So my group doesnt really caref or dungeon crawls, and our current GM has requested a break. I was thinking of doing a world where the basis for quests/adventures were twists on the fairy tales and favorite stories we all know and love. This post is a request for thoughts on that concept, as well as potential stories/quests etc. Below is one of my current ideas.
A murderer (we think) is currently harassing the city. People have been disappearing, The Thatchers house has a caved in door and there is blood everywhere inside, with the thatcher missing. The local lumber foreman has also goine missing, his door is also blown in and he is missing. There's some sort of wolf like track in th dirt if they c an find it with a high perception check. The third house, if they follow the few clues i lay out, will lead to the mason's house, where depending on how fast they are, they may be able to save him or catch the werewolf killing him. If they take too long to follow the clues, he will die, and the werewolf will ambush the party when they get to his house.
Obviously, this should be a nod to the three little pigs. Givn its a wolf i might throw in a few red riding hood clues too...
Any constructive criticism is welcome!
Evilserran wrote:
Givn its a wolf i might throw in a few red riding hood clues too...
Why not give a red magical cloak to one of your pc and make them the red riding hood without tipping them off?
Your idea does sound pretty cool though! The only worry i would have would be to avoid following the original fairy tales too closely to avoid players guessing what's gonna happen next.
An arch-fairy could be messing with the typical narrative, explaining how it turns darker and the main plot can diverge a bit. Bonus point if the PCs are aware of how the story should and try to work out the timeline.
1. A forest with a shattered mirror at it's heart. The forest is dominated by a coven of hags. Said coven is working to use a variety of methods to coerce young girls to voluntarily giving up their "beauty" in return for some gift from the coven. "Beauty" consists of any Cha bonus; the coven needs a total of +30 bonus. The process drains the subject of Cha; when the victim hits 0 they become a Thawn in service to the coven
2. A nihilistic urban druid, fed up with the filth rotting away the slums of a local city, has allied himself with a group of gremlins to sabotage a wealthy bathhouse in order to summon a nuckelavee into the city
3. A young woman, working to ensure she remains the fairest in the land, has taken to using magic (Witch of whatever level appropriate to the party) to disguise herself as a crone and deliver poisoned apples to children, in order to keep them from growing into rivals
4. The PCs are challenged to reach a cave before a little man (a leprechaun) who moves quite quickly for his size. The path is marked with yellow ribbons bound to trees and hedges. The clever little man uses his powers to confuse and confound the PCs as they go but if they beat the wee man they earn some major treasure or a limited wish
5. A young girl has disappeared as she was crossing through the woods to reach a relative's cottage; locals suspect a terrible talking wolf (a worg) that dwells in the forest. In actuality the girl's estranged grandmother (Witch of a suitable level to the party) has employed a local woodsman to purposely put the PCs off the scent, try to lead them to the wolf or even directly attack them while she transforms her granddaughter into a proper vessel for her own rebirth so she can live forever
6. Brutal killings are the work of a redcap. Honestly, I've never known how to "fairy tale" these guys; instead I've either used them as servants of more powerful fey or I've done a Jeckyl and Hyde type mystery with them, having a halfling (I don't have gnomes in my games) alchemist transform into one due to an accidental infusion of fey reagents in his mutagens
7. Children have begun disappearing from a local county. Said county was made famous recently because it had a terrible rat problem that suddenly cleared up. Now, as more children disappear more of the rats return. What's happening is that a satyr lured the rats out initially at the request of the noble count but when the count refused to reward the satyr by relinquishing his private hunting grounds the creatures of the Fey, the satyr began luring children out of the towns and villages and delivering them to a coven which, in turn, is turning them into rats
8. A trio of goat-like centaur brothers require hearty bodyguards to help them navigate a dangerous river crossing through the wilds. They expect the way to be blighted with trolls
9. Mother Magpie's Marvelous Pies is a local shop on the outskirts of town. It opens every so often and serves delicious, savory pies, some of which carry magical properties. You can use this as a fantastic location on its own, have Mother Magpie hire the PCs to capture rare ingredients for her meat pies OR make the woman a villain who is secretly a powerful hag using magic to lure local, virtuous people into her clutches so she can grind them up for her pies
10. The village idiot is a lad named Jack; some months ago he survived being trampled by a cow but ever since has wandered about, looking for "magic beans". His mother has become increasingly worried and has gone broke trying to find a way to restore her boy. The other day a strange little man (choose a fey of appropriate CR as a major villain for the PCs, likely APL +4) came along and paid the woman handsomely to take Jack off her hands. At the same time a massive hill giant has begun terrorizing the local populace.
