In April I will be chaperoning a high school trip on an 11 hour bus ride. Usually on these trips I bring the Paizo pre-gens and run a game introducing people to this. I snagged 4 new Pathfinder players the last time I did this. What I am looking for are 2 fun 1st-level adventures to bring with me that are not map intensive.
Thanks!
ok how about a little girl gets kidnapped by somebody, and some suspicious figures were seen slinking off into the woods (PCs learn this after some investigating) and they PCs track the people to a small cave network behind a waterfall where the little girl is to be sacrificed to conjure a demon or some kind of outsider by a profane cult. Fight a couple of cultists, maybe a wierd monster or something. Should take a few hours to play out considering these are new or newish players. Find some gold,a cool weapon for somebody, a piece of cool armor for someone else, plus if they are to continue these characters you can set it up to where the parents of this child have connections and get the PCs regular adventuring jobs. Then just scale encounter groups based on the number of players and what they are
the whole first half of the adventure you can do without any maps, and then just bring some grid paper for the cave network. Just a sheet could work fine
idea number 2. Dont have the PCs get to equip gear (like mundane stuff. rope, bedrolls that sort of thing). They wake up on a coastline that is unfamiliar to them amongst the wreckage of a ship. They dont remember where they were going or where they were coming from. With very simple looking about the items washed ashore they can deduce that this was a merchant ship carrying supplies for what seems to be a general store of some kind. They can find a survivor if you wish, like a firstmate or something, and he is wounded badly, with compound fractures in both of his legs and a broken arm, and it seems a fever is setting in. The wounds are inflamed and are starting to turn dark and stink. By this time it should be getting dark and the firstmate says that there were about 50 miles away from their destination (insert town name. The PCs have options. They can try to heal the guy and take him with them, or leave him or do whatever. Eventually the PCs are going to need to leave the area. Now once they make there way up the coastline, they start to notice that they arent alone on the beach and it seems that whoever is out there has greater numbers. They can continue along the sand or climb the cliff face into the woods, where they find signs of logging and deforesttion. Inside the woods they also find a dryad that has been staked down outside of the distance away from her tree and left to die. The PCs should find out theat there are a group of hobgoblins that are harvesting the forest for lumber to make spears and arrows and so on and so forth. The PCs can try to deal with the hobgoblins alone, or make for the town and warn them there about the hobgoblin attack. Take a little more set up but should be entertaining
We Be Goblins probably does the job alright.
Master of the Fallen Fortress is alright too.
I would advise against 9toes idea number 1. Games that are in the style of Dungeons and Dragons still carry a lot of negative stigma, and as an educator (or at least someone representing the school), the last thing you want to do is reinforce that stigma by running an adventure with demons and cultists. Whatever you do, I would keep your adventure in the style of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. You want a totally PG themed game.
yea that makes a little sense i guess. Even though bestiary 1-4 is chock full of demons and devils and daemons and all other manner of terrible creatures and there's a whole thing called the Worldwound that's the location of a demonic invasion, on tops of tons of cults in pathfinder it would make sense from an educator standpoint to not throw new players in to that. Maybe change the idea from a cult summoning thing to something else. It was meant to be a generic quest line but i have had to deal with that negative stigma a couple of times and it is very annoying seeing as D&D wasnt even a game involving that it originated from a war game. But yes i do agree starting kids out on a quest involving demons and cults would not help out at all against the unknowing.
There was a Dungeon adventure, can't recall the name, about a halfling village. The kind of place that's just a stop on the PC's trip to 'the big city'.
Unfortunately, the local hive of giant bees has been displaced and they've moved their queen and hive into the covered wooden bridge which crosses the gorge on the other side of the valley. Unfortunately it's the only way to get to the big city and the halflings can't risk dealing with the giant bees themselves.
Normally they'd just use fire to scare the hive or smoke them out, but the winds of the gorge make that nonviable and they can't risk burning down the only route outside of the valley in that direction.
You could just have the PCs go in, fight some bees (not using fire), face the queen, hack through the honeycombs and clear the bridge. Or you could try to relocate the bees.
Find out what moved the bees out of their nest; goblins, kobolds, an evil druid or farmer who dislikes halfling and wants their land. If they can clear the old lair then maybe they can lure the bees back. Perhaps finding an aromatic flower that causes giant bees to follow them back home.
No really complex maps needed. Reward is not large monetarily, since the halflings are modest farmers, maybe some delicious jars of honey, honey mead, pies, etc; especially if they saved the honeycombs for the halfling community.
tcharleschapman wrote: In April I will be chaperoning a high school trip on an 11 hour bus ride. Usually on these trips I bring the Paizo pre-gens and run a game introducing people to this. I snagged 4 new Pathfinder players the last time I did this. What I am looking for are 2 fun 1st-level adventures to bring with me that are not map intensive.
