Please read and critique; Jason/Liss: stop reading now!
Every year a hillside town thanks Torag for the bounty of the quarry with among other things incredible beer that they pour down into the quarry pit. The next morning the circular stone shrine to Torag is changed in some way. This year the beer wasn't accepted for some reason and lay tainted on the stone below; the shrine's standing stones were toppled.
The priest/quarrymaster and head of the town, a dwarf named Ulucbyr was plagued by 3 curses: as he drank from a pottery ewer it and the windows of his hall shattered; he was attacked by animated tassels and chords on his bed drapes and finally his coach was attacked by a wierd laugh that stunned his horses, driver himself and the footman.
Now the lord has disappeared. The brewmaster waits on death row for a crime he didn't commit and everyone in town thinks Torag has forsaken them.
The reality is every year a korred living among the hills near the "Torag Shrine" comes down every year to drink the fine beer after the crowds leave, then he heads up to the stones drunk and makes some kind of change with Stone Shape.
This year a bunch of mites thought it'd be funny if they poured cave fungus and spider bile into the beer and use Prestidigitation to disguise the taste. After the korred got a rumbly tummy he swore vengeance on the guy that pours the beer every year not guessing the mites' involvement.
The party then has to do some roleplaying/skill challenging to guess something fishy's going on and poke about the wooded hills near the shrine. Spiders in the area and signs of mite activity lead them underground and eventually to the mites who stole some of the good beer and have been keeping it to toast their success.
The mites will also have some clues (rule of 3) to the korred's secret lair. They must devise some way (epic fight; drag a mite w/them; give him the good beer; etc...) to convince the fey that he's got the wrong guy and release Quarrymaster Ulucbyr before turning his brain to mush with some weird fey rite or something.
Is this too hard for meeting a couple of strangers at a game shop and running a one shot?
Bumping for another shot at some commentary. My main question is: does this sound too long or involved for a one shot? I've not done a 1-shot adventure for like 10 years or more. Please help.
You'll probably lose some time to a proper exposition, but it looks cool to me.
You are very right. I know the 3 clue rule but I need to switch my perception to that of a player and try to amass the details to guide the PC's in the right direction.
Things I need them to know are:
1) this wasn't divine retribution but fey trickery
2) where the mites are living (nearby wooded hollow in the hills called Shyggenskogge)
3) how to get to the Korred from the mites' lair
Being that it's a one-shot with limited time I think I'll hold off on a red herring. I don't know my players at all but from an email I got from one of them they don't sound like they want to be railroaded and they apparently enjoy a lot of roleplaying/chatting w/NPC's. I think I may have to pass some of the clues in conversation with said NPC's.
I'm so out of practice. The last 10 years I've been doing ever-increasing tactical side gaming with little or no fluff or interaction with the NPC's beyond absolute necessity. Compound that with my lack of experience with one-shots and I may have bitten off more than I can chew here...