Part 1 is here.
Introduction.
For nearly 40 years, adventurers have been investigating dungeons, killing their inhabitants and making off with their possessions. To this day, for many, this remains a respectable life. Others found that it got old and moved on to other forms of adventuring.
But what about the dungeon denizens? Some would argue that it doesn’t matter since none of them live long enough to get old.
However, what if a band of monsters, coming from the lowest rung of the dungeon pecking order, survived long enough to do something about it?
Kobold Love (placeholder name) is a D&D 4e compatible Reverse-Dungeon type adventure (i.e. Monsters as PCs) for five level 5 characters. While it was written for pre-generated characters, it can be adapted to various other PC races found in the appendix of the Core 4e Monster Manual. As written, this short adventure should take about 4-5 hours to play.
Chatty’s notes: This takes about 150 words, and showcases my ‘style’. By this I mean that I blur the lines between player and adventurers as well as poke gentle fun at playing styles. I then dive right into a super compact Elevator Pitch and conclude with the adventure’s nuts and blots.
Adventure Background
Near the human settlement of Hope’s Point, the forests of Heartfang Hills hide a series of caves. The network of caverns has held many names. The Caves of Doom, the Dungeon of Countless Teeth, and the Caverns of Sorrow are some of the more colorful ones. However, the multiple factions of its monstrous denizens have always had but one name for it: “Home.”
More than thirty years ago, the caves began to be visited by a new breed of surface-dwellers. Called “adventurers”, these foolhardy treasure-seekers entered the caves wielding weapons, lugging carts, and exploring with long poles. They all hoped to strike it rich by ransacking the deeper levels.
Most perished at the hands (and claws) of wandering bands of the dungeon’s inhabitants. Others descended into well-placed secret stairways, never to be seen again.
Still, every so often, a band of crafty men and demi-humans would be blessed by the gods and survive long enough to recover riches, leaving dead bodies and warring factions behind them.
About 20 years ago, adventurers became bolder, if not more competent. At the same time new dark creatures with sinister plans and complex hidden agendas established lairs in the caves. The death rate soared on both sides and bards sang epic dirges of heroic victories and tragic demises.
A decade ago, a bunch of horrendous half-kobold infants were found in one of the empty caves of the underground complex. No one knew where they came from or by what unholy process such half-breeds were created. Shunned by all, they tried to live off fungi and rodents.
Many died but a handful grew sronger, learning the secrets of cunning and underground survival the hard way. They were eventually taken under the wing of Grak-th’ah, an ancient and much respected female Kobold Seer. As they grew up, they became the Oracle’s heralds and protectors.
A few years later, something happened that disrupted the equilibrium of the cave complex. Adventurers of all sorts started coming in droves, killing and looting with hardly any casualties on their part. The caves’ inhabitants were systematically slain, dispersed or captured.
The young misshapen kobolds half-breeds and the oracle managed to survive through each foray by sheer luck and near-prescient strategic retreats in the deeper caves.
This continued for several years. However, a few days ago, Grak-th’ah had a powerful vision. A new age had been heralded where champions of the darkness would rise up and stop the killing cycle once and for all. Like flames to dry leaves, the prophecy spread rapidly over the underground complex.
Unfortunately, who the champions were and how the prophecy was to be achieved was met with violent opposition by many of the dungeon’s more conservative factions…
Chatty’s Notes: I could not resist making the whole adventure’s background into a tribute to D&D’s various editions (as that’s part of what the project is about to me). I think it works out rather well.
Adventure Summary
A band of young half-kobold champions are charged to seek out and kill a quest-giving stranger residing in Hope Point’s tavern. They must first battle and negotiate with some of the dungeon’s denizens who are opposed to the PC’s quest.
On the way to the town, the PCs may get tangled up with the latest group of adventurers going to their dungeon. They must then find a way to sneak into the city without arousing suspicion. Once at the tavern, they get to face the stranger and many of the region’s “heroes”.
They might find that they got more than they bargained for at the end of their prophetic quest.
Chatty’s Note: So that’s the whole adventure’s plan with some form of foreshadowing for the ending. Given the adventure’s plot twist at the very end, I’m going to add a new section to the Introduction:
Note to the DM:
Much of Kobold Love’s story revolves around the fact that the tavern’s quest giver is actually the Half-kobolds’ creator (See Scene 5, page XX) who sent his ‘kids’ to the dungeon 10 years ago as a test of the strength of his new creations.
He since lost track of them shortly after they were taken under the wing of the old Oracle, who also happens to be the PC’s ‘mother. Since then he’s been sending adventurers to try to contact them and find his ‘children”.
The adventure will have 2 possible endings. The more classic one, where the stranger ends up being some sort of mad Wizard trying to recover his greatest creations. However, fearless DMs are invited to go for the alternate ending where the PCs might kill their true father who only wanted to return to his children’s side.
Chatty’s Notes: There we are, no more secrets, the plot is revealed up front and the potential DM has the rest of the adventure to decide what to do.
When I publish this adventure, I will likely add a ‘Sidebar’ or ‘boxed text’ part where I indicate how to adapt the adventure’s plot for other types of PCs or different numbers of players.
Up next: Scene 1 where I must create a very hard, multi-faction encounter, choose/create a Battlemap for it and write a skill challenge to allow PCs to negociate while fighting to even the battle’s odds in thier favour.
As always, your feedback is appreciated.
Credits: Robin Stacey AKA Greywulf (Image)
Cool! I like pretty much everything here.
