Short Quest Ideas

[Xyk]

I have procrastinated yet again. Those of you who have paid abnormally close attention to my posts will remember I'm currently DMing an urban sandbox game, and the players are now level 3-4. Human Warblade 3 (lawful good), Half-elf Cleric 3 (neutral good), Halfling Rogue 4 (chaotic good), and Human Swashbuckler 4 (chaotic neutral).

I have DMed myself into something of a corner. I neglected to plan the last session even a little bit, and now the party has joined the Gears of Revolution (a gang that, under the guise of righteous revolution, is led by a weakened Ancient Red Dragon that had once terrorized the town). The tricky part here is that the players are themselves divided. The Warblade and the Cleric dislike the gang and have become something like double agents, and are spying on the Gears in order to later vanquish them. The Rogue is tentatively in support of the gang, trying to see what kind of message they actually stand for. The Swashbuckler is gung-ho in support of the gang. I am having a sort of writer's block. I need to think of some missions and plot hooks for this zany group.

tl;dr What are some good short quests/plot hooks for a Chaotic Good revolutionary gang with Lawful Evil leadership to give their mercenaries?

[Amnestic]

A dragon leads them? The answer is clear: Set them on another dragon's horde. The dragon need not be there in person dragon; they may be absent and have left their own guards in place to keep it safe (allows you to keep it as CR appropriate). Adventurers always have need of gold for whatever cause they follow (be it their pockets, their god or their town), and the Ancient Red is using them to weaken his opponents.

Could be a good-aligned dragon-horde, could not be. It need not matter to the Ancient Red, and the peons (the PCs :P) don't need to know.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Well, this depends. Do you want to bring the group back together, or do you want to fan the flames here?

What does the dragon want? How could he disguise something that furthers his own ambitions as something which furthers the revolution? Or better yet, what would further his own desires AND the revolution?

[Xyk]

I thought I was being too wordy as it is. Lemme describe the situation in full...

This dragon once terrorized and dominated the city of Adriannen in order to gain access to the vast mithril mines deep below it's surface. The great hero, Adrian, drove him out in an unknown manner, and the people celebrated and named the city of him. Fast forward about 250 years. The city is run by two leaders: a moral leader and direct descendant of Adrian, Natalia Adrianol; and a practical leader who knows what he's doing and is chosen by a secret council, Emmett Drusk. This was intended to dispel the possibility of tyranny, which the people now fear very much. In celebration of Adrian and the culture of heroism, the police force is extremely weak, leaving the citizens and graduates of Adrian's Hero Academy to keep the peace. Needless to say, it is not an effective system.

The PCs graduated from this academy. They performed various helpful quests for the city and the people in the city for about 2 weeks before being offered more money and a position in the city's largest gang, the Gears of Revolution. The gears are led by the initial dragon, unbeknownst to any of the members or the PCs. The Gear's written purpose is to overthrow the current leadership in order to bring about a better government for it's people. Probably some kind of parliament with a legitimate police force and taxes and stuff. The dragon leader's goal is revenge.

You see, it's very complicated. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I made it so complicated, but here we are.

The problem I'm having is in thinking like a dragon. It is damn hard to have LE goals be the same as CG goals.

[Craft (Cheese)]

I thought I was being too wordy as it is. Lemme describe the situation in full...

This dragon once terrorized and dominated the city of Adriannen in order to gain access to the vast mithril mines deep below it's surface. The great hero, Adrian, drove him out in an unknown manner, and the people celebrated and named the city of him. Fast forward about 250 years. The city is run by two leaders: a moral leader and direct descendant of Adrian, Natalia Adrianol; and a practical leader who knows what he's doing and is chosen by a secret council, Emmett Drusk. This was intended to dispel the possibility of tyranny, which the people now fear very much. In celebration of Adrian and the culture of heroism, the police force is extremely weak, leaving the citizens and graduates of Adrian's Hero Academy to keep the peace. Needless to say, it is not an effective system.

The PCs graduated from this academy. They performed various helpful quests for the city and the people in the city for about 2 weeks before being offered more money and a position in the city's largest gang, the Gears of Revolution. The gears are led by the initial dragon, unbeknownst to any of the members or the PCs. The Gear's written purpose is to overthrow the current leadership in order to bring about a better government for it's people. Probably some kind of parliament with a legitimate police force and taxes and stuff. The dragon leader's goal is revenge.

You see, it's very complicated. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I made it so complicated, but here we are.

The problem I'm having is in thinking like a dragon. It is damn hard to have LE goals be the same as CG goals.

