Peasant's page

I am presently running a campaign of an unusual stripe, trying to drag a number of mostly high-school age, inexperienced players, outside the narrow confines of PFS. They would like to begin exploring a broader roleplay experience and more open-ended play, and eventually want to build the toolkit to run games on their own. The point of this campaign is to facilitate this, in large part by breaking them of bad habits, especially those which seem okay in PFS but become acute problems outside of that box.

I've opted to achieve this by adapting a Call of Cthulu module, "Beyond The Mountains of Madness". Its length rivals an Adventure Path, but the horror/survival theme will be new to these players and because C.O.C. modules are driven more by flavor than rules, it provides an ample stub on which to hang focused lesson plans... err... encounters. I can then explain plotting and encounter design as I go to provide some insight to the would-be GM's.

So far I've been attempting to drive home some basic lessons of etiquette, teamwork and planning...

* If the GM is giving out pointed tips, don't ignore them.
* No man is an island. Make sure the PARTY covers its bases.
* Share information and assist one another.
* Actions have consequences:
Do not do anything IC that you can't at least try to justify.
Swordplay isn't always the answer.
* Do not assume the encounter is weak just because you are.

This week will be a personal favorite, "Leave dragons alone." After that though, I'm open to additional input. It's been a long time since I counseled true newbies. What non-constructive behaviors have you seen (especially in PFS) that, given the chance, you'd like to see players broken of before they move into static groups?

I am seeking suggestions for specific obstacles (per the chase rules) to put in the path of my players in an upcoming planned encounter. We quite enjoy the cinematic feel of these rules, but in practice I find that most of the obstacles I quickly envision boil down to an Acrobatics check. I would prefer to move away from just Acrobatics and instead showcase both the strengths of the party and their weaknesses.

The premise - The party will be aboard a doomed train when it comes under assault by a Purple Worm in deep desert. It's a poorly optimized 6th level party, so a straight up fight against a Purple Worm would be a TPK and they know it. So this won't be a strict combat encounter. Instead, as they move forward through the cars, the worm's actions will generate obstacles and create opportunities to strike at vital points. The more of these points which they reach and exploit, the better the outcome. Hence the chase rules, which are specifically structured around quick decision making and multiple paths to success.

The party - A cannibalistic urban barbarian that tries (and fails) diplomacy whenever given the chance. A stretchy limbed aberrant gnome sorceress (the party's tank, don't ask) that invariably tries to solve problems with necromancy, whether that's a good idea or not. A lizardfolk alchemist that's an adept climber and capable of gliding, but is easily distracted by shiny things. A drow ranger and trick shot artist that will be constrained by the availability of shadows during this encounter. A witch that has so far filled the roll of healer and knowledge monkey, though she's not actually good at either of those things and would like to get more use out of hexes. They also have a couple of hangers on, a Falcon companion and an immature Fire Elemental kept as a pet.

With that background, do any interesting or at least amusing obstacles present themselves? Feel free to make whatever assumptions you like about the actual capabilities of the characters. These are not the sorts of players that will limit their actions to the sensible.

Through an odd confluence of fortune and foolishness, my players now stand on an interesting precipice. They have a singular opportunity to neatly wrap up a number of troubling loose ends and secure a powerful alliance with a single maneuver. The catch of course is that pulling off said maneuver is all but impossible using only the resources available within the party.

As they reached this point through active and engaged roleplay, I would like to give them a fighting chance. Doing so without overshadowing their own contributions will be tricky however.

Mission: Assassinate a cautiously allied dragon in the midst of a larger air battle. They must do so in a single round or risk exposure as treachers.

They are an non-optimized, presently under-equipped and over-sized 11th level party consisting: Ninja, Barbarian, Ranger (2WF), Cleric (Travel), Inquisitor and 2 Sorcerers (Aberrant and Protean). The dragon is a blue, approximately CR 18. The battle will be extremely dangerous in its own right, so it is probably best to assume they will be trying this while significantly depleted.

What would you do to give them a helping hand without rendering the party and the encounter irrelevant?

In my gamemastering I tend to fall on the simulationist side of the hobby. Many of my favorite moments around the table came when some wild and crazy environmental aspect of an encounter escalated a seemingly trivial encounter into something cinematic and epic and memorable. This penchant has earned me repute as a killer; I draw heavily upon a segment of the rules to which quite a few players give little thought and punish them for their lack of foresight. Obviously that's not for everyone, so I'm curious... to what extent do the environmental rules actually come up in other campaigns? Are they regular features for which the party diligently hedges, complications reserved for boss fights and special occasions or just an afterthought?

(Forest fires, blizzards, windstorms, brownouts, seismic events, volcanic activity, extreme heat or cold, altitude, pressure, suffocation, thirst, glare, exhaustion, air- or water-borne disease, structural collapse, unstable footing or really any of the planar traits)

If they feature prominently in your campaigns, I'd love to hear how. If they are just an afterthought, why is that?

