Farming sidequest plothooks for a.. unique game, any ideas welcome

[Kyuubil]

mk, so this is a bit of an odd request. It's a bit long, but to give an idea of the situation, required, I guess? hah.

I'm running a bunch of chain-one shots on days our dm decides he needs a week to plan -- don't want to start up af ull on campaign and confuse the other players trying to juggle two stories.. so I had an idea.

Run it along the lines of a Strategy/war game mixed with dungeon keeper --

Players are all evil (Vampire palemaster, Chain-demon warblade; Succubus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126713); Half-penguin Incarnate (.. player wanted to play Gunther from Adventure Time, heh); Cleric, and one more undetermined class) -- so I figured, play it as a mastermind game, group of EVIL adventurers want to TAKE OVER THE WORLD.

Start them off at level 3, lair is a ill-furnished cave, few fairly useless minions -- and they set out on sidequests to improve their situation, raid the nearby Kobold Den, enslave or slay their shaman, subjugate them; Useless minions are now supplemented by an army of enslaved kobolds; Raid the village for slave labor, maybe mind control the village enchanter and have an enchantment shop in the lair.

Eventually, they will build up enough forces to raid the local border keep, new lair, yay, more difficult quests for more difficult rewards, slowly increasing their area of influence, upgrading the quality of their lair -- Dark tower, Flying fortress, whatever, conquering the world.

Problem is, I've only got about 5 sidequests planned; and each oen is about 1-2 hours of play, so.. it'll last two sessions at most; so I put it to open forum:

Any suggestions for sidequests? of any level really, any rough benefits it would give them, etc are welcome.

(I'll post the rough draft of the system I tossed together in the next post, to give ideas.)

[Kyuubil]

Essentially, I took what REIGN did and made it a more streamlined for unintended play.

They, as a collective group -- their band, empire, whatever have Four stats.

These stats represent the resources at their disposal, it will change situations, give them access to items, enable actions -- but they themselves are not directly affected nor do they directly affect it; They are the turning factor. I'll give an example of this in a moment

Might - Millitary strength; The power of their armies, siege weapons, anything that gives them tangible millitant force.

This will affect their ability to conquer, usually via an opposed check -- for example

The border keep mentioned (already have this planned); They will have access to attack it from the start; but if they do, it'll be difficult -- as they start with Might 0; They have no armies, no weapons, just.. themselves.

So they attack the keep, which has a might of 30; I roll two d20, add their mights, for every 5 by which the keep "wins" the roll, they take a situational penalty; They have no armies to distract the archers, so they're force to deal with a rain of arrows doing constant damage, they had no fodder to trip the traps, so they have to deal with those -- They have no armies to occupy their guards, so the size of encounters will be doubled, etc.

They can still take the keep, but it'll be really difficult, potentially deadly.

Whereas if they win the roll -- Encounters are halved -- win by a lot and encounters might be outright skipped -- treasure will be doubled, they raided with such force that the enemies didn't have time to take their valuables and run, traps will be tripped and a non-issue, etc.

Tyranny/Influence - The iron of their grip, the level of lockdown control they have over the land they've captured

This will be rolled every time they say, need information; or on occasion to see if a rebellion pops up, or to see if they can acquire something from the population -- Take every first son in the land for the succubus? Low influence that might be refused and met with rebellion; High influence.. it'll happen, maybe they'll even send tribute with them.

Also low influence, high labor could mean Bandits raid your caravans, delaying rolls.

Labor - Workforce, work capability.

Increases hte speed at which they can say, improve their defenses, or.. say they wish to equip their army with ADamantine weapons for a might bonus -- they've got an adamantine mine, just need to mine and craft it -- It would be an extended Labor check, say, every time they start a side quest, until they reach X dc

Defenses - Traps, Fortifications, etc.

Will check on occasion, to see how well their domain can resist hero intrusions, or put down rebellions -- failures might result in them losing assets until they reclaim them, or getting ambushed by a party of heroes I have set up.

Assets:

These will be things they have that might not fall under any of hte catagories, providing situational bonuses to stats, or personal bonuses

Typically Rewards for sidequests

Examples:

Enchanter: Given materials (or a check against their treasury asset/labor/influences), can enchant or create magic items for them, Crafter in a box, might be limited to +1 items until they can say, raid a royal library and get more complicated recipes, or devote resources to researching it (taking penalties to labor while he does so)

Lycanthropy: They've managed to somehow get control of a strain of hte lycanthropy curse, infecting their armies with it -- +15 might during raids they take at night.

Gates: They've gotten control of an ancient gate system and/or constructed a portal system -- Bonus to the speed of labor checks involving transporting materials, caravans containing materials can't be raided by bandits; They can undertake quests on the other side of the world without making Hero Raid checks (also.. vampire in the party means they won't be able to travel far very fast.


