Help with this Adventure Idea (Long post)


Homebrew and House Rules


Hi everybody probably a long post.

I have this adventure idea and I need some help developing it and
populating it with enemies.

First the basics I have a group of 5 players, some are 6th level and some are 7th level we have just finished the adventure Tower of the last Baron and I think they will take the bait for Treasure of Chimera Cove, we are also using the PFRPG rules with all the supplement books from paizo (actually the fighter is a little bit overpowered because of that doing 2d6+20dmg with overhand shop).

I haven’t wrote and adventure in a long time instead playing premade adventures like this ones and Rise of the runlords and crimson throne that’s why I need help I’m a little rusty and the system has changed a lot.

The idea is simple at first, the group is heading to the next adventure and they stop to spend the night in a little town, the town features are: it has only one street, a tavern, blacksmith, grocery store, cemetery, small shrine to a god (don’t know which jet), a well and a wild sunflower “garden”

The plan is that they are arriving at the town when the sun is setting, the few people that they see on their way to the tavern look at them scared and then they sigh of relief before heading to their house in a hurry, when they arrive at the tavern the last patrons are leaving. The bartender/owner, a human probably on his fifties, welcomes them and start to do some small talk while he offers them something to drink and tells them they can sleep on the floor by the fire because the tavern don’t have any rooms being in the middle of nowhere he doesn’t have many travelers coming by, when asked about the town people and the tavern being empty he tells them a story:

A couple of weeks ago weird things started happening in town, a soon as is dark weird noises could be heard and then ghostly figures appeared flying by the town, this ghosts look like demons or monsters and the people stopped going out at night, but it didn’t end there some of the kids in town couldn’t be woken up, they went to sleep and the next morning they didn’t wake up they kept sleeping nothing the people do could wake them even his younger son is sleeping right now, they sent word to the next town for help but haven’t heard from the messenger in days.

At this point I expect the players to investigate and maybe go out to see this monsters, the clues will eventually led them to a little girl who was the first to fall asleep, when they come (hopefully at night) the mother will plead they don’t hurt the little girl that she doesn’t know what she is doing, if they go to her room they will see that her window is open (the only open window at night in town) and that the girl is sleeping on her bed, there is also a night table beside the bed and a big wardrobe (like the one in Narnia) if they stay there for a while at the door they will see one of the creatures come out near the wardrobe and get out of the house through the window, if they get in the room, suddenly the bed looks like it’s far away and no matter how much they walk they can reach it and that their feet are stuck to the ground like if they were walking on mud, when they are finally about to reach the girl a strong wind start blowing in the room (imagine being in the eye of a tornado) but the only thing that is moving is the wardrobe (its shaking) the closer they get the harder it shakes.

Here they have a choice they can kill the little girl and everything stops or if they can deduce that the walking on mud and that the not being able to reach the bed are common nightmares and a few other clues dropped by the mom about the girl being scared at night, they can open the wardrobe (I’m going for the monster in the closet thing) there they will find a portal that takes them inside the girl mind, to her nightmare.

You see the girl has power, she is a sorcerer in the making, she was born with this power that she can’t control and it draw the attention of something, this thing feeds on nightmares, the “ghosts” are this girl nightmares they are bleeding into the real world and their mission is to give nightmares to others and draw them into their world, that’s why the kids are asleep they were the first to be attacked, if left unchecked the monster (Don’t know if there is something with this powers, any suggestion would help) I’ll call him Lord of Nightmares (sounds cool and cliched :P) will enter the real world.

Once inside they have to rescue the kids and finally the little girl, I don’t have a lot developed here but what I got is this, they will “wake up” in the field of sunflowers (this is where the girl used to play and thus is a “safe” place, a place where she felt secure) everything is dark, pitch black, they can’t see anything, when they try to light a torch or use a light spell, the light will immediately dim down to the illumination level of a candle, it doesn’t matter how powerful the spell in here light is weak, when they look around they see the sunflowers but they are huge, that’s because they see things from the perspective of the girl, since they are inside her mind everything looks to them like it looks to her, the nightmare is a representation of the town where the kids are trapped.

I imagine the kids trapped inside monsters and when the monsters are defeated the kid has to wake up in order to escape, the only way I can think of is pretending to fall, you always wake up when you fall in a dream, once the kid starts to fall he wakes and disappears, they will hear the screams or something of the kids to guide them through town, one idea I had was that since the girl has never set foot in the tavern when they go to rescue the bartender kid it will be filled with voices and blurring images, glimpses of what the girl could see and hear when she walked down the street and in front of the tavern.

The first thing they will see after leaving the garden is the well and they will hear a girl crying form inside the well, inside the well is the girl alter ego, when she played she was this heroic adventurer a sorcerer warrior that defeated demons and monsters, this “hero” is trying to rescue her but was captured and thrown in the well, the scariest place in town for the girl, the PCs have to climb down and pull her out but inside the lights won’t work and they will have an inexplicable fear, the emotions of the girl are mixing with theirs because of the significance of this place (remember they are in her mind) once they pull her out, the girl transforms into a woman and explains who she is, but she doesn’t know that she is not real she believes she has slay demos and dragons, and she points at the girl window explaining were she needs to go, and the window will illuminate like a beacon, this is the girl calling for help to her alter ego.

When they finally reach the girl room they will be confronted by the lord of nightmares who has trapped the girl and he will tell to the “hero” that she is not real that if the girl wakes up she will disappear essentially die and that she should help him, the party needs to convince her not to and defeat the monster once the monster is defeated the girl will ask what is going on and the hero will ask a moment with her, the girl will be excited to meet her hero and she will tell her she needs to wake up, the hero will linger in this words and with sudden realization will fall disappearing, everything will start to collapse and the PCs need to escape the dream as it crumbles around them, parts of the room will disappear in the blink of an eye, the girl scared will start crying and then she will disappear too, they need to reach the wardrobe before it disappears to exit the dream.

What happened is that the hero realized that she was as much the little girl as she was herself and woke up, leaving the girl trapped in the dream, she took possession of her body, and when you wake up you can remember your dream for a few minutes before it disappears of your memory, this is the time the PCs have to escape.

After that I plan that she will maintain the girl persona for as long the PCs are in town, and will become a recurring villain or something.

So what do you think? Opinions and criticism are welcome.
I need help expanding the encounters in the dream world and populating the adventure with monsters and NPCs but any help is welcomed.
Sources of inspiration:

A weird dream I had about a journalist who had been building a city inside her head since she was a child and one day one of her character possessed her body and was trying to bring her lover into the real world as well. (As I said weird dream)

The movie insidious (that’s how I imagine the dark dream world like the astral plane)

And of course Inception.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32

My one criticism is that I'd be afraid of making the players spectators to your story. They rescue children and do a few fights, but the story is largely dependent on their following the steps you describe. The story is very interesting by itself, and it might be a good adventure if you give the players a little more control over it. What if they don't actually show any interest in investigating the town? What if they just kill the girl? Should these things just cut the story short, or might they be alternative routes to the solution?

I would say to make the PCs more meaningful to the plot, give them things to do at every point in the story, and avoid having your NPCs talk to each other to resolve the story. But it sounds like a good start.

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