There's a few to get you started. Hopefully this helps spur the brain juices.
@Alagarik yea thats kind of my thought, i got to keep it different enough that its not too obvious, i am hoping to get 2-3 quests in before they can even start to suspect.
@Mark Hoover i absolutely love some of those, awesome ideas! Particular note of favorites to 7, 8, and 3.
I have to confess, #2 was a bit too subtle for me. What fairy tale is it?
To OP, love the idea. Role reversal of good and bad guys is always a fun spin on this theme.
Looking up the original tales is also useful. I was raised with Disney, but the originals are much more brutal. Mix and match to your heart's content. Might be fun to have the occasional light hearted, whimsical, or happy oddball encounter in the larger ongoing theme.
If you need urban feys or fey-like creatures, the Bogeyman, Spring-heeled Jack and Onyvolan can work for terrorizing citizens ^_^
I've found that many GM's are hesitant to use "clichés" like the classic fantasy tropes and fairy-tales, but that players are usually thrilled for the chance to personally partake in "the classics".
One thing I'd suggest as a possibility is to focus on the tone of fairy-tales rather than the specific narratives. I ran a pretty successful encounter with a modified green hag, an advanced medium viper and a custom large animated object, a chicken coop with chicken legs, along with some ensorcelled children and undertones of cannibalism. A little Hanzel and Gretyl, a little Baba Yaga, etc. The players picked up on the vibes immediately and really enjoyed themselves. And ruthlessly slaying the vile hag.
One thing I'd say is absolutely essential is doing your research. The whole "hey, what if we--wait for it--remade all the fairy-tales, but super dark and messed up?" idea is obnoxious in the extreme because the people who keep trying it are obviously unfamiliar with the older (weirder, more disturbing) versions of the stories they're riffing off of.
Two stories that are slightly off the beaten path that I'm a big fan of are those about Stingy Jack and Death and the Magic Pack. I would definitely look in places like that for a little inspiration.
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Sysryke wrote: I have to confess, #2 was a bit too subtle for me. What fairy tale is it? That one wasn't a fairy tale, just using themes. Since its a bathhouse and features elements of pollution and corruption, with a little bit of modification you could model it on Spirited Away by Gibli Studios which is kind of a really long folk tale.
To the OP, to piggy back on what Quixote was saying, classic fairy tales and often many folk tales involve outsmarting a villain, or a villain outsmarting the folks they threaten, with combat an death usually being a very dark and intimate affair.
Now not ALL tales go this way but a lot of the classics - Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White... they were cautionary tales meant to scare kids. You didn't need mass death to bring on the fear.
IMO, what makes a game feel like a fairy or folk tale is leaning into that fear factor and not trivializing death. Games with gritty realism work well here. On the contrary, a game of high fantasy, tons of Arcane utility spells and murder-hobo'ing on a scale akin to playing Diablo misses the tone of those old stories.
You don't have to exactly mirror or even subvert specific tales in order to get the game you're looking for. Adding fairy tale elements, sometimes as simple as taking a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing and instead calling them "Seven League Boots" (a thing worn by the evil witch in the story Suppose You Met A Witch) can give your game what's needed. Focus on clever villains, or minions with obvious flaws but personality to boot; specific words and cadence in your narration; instilling dread, tension and fear in your players alongside the "wonder" of such tales is key.
