Build an Original Adventure Part 4

In Part 3 of this series, we looked at how to craft our adventure hooks and we began working on our timeline and information pipeline by working backwards through the background events that led up to the beginning of the adventure.

This leads us to working forward. First, we have the PCs arrive in town at sunset. They’ve been traveling all day to get here and they’re weary and dirty from the road, and their reception in town is cold. And everyone seems to be watching them with suspicion. On one hand, this is kind of the life of a group of adventurers on the road. They’re presumably a group of heavily armed individuals; maybe they’re wizards, barbarians, and other dangerous individuals. On the other hand, there are 2 really good reasons that people are watching them suspiciously. The townsfolk know that there have been a number of disappearances lately, and a group of adventurers showing up while that’s going on looks pretty bad for them. The cultists know that the PCs aren’t involved in the disappearances, and they’re suspicious that someone is on to them and sent the adventurers to interfere.

All of this leads up to an interesting scenario - the setting is laden with suspicion, and the players won’t know who’s legit suspicious of them and who’s untrustworthy themselves. So we’ve got this 3 day clock until the stars go ding, the cultists cut the captives’ throats, and all hell breaks loose. What’s happening in that 3 day period?

First, the cultists need more victims. Somebody the players talk to the night they get into town can’t be found the next evening. Which is weird, because they’re a regular at the inn. If the innkeeper or other patrons trust the PCs at this point, they will talk about the disappearances. 2 more people are missing after the second night. The PCs are followed the first 2 days, and on the second day if they’ve been asking too many questions the cultists try to split them up and ambush one or two. On the third day there’s obviously something weird going on in town. Nothing is business as usual and a group of cultists have a meeting in town. They slip out of town at dusk and head up to the abbey for the summoning ritual. Then the third night, the clock goes ding and our eggs are done. Ideally we want the PCs at the abbey at that point, when all of the cultists are there and the ceremony is going on.

This of course brings us to a couple of key issues: pacing, and the flow of information from the GM to the players. Planning is a key to both of these. We’re not talking about a railroaded adventure here where you’re going to tell the players where to go and when to go there - if we were doing that, we could skip all of the story setup stuff we’re doing and just tell them, “you arrive at the dungeon at night and you hear chanting.” Besides, the idea is really that they are supposed to get in there and rescue the prisoners. They can find evidence of what the cultists were plotting when they do, we don’t need them to walk in during the summoning. However, if they haven’t put things together enough to get to the abbey, you can provide them an opportunity for an eleventh-hour entrance by following the cultists out of town at dusk. Thus, we've set up a sequence of events that should heighten the players’ suspicion and give them enough clues while in town to get them to the abbey by the third day.

Next: Adding game mechanics and using details to tie the adventure into the game world.