The upcoming arc of my homebrew includes a fetch quest inspired by the show River Monsters. I am entertaining doubts however that this party, which could charitably be described as underoptimized and undergeared, can actually pull it off. So, I could use some input. Imagine if you will that you have an 11th party that has made pretty much every 'mistake' in design possible and gotten by mostly on luck and the GM's mercy. How would you tackle the challenge of capturing an Inkanyamba (3000 lb 60' river serpent) alive and delivering it over a distance of several hundred miles to its ultimate end in ritual sacrifice?

I of course need to expand on the mistakes I mentioned. Healing is basically single sourced to the cleric. The meatshield (a Barbarian) has negligible armor). The ranger disdains the use of a bow and doesn't really grasp that her spell list extends beyond Speak with Plants. The Ninja continues to think Invisibility is the answer to everything no matter how many times it fails him. The sorcerer is spec'ed as a basic blaster and occasional counter-speller. And lastly the Inquisitor, who likes to charge into the fray but has no hp to speak of.

Some of you will ask why they aren't already dead? Put simply, it's a casual, RP-heavy game where when push comes to shove they will occasionally display tactical or devious brilliance and overcome their mechanical deficiencies. That being said, if it seems like too much to handle from a narrative perspective, I'd rather just shelve the quest.

In my homebrew (PF + 3.5 material selected for flavor), the story will soon take my players to the outer planes, but I've hit a snag. The group is on track to be significantly underleveled for the subsequent portions of the planned story. Therefore I'd like to expand the planar jaunting portion of the story to allow them to advance from ~10-13 and I thought it would be fun to incorporate the thoughts of this community, since my present ideas amount to not nearly enough xp. If so inclined, feel free to toss out ideas (general or specific) that suit the encapsulated scenarios below. Sweat the mechanics if you want, or just share your creative juices.

Synopsis: Players travel to 3 locations in the outer planes to destroy minor relics. Players do not possess the means or any developed motivation to go to other planar sites.

Site 1 - Provenance Rim

There is a place on the rim where the grand gears of Mechanus intrude upon stark Acheron, where sound and fury descend upon the most aged cogs and calve off the splinters that will become new battlefields for restless petitioners. This is the Provenance Rim. A delicate frontier akin to a failing clock, it slips through missing teeth and shudders with each imperfect meshing, while the movements pulp the least wary of the territorial generals and lubricate the gears in blood. All of these common dangers pale beside the lodestone that has
ruinously tumbled for eons through the gears and the scabrous cloud of debris that orbits it.

(The lodestone is what the party seeks, but it does not wish to be tamed and will use the confluence of the planes in its own defense. Reaching it under ideal circumstances would require navigating a maze of flying debris where up and down change in seconds. Reaching it while battle rages and siege weapons fly through the debris is tantamount to suicide; rather like climbing through razorwire during an earthquake. The party will almost certainly have to split up, sending their most agile members into the debris cloud while the remainder divert or suppress the violence between formians and the denizens of Acheron.)

Site 2 - Perythion

Undulating swells of shifting sand wash through the boulevards of this forgotten Carcerian necropolis. The pitiful condemned souls of the prison plane scrabble to maintain perches among the toppled buildings that bob and roll like so much flotsam. The heave and pitch offer fleeting glimpses of unseemly vermin, their dim luminescence just strong enough to hint at furtive and deliberate movements in the middle distance. Of what lies beyond there is no sign save for the wet and unwholesome beating of leathery wings, a sound which offers no better bearing than the starless void of night.

(Local folklore holds that a key to escaping the prison plane lies in the gullet of a titanic centipede that prowls these sands and it is the mostly futile hunt for that mythic monster that has brought gangs of petitioners and gaolers alike. The party must gather tidbits of the local lore in order to track down the creature, avoid alerting the prisoners to their aims, and find a way into the beast's craw to destroy that which they came for.)

Site 3 - Lagouro

Where the Pridelands of Krigala skirt the glades of Arborea, there lies a lake forever gleaming with the golden hues of the setting sun. The bacchanal that plays out along its shores is an intoxicating celebration of urge and passion that tempts even the devoutly moral. But there is a subtle wrongness within, a slowly emerging sense that the drama being played out is not the actors' own, but the sordid and sometimes visceral memory of another played out in puppets of the flesh.

(In essence the lake is haunted by a zeitgeist, the accumulated unrealized passions of an ancient fey court that frequented the site. The object the players seek has been hidden within the lake, concealed only by the distractions of the bacchanal and the reflection upon the water. Retrieving it will probably require assuaging the fey in some way, perhaps by taking up a role in their drama or by offering up a loved one as a hostage.)