A few basic ideas to maybe draw from:
-a talking frog/squirrel/hedgehog that's really an enchanted price (or maybe not. Maybe it's just a magic critter that just wants some attention/magic/a kiss).
-a dragon kidnaps a princess. The party could be hired to rescue her. Maybe the dragon wants to raise a brood of half-dragon children?
Or maybe the princess hires the party, because her kingdom is a corrupt and wicked one, and has hired some seriously brutal and evil mercenaries to slay the wise old wyrm.
Or maybe the princess is a powerful sorceress or even a demon in disguise and somehow has the dragon in her thrall.
-a giant is pillaging a village. Giant beanstalks and singing harps could make an appearance here.
Or maybe the giant is treating the village like a herd of cattle--there is something ever so much more disturbing about being eaten by a huge thing that uses a knife and fork and cornmeal breading.
-a fairy is stealing children from their cribs.
Maybe the parents are neglectful or abusive.
Maybe the children are changeling-esque replacements being called home.
Maybe the children are all fathered by the fairy.
I think one thing to decide up front is whether or not the fairy-tale tone is part of your setting or if it's something unique to this specific adventure or campaign arc. I really like leaning hard into storybook logic for some of my settings. Then you can do stuff like "you are walking through the woods when you meet--as wanderers often meet in stories such as this one--a wise old hermit", and even better, your players can lead into that sort of thinking, too.
Some media I'd suggest for more ideas:
- the "Fables" comics
- "Over the Garden Wall", the cartoon mini-series by Pendleton Ward
- pretty much anything at all by Neil Hainan, but especially his children/young-adult stuff. "Stardust", "Coraline", "Odd and the Frost Giants", etc.
I read a story once about people being "elfshot" back in the middle ages. Essentially when folks become extremely listless and melancholy, what we'd call today clinically depressed, the superstitious believed that a fairy had come along and snatched the soul of the person, their "passion" and taken it back to the lands of the fey. There the soul would live out it's passion in the court of the fey for their amusement while the person's body in the Prime would basically be like an automaton.
I actually used that as a plot device, calling it getting "feyshot" instead. Basically a Lurker in Light would pop over from the fey realm, watch a settlement until they found some really skilled expert like a talented baker or blacksmith, then steal their "passion" and return to the First World so that their new servant could practice their amazing skill for the delight of an Eldest while the person would continue going about their daily tasks mindlessly. Eventually these poor souls would waste away, rising again as perpetually reanimating zombies unless you consumed the corpse in fire.
The PCs eventually slew the Lurker in Light but unfortunately never learned enough to actually travel to the First World and save a woman's soul from eternal servitude.
Algarik wrote: Evilserran wrote:
Givn its a wolf i might throw in a few red riding hood clues too...
Why not give a red magical cloak to one of your pc and make them the red riding hood without tipping them off? F*%!ing Brilliant!
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I think you have picked rich ground for planting your garden of fairy tale adventures.
I recommend you read up on some fairy tales to refresh your memory and read a few more that maybe you haven't read yet, and take notes.
Read some fairy tales from your childhood. Read some from other countries and cultures. I don't know what your cultural palette is. But whatever your party's cultural background, they might think it's cool to be hunting a boogey man, a Chupacabra, a jub-jub bird, an oni, the Questing Beast, or a leprechaun. Maybe even borrow from history. Maybe work in some more modern children's stories, like some Dr. Seuss characters, or maybe Nanny of the Maroons, or the Night Witches. A deadly assassin-sniper that people call Lady Death.
Maybe mingle. Have a town beset by marauders that is about to turn to a wizard for help. If the party doesn't save the town first, the wizard will release an army of Golems that will proliferate around the world and destabilize every kingdom everywhere. The wizard's name is Mikhail Kalashnikov. We all know what the Golem of Kalashnikov was in real life, but what will it look like in your world? What would it be like for the party in interact with the First Ranger? You know, Robert Rogers.
