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Yora
2013-07-23, 03:34 AM
I just had the most awesome idea for an adventure that, if done well, should be great fun for everyone involved.

The PCs are contacted by a noblewoman in need who basically tries to pull an elaborate Nigerian prince scam on them. :smallbiggrin:

In the world of fantasy RPGs, such requests from total strangers are perfectly normal and happen every day.


Any similar ideas for adventures?

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 03:51 AM
1. The adventurers are sent to retrieve a artifact by a nobleman.
The nobleman owns the artifact, he just wanted to get them out of town for a while so that the town can have some peace for once.

Totally Guy
2013-07-23, 04:11 AM
I read a published mini-adventure called The Tower, (it was included as a small bonus in an adventure called Death Frost Doom).

In it the players discover a tower locked with a heart shaped keyhole. It is suggested that they have already found a heart emblazened key and a map to the location in the setup to the adventure.

The rooms tell a story as you investigate the decorations and murals. It suggests great love will come to those who don the provided robes and come unarmed. At the "top" floor there's a sleeping beauty who turns into a horrible monster and attempts to kill the unarmed and unarmoured party.

The adventure goes on to explain why there can be no noble justification as to why the adventurers went up the tower.

The floor above the princess level can only be accessed through the window at the top of the tower and is a just a small pit full of caltrops.

There is no treasure.

Arkhosia
2013-07-23, 04:42 AM
A peasant sends the party to find a VII (very important item) of his, telling them to never read what is written upon it.
It's explosive runes.
The peasant was paid gold by the BBEG, and is nowhere to be found.

Eldan
2013-07-23, 06:37 AM
1. The adventurers are sent to retrieve a artifact by a nobleman.
The nobleman owns the artifact, he just wanted to get them out of town for a while so that the town can have some peace for once.

Insurance scam, maybe? Though I can't imagine that an insurance business would work in a fantasy world. Discworld proved that.

A typical adventurer variation of the Nigerian Prince Scam:

"Help, I'm the Crown Princess of Farawaynistan. I am being help prisoner by the evil Vizier, my uncle. Please send me 10'000 gold pieces so that I can hire an adventurer to smuggle the crown jewels out of the country before he can crown himself king with them. If you do this, you may keep whatever else these adventurers can smuggle out of the royal vault."

Of course, being adventurers themselves, the party will immediately travel to Farawaynistan. Hijinks ensue.

prufock
2013-07-23, 06:44 AM
The PCs are contacted by a noblewoman in need who basically tries to pull an elaborate Nigerian prince scam on them. :smallbiggrin:

I did a similar thing, but it was in a game of Paranoia!, in which trolling the players is kind of the point everyone has fun and nothing bad can happen.

Threadnaught
2013-07-23, 06:45 AM
Adventurers are sent into a trap filled cave where they are assaulted by all sorts of traps. No monsters, just a labyrinth of traps.

Once they reach the end, they find a vault with no treasure at all, just empty treasure chests. The vault locks itself with them inside for 3 days, after which the quest giver and his pal arrive to loot and dispose of their bodies, and reset all the traps.


Now if that doesn't scream troll, just take a look at who posted it. :smallamused:

DigoDragon
2013-07-23, 07:06 AM
Shadowrun:
The team was hired to investigate the death of a wealthy former computer engineer named Mr. Body. The party travels to his mansion and ends up playing out the game of "Clue" :smallbiggrin: The bonus was that each of the other guests had interesting sins that made them suspects. for example, Mr. Gray was a crooked cop who took protection money from Mr. Body and got upset when Body stopped paying. Professor Plum was laundering Mr. Body's ill-gotten gambling money until Body decided to come clean. Also, the killer was still in the mansion killing the other guests (and making attempts at the players).

They had a lot of fun with that one.

Frozen_Feet
2013-07-23, 07:13 AM
Anything by James Edward Raggi, the author of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Better than Any Man comes to mind in particular. It's practically a mini-setting and available for free as a PDF.

This is the guy who made Death Frost Doom, by the way. :smallwink:

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-07-23, 08:26 AM
Shadowrun:
The team was hired to investigate the death of a wealthy former computer engineer named Mr. Body. The party travels to his mansion and ends up playing out the game of "Clue" :smallbiggrin: The bonus was that each of the other guests had interesting sins that made them suspects. for example, Mr. Gray was a crooked cop who took protection money from Mr. Body and got upset when Body stopped paying. Professor Plum was laundering Mr. Body's ill-gotten gambling money until Body decided to come clean. Also, the killer was still in the mansion killing the other guests (and making attempts at the players).

