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View Full Version : DM Help New GM -- Running adventures in towns with a secret?



JenBurdoo
2015-07-06, 06:41 AM
Hi, long time lurker, first-ish time poster here. I'm actually a teen librarian who has just started a fantasy campaign at work with total newbies. Unfortunately, I'm a total newbie at GMing and could use some help building adventures quickly... Ruleswise, I'm cheating and using Tracy Hickman's incredibly rules-lite XD20.

The party has just investigated a Guard tower outside a border town and fought off the orcs who took it over. Two of the characters had a pre-adventure where they fought a large wolf. The overarching plot is that the orcs and wolves are planning to invade the land together, as in The Hobbit -- the tower was a a scout party and the wolves are just ... increasing in number. I'm thinking that the party will be asked to take this knowledge to the king and on their journey they will run into further evidence of wolf and orc secretive-presence. What I'm looking for here is a way to run an adventure in which they stay the night in a town that has been quietly taken over by a werewolf.

He perhaps eats the mayor and sets himself up in the inn, where he fobs off the party as the staff actively avoids him but doesn't dare tell the players; but when they stay the night, they learn something is going on. Besides the obvious clues on his person, what can I do to have them puzzle out the situation and eventually encounter him? Should they hear a scream and investigate?

Thanks for any thoughts!

Keltest
2015-07-06, 06:48 AM
So first, some questions. The town knows he is a werewolf and is prevented from speaking out due to fear, correct?

Secondly, is this a "Full moon" werewolf or a "whenever he wants" werewolf?

Is he in league with the orcs and wolves or is he coincidental?

What does he want with the party?

What incentive does the party have to stick around and deal with this rather than carry on with their important mission?

These last two are very important because without them, there is no adventure here.

some guy
2015-07-06, 07:00 AM
I'd make this a long-running thing. The werewolf is in control of himself to sate his bloodlust with cattle and infect villagers every night around full moon. Make the village a nice base of operations for the players, so they will return there every so often and make the villagers helpful. Then, every time they return, a few npc's behave different from the last time they saw them; more aggressive in general, quite hostile to people not in the pack and fiercely loyal to the alpha werewolf.
The earlier the players notice that's something up, the more people they can save.

First day: only some rumours of slaughtered cattle, but everyone just treats the werewolf as traveler.
Second time they're in the village: the slaughtering of cattle is getting worse, the werewolf has a small pack which hides among the people
Third time: the werewolf has gained a bit of a small cult and shows his power more openly (just not his werewolf form yet) and has a base where his pack hangsout (the inn), maybe a few of his pack-villagers have difficulty controlling themselves and are killing other villagers

Maybe throw in some large families which are feuding amongst the village, so it's a bit more difficult to distinguish clues from gossip "Lauren Marsh was killed in her bed, it's probably her nephews who did the deed, never agreed with her marriage into the Marsh family.".

JenBurdoo
2015-07-06, 11:24 AM
So first, some questions. The town knows he is a werewolf and is prevented from speaking out due to fear, correct?

That's what I'm thinking, mostly so he can be in plain sight and pretend to help them, so that I can have a mystery where they can say, "Oh, HE was the werewolf all along!" The other option is to have him sneaking around, but I already am thinking of having the orc survivors from the tower do that.


Secondly, is this a "Full moon" werewolf or a "whenever he wants" werewolf? Not sure yet. Thinking full moon just so I can use the moon as a clue.


Is he in league with the orcs and wolves or is he coincidental? In league with, leading a band of dire wolves.


What does he want with the party?
Right now, I'm planning to have him be a previous foe of two of the party members, who shot him and left him for dead in their introductory game, and perhaps he wants revenge. (He'll wear a cravat to cover the hole in his throat and will evince clear dislike of the catfolk and elf members of the party who fought him.) The alternative is that he wants them to go away -- see next question.

What incentive does the party have to stick around and deal with this rather than carry on with their important mission?
Excellent question -- The previously discussed characters may simply be attacked. I'm torn between an actual mystery for the session as a whole (in which case they will find dead NPCs or maybe even defend the town against a wolf attack) or of having them simply pass through and return to it later. If the latter, I'm very much liking some guy's ideas.

BigKahuna
2015-07-07, 02:09 PM
I actually tried this idea of a town with a secret for my first campaign GMing, and it went really well... For the first session. The idea for my town was that the mayor was under the influence of a small group of vampires that were harvesting the town. In the first session I was able to drop some subtle hints about this while also running a fun encounter which introduced the PCs to the town.

Unfortunately, I screwed up badly in the second session. While it was still an enjoyable session, it did burn through an entire campaign of plot and left me scrambling for what I would run the following week. My problem essentially came down to the kind of mistake new GMs make all the time. While I spent a lot of time working on the overarching plan for the vampires, I hadn't spent enough time planning how I would introduce it to the PCs.

Because of this, I accidentally gave the PCs too much information. From one out of place clue, they pieced together my entire plan and the location of the vampires. One of them started running around with a magic megaphone talking about how the town had been duped. A few incredible diplomacy rolls later, he had the entire town on his side.

Coincidentally, sunrise was about half an hour away. So they got the townspeople to gather up everything flammable, and placed it around the vampire's nest. At sunrise, they set it all on fire and watched gleefully as the building burnt down, laughing at the vampire's pleas for mercy. While I could have improvised an escape for the vampires, or made it more challenging to kill them, I was just too shocked by the fact that the player's had figured out my plan.

So, my advice is to make sure that you think very carefully about your secret from the PCs perspective. While it can be fun to come up with big plans for your villains, you have to remember that the game is experienced from the PCs point of view. So, if you reveal too much too early because you want to show off how clever you are, don't be surprised if it goes down in flames.

elliott20
2015-07-08, 09:51 AM
you need to be careful here about how you parse out information.

The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to create a flow of events where you assume what would happen if the players don't show up / intervene. And then react to the players' actions accordingly. A couple of things you need to think about:

- how hard will the local populace work to keep this secret concealed?
- how much effort will the werewolf put into keeping this secret?
- is the werewolf sloppy in his executions of his plans, if any?

These questions will help you shape the responses you come up with against the player's actions.

What you need though, is a first catalyst event that puts this potential issue on their radar. i.e. maybe one night, the players will hear a lot of commotion from a certain area of town, only to find that one of the citizens was brutally slaughtered and half eaten. that alone will be enough to gen up the motivation for them to investigate.