How about some jokes? Do jokes count as fairy tales? When the adventure is over, the party retires to the bar. They see a priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar... They see a blonde, a brunette and a redhead walk into a bar... a horse walks into a bar...
I guess my advice is sample from a large buffet, and pile on your favorites!
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: I read a story once about people being "elfshot"... That's a much richer interpretation than "arrows that cast Sleep on you". But then, that kind of goes to show: a lot of stuff in the game comes from old folklore and legend. Just need to dig deep enough.
The concept of the changeling, a faerie look-alike meant to replace your stolen child, is now thought to possibly be a way to explain neurological conditions that don't present symptoms until a few years after birth.
I mean. You can do research on the origins of these stories and go from there, or you can take the theorized cause behind the stories and run with that. Kind of all depends on how you want the game to feel and how cerebral it could get.
So first adventure is done, i did a slight nod towards three little pigs with a bit of red riding hood. The granary foreman was murdered and stuffed down a well, the Mason foreman had gotten mauled on horseback, and the lumberjack foreman got attacked and mauled in front of the party by a clydesdale sized wolf, revealing he was actually a worgen, and the giant wolf was a worg. One of the townsfolk was secretly cusing the two groups to feud with each other (she wore a red cloak, and was rumored to be the red mother ((a ghostly vengeance nature spirit)))
The group ended up having to figure out whom was whom, and why the fight was happening, and managed to get enough clues to deal with the woman.
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The new Loremaster of Slumbering Swail has been reported slain. Rumor has it that he was in love with and dueling for the affections of a beautiful village girl. His corpse was found disfigured, at the end of the long, covered bridge leading out of the settlement, his broken down nag wandering the marsh nearby.
The nature of the disfigurement was such that Loremaster Loon was decapitated. Where his head SHOULD have been was a gourd, carved with a wickedly grinning face. You adventurers have been hired by the Shire of the Commonwealth to investigate this incident and determine if Loremaster Loon was indeed slain by some kind of vengeful spirit as the villagers contend or if this was a case of foul play brought upon by a romantic rival.
Oh, the first name of the Loremaster? Why, Ichabod, why do you ask?
I wish you well in your campaign, E-Saran-wrap. Just remember there's more than just fairy tales out there. The "tall tales" of the American west such as Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. You can also explore ghost stories, folk tales, even modern horror. What if in a dungeon the PCs find a mysterious puzzle box that whispers to them: "what delicious pain we could show you!" Or how about a lake where the bullies of a rural village supposedly drowned the child they tormented, and now the bullies are disappearing? You might even talk about how, every 23 years or so, children in a small coastal town go missing while the level of fear and anguish in the settlement just seems to spike for no reason.
So much rich literature to explore.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: The "tall tales" of the American west such as Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I was so disappointed when I learned that these two and several others like them were never actual legends or folk heroes; they were inventions of corporations, made to sell product. Which just feels...so odd, given what you said: there's so much out there, and it's such a rich vein.
The adventure with the Red Mother sounds fun; not only is it a subtle nod to traditional fairy-tales, but the overall tone within the adventure itself feels like it's got a touch of the Bros. Grimm, too.
Just curious as to where you draw the line for "real" folklore or legends. Is Rudolf any less a Christmas legend for having been first developed as an ad campaign. I can't speak to Pecos Bill, but Paul Bunyan did become a staple folklore figure in several early logging towns.
I would say, if your origins are from folklore or legend, you're the real deal. If you were created by a company with the intent to create the illusion of folklore, not so much.
Of course, some stories with completely artificial beginnings become more real because enough people buy into the illusion for long enough.
It's not a perfect example, but the Slenderman mythos is a similar situation where something deliberately created sort of takes on a life of its own. But that wasn't by any design of the creator.
Can anyone think of a good "goldilocks" monster? I was thinking of having the next town have a slew of breakins, where certain furniture is destroyed and food is eaten, and it will even happen to the adventurers on their first day/night in town.