1. Have the players perform subterfuge missions, slowly undoing the town's defenses and responses to attack, under the guise of allowing the revolution to quickly and painlessly take over the city, though the true purpose is to allow for the Dragon to be able to easily raze the place when the time comes. Do the PCs figure out something is very suspect about the tasks they've been assigned to perform?

2. As part of these subterfuge missions, direct them to destroy the inner workings of the incumbent government. If the players don't know about Drusk (implied by him being elected by a "secret" council), have them find out about his existence this way. Do the players decide that Drusk is the real enemy that needs to be overthrown, or do they see him as someone who tries to fix Natalia's incompetent mistakes as best as he is able? Or do they decide to work against both leaders?

[flabort]

"There's been a rumor circulating that (Mr./Mrs.) Adrianol and (his/her) brother slept with a few dozen prostitutes in one night. We got orders from above to kill the brother and leave his entrails on Natalia's yard. Doesn't make sense, but you got to do these things for the greater good. You up for the task?"

Edit: Natalia sounds like a girls name. Is that Figurehead a guy or gurl?

[Amnestic]

Don't try to make CG and LE goals coincide. It's doable, but not really desireable. Better to make LE goals look CG from the perspective of the PCs, but objectively they were pretty evil the whole time.

[NecroRick]

Sucker them in by having them do some normal missions for a while, and _gradually_ swing the missions round to an evil flavour.

Example: Lawful evil supports upholding the law, so they can be sent after a rival gang of thieves for instance.

Sprinkle liberally with "side quests". E.g. talk to X, find out he needs the Y, go to Z and frabjulicate the mictularity in order to Q, which lets you do P and W in order to achieve Y.

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Another system I liked was in the original pool of radiance where they posted bounties for various quests (clean out the sewers, clean out the graveyard, clean out the mens room etc). That way the group can decide which quests they want to tackle.

(Hint: leave the graveyard to almost last)

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Maybe drop incredibly subtle hints along the way, e.g. they get sent to some painter who is making a mural of Adrian slaying the dragon. They get told to persuade him to make some artistic changes, e.g. "Wouldn't it be more dramatic to have Andrew fighting the dragon instead? And that looks nice, but perhaps the dragon should look more scary, maybe even look like it is winning a bit, you know, to give it more 'drama'".


Have them take a cart to some farmer's fields and slaughter N cattle. That should be good for a laugh. And then they have to load up the carcasses on the cart and sneak them back into the city and take it to a drop-off point where another bloke will take the cart and carry on. (But never explain what its for, or give any other clues)

[Niceman]

I'm guessing the dragon is going for the political overthrow in order to make sure corrupt minions are the ones to come to power so they'll secretly answer to him. This could be a several year plan, and since they main bad guy is an Ancient dragon and the players are only level 3-4 I'm guessing that's part of the plan... let them do a few things now before they head off into the world to adventure then when they come back here in a dozen levels they discover the changes that has been going on.

In any event... When the overthrow is made, let his minions actually run the city properly and goodly, while they subtly remove political oppositions, but also to undermine the city's strengths.. "We are prosperous and peaceful... we don't need the Academy any more..." So when the city is at it's weakest, the dragon moves in and his city leaders convince the populace that bowing down and providing tribute would save more lives etc... so now the dragon has them under his thumb with his lackeys keeping them in line and making sure they have no ways to fight back.

I know you're wanting quick hooks, so it could be that some of the party members are asked to retrieve incriminating evidence from a noble's house as proof of his corruption. The ones on board with the movement would be happy to do this.. the ones spying on the outfit might have a chance to discover that the info was planted by other members of the Gears.

The hidden agenda of the Gears could also be to destabilize alliances and ties with other towns so when Adriannen does get in trouble no one will want to rush to their aid. So some missions for the players could be to find out who's been raiding farms and caravans in the area, which they find incriminating evidence of other towns behind it... especially ones that may have had disputes with the city in the past. This could keep the party busy and also out of town so some of the corruption going on wouldn't be noticed... especially if the party members have been getting too nosy or begin to actively oppose the Gears.

[Xyk]

I like it. Thanks, guys. I will definitely use some of these when everybody shows up in like 3 hours. I actually have been using a posted bounties system for quests for the city, and it's been working out pretty well.

Natalia is a girl's name, she acts essentially like the supreme court. There's no written law in the city, so it's up to heroes to decide if their action is heroic. If that comes into question, she decides what's heroic. It's really not a good system and crime is really a problem.

Killing the brother is a good idea, I'll make him a public disgrace in the eyes of the townsfolk to that killing him might be construed as Good by some people.
Stealing cattle would also be a really funny quest. That's a good idea.

Thanks again, you guys really helped me out of a jam.