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View Full Version : Super Awesome Vote the Encounter Experiment!



7RED7
2012-02-21, 07:35 PM
I always like to try out fun things to add some flavor to the game. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to let all you nice folks here at GitP vote on tomorrow's encounter and whatever you guys pick is the one I'm going to run.

Wall of text warning, so skip to the bold section if you don't want the background. ;)

A little background for the game.

The system: Pathfinder

The party:
[All level 5] Hailing from the land of Fairweather Deep:
1 Bard with Flamethrowing Musical "Axe" (Jarkvaad is soo metal), 1 Samurai (fails, fails, fails, hits awesomely, fails, and has a weasel that may or may not be statted or even remembered at any given time), 1 Barbarian with pet fiendish bull mastiff Bumbles (she enjoys drunkenly seducing enemy npcs, and long dolphin races around the beach), 1 Homebrew class that just gets High HD, BAB, Saves, and +1 to all attributes each level (does very well at everything. still complains that he isn't OP enough), maybe 1 ranger (for the first few sessions he spent half his time trying to run away and shoot things. hasn't played in a month so we have the running joke that his character is still trying to get more range)

The setting and story so far:
The players are representatives of their home country in what is essentially the olympics of adventuring. Teams come from all around the world and several other planes to a resort and casino city built on a large atol in international waters. Adventure TV (Transethereal Voxorb) is the highest rated channel on the struggling Scrynet, a broadcasting network owned and hosted by the mysterious archlich Ra'venor "Ra" Valorius, and maintained by a group of wizards and psions who share an uneasy truce over creative differences.
Participants compete in quests, races, monster hunts, and the odd arena showdown against each other, with all events being broadcast live.
Until recently this has provided a wonderful opportunity to let the players decide how they want to play a game session as they can choose to compete in the available events that day for fame, fortune, and country, sneak around and spy on their countries wartime rivals, The Kelmorians(also represented at the games), or get up to random shenanigans while exploring the city and surrounding areas.
Over the last few sessions this status quo has changed.
The Kelmorians have broken the non-violence treaty of the games and have outright invaded the Vahariti Atol Resort and Casino complex to use it's technology (which is far more advanced than the rest of the world: magic elevators and other conveniences, power generation, and even an elven airglider fleet) in their war of conquest. The party has fought their way out of their ambushed embassy and managed to scare off a necromancer, who was holding open a portal to allow a stream of Kelmorian infantry into the main hall between the larger embassies, as well as kill the zombified storm giant who was heading the assault. The Kelmorians seem to have solidified strategic dominance over most of the city (as far as the players know), and control transportation, power, and sercurity/surveillance systems. The seemingly omnipotent golden knight police force that magically crushes any conflict (at least in the wealthy upper city) is surprisingly absent. The players have been working with their local Fairweather officials and the remains of their embassy guard to mount a resistance. Their most recent mission involved them attempting to regain control of the city's powerplant by stealthily making their way down through Kelmorian held territory to the lower floors. The barbarian made a spectacular even of not taking out the two guards in the elevator she was climbing around on, who ran away and sounded the alarm. The bard was captured in a locked-down elevator (well, escorted to security for questioning because he'd actually managed to attain a good standing with the Kelmorian embassy as a master storyteller and lute'ist hired for fancy parties), and managed to stall the Kelmorian Gestapo long enough for the party to make their way to him. The Samurai was dumb enough to mention having a crowbar while climbing through the city's utility ducts and was promptly attacked by a vent parasite (totally not a headcrab).
Hilarity ensued and they are all heading further down the elevator shaft in effort to wrest control of the powerplant back in their favor.

Here's where the encounter vote comes into play.

Do they encounter:

A) A force of Golems and constructs led by a cunning Artificer who has managed to completely rework the city's magical power grid and set up many deadly traps and machinations to slow them down.

B) The elementals that have been released from the generators where they had been held captive and are now rampaging through the underworks, destroying any resistance to the small force of Kelmorians who have taken control of them.

C) Their new rival team. A ragtag group zany mutants who banded together after escaping from horrible wizard experiments, and have now found a home as fan favorites on Adventure TV....
...who are totally going to save the city first losers! Bwahahaha!
As well as lots of crazy trials to defeat the occupiers first and make sure their team gets to control the power and get respected as local heroes.

D) The REAL source of the Atol's power generation. It's so shocking I can't even say what it really is!

E) Other. Oh come on, those are epic. You think you've got something better? Also, they are getting tired of ninjas.

I don't see an option to post this as a poll, otherwise I would. I don't imagine enough people will respond for the counting to get ridiculous. ^_^

DaMullet
2012-02-21, 07:43 PM
Rampaging elementals, definitely. Bonus points if their being released means that the party has to fight through malfunctioning elevators and blackouts.

7RED7
2012-02-21, 08:19 PM
They've already been dealing with malfunctioning elevators and blackouts.
The party has been stuck in the embassy district (rookie teams representing sizable countries live in their country's embassy where they can be protected until they get their adventuring momentum) for a few days under lock-down as the Kelmorians have seized the city's main controls and security systems and only allow transportation and power on floors they control.
Power has been shut down to areas within 3 floors of the national embassies and similar areas that are showing resistance to the Kelmorian conquest.
Their solution has been to go die-harding through the elevator shafts (large circumference shafts which house multiple elevators and allow access to utilities) and ventilation tunnels.

I found this on a wallpaper site:
http://coolvibe.com/2011/100-inspirational-digital-art-wallpapers/center_of_universe_web-2/
It's basically what I used to describe the city to the players.
The embassy levels are the floors on the main cylinder that have little balconies on them. The top left balcony is the location of the Fairweather Deep lodgings and offices, and the bottom right is the corresponding Kelmorian lodgings.
The other two balconies belong to other powerful and high influence countries that have yet to be introduced.
We've basically described the interior design of most of the upper city as being similar to the Mass Effect Citadel with magical artifice instead of tech everywhere.