The only version of Goldilocks I know off the top of my head involves a girl, lost and desperate, finding a cottage primarily owned by three bears. She tries all their stuff, eventually falling asleep in one of the beds, and then when the bears come home and find her, she runs away.
So, obvious nods to the characters might be a hag, posing as a young girl with golden hair, or a trio of bugbears who use stealth to enter the homes of the townsfolk and terrorize them. Another way to go would be corrupt fey using tricks and misinformation to frame an innocent, "Goldilocks" type. Yet another way to run it would be to make the antagonist a girl, again with golden hair, who has been afflicted with Lycanthropy and is now a wearbear; she is desperately searching the town for some McGuffin that can help her with her affliction but by night the beast takes over.
Of course, those are some of the more obvious takes. Let's break down the story: in the original, per this, Goldilocks was some truant kid who was SUPPOSED to be running an errand for her mom and got distracted. The tale seems to be a morality play about doing what you're told and not being impulsive or willful. It ends with a bit of a mystery as to what ACTUALLY happened to Goldilocks once the bears discovered her.
Wayward and truant; impulsive and willful. This type of character could be one of a number of fey. However, it also describes the Paizo version of goblins. Still another way to see this is someone disobedient and childish - could be common thieves or criminals, might also be a drow elf turning against their matriarch in search of some weapon or advantage to prove their own superiority.
Then look at Goldilocks' motivations, after the initial break in. She's hungry and tired; she seeks sustenance, comfort and rest. Could be a restless spirit, a ghost that once occupied a mortal life here and desperately clings to their old habits out of fear or remorse. The taking of OTHERS' things though, to make yourself feel better... pick any CE, intelligent creature and they could easily sub for Goldilocks here.
Now the bears on the other hand are portrayed as the victims despite the fact that the original story talks about how they're "proper" bears so they roar and act scary. Something that blusters, but only in defense of it's lair and property? Anything on the Animal or Magical Beast list, along with a number of corporeal undead.
Ultimately its your campaign, you do what you want. I could see this being one of the obvious choices. I could also see a blond-haired elf maiden, acting as an Inquisitor of militant sect, hunting a trio of wearbears in the area. The townsfolk are desperately trying to protect the lycanthropes as they may be kin or have some other strong bond to the three. One of the wearbears, of course, is just a child, an innocent.
The brutal Inquisitor will stop at nothing and is perpetuating a lengthy campaign of terror to try and get the townsfolk to obey the will of the church and serve up the diseased monsters for righteous Judgement. The PCs, injected into the situation, can either work alongside the elf to carry out her holy orders or might fall in with the townsfolk and work to smuggle the three werebears away before the next full moon.
On the far side of the wood, there is supposedly an old abandoned lodge, once dedicated to Erastil. The magic that still lingers here will allow the lycanthropes a measure of control over their affliction, so they might yet survive if they can only reach it in time. Unfortunately for the bears, they've been marked for death by the holy church; their unnatural presence is a disease that might become a plague. If they can be isolated and dealt with, the plague ends here and now.
So holy mother church has sent the Inquisitor with the blond hair, but they are not fools. They've also conscripted several clergy members to serve as guides and if need be, rangers in service to the elf maiden. If the PCs join her in the bid to find and slay the werebears, these minions of the church are low level NPC Experts meant to provide field intel only. If however the PCs join the townsfolk trying to get the lycanthropes to the Erastilin lodge, these minions are generic NPC Warriors who can ambush the PCs on their way.
Once they arrive at the lodge, the werebears must of course complete The Rite of Homesteading - they must consume a meal, rest from a day's labors, and then sleep a night in the bedding of the lodge. They are still vulnerable to the Inquistor at this time, so this might be the perfect time for the PCs, working with the elf maiden, to spring a final attack on the trio.
Of course, if they're working WITH the bears, the PCs ultimately have to defend the bears as they eat their porridge... sit in their chairs for a requisite time, and then bed down for the night, all while Goldilocks the Dread Inquisitrex brandishes her holy sword with Judgement for all!
