Hey! First things first, if your initials are C. L. and you know you shouldn't be reading this thread because it pertains to a game you're a player in, for shame! For shame, C. L.
With that out of the way, down to business: I am running a Planescape game (using Pathfinder, naturally) and find myself in need of some fresh ideas for a session. My players are presently stuck (imprisoned, some might say) in a rehabilitation facility, intending to 'cure' them of their chaotic impulses.
I want to do a series of mini-game-like skill challenges, to patronize them a little and have the individuals running the facility treat them like children. The idea is that they can earn 'merit badges' for completing various orderly tasks, tasks that requite forward planning, or doing something consistently for an extended period of time. I want them to be reminiscent of Brownie or Boy Scout badges, but the kinds of badges you would give a dangerous criminal to reward them for behaving like a constructive member of society.
As this is a D&D game I'd like as many of these to involve game mechanics as I can, though. A cooking badge for volunteering in the kitchens for a months worth of lunches could require a few untrained craft or profession chechs, but what else? Both for the low-levelled PCs, and some difficult-to-get badges other inmates could be toting.
I plan on illustrating the badges and handing them out to the olayers, kind of like X-Box achievements, to make the PCs compete with each other and the NPC inmates for the most number of cheevos.
Tempt them with a "hapless victim", like a fellow inmate having trouble carrying supplies. If they leave him be, they get a badge. If they actually help him carry his goods, they get a badge with a star!
If they steal the supplies, they get the hose...
Love the idea Anetra! I work as a psychologist in a forensic psychiatric hospital on the east coast and can give some work-related ideas! Depending on how you play this stuff it can be a bit tongue in cheeky or kind of scary (i.e. here’s a painful shock for every wrong answer). Remember always avoid telling the player’s what they’re supposed to do! An orderly mind should be able to figure it out!
1) Compliance: Offer the players “medications” every day without explaining exactly what they do, and have them cause occasionally uncomfortable side effects like stiffness, nausea, blurred vision (reflected by various negatives to skill checks). They’re compliance to a higher/more knowledgeable/wiser authority is being tested.
2) Obedience: Given a seemingly unimportant task to complete for 3 hours every day, like polish gears or put together puzzle pieces or paint a small patch of wall over and over. While doing this task, receive lectures on the importance of being “a cog in the great machine.”
3) Occupational Therapy: Forced to learn a completely random profession skill, by sacrificing a rank in other skills. The problem is that the task has little relevance to the average adventure’s life, so having to get a rank or 2 in either Craft or Profession: Quilting or Book Binding or Candle Crafting or Putting Long Objects Things in Small Bags, etc. Then maybe have their new random skill play a role in their escape!
4) Music Therapy: Having to sing/play along with the other inmates, but making sure not to stand out, not do to well and not do to poorly, but to make sure your voice is indistinguishable from the other inmates.
5) Self-Help: Give them false opportunities to “escape” and then punish them for trying. Open doors, keys on the ground, loose bricks, etc. Clearly they don’t understand the benefits of their “re-education” if they try to leave before being purged of their chaotic lifestyle.
6) Non-Violent Conflict Resolution: Have the characters faced off against low level traditionally evil monsters, i.e. orcs hopped up on steroids or rabid goblins or fast running brain eating zombies, and give them weapons and set it up as being reminiscent of a dungeon random encounter, but then punish them for reacting violently, instead they should only use calm discourse, logic and non-violent means to stop the enemies. (Try talking down a zombie that’s chewing on your face and then have the doctor tell you, “I’m very disappointed in how you resorted to violence…”)
7) Order Based Esoteric Theory: Have the arcane spell casters give up “random and chaotic spells” in place of “safe and reliable” spells with no random variables. So Magic Missile Bad! Mage Armor good. Also must write out logical arguments about the inherent unreliability of random variable spells (Linguistics or Spellcraft or Knowledge Arcane Checks)
8) Non-Denominational Worship: Have Priests subjected to mind-numbing lectures on the benefits of either non-denominational worship or a specific god of order and logic. Perhaps prayer becomes more difficult or spells begin to fade or prayers start being answered by a different god?
9) Basic Education: Have the characters forced to take GRE/SAT type tests on a random basis, each test checks a random knowledge, so one day it’s Knowledge: History, the next it’s Knowledge: Nature, the next: Knowledge: Underwater Architecture.
10) Non-Chaotic Combat: Must engage is “step-forward, stab, setp-forward, slash, step forward- stab” practice combat with an instructor, innovation, combat maneuvers, winning are punished.
Hope these are helpful! Be very curious to hear how it goes!
Haha, Jeffrey those are excellent! Especially #2 is going to be so frustrating for them.
The party is a Monk, a Summoner, and a Wizard (the monk is the most cooperative of them, naturally; he's not actually chaotic, but he has TAINTED BLOOD so he must be rescued from the bad thoughts regardless).
#7 will be especially trying for the wizard to go through. He is an evoker and easily the most chaotic of the group (CN, even). He's even going to attempt to MacGuyver together spell components for a couple castings of Colour Spray in the next session, too; dying sand from the training grounds outside with blueberries and so forth.
Maybe test the monk by having him watched under the Detect Thoughts spell and given some kind of punishment/task for any deviant thought. Often these thoughts can be unintentional, even in the disciplined. The objective is a logical, passionless "No mind" often sought in Zen meditation.
Also, you if you wanna be strange about it, have the doctors try "fixing" the tainted blood of the monk and summoner, by leaching or strange medical procedures, or casting unusual curative spells (Cure Disease, Cure Moderate Wounds, Cure Curse) on them and then testing their blood for "chaotic taint."
Maybe the wizard can earn a "merit badge" for dying the sand various shades, viewed as some kind of art therapy, particularly if he stores it and other mock ingredients in a carefully crafted mandala in his room...