They had a lot of fun with that one.
Now this sounds like a job for Paranoia.

If only because every character has a different security clearance.

I did a similar thing, but it was in a game of Paranoia!, in which trolling the players is kind of the point everyone has fun and nothing bad can happen.
Mandatory fun.

The New Bruceski
2013-07-23, 09:52 AM
It's not the same flavor of troll, but I believe Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was deliberately taking the piss at folks adamant about sci-fi/fantasy separation back in the day.

Kurald Galain
2013-07-23, 10:03 AM
Speaking of mandatory fun...

...suppose your group is familiar with shows like Who's The Mole, and has not rumors about Paranoia (rumors are treason, after all). Set them up on a standard mission while hinting that one of them may be a traitor who's actually working against the mission...

...and if you're familiar happy with Paranoia, you already know what the catch is. But great fun if your players don't! Trust The Computer, The Computer Is Your Friend!

Yora
2013-07-23, 10:20 AM
I just read an adventure in which the PCs enter an ancient tomb of an evil cult who sacrificed thousands of people over many centuries. It's high on top of a deslote mountain covered in snow, with all kinds of weird phenomena that defy reality and spooky wall images and decorations, but the place is actually deserted and there is nothing attacking the PCs at all.
But even if they come back out ladden with treasures and still not having run into any monsters, they will almost certainly wonder if they missed something major.

The only thing they could do, is to put an end to the strange faint noise that can be heard throughout the tomb and on top of the mountain. Which will cause all the corpses to come to live and attack. All 12,162 of them. :smallbiggrin:

Segev
2013-07-23, 10:20 AM
Does the Tomb of Horrors count? It's pretty much Gary Gygax trolling players all the way through.

Yora
2013-07-23, 10:25 AM
It counts as trolling, but I think it's not enjoyable to any players.

Jay R
2013-07-23, 10:55 AM
“I want you to go to the black swamps of Telgar to investigate why people are disappearing there.”

“Don’t you have a squad of extremely powerful ninjas rumored to be the best in the world at that sort of spying?”

“Yes. I’m sending you in to investigate what happened to them.”

————————–

The characters are hired by a Great White Wizard to sneak into the Black Mage’s castle to steal the Ruby of Power in his throne that is the source of his power. After they go through the traps, monsters and other dangers outside, they have to make their way through the guards and castle traps, finally arriving at the throne room, to find the Great White Wizard calmly sitting and holding the ruby.

PC: “If you were coming here, why did you hire us?”

GWW: “To take all the risks, of course. Once the Black Mage’s full attention
was bent on killing you, I had no trouble slipping in.”

PC: “Why didn’t you at least tell us?”

GWW: “Because the Black Mage can read lower-level minds. Why do you think you wound up facing every minion he had?”

Totally Guy
2013-07-23, 11:09 AM
The only thing they could do, is to put an end to the strange faint noise that can be heard throughout the tomb and on top of the mountain.

That's the aforementioned Death Frost Doom. Such a good idea.


Also by Jim Raggi is Tower of the Stargazer. There's a telescope at the top of the wizard's tower. There are all kind of levers and adjustments you can make and if you set the device up just right the magical telescope teleports you to the planet. With no way of returning and nothing but hungry blob aliens keep you company.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-07-23, 12:32 PM
That's the aforementioned Death Frost Doom. Such a good idea.

Death Frost Doom is probably one of my favorite modules of all time. I unfortunately haven't had the chance to read Tower of the Stargazer.

If you haven't played/read it yourself, The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time is also wonderful.

Yora
2013-07-23, 12:53 PM
The main problem I've seen was finding a reason for the PCs to get up the mountain in the first place. It seems to follow the old-school logic of "it's a dungeon, and going into dungeons is what PCs do".
It's more a location than an adventure.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-07-23, 12:59 PM
The main problem I've seen was finding a reason for the PCs to get up the mountain in the first place. It seems to follow the old-school logic of "it's a dungeon, and going into dungeons is what PCs do".
It's more a location than an adventure.

But that's the fun part!

Deepbluediver
2013-07-23, 02:18 PM
I don't think I would classify it as trolling, but I do enjoy the prospect of a dungeon or other scenario that is surprisingly easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of. Something like a Cave-of-Wonders scenario where grabbing the treasure ensures their doom. :P

Arbane
2013-07-23, 03:13 PM
If you haven't played/read it yourself, The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time is also wonderful.

That's the one where it's possible for the GM to have their rights to ever GM again revoked, right?

Raggi trolls EVERYONE who reads his stuff.