I can't touch most of what Mark wrote, it's awesome. However, since the original tale leaves room for either Goldilocks or the bears to be viewed as hero or villain, why not both? Using a lot of what Mark said, you could mix and match the creatures so that all parties have vilinous potential and sympathetic motives.
I'm not saying this well, but basically make the story pick up after thevoriginal tale. Goldilocks is some creature that pulled a home invasion on the bears. The bears take semi-justifiable actions to get justice/recompense, but then take it too far by somehow forcing her into repeated home invasions. But, maybe she's taking it to far by being more destructive than necessary, or she had ill motives when she first invaded the bears. Now you have problems to solve, and foes to thwart from multiple angles. Just an alternative so it doesn't have to be an either or scenario.
I wrote a short story a while ago that took elements of Little Red Ridding Hood, Goldilocks and Beauty and the Beast.
Essentially, the townsfolk come together to find and destroy The Beast that lives in the woods, because it's scary and therefore obviously evil.
But there's a young girl who has seen the Beast for what he is; a boy who, each night, steps out of his human skin and sings his proud, mournful song to the moon. She knows there's nothing to be afraid of and goes to warn him about the villager's hunt.
And after running off with him, she steps out of her human skin and together they sing their proud, mournful song to the moon.
... maybe the villagers think the girl is the victim, but she's really the monster, too? But then it turns out she's not evil after all and it's the villagers who are the real evil ones?
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What if Goldilocks' mom was evil?
She sends her obviously distractible daughter, alone, through the woods past a house she knows is occupied by 3 anthropomorphic bears, and she sends Goldilocks alone. What if the mother knew EXACTLY what would happen?
The poor mother, overworked in her woodland cottage, saddled with a bratty child who doesn't seem to understand personal boundaries, is looking to ensure she's got one less mouth to feed in the house. She sends Goldilocks on an "errand" while she somehow gets word to the three bears - put down my daughter and you'll never have to slop porridge, ever again.
I mean, does anyone think it was awfully convenient that the 3 bears decided to take a walk in the woods to wait for their porridge to cool at the EXACT time that Goldilocks happened along? Or that their walk just HAPPENS to take enough time for the sedatives they laced the food with to take effect on the young girl?
And as we see in the original version of the tale, we don't actually KNOW what happened to Goldilocks, post-home invasion. She supposedly may have fallen out a window and broken her neck. An accident like that probably wouldn't have been investigated much.
Taking this outlook, the game could go 2 ways that I can see:
1. The PCs as gumshoes: the party is called upon, briefly after Goldilocks' body is discovered dead outside the cottage of the 3 bears. Of course, you don't have to use these actual characters but I digress. Anyway, the PCs are meant to investigate for signs of foul play and bring any criminals to justice for murder.
2. Vengeance in Gold: it's been five years since the girl died. The tale is whispered of in the village; she was found in the garden of the mansion in the woods, the one occupied by the trio of eccentric outcasts. The girl's mother, of course, has been distraught but what could she do? Now, on the eve of the anniversary of the girl's death, her vengeful spirit is invading homes, terrorizing the locals. If only there were brave adventurers who could end this poltergeist?
The mission begins as a simple ghost hunting episode. However, the GM has to be clever and use obvious enough clues to indicate that the girl isn't returning from beyond the grave out of pure malice. She suspects that the "bears," who only came into their fantastic wealth after she died, were in cahoots with her own mother. The girl's spirit will only truly rest (without serious Ghost Touch damage and mid to high level spells that is) if her mother pays for the crime of putting out a hit on her own daughter.
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You could even take this one step further: Goldilocks' "mom" isn't a mom at all, she's the matron of an orphanage. An orphanage that supplies victims to keep the greater evils of the world at bay.
