Always playing pre-made adventure, but made my first one a while a go. Have some new ideas and hope for some help here.
It will probably be a one-shot, but maybe a little longer. I'm thinking of an adventure where the players make completely new characters, who they may never play with again.
If I'm writing in the wrong forum/chat, please guide me to the correct one, place.
My idea is that each player will have some kind of secret information that the others don't know about. How far they want to tell the others or not is of course up to them.
Quick facts. The adventure itself will be about a woman who has been murdered. Let's call her Diane. The murderer has of course killed more than just Diane, but Diane is perhaps more famous or special to someone or perhaps a group of people, and she is the reason for the almost unreasonably high reward. The group has been tasked with finding this murderer and will then receive this reward, say 10,000 gold, for catching the murderer.
The information that is more personal and dealt to each player will look like something like this:
For 3 players:
- Diane's secret lover and perhaps more out for revenge than the reward.
- Diane's murderer, but doesn't really remember that he/she murdered anyone. Everything seems blurry but still he/she can see clear images play in his/her head when this happened. (The player is not the murderer but has a spell over him/her that makes him/her believe this).
- Has received secret information that Diane is the real murderer but that she is a powerful sorceress and Changeling who bewitched others to do the deed. But the player can't be truly sure if this is true. (Is this too much and too early to know at once?)
For a forth player:
- Owes a gangster boss a lot of money, say 10,000 gold, and maybe doesn't want to share the reward money?
For a fifth player:
- Is Diane and a Changeling. The other players can lead her to someone special she is after. (Reason?)
Would appreciate some opinions on details for such an adventure. Thanks.
Right, so my first take on this is that you have developed an extremely convoluted mess on your first try and would suggest maybe dialing it back a tad.
- A famous woman (Diane) has allegedly been killed and a reward for the capture of her murderer has been posted (10,000g seems excessive, but whatever?)
- One player is a former lover of the alleged victim, one player have been ensorcelled to think they are the murderer, and one player has been given a clue that leads them to believe that the victim actually committed suicide for some reason. Additional players may either just want the reward money or be the actual victim (and murderer) in disguise, but for very unclear reasons.
Again, on first blush, I would not enjoy this scenario unless there were way more specifics that made sense as they were revealed. If I were you, I'd go back to the drawing board and work out a more normal murder mystery involving a victim that actually is a victim and maybe hand out clues to solving the case to your players or reward them with clues if they do the legwork to investigate.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
this is a cool idea needs a lot of refinement to make work. Id say for your first homebrew try to keep it simple players cause chaos themselves. D&d mystery works very different then a books. Honestly there is no need to put in any misdirection players will accidentally make there own twist you just pretend you planed them lol.
That's true. And I know it got a little bit overwhelmed here. Notices when I wrote my ideas down...
I made my own first adventure a while back. It went really nice and as you say, I changed and added lots of things because of the players choices.
My second was more planned and I hinted with things that should happen later. But it went bad and my twists to solve the other parts of my hints went even worse.
Sorry, my bad. I started with writing down what the players would know. But the point would be that Diane was never murdered. She is the murderer and a changeling that uses magic that tricks your mind.
Well I didn't write it down correct I understand now. The Diane part is what the players know. But the point was that she is the murderer. She have magic that tricks your mind and made it look like someone murdered her.
And the reward money was just something I wrote. I where going to look it up later for what a high reward should be.
Also, my point was to get help from you guys to see what I could change and mostly for what I could do to get a story of it and an adventure on that. And maybe get some help with this mess.
My original plan comes from a pod where all players had a private phone call whit ther DM the day before GameDay. Everyone got one hidden thing to focus on. And the best one was the one player that got the information that he actually worked for the bad guy. They played it out so damn good. And now I want to do something similar. This is my third homebrew adventure though, and only the first one was good. So I know I have lots of work to do and therefore I asking for help here.
I think that at some point maybe they would find out that she is in fact the murderer and then maybe figure out how to turn someone in for the reward money to pay off the debt the player owes the gangster?
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“The past never changes—and from what I can see, neither does the future.”
I think that at some point maybe they would find out that she is in fact the murderer and then maybe figure out how to turn someone in for the reward money to pay off the debt the player owes the gangster?
Yes it is supposed to be a one shot. Depending on the players I think some would go rogue and start to act for their own. A group of players might solve it quick by just talking it out and the find the real murderer. Or they keep everything a secret and just goes around in circles while others might start to attack each others.
But I understand it might be to much info some have and lots here needs to change. That's why I'm asking for help.
