Hey everyone, I am currently prepping a short adventure with a premise similar to that of something like Majora's Mask or Groundhog's Day(the movie). In it the party is trapped in a day long time loop that resets at midnight or when the PCs die.
I've got the main plot fairly set as for what exactly the PCs will need to solve to fix the timeloop. The main thing I need now is some additional side quest type material for them do as it strikes their fancy.
Most of the material takes place around a small village of 50ish people. Some examples of side quests I have are things like:
Merchants in route to town get ambushed by bandits. PCs can arrive ahead of time to rescue them and get a reward.
Two of the younger villagers break up because one of them forgot it was their anniversary.
Hunter gets injured in the woods by a bear and needs medical attention.
Small fire gets started accidentally.
etc
Bump just in case someone has some thoughts. Or a better place to post the question.
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Do you really need side quests in a short adventure? The stuck-in-a-time-loop adventure can get boring, having to do a bunch of minor quests repeatedly might make it worse. You might also want to tell the players not to play Wizards as not being able to write new spells in a spellbook isn't fun.
Curse of the Kingspire is an adventure with a similar theme. Here's how they handled it.
- To end the loop, the players have to find a sword and kill a giant worm. The sword and anything within a certain range of it have a kind of immunity to the time loop. That is, you stay at the same place when the loop resets. If you die near the sword, you won't respawn. It's the only way to kill the worm and end the cycle.
I've been playing around with ideas for a time looped adventure as well.
A thing you need to consider - if time is looped, why should the party bother with side quests? Presumably the side quest will be reset when the loop resets, so you'll have to think of some other way to make them worthwhile. Majora's Mask did this by rewarding the player with new masks. How will you reward your players for doing these quests?
What I had planned on doing was allowing the party to make "game saves".
If they complete a fight/quest I'll mark down their current hp and resources used. They can then return to that point of the day in that state by doing everything the same. If they want to redo a fight because they believe they can use better tactics or get through it easier after they leveled or found some items they are welcome to do so.
As for the wizard I had planned on warning them away from it. But if someone really wants a wizard I won't stop them.
As for rewards for the side quests it would broadly be in two categories. Information(which for the PCs for plot related reasons would carry over and can be used freely). Or various item rewards which they can fast forward to acquiring again.