Adventure Prep, Session 5: When Frustration leads to Inspiration

Okay, so this week’s game is a transition from my adaptation of the Vile Addiction adventure (From Dungeon Magazine #145) to its sequel, Spawn of Sehan from #146.

Going in this week’s preparations, I had the following goals:

• Focus the adventure on the more impatient Butt Kickers like Eric and Math to make up for last game’s Storyteller’s festival.
• Introduce Stef’s new Character, a Half-Dragon (Brass) barbarian, hopefully in such a way to be as seamless as possible.
• Prepare the jump to Planescape shortly after this game.
• Add more Ptolus Organizations into the adventure’s Fluff to build more Plot seeds to allow players to find anchors to build up their character’s motivations.

With all that in mind, I set out to re-read the adventure. It turns out the adventure sucks big time with the party’s current composition (i.e. no Rogues and no clerics). As is, the adventure is a medium-large dungeon crawl featuring a Crypt-like environment filled to the brim with monsters that seek to kill the party without resorting to bringing Hit Points to zero (i.e it features a lot of things like ability damage and draining effects).

The adventure also features a lot of different monsters that, while thematically linked feel like they were dropped randomly in the adventure (probably to showcase the critters from the latest Monster book of the time). The number of empty rooms is also very low, making this adventure likely to last 3 or more sessions… probably taking us to the Christmas Holidays.

Finally, as written, the dungeon has been looted countless times and is pretty low on Bling. Thing is, I like bling, my players like bling, and a lot of it is spent on healing items… go figure…

With my frustration level rising as I was reading the adventure, I curiously found myself in an oddly familiar, almost comfortable, position. It was too late to change adventure, I had to forge on, but I had an almost impossible situation on my hands. I had yet again painted myself into a DMing corner… But the thing I forgot to mention in that semi-neurotic post is that I’m often at my creative best when in that situation.

My 1st decision was to nix any monsters that I knew my players would hate. Level draining demonic locust swarm sitting alone in an otherwise empty room? Nixed. A cloaker hiding in a room already occupied by a monster whose abilities include making characters defenseless? Nixed. Etc. This frees up space in the otherwise overcrowded dungeons.

Then I had to address all those plant-like monsters that were seen heading into the Cemetary. Where the hell do I put them? They are dangerous as hell and I can’t cram a lot in the dungeon, the characters will get killed!!

So I decided to have a potential ally, a known Ptolus NPC living in the graveyard, giving the PCs a hand by having it deal with the drug junkies-turned walking toxic vegetables.

Aside: The plant-like creatures have a very badly designed ability that acts like a poison. Thing is, the initial damage is trivial (lose one point of x) while the secondary damage is downright lethal (It deals multiple dice of damage to a stat that is one of the usual Dump stats of D&D).

Since players have no idea what the ability does, the 1 point of ability damage risks misleading the characters in thinking nothing that bad will come from failing the second saving throw. I’ve reworked that to spread the multiple dice of damage over the initial and secondary stage, making the ability a lot scarier up front, prompting immediate restorative action.

Next, I made some of the random monsters into agents of an antagonistic organization. This makes the story more interesting as players won’t be the only one after the source of the plant-like creatures.

I finally added some extra Bling to correspond to the various challenges met in the dungeon. Where it makes no sense to put loot, I made it up by having the various organization with a stake in the adventure offer rewards to the players.

While I was doing this, and as frustration was slowly ebbing away, inspiration struck me:

The Source of these plant-like creature is an otherworldly entity. Not Planescape otherworldly, Chthulu otherworldy.

One of the characters, Stef’s Dragon Shaman, has been exposed to the secretion of that “thing” (He was dipped in a cauldron of the green secretions last session).

…a secretion that, so far, can change people into horrible things…

… and Stef wants to change his character…

…and the “thing” has a plan and sooooooooo much to offer to the frail beings of this dimension…

… and Stef’s character is quite possibly power hungry enough to consider any offer, no matter how unholy or alien… and egoistic enough to resist the mental manipulations that come with the offers…

So I wrote a short Cut-scene where Stef’s will be presented with two offers (Stef usually doesn’t read this blog so I don’t mind spoiling it too much)… If Stef choses one, he’ll wake up as a 1/2 dragon Barbarian if he choses the other well… lets just say that he’ll take the 1st choice.

Convincing his pals that its still him will be interesting… but hey it’s Ptolus! These things are almost mundane there!

When I was done with this idea, it blossomed into potential cut scenes for all other characters that may become in contact with the “thing’s” essence. Ideas that could act as foreshadowing for things to come… including a little romp in the Planescape setting.

These scenes will allow me to tackle my next DM’s challenge: Roleplaying the interface between a completely alien mind and player characters. I’m going all out for a series of insane “WTF!!!” moments… I’ve pulled it before, I know I can do it again!

So there you go… when painted in a corner, break the freaking walls and blame it on Lovecraft!