Goldilocks was a sacrifice meant to appease 3 lycanthropes living on the edge of the village. Hansel and Gretel, 2 more of her wards, disappeared through the woods only to find their way to a hag's oven. Similarly she's convinced a gullible boy named Jack to try to infiltrate a giant's lair and once locked a girl referred to as "The fairest of them all" inside a glass casket so that an evil queen wouldn't visit destruction down upon the region.
Some in the villages around these accursed woods know the truth of the orphanage and the wicked matron who runs it. However, Goldilock's "mom" isn't necessarily evil - she does what she does to protect the greater good from unspeakable horrors.
Depending on the races/ages of the characters and their backgrounds, one or more of them might have originally been from the facility. They have no memory of it because of the trauma of their escape but when they return the matron fawns upon them. "My little lamb... my prodigal child..." and so on. You don't want to outright have the matron blurt out that they've returned to her, but after a bit of investigation the PC(S) might figure it out.
You see, the matron isn't magical or powerful, she's just stuck in this terrible role. She senses greatness in some of her children however and these are the ones she is forced to deliver to the evils of the land. With the PC(s) though, she rigged it somehow that they'd survive, that they'd get away, in hopes that someday the prodigal child/children would return to set things right.
The matron then could serve as a kind of oracle, sending the PCs out on missions to end whatever fairy tale evils the GM can dream up. Of course, at some point the matron's own Faustian bargain (perhaps with Rumpelstiltskin or something) catches up with her and one of the evils she was supposed to sacrifice the PC(s) to puts her down, but hopefully by then she's reached some kind of redemption arc in the end.
Hm lots of good ideas, especially Mark Hoover, wish you were my GM! lol. I really did like the inquisitor bent. I have tried giving my parties open ended situations without an obvious good/evil choise, or with the way to work with several factions, and they seem to ALWAYS pick one, like a dog with a bone, and just go to town, so i don't need to go too crazy into intrigue. As we discovered in the initial story they have zero party face, AND ZERO percwption/investigation skills, so while i like that part, the npc i provide can only do so much without stealing the show. ( i made them a deaf/mute oracle with disable device already)
They also dont want a dungeon slog, so enough intrigue to keep them guessing without relying on the usual set of skills is kind of what needs to be done right now, and i feel that maybe the inquistor option might give me the best effort (though one of my players LOVES Beauty and the Beast, so that WILL be done at some point, but i was planning on having Belle be the witch that cursed the beast in the first place, and made him forget)
I was also thinking of an elves and the shoemaker type story, using a toymaker who's presents would magically be painted overnight, but that the red would actually be blood, and it was redcaps sneaking in to paint (and use the workshop to dispose of bodies, of course)
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Fairly low DC's and/or significant circumstance bonuses could help mitigate poor skill sets if you want to add a little cloak-and-dagger/noir to an adventure.
M. Hoover, your brand is entirely your own, and I really found the idea of turning Goldilocks and the Three Bears into a murder mystery to be amusing and very well-done.
Evilserran, if you can get ahold of a copy, I can't recommend White Wolf Games's "Changeling: the Lost" enough, just for the works of microfiction alone. There's a short story at the beginning of each chapter, one that describes each type of the fae, story seeds and plot hooks on every other page and several passages that delve pretty deeply into the fairy-tale tone itself, especially taking traditional stories in new directions.
Quixote wrote: Fairly low DC's and/or significant circumstance bonuses could help mitigate poor skill sets if you want to add a little cloak-and-dagger/noir to an adventure. To piggy back on this, look at the skills the PCs DO have, then design one or more of your clues/interactions around these. A PC with no ranks in Diplomacy and Cha as a dump stat might also have a rank in Profession: Soldier, giving them a +5 or better in that skill. Having an NPC then who is an ex-guardsman that the PC could gather info from using their Profession skill in place of Diplomacy might be an avenue for success.
The thing about fairy tales is that they all exist in a vacuum. Goldilocks never met Cinderella; the evil queen in Snow White isn't the same as the witch in Sleeping Beauty. No overarching person, place or thing binds these all together.
