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Adventure Help: A Recon Mission And A Mystery
Hey there, Portatoes, I'm looking for some advice and ideas for my D&D 3.5 campaign "Adanne":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/adanne - specifically, I'm looking for your experiences running adventures similar to these. Let me lay it out for you succinctly:
Party consists of the following:
Orcish Barbarian (Yes, full-blooded Orc)
Human Warblade (Book of the Nine Swords)
Human Sorcerer
Gray Elf Ranger
They are all level 2. They are headquarter in a large town/small city called Antibas which lies on the influence border between the Gray Elf city-state of Eleston and the Human city-state of Genova.
The players have just returned from a rather major delve into an old abandoned mine, where they were to retrieve some ancient and valuable cultural artifacts from an underground temple. Having successfully done so without dying, they decided to return to town. While they were camping in a ruined keep outside the mine, the Orcish Barbarian observed a scouting party of other Orcs passing by below them; while the scouting party presented no major threat, he knows that it is almost certainly only the forerunner for a whole tribe of Orcs moving into the area.
When they get back to town, the group will probably want to collect their payment from the archaeologist who hired them, and then hopefully report the oncoming Orcs. If they don't, a Wood Elf envoy will arrive from a nearby village to inform the Mayor. Otherwise, the Wood Elf will arrive at the town hall around the same time they do. The Mayor will commission them (they've been building a small reputation for themselves around town) to go with the Wood Elf (a rather haughty and suspicious fellow who won't take well to anyone in the group) and scout out the Orcs. Meanwhile, he'll raise a tax levy to pay for Elestonian soldiers to defend the town; in fact, the party will be the first to pay their share. They'll be so pleased.
So here's the first part of the adventure that I'd like ideas, advice, and help on. So far, I want the recon mission to include the following elements:
* no one likes the wood elf
* he gets captured by an Orc scout party, and they have to rescue him
* they succeed, and he turns over a new leaf, but then they are surrounded by a larger group of orcs
* the other Wood Elves show up and a skirmish ensues, ending when all the Orcs are slain or driven off
* their guide vouches for them, and they are invited to become honorary members of the village (which means they need to run THE GAUNTLET)
* I don't know what THE GAUNTLET should consist of...help?
* they finish scouting the Orcs and discover their numbers and position, then head back to town
*Recon == finito*. Any ideas about how to run a large combat in a forest setting, how to incorporate 4E skill challenges into this in some way, or any other neat ideas about running recon missions would be welcome.
Party consists of the following:
Orcish Barbarian (Yes, full-blooded Orc)
Human Warblade (Book of the Nine Swords)
Human Sorcerer
Gray Elf Ranger
They are all level 2. They are headquarter in a large town/small city called Antibas which lies on the influence border between the Gray Elf city-state of Eleston and the Human city-state of Genova.
The players have just returned from a rather major delve into an old abandoned mine, where they were to retrieve some ancient and valuable cultural artifacts from an underground temple. Having successfully done so without dying, they decided to return to town. While they were camping in a ruined keep outside the mine, the Orcish Barbarian observed a scouting party of other Orcs passing by below them; while the scouting party presented no major threat, he knows that it is almost certainly only the forerunner for a whole tribe of Orcs moving into the area.
When they get back to town, the group will probably want to collect their payment from the archaeologist who hired them, and then hopefully report the oncoming Orcs. If they don't, a Wood Elf envoy will arrive from a nearby village to inform the Mayor. Otherwise, the Wood Elf will arrive at the town hall around the same time they do. The Mayor will commission them (they've been building a small reputation for themselves around town) to go with the Wood Elf (a rather haughty and suspicious fellow who won't take well to anyone in the group) and scout out the Orcs. Meanwhile, he'll raise a tax levy to pay for Elestonian soldiers to defend the town; in fact, the party will be the first to pay their share. They'll be so pleased.
So here's the first part of the adventure that I'd like ideas, advice, and help on. So far, I want the recon mission to include the following elements:
* no one likes the wood elf
* he gets captured by an Orc scout party, and they have to rescue him
* they succeed, and he turns over a new leaf, but then they are surrounded by a larger group of orcs
* the other Wood Elves show up and a skirmish ensues, ending when all the Orcs are slain or driven off
* their guide vouches for them, and they are invited to become honorary members of the village (which means they need to run THE GAUNTLET)
* I don't know what THE GAUNTLET should consist of...help?
* they finish scouting the Orcs and discover their numbers and position, then head back to town
*Recon == finito*. Any ideas about how to run a large combat in a forest setting, how to incorporate 4E skill challenges into this in some way, or any other neat ideas about running recon missions would be welcome.