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Always playing pre-made adventure, but made my first one a while a go. Have some new ideas and hope for some help here.
It will probably be a one-shot, but maybe a little longer. I'm thinking of an adventure where the players make completely new characters, who they may never play with again.
If I'm writing in the wrong forum/chat, please guide me to the correct one, place.
My idea is that each player will have some kind of secret information that the others don't know about. How far they want to tell the others or not is of course up to them.
Quick facts. The adventure itself will be about a woman who has been murdered. Let's call her Diane. The murderer has of course killed more than just Diane, but Diane is perhaps more famous or special to someone or perhaps a group of people, and she is the reason for the almost unreasonably high reward. The group has been tasked with finding this murderer and will then receive this reward, say 10,000 gold, for catching the murderer.
The information that is more personal and dealt to each player will look like something like this:
For 3 players:
- Diane's secret lover and perhaps more out for revenge than the reward.
- Diane's murderer, but doesn't really remember that he/she murdered anyone. Everything seems blurry but still he/she can see clear images play in his/her head when this happened. (The player is not the murderer but has a spell over him/her that makes him/her believe this).
- Has received secret information that Diane is the real murderer but that she is a powerful sorceress and Changeling who bewitched others to do the deed. But the player can't be truly sure if this is true. (Is this too much and too early to know at once?)
For a forth player:
- Owes a gangster boss a lot of money, say 10,000 gold, and maybe doesn't want to share the reward money?
For a fifth player:
- Is Diane and a Changeling. The other players can lead her to someone special she is after. (Reason?)
Would appreciate some opinions on details for such an adventure. Thanks.
I'm confused: you want Diane to be dead, one player to know she actually killed herself, and one player to be Diane. How does that work?
Extended signature
Diane faked her death.
Right, so my first take on this is that you have developed an extremely convoluted mess on your first try and would suggest maybe dialing it back a tad.
- A famous woman (Diane) has allegedly been killed and a reward for the capture of her murderer has been posted (10,000g seems excessive, but whatever?)
- One player is a former lover of the alleged victim, one player have been ensorcelled to think they are the murderer, and one player has been given a clue that leads them to believe that the victim actually committed suicide for some reason. Additional players may either just want the reward money or be the actual victim (and murderer) in disguise, but for very unclear reasons.
Again, on first blush, I would not enjoy this scenario unless there were way more specifics that made sense as they were revealed. If I were you, I'd go back to the drawing board and work out a more normal murder mystery involving a victim that actually is a victim and maybe hand out clues to solving the case to your players or reward them with clues if they do the legwork to investigate.
But she is also part of the party?
Extended signature
this is a cool idea needs a lot of refinement to make work. Id say for your first homebrew try to keep it simple players cause chaos themselves. D&d mystery works very different then a books. Honestly there is no need to put in any misdirection players will accidentally make there own twist you just pretend you planed them lol.
That's true. And I know it got a little bit overwhelmed here. Notices when I wrote my ideas down...
I made my own first adventure a while back. It went really nice and as you say, I changed and added lots of things because of the players choices.
My second was more planned and I hinted with things that should happen later. But it went bad and my twists to solve the other parts of my hints went even worse.
Sorry, my bad. I started with writing down what the players would know. But the point would be that Diane was never murdered. She is the murderer and a changeling that uses magic that tricks your mind.
Well I didn't write it down correct I understand now. The Diane part is what the players know. But the point was that she is the murderer. She have magic that tricks your mind and made it look like someone murdered her.
And the reward money was just something I wrote. I where going to look it up later for what a high reward should be.
Also, my point was to get help from you guys to see what I could change and mostly for what I could do to get a story of it and an adventure on that. And maybe get some help with this mess.
My original plan comes from a pod where all players had a private phone call whit ther DM the day before GameDay. Everyone got one hidden thing to focus on. And the best one was the one player that got the information that he actually worked for the bad guy. They played it out so damn good. And now I want to do something similar. This is my third homebrew adventure though, and only the first one was good. So I know I have lots of work to do and therefore I asking for help here.
I think that at some point maybe they would find out that she is in fact the murderer and then maybe figure out how to turn someone in for the reward money to pay off the debt the player owes the gangster?
“The past never changes—and from what I can see, neither does the future.”
Yes it is supposed to be a one shot. Depending on the players I think some would go rogue and start to act for their own. A group of players might solve it quick by just talking it out and the find the real murderer. Or they keep everything a secret and just goes around in circles while others might start to attack each others.
But I understand it might be to much info some have and lots here needs to change. That's why I'm asking for help.