So, yea, any ideas to fit within that would be :awesome:


Oh, and I should mention; probably just going to use Creation (http://hd42.de/images/exalted/Creation_Map_v7.1a.jpg), minus the exalted (any exalt-specific things like dendandasor would just be shoved into the "created by a powerful ancient race" ) -- Simply because A.) I played exalted forever, so I know the world inside out, and B.) it gives a lot of very high-fantasy things for me to use as hooks

[Ranting Fool]

Of the top of my head: Quests Ideas to help low level Evil doo-ers become more powerful / Take over the world Muhahahahahahahahaha..ha...ha..ha *cough*

You aiming for laughs like Dungeon Keeper? Or something more horror style?


Raiding trade caravan (standard bandit thing to do, maybe the caravan could have an item that would be useful)

Kidnap a relative of someone important to blackmail them to keep heroes away from your lair (Could very easily backfire)

Try to subdue a Tribe of Mooks (Goblins/Kobolds at lower level)

Raid the local town's graveyard for minion fodder (hey evil clerics love undead right?)

Try to infiltrate / corrupt a good organisation or group of heroes

Go into old tomb and raid it for gold and items (Hey just because good guys do this doesn't mean it isn't fun for laughs)

Yip Yip your faithful minion has stolen a complete list of your evil plans, hunt him down before he reaches Bunnyvill

[Particle_Man]

Maybe make it personal? Are there npcs in the character's backgrounds that might be relevant (friends, rivals, complications, forced choices (do I take a break from taking over the world to help out my kid sister?)?

Also, the occasional "hunted by Teh Good Guyz!" is always fun.

[Ranting Fool]

My brother likes this idea and wanted to add


A rival evil doo-er group battles them for power

Something is changing their minions to Good, Must slap them down / make them evil to prevent uprising

Your Goblin Minions have been extra un-hygienic and a load of fungal monsters have grown they must defeat these foul smelling threat or lose minion strength (Or find a way to control them to gain added fume power)
A hired assassin has been seen heading their way

[Agent 451]

When I read the title I literally thought this was going to be about the pc's farming carrots and what have you.

That being said, have the evil doers go on quests to find corrupted versions of the crops local villages grow. Mix them into the crops at night so the corruption spreads and then con the villagers out of everything they own using false promises of a cure.

[Kyuubil]

When I read the title I literally thought this was going to be about the pc's farming carrots and what have you.

That being said, have the evil doers go on quests to find corrupted versions of the crops local villages grow. Mix them into the crops at night so the corruption spreads and then con the villagers out of everything they own using false promises of a cure.

GENIUS.

Also as to whether it's serious or dungeon-keeper silly.. uh, both. I mean, I intend for a fair level of seriousness, but this is the same group that invented a magikarp railgun using gravity and leveled veridian city, so.. It's probably going to be fairly tongue-in-cheek.

[Toy Killer]

I honestly recommend your players come up with goals for themselves and just concentrate on making 'good colonies' and such for them to raid to further these goals.

one of the biggest problems with indulging in monolithic evil is most people aren't on the same page. A Kobald sorcerer may be looking to rez an ancient hellfire wyrm, while the human warlock is looking to usurp a long standing kingdom. they both have different long term goals with the same (general) idea in the long run: Moar Power!

So, to help counter this fact, have each compile their goals separately and start the game up with them discussing the terms and conditions of their cooperation. Then as the game progresses, in order to raise the dragon, he needs a Diamond that's magically infused with some mystical might which can be provided for by the Warlock, but the Warlock needs scripture from a near by clove of scholars. They have to work together for what either wants, but if one succeeds in their own idea of global conquest, the others fail by it's nature...

a wise man once said, the best parties don't work together because they want to, they work together because they have to...

o'course, I could just be crazy.:smalltongue:

[Kyuubil]

Session was last night, pretty successful (guess I should make a thread for it if people are interested?)

Essentially, it wasn't hard to get them to work together, our normal DM half-bull****s the rules and everyone else (Who has been playing with him for years) just gets their sheets made by him (I had to teach half of them how to make a character last night -- I just started playing with them a couple months ago), he also has a tendancy to write up his own magical items which are silly, things like shinigami masks, and fruits from one piece, last game we had a guy who had tetsaiga -- 1d10 +5 sword that insta-killed all demons.. at level 5.

He also runs almost pure combat, we have silly social encounters in town, but "ROLL DIPLOMACY" has never been an option, in fact he ignores skills altogether.

Soo, running legit DND had them all super happy and engrossed, the guy who usually falls asleep at 1 am was up till 5 fully attentive because STORY.


-------------------------------------------

So, basically they all enjoyed it, had fun being evil, I spread around the rewards and handwaved some rolls to let the less powergamed characters have fun.

They started in a fairly dank, unfurnished cave, recently taken from goblins; they managed to enslave a few, but all in all they had nothing

I gave them five side quests (Via their goblin butler, Jeeves, complete with little suit and tophat), which they eventually accomplished all of:

1.) Small Village nearby, population of 30, slave, rape, slaughter, do what you wish -- they invaded, killed the militia, gang pressed a few drunkards, our Illithid Bard (.. yea) sent out a mental suggestion for all of the sleeping children to come to him.

Our Vampire sired four of them as his "children"; Our Totemist took one under his wing as a page; The other two, our warblade had the Illithid project the story of peter pan into their heads and convince them he was tink and the warblade was peter pan, and all of the adults were pirates.. They became his lost boys.