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Here is the map I am using for my "Town Hall":http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mapofweek/Dec2006/04_December2006_150_b2302_ppi.jpg:
upper left is the second floor, which has the only entrance, lower left is the first floor, which is completely fortified, and then there's the hidden storage chamber where the government funds are kept. A small group of well-equipped thieves who knew exactly where they were going and what they were after broke in and stole the money.
Here's the blame chain I've worked out:
*Thieves*: waaay more effective than they should have been, given the countermeasures in place, they clearly had inside help. Interesting, one of these rogues was a member of a rival adventuring party that our heroes beat out in the quest for the cultural artifacts. They were hired by...
*Corrupt Bureaucrat*: long-suspected Genovan sympathizer, may crack under pressure and reveal he has been a double-agent for some time, however - duh, duh, dunnn - despite pictures in his home of a large family, neither his wife nor children are anywhere to be found. Have they fled the city, or are they being held captive to blackmail him into the theft by...
*Thugs*: Just some random toughs; the kind of people who kidnap children for a living. Hired in turn to blackmail the bureaucrat (though not specifically by doing this) by...
*Elestonian Archaeologist*: The very elven archaeologist the party was just working for! And he seemed so harmless...but wait! Why is he doing this? Is he trying to start a war between Eleston and Genova? Nope! Turns out the ancient stone tablet the party brought back at his request was stolen and he is ALSO being blackmailed into this by...
*Other Thieves*: That's right, yet another group of thieves! But wait...there's that same rogue from the rival adventuring party again! How'd he escape? Ah, but he's off and runnign again. Well, let's arrest the others anyway. And who are they working for?
*Man with Scars And Tattoos From The Party's Backgrounds*: A similar vein involving a scarred and tattooed man emerged in many of the group's background stories - could this be their guy? But rumors currently place him as a commander in the Genovan military...so what does that mean? And anyway, there was something fishy about the Other Thieves' description of him, something that seemed off. Could this have been an impostor? But who? And why?
So that's that. *Mystery == finito*, for the moment.
What do you all think? I need ideas for clues leading from each group to the next, ideas for how the Town Hall would have been guarded and broken into, and any other ideas that might help make the connections and interactions of these various criminals that much more Machiavellian and confusing, without frustrating the party's efforts to solve this thing.
So...go!
Re: the recon mission. There are a lot of points in your chain of events that I can see the PCs foiling, especially the orcs capture the wood-elf part. I'm trying to think of ways to accomplish this without the players feeling railroaded. Also, what would the orcs' motivation be for capturing the elf instead of one of the PCs or instead of just killing them all? -just some stuff to think about.
If I wanted to guarantee the elf got caught, I would set up an ambush encounter at some sort of forest "chokepoint" like where a game trail crosses a stream. The trick would be to separate the elf from the party quickly so they don't have time to go after him and immediately kill his captors. A couple options for this include:
Crocodile Dundee-style trap where the orcs set a snare at the ambush point with the other end tied to an ox or horse. When someone steps in the trap, the an orc slaps the beast's rump causing it to take off through the brush dragging the wood-elf with it.
Have the orcish ambush unnerve the elf so he flees on his own and gets captured by another group away from the party.
The ambush point is a rope bridge over a ravine. The elf scouts ahead and the orcs attack both sides of the bridge. Any party members on the side with the elf get bullrushed into the ravine (miraculously landing on a ledge with only some injuries), the bridge is cut or burned by the orcs and the elf is carried off.
The elf gets dragged off while on watch one night.
As for rescuing the elf, you could potentially set up some sort of chase scene. I had an excellent reversed version of this in my game when my players were being chased by a pack of ghouls.
It works as follows, (determine the total distance to be run and break it into a number of segments that will form mini encounters.) to begin each segment of the chase, have the party make constitution checks against the fleeing orcs. If anyone in the party rolls better than the orcs, they catch up with some of them. In my game, I positioned the PCs based on their check results. if the highest was 18, that PC was at the front and if the next was 15, that PC would be 3 grid spaces behind the leader, and so on. This added an element of randomness to the situation when an encounter began.
You could fudge things as the DM and have the encounter where the PCs rescue the elf automatically be the one where the orcs reach their larger group of friends.
Anyway, those are my initial thoughts.
Well, the Orcs' motivation is easy, although it's probably a good question for me to think about, since the party will want to know. They're scouts gathering intel for future raids, and any captives are good for two things: providing information and being worked to death as slaves.
Wow, those are all great ideas for ambushes; I knew there was a reason I keep reading these forums! The Dundee-style trap especially works for me, although I may combine it with the rope bridge to limit the party's ability to save him.
Ah, see now, there's nothing like a good chase scene. I've always found them so difficult to run because there aren't any concrete rules for it.
Also, thanks for the quick response - I run the session this coming Monday, and I'm hoping to finish planning by the weekend.