they like so much that they won't stop, but also something that they can never obtain.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
It would have to be an ever-changing landscape filled with woods and streams and ice and libraries, just enough to be novel and breathtaking and yet just knowable and gentle enough to be homely.
Frequent Eladrin || They/Them, but accept all pronouns
Luz Noceda would like to remind you that you're worth loving!
A garden of earthly delights
Have their loved ones be there.
Possibly memory... if in this Utopia memory faded after say 48 hours everything would be ever exciting and new, past relationships family exetra they would think they haven't been gone long... that and a general atmosphere of blissful perpetual party euphoria that no one has any recollection of experiencing before... I could well imagine some might prefer to stay then return to a reality of struggle and serfdom conformity you name it even after you made them aware of the situation...
...thinking about it a bit further you could even have it that over time the memories of "before" start to fade
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Either all of their dreams ARE being fulfilled or they are being tricked in some way to believe that they are. Decide which.
The trick with the actual fulfillment is that every aspect would need to be addressed. That is tricky unless they have nothing to leave behind. If there is nothing to leave then they will run to what they think they want. Cutting ties is only going to happen if those ties are weak. So, perhaps those who want to stay are refugees, prisoners, deserters, fleeing from the mob, or something along those lines.
If they are being tricked then determine if the trick is being played on memory or an unreal set of experiences (a la the start of the Matrix, or illusion). There is magic that can be used in both cases. The Fey seem like the perfect folks for this.
Good Luck.
Maybe they've been deceived into thinking they're actually doing something very important, like they've been appointed guardians of the tree at the world's root or some other magical BS. It's a lie, of course (unless it's not), but it's convinced them that they have a real purpose here, and can't abandon it.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
A few ideas:
Literal doppelgangers of their loved ones already there unexplained. Something like their memories have been read and the portal manifests their most inner desires and creates doppelgangers of their loved ones could be and have very interesting hooks.
Probably would have parts of the city in every biome, so everyone would be able to choose where they could live. It would have everything the people need and want in their house, it could have a memory wiper to make them think they lived there (credit to justindarkness cos he suggested it), magically created soulmates that are the perfect match for the people if they are lonely, basically, the whole idea revolves around the NPCs personality and traits to make it compelling to them
Balder's Gate: Descent into Avernus sends the player characters into one of the Nine Hells. The adventure goes from level 1 to level 13. They don't reach Avernus itself until chapter 3, and they're probably not in Tier 1 at that point. There's really no way for me to tell what level they are supposed to be at that point in the Adventure.
You gave us almost no information. We don't know the party level, it would be useful to know the party size, but not mandatory as long as there are 3 to 5 of them, we don't know what classes they are, or what resources they have. All we know is that they are taking a portal directly into one of the levels of Hell, we don't know which, to rescue some "citizens". Normally, rescuing citizens isn't something you do after Tier 1, player characters above level 4 are usually on to grander things.
You say that the citizens themselves have been trapped there by running into something so wonderful that they want to stay, but Devils are not known for doing pleasant things, so whatever the plan the Devils have, it's going to be malevolent, so the Big Boss behind this all has to be powerful enough to pull this all off, and his intentions are very unpleasant. You don't say the PCs get trapped, the idea might have been that they were doing a kind of commando raid and would just grab the NPCs and force them to leave. That's a decent plot line, but the power behind it all isn't likely to let them do it, and it's got to be one of the Lords of Hell itself to do this stunt, so you're dealing with a malevolent demigod at the least, if not a fully fledged deity. Clearly the Big Boss doesn't have to show up in the story at all, but you have to wonder just how powerful their agents are going to be. They have got to have a lot of resources available to them, including multiple armies of Devils.
Another problem is that if the place is as wonderful as all that, the PCs themselves might not want to leave either. They would have to have strong connections to their friends and family. I can't count the number of characters I have seen over the years who were orphans with no ties to anyone but the other adventurers, and maybe not even them. There's a lot of "Edgelords" out there, lone wolf types with a tragic backstory that leaves them in solitude. It's a cool character concept. So if they do have those strong connections getting trapped would be horribly punishing, and if they don't, you're rewarding them for not having them. So it's either bad for the players who were kind enough to have strong connections, or it's good for people who don't have them, which is encouraging what I consider poor play. You're pretty much pushing the idea of all players being Edgelords.
There's nothing all that wrong with the concept behind the story arc, but it's almost certainly a Tier 3 adventure, so I've got to know what the level of the party is at the very least to give anything close to good advice. I think we'd all benefit from that.
<Insert clever signature here>
Thanks to all of you, there have been quite a few helpful suggestions in this thread! I feel like I've settled on abundance of food and fulfilling NPCs interests, as well as some kind of memory issue where the NPCs don't believe they've spent much time at all in the portal - and I'll probably have a wisdom save for the players.
For the record, we're playing a homebrew story, and they're not going into actual hell. My players chose the "save citizens from this portal" side quest themselves, so I'm not pushing them to do not-so-grandiose things either. I always give them 4-5 side quests to choose from in advance, and they choose the ones they feel like playing, and then I work on those. I didn't actually think they'd choose this one because they are scaredycats so I didn't have much of a plan for this one... :') I just want their first experience through a portal to be mostly positive.
I don't feel like this side quest needs much of a battle either, and if it did, I'd prefer to figure that out myself.
Got a few irl weeks before we'll play this, so I'll have a think about how exactly I'll do this.
If you know your PCs backstories, or any important events that affected them during the campaign? If so I say you use that, even if it’s a little obvious.
One thing that I would be likely to find a siren song would be health and lack of pain.
It’s extremely difficult to put severe autoimmune disorders into terms that healthy people, especially healthy young people, understand; the best explanation I’ve ever come across is to describe it like having influenza/pneumonia. Aching muscles, stiff joints, nausea, vomiting, pain, weakness, fluid in the lungs, difficulty breathing, coughing, hypersensitive skin, headache, dizziness, hot/cold flashes, swelling of the joints, muscles, and skin, and on and on and on. Combine that with hair loss, vital organ damage, joint damage, sores on your skin and scalp, numbness in the hands and feet, brain fog, lack of sleep due to pain and sickness, etc. You’re in constant pain, you’re always sick, you can’t keep up with your loved ones, you become home bound. This is your whole life, and there is no cure. It’s going to be like this forever.
Now imagine how it feels to take a strong dose of flu medication. The pain evaporates. It’s sheer ecstasy. The lack of pain is a narcotic all by itself; you can’t decide if you want to get up and do something to enjoy it, or to doze off and get the first real sleep you’ve had in days. Weeks. Years…
If somebody offered me a way out of this pain, I doubt I’d have the willpower to refuse, and I’d do everything I could think of to justify my choice. Maybe the people in this alternate dimension are sick/crippled, and prefer the fake reality because it doesn’t hurt. Maybe they even made a deliberate choice to lure others in, to “repay” whomever is controlling the illusion. After all, they’re offering a quality of life that these people can’t get from reality; isn’t that a kindness?
It’s like that episode of the original Star Trek. Maybe the “prisoners” prefer their illusory life of bliss.
Edited to add: I just reread this post, and good god does it ever sound edge lord-y!
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.