Thanks!
Burnt Offerings, the first part of Rise of the Runelords, makes for an outstanding 1st - 4th level stand-alone adventure. You could even skip the Catacombs of Wrath segment entirely, provided you give the PC's a little boost before Thistletop.
you could change it so the girl has been kidnapped by a rival of some sort (like a rival merchant, noble, blah blah) and you have been asked to retrieve the girl and after some investigation you find where they are holding her and can go in and rescue the girl there or set an ambush at the location of a ransom drop off. That would be a little more kid friendly i think. And the reason the people that hired the PCs didnt go with someone with a reputation is because they have a reputation and the kidnappers would catch wind that they are searching, which would put the little girls life at risk. So they went with some nobody's cuz nobody knows them. still got some action with a somewhat interesting storyline, without the stigma.
There's a new scenario out for PFS called The Comfirmation. It's a pretty quick play, has an NPC to guide the PCs through the first half, and could be played pretty easily in theatre of the mind.
Most importanly, it's designed to introduce new players to the idea of Pathfinder (and PFS, honestly) and hook them.
Edit to add: Oh, no demons either.
I think that Crypt of the Everflame is the best intro mod out there. It starts with a good bit of RP and the first encounters have very good reasons to be soft but leads into a common PF theme; undead have reason and are causing problems. It also has nicely tailored treasure, a few puzzles, and text boxes that highlight different mechanics.
Be careful with the incorporeal undead in room 5 but it can teach PCs the value of running. It does not specify what doors are made of but wooden doors are easy while iron doors are hard. I suggest rusty (weakened) iron doors.
A group of apprentices are on a trip with their instructor into the wilderness. Unfortunately, the wagon breaks an axle and the group is forced to spend the night (dark... and stormy) in an abandoned cluster of cabins.
A few senior chaperones go walking off to get help (they never return). Some students sneak around for various reasons: having trysts, stealing another student's personal effects, sneaking a peek into the instructor's itinerary for the upcoming test.
As some students disappear, and fear takes over, the students huddle together, crowding into one cabin with only their trusted mentor to look to for protection. He tells them of a protection ritual to get them through the night.
Turns out their trusted teacher is really a demon-worshipping cultist, out to warp their minds, and perform horrifically perverse but possibly educational acts on them (they might even learn a thing or two)and convert them into deviant, brainwashed followers.
The students play PCs who are part of that group. Offer to run personal side scenes for interested students during down-time and breaks along the the trip.
Someone mentioned Master of the Fallen Fortress, I did not enjoy that scenario at all when I played it last weekend.
Hollow's last hope is fun, though maybe too map intensive. I also like a dungeon adventure from back in the AD&D days called Janx' Jinx. Essentially in that adventure the PCs are asked to protect a village from wolves w/rabies. The party starts defending and in the midst of the attack a ghostly white canine appears and does some damage then mysteriously disappears.
The next day the PCs should be motivated in some way to get after the beast. It was real, not a ghost. In the nearby forest they stumble upon Shyleen, a ranger, who has lost his friend Janx. Janx coincidentally is a blink dog.
The next part of the game is tracking down Janx and the remaining diseased wolves, putting the wolves down and capturing the blink dog. In the original adventure there are hints scattered all around leading to a nearby healing shrine. In the version I run I have the villagers talk about a ruined church with powers but also corruption.
The last part of the session is getting Janx to the shrine/church before he expires from the disease. There is a clock and the players should know it. In the original the PCs have to go there, figure out a riddle, and then get cured/healed. In my version the place is a ruin haunted by a choker who is merely a delaying tactic to divide the party. It grabs someone and flees while they read the riddle. Now they can fully turn to the choker but if no one completes the riddle the blink dog dies.
I also suggest Hollow's Last Hope. It was the first module I ran as a new DM and it went very well. The maps are pretty good and I had a lot of fun roleplaying the townsfolk and lumber baron. A noble quest and sets the party up to return in Carnival of Tears (at about 7th level).
I am currently in Burnt Offerings and it rocks. My DM has the whole Anniversary Set and I am hoping to live to make it to the end.
Just remember to have fun and don't be afraid to hand-wave alot of piddling details that may slow you down.
If you don't mind doing a little bit of conversion work "the scar" from dungeon magazine #80 is my all time favorite starting module. I'm also rather fond of "three days to kill" from atlas games - one of the very 1st d20 adventures.
If you really want to stick to pathfinder specific stuff, the 1st book in the "rise of the runelords adventure path" is really good.
Or you could do something freeform about a bus full of high-school students on a long bus trip who are unsuspecting prey for an eldritch horror from beyond... I'm thinking Call of Cthulhu, but your tastes may vary.
|