The TV shows Once Upon a Time and Grimm tried to do that. They formalized rules and a setting that gathered all these stories up and made them part of a larger narrative. Pathfinder as a game though already has evil fey as a part of the background, a fact of life; you don't need some preternatural way to explain the presence of redcaps and werebears, they just are.
So my question to you Ser-Bear is just this: do YOU have some thread that connects all these adventures together or are they all just happening b/c monsters? Like, is there some brutal force pulling the strings behind the creation of the Red Mother, the infection of the Three Bears with Lycanthropy and the appearance of redcaps in the life of a toymaker?
Its entirely possible there might not be and these are all disparate adventures unto themselves. If your players prefer intrigue however, giving them some kind of "Professor Moriarty" figure looming over all of this might be a cool payoff at the upper levels of the campaign. What's better, with your penchant for leaving things open ended for the players to work with one side or another in their adventures, when this overarching foe is finally revealed to the players it might be interesting to reveal to them that the PCs were inadvertently pawns in the shadow-enemy's game all along.
They've been doing his/her/its bidding for 12 levels now, clearing away all foes and obstacles to their/its quest for ultimate power. Now that the players have uncovered the true evil behind all the fairy tales, they have a choice: take on the foolish and futile quest of defeating it or join forces and become immortal fairy tale monsters themselves.
Bringing it back to the toymaker and having multiple forces to work with, consider the story of the original shoemaker - they were kind to faeries, so the faeries helped get his work done. The 2 "forces" then are the fey, who came to the shop looking to steal some cream in the first place, and the Shoemaker who purposely fed the faeries the best he had to offer them out of kindness.
Redcaps in the Bestiary are a NE fey, one of the few examples in that creature type that are just Brute type foes. They don't have cool magic powers or clever wits - they wield big freaking scythes and paint themselves in murder. To me, they've always seemed like minion types. Also, observe the one weakness of a Redcap: Irreligious.
Irreligious wrote: Bitter and blasphemous, redcaps cannot stand the symbols of good-aligned religions. If a foe spends a standard action presenting such a holy symbol, any redcap that can see the creature must make a DC 15 Will save or become frightened for 1 minute and attempt to flee. A redcap who successfully saves is shaken for 1 minute. This BEGS for some kind of religious tie-in for the adventure beyond just having a Divine PC in the party. Perhaps you could involve "Goldilocks" here as an NPC that either antagonizes the PCs or entreats their help depending on how they interacted with the Inquisitor before. If "Goldilocks" has been slain, what if the church organization that sent her are employing the PCs to get to the bottom of this adventure? If you want neither of these, at the very least having the redcaps making their lair in the crypts beneath a defiled church or having them target devout victims could be cool.
It MIGHT even be that the mastermind controlling the redcaps has an anti-religious agenda. If you're using Golarion or that setting's cosmology, remember that the First World was kind of a rough draft of the earth that the gods abandoned in the final creation of everything. As a result souls pass THROUGH the First World but the creatures that exist there do not receive souls; they exist outside the life/death/afterlife cycle the rest of the universe has.
In some Paizo adventures, this has bred in an attitude of resentment and bitterness on the part of the Fey towards deities. While some fey, such as some mites in one adventure, might worship deities when they became natives to the main earth, those who remain in the First World could be motivated to harass deities and their Divine/Profane agents.
Could be that the toymaker is some heretic or blasphemer. Some tragedy, say, the death of a child, caused them to turn away from their chosen deity. When they did their anguish was heard not by a demon or devil, but by some force of the First World. This force cannot fix whatever befell the toymaker but they can deliver some kind of retribution.
However... and here's where the 2 forces come in... the PCs' investigations should turn up that someone in the church COULD'VE prevented whatever tragedy befell the toymaker, they just CHOSE not to. This would work out really well if you go with a deity like Abadar - could be that the toymaker was destitute and couldn't pay for the spell needed to save his child or whatever.
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