In fact, I only have one beef (other than a few trivial typos): the adventure summary starts and reads like most every adventure summary I’ve read; “Not far from X, in the forests of Y, there are legends of a beautiful/terrible Z.” It contains lots of backstory that doesn’t interest me until I understand more about the adventure itself.
I personally recommend that you rewrite the summary to be entirely from the dungeon-dwellers point of view. Something nice and dark and atmospheric, painting those strange surface dwellers as alien invaders, upsetting the time-honored rituals of trial and sacrifice in the Stone Depths (or whatever the denizens call it).
Make the summary into a story itself. Intrigue the readers.
But that’s just me.
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I understand where your coming from Brent. Although I have a feeling that it’s the adventure’s background your giving me feedback on and not the summary. (Please advise).
Thing is, as a published adventure (and not a story), I need to hit the widest DM audience possible with this part of the document. The tried and true writing methods for the Background and summary are more or less required. If I go too Storytelling, I lose the old school crowd, if I go too concise, I lose the storytellers. (A losing battle I fear)
Since I decided to go closer to old school than storytelling, (and my desire to paint a tribute to 36 years of dungeon crawling) my design choice steered me to what’s up there.
All the info you request actually could be given by a storytelling DM to players during the buildup to scene 1.
But that’s just me, I’m open to suggestions.
All I can say is that I’d buy it, and I don’t even like 4e! While I’m still not big on the Quest Giver being their “father”, I could hack that easily out and maybe make him the brother of a local noble or something and use it as a hook for a full campaign.
Looks pretty darn good to me!
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Excellent start, indeed!
Would you need to tie in how the Kobolds found out about the Quest Giver? Or is that something left up to the DM to decide/make up?
@Tom: Hacking is assumed and encouraged. I get the feeling that many less experienced DMs don’t dare mess with an adventure, they should!
@Czar: The first scene’s will feature the wording of the prophecy which hints strongly at the Quest Giver’s presence in the inn.
Sorry, yeah, I meant the adventure background.
I like your proyect (a lot!) and will probably find a way to buy the finished adventure.
The only thing I would change is that I would make them “full-blooded” kobolds instead of half-breeds.
Still, since they are PCs, they would be above the ordinary kobold in abilities and powers, so they would still be “favored children of fate” or whatever.
In this variation, the Quest-Giver would be an elderly halfling, whose magical mask vanishes when he dies, revealing the face of a kobold wizard…
This sounds like a ton of fun.
I can’t wait to whip this out when we have another “dunno, what to YOU want to play” night.
It’s always a nice change of pace to play monsters instead of your standard heroes. I like so many others have a soft spot for the cannon fodder that is kobolds. So adventures like this are always craved. Although this seems like your basic hero story except with monsters but as you commented to another poster this is definantly up for tweaking to fit the dm’s style. Hope it turns out well.
Okay, this project is starting to sound more and more like a ton of fun. There are only a few things I would change, so far:
As mentioned by Brent, the Adventure Background and Summary seem just a little formulaic. I suggest mixing it up a little, so it reads a little smoother…
For example:
A decade ago, a bunch of horrendous half-kobold infants were found in one of the empty caves of the underground complex. No one knew where they came from or by what unholy process such half-breeds were created. Shunned by all, they tried to live off fungi and rodents.
Many died but a handful grew sronger, learning the secrets of cunning and underground survival the hard way. They were eventually taken under the wing of Grak-th’ah, an ancient and much respected female Kobold Seer. As they grew up, they became the Oracle’s heralds and protectors.
I would rewrite as something like:
A decade ago, denizens of the underground complex came upon a group of horrendous, half-kobold infants, tucked away in one of the empty, uninhabited caverns. Repulsed by the half-breeds, they were shunned and abandoned to fend for themselves. Most of them perished, but a handful – living off of the fungi and rodents that made their home in the complex – grew stronger, and learned the secrets to being cunning and living underground the hard way. Years later, they were discovered by Grak-th’ah, an ancient and much respected female Kobold Seer, who took them under her wing, and raised them as her own children. Over time, they became her the Oracle’s heralds and protectors.
Something like that – it just gives it a little more flair…
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@ Brent and Tim: In the light of your comments, I see where you are going and I agree. I WILL rewrite the background based on the same info but by increasing the flavour factor (I can fish in my wildest Trope posts).
I can still have the ‘formula’ as the base and add on it.
That is very useful feedback and I appreciate it greatly.
I like it! 🙂
I think i get a bit hung up on hlaf kobold thing. I would steer away from naming them hlaf-kobold, rather just describe them as different from other kobolds, lacking this, having that. I would do this because it makes them more unique.
A hlaf celestial winged elf is not unique even though the name sure sounds like it should be, its just a bunch of templates. I think you don’t have say it upfront.
There now i have that out, i can go back to sleep.
I agree with Labareda,
From the dungeon-dwellers perspective, they’re wandering around this dungeon complex, trying not to encounter a wandering adventurer on the wandering adventurer encounter table, and they come across these weird looking things that kind of resemble larger, strange-colored Kobolds – they’re not going to know that they’re “half-” anything, and are just going to assume they’re disfigured… perhaps you should save the ‘reveal’ that they are anything other than odd-looking until the very end – by defeating the last boss at the end, they learn of their true heritage…
You could have a table at the end of races that could make up their other half, and determine it randomly at the end of the adventure, or determine it based on how they conclude the adventure… if they talk to the boss at the end, and become freindly, he reveals that they are his children, or his ‘children’, in the sense that he bred creature X with a Kobold to make them – if they flat out just kill him, they find a note describing that they are half-kobold, half-x… Gnollbolds? Kobears? Kogres? lol