They then proceeded to give all of the "pirates" a choice; Serve or die. The cleric simply converted the mayor's Mistresses to his "cult"

They succeeded on everything, enslaved the town, had them relocate the buildings outside of the cave, to give a cover that it's just a town, with the entrance to their lair behind the Tavern.

1.) The goblins were at war with a local Kobold tribe, the Kobolds, released from the threat of Goblins raids, have begun to try and hatch an egg of their lord, a spectral dragon

They raided, got in, killed a fwe patrols, the Totemist ran up and x3 critted the shaman with his battleaxe, did 52 damage, exploded horribly; he made a diplomacy check, became the shaman of a clan of Kobolds (rolled a d100, it's.. 100 kobolds)

He then made a bluff check to try and complete teh shaman's ritual.. succeded, they got a baby spectral dragon, yay. (He just perches on their head, he probably won't be powerful enough to do anything till they're 10 or so levels higher); Gave them all a roll on the level 3 and 4 random item table and let them choose which they wanted from the two.

3.) Local enchanter, could be gangpressed into service -- Went in, he had a wall of protection up; They sent one of the vampire children in to deactivate the talisman.. nat 1, he exploded, so did the wall, oh well.

Opened the door, warblade grappled the enchanter and his child with chains and yanked them out (he tried to headbutt them, but the enchatner had a repulsion circlet on, went flying 20 ft instead. XD), nat 20 on a diplomacy check succeeded, enchanter joined them, gave them his son in return for the child the vampire lost (having your diplomat be an illithid.. gets odd results when you REALLY want something)

Raided the house, gave them a roll on the level .5 and 1 random item tables, let them choose which of the two they wanted, yay, items.

They then had the enchanter make their derpy donkey car magical horseshoes to move faster, they can now reach the alchemist in one day before their vampire catches fire and explodes!

4.) Alchemist, Traps, errywhere, made them amke 5 spot checks each, failure put them at reflex save against a random spike, or arrow, orpitfall trap -- except one guy, who rolled a nat 1, then on the d20 roll to decide a trap.. I rolled 9.. three times, Tzneetch wanted his blood; so I madeh im roll a fort save against potion of flesh to gold, he succeeded, just took 1d20 damage, they reach the goblin.

Goblin wasn't too happy about them taking over his clan and killing his family,but once again, huge diplomacy check means the bard convinced him to at least cooperate, though he made it clear, if he wasn't cool with their operation he was going to turn them all to gold, then have Jeeves melt them down into golden shoes, which he would use to step in horse dung.

5.) Spiders infesting the local lumber mill -- the warblade is terrified of spiders, but a few remove fear spells and inspire bravery later, we were on, turns out they were psionic spiders, and all of the workers were cacooned and injected with eggs.

Battle ensued, they killed two, the illithid tried to eat the brain of one, gave him a battle of wills. 15 or higher on a 20 and he won, dominated the spider, got it as a mount, got access to the hive mind.

5 or lower and the spider one, he fell unconcious and the spider started slowly eating his mind until he could roll at 15 or higher and take control; if he died, he'd become a puppet.

.. he failed 11 times. eventually rolling a 1; couple of rounds later he finally succeeded. he had 7 hp left, heh.

Anyhow, after dominating the spider he sent a telepathic command to the broodlings to hatch and attempt to take over the minds of their hosts; they now have a bunch of mindless lumber mill workers controlled by hordes of psychic spiders, automated defense for the lumber mill.

I let them each roll on the 4/5 loot tables, choose one; Over the course of this they experience they accumulated reached 6000, they're now level 4 (figured up till 6 or so i'd make progression fairly fast, let them fill out a bit)

This is the current status of their "Band"

Here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P-Our4dqh4F4QSPbC3Gb7yDtDFhA4_mp3cbEIRDu54w/edit)

So yea, all in all succesful, still looking for ideas though

[rot42]

That sounds like great fun - over the top enough to be hilarious without devolving into random nuttery.

* Some of your minions have started taking drugs while on duty, impairing their efficiency. Find out who is dealing, and co-opt their supply chain. Public execution for anyone found stoned on the job.
* Dire rats in the ventilation ducts! (or just lead them through the Evil Overlord List).
* Child of Prophecy has to come up in any evil world domination scheme. How will your PCs foil the inevitable rag-tag band of unlikely heroes? Give the populace a reason to be invested in their continue reign of terror (hostages, protection from the rest of the world, promise a planet full of strawberries to all worshipers once godhood is achieved)? Spread false rumors of prophecies so the people will be inured to hope?
* Totemist really needs to consider Shape Soulmeld (Necrocarnum Circlet) for zombies.
* The sword works better for the sharpening - how do they identify, train, and assure the loyalty of the retainers tasked with managing the quotidian minutia of the evil empire?
* Ancient evil artifact can only be unlocked by someone of the correct bloodline or "of pure heart" or something. Fetch quest in a tomb, then roleplaying locate quest, then deal with the loyal retainers who have heard rumor of the PCs' evil and will protect whoever unto their last dying breath.
* Someone has cornered the market in black onyx, either to create their own zombie army or to prevent the creation of more undead abominations.