Yora
2013-07-23, 03:27 PM
Reminds me of Stalker,

where the wish-grantic monolith in the center of the ruin is just a decoy that lures in anyone who made it that far to end up in a fatal accident. The real source of the supernatural phenomena is actually located in a hidden basement below that chamber. But with the legendary monolith just in sight, everyone just rushes by the unremarkable door in a dark corner.

Doorhandle
2013-07-23, 05:20 PM
Well I've always enjoyed an scenario where the local hill gets up and tries to kill you.

NowhereMan583
2013-07-23, 08:38 PM
Well I've always enjoyed an scenario where the local hill gets up and tries to kill you.

The hills are alive with the sound of questionable bardic rituals.

Rogue Shadows
2013-07-23, 08:58 PM
Well, a pretty basic but interesting one is to have a bunch of shambling corpses walking around town. The party's Cleric attempts to turn them - and there's no effect.

Turns out they're animated objects, not zombies. Potentially annoying to the party cleric, I guess, but given that they're only CR 1 monsters...

There is, of course, two more classics, both of which I think were parodied by OotS at some point: the Wight Dragon, and the fearsome Red Dragon of Ice Mountain.

oball
2013-07-23, 09:09 PM
Speaking of mandatory fun...

...suppose your group is familiar with shows like Who's The Mole, and has not rumors about Paranoia (rumors are treason, after all). Set them up on a standard mission while hinting that one of them may be a traitor who's actually working against the mission...

...and if you're familiar happy with Paranoia, you already know what the catch is. But great fun if your players don't! Trust The Computer, The Computer Is Your Friend!

I'd do it like this:

Take each player aside or send them an email or something (without the others knowing) before the adventure starts and tell them that their character and their character alone has received a rumor that one of their comrades is working against them. Tell them that you have actually organised this with one of the other players, but have let that player think that the rest of the party know nothing about this. Tell them if they can correctly identify the traitor without the traitor realising they have been spotted, they will get an XP (or similar) bonus.

Hence, each player will "know" that there is a traitor, but will think nobody else knows, and won't be able to talk about it to the others (either in or out of character) for fear of alerting the traitor and losing their reward.

Be sure to spread suspicion equally by passing copious amounts of secret notes to each player throughout the adventure.

Scow2
2013-07-23, 09:21 PM
I'd do it like this:

Take each player aside or send them an email or something (without the others knowing) before the adventure starts and tell them that their character and their character alone has received a rumor that one of their comrades is working against them. Tell them that you have actually organised this with one of the other players, but have let that player think that the rest of the party know nothing about this. Tell them if they can correctly identify the traitor without the traitor realising they have been spotted, they will get an XP (or similar) bonus.

Hence, each player will "know" that there is a traitor, but will think nobody else knows, and won't be able to talk about it to the others (either in or out of character) for fear of alerting the traitor and losing their reward.

Be sure to spread suspicion equally by passing copious amounts of secret notes to each player throughout the adventure.

Isn't the catch in Paranoia that everyone is a Hippy Commie Mutant Traitor, and they're trying to keep the rest of the group from suspecting them?

oball
2013-07-23, 09:35 PM
Could very well be, but as I've never played it I have no idea!

Arbane
2013-07-23, 10:56 PM
Yep. EVERYONE is out to get everyone else in Paranoia.

oball
2013-07-23, 11:10 PM
Heh, so pretty much the exact opposite of what I suggested.

Friv
2013-07-24, 08:04 AM
Now this sounds like a job for Paranoia.

If only because every character has a different security clearance.

Mandatory fun.

One of my friends ran that game, actually. Alpha Complex had an annual Inter-Ranking Meeting, and the players were hired as security. One guy each from Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet clearance were invited.


And then the Violet-clearance guy was murdered.


Six times.

Eldan
2013-07-24, 08:10 AM
I played a D&D forum game like that once. All the players were celebrities invited to the maiden voyage of, well, essentially the prototype of a new magical space cruise liner.

Everyone also had a hidden agenda. Industrial espionage to steal the secret of the drive core, sabotage the ship so it would crash into the fey realms, open the shields so that ifrit slavers could come in and catch everyone and so on. A few were a bit more harmless than that.

Then the plan was to gradually scale up the threat level until they were pretty much forced to work together. The ship's drive core used non-euclidian physics man was not meant to know (tm) and gradually pulled everyone into a nightmare realm, the plants in the garden came alive and tried to eat people in their sleep, the chief engineer was bat**** insane, knew the secret and couldn't tell anyone because the company owning the ship and psionically tinkered with her brain so she couldn't talk about it and that was before stuff got really weird.

Sadly, the game died before it got that far.