Lord Il Palazzo
2015-11-03, 02:38 PM
If you're in a game where your characters are about to attend the Giant Space Flea, please don't read this. Thanks.
I'm running a game right now and need some help brainstorming for an upcoming session. The system isn't important but the setting could be described as early/mid-20th century urban fantasy where magic is open but usually at pretty low levels (some enchanted items here and there and a fair number of civilians with a cantrip-level spell or two).
The party has tracked an NPC merchant they suspect is up to no good to a massive flea market where he is setting up shop. They caught up to him the night before the market opened, just as a pair of bounty hunters also tracking the merchant caught up to him. After a fairly tense stand-off-y session of negotiations, the PCs now suspect that there's more to what's going on than they had realized and want to meet with the person who hired the bounty hunters for more information. The hunters won't leave without the merchant and the merchant isn't going to write off the table he's rented so they whole bunch of them, party, merchant and hunters are sticking around for the flea market.
The party doesn't have a lot in the way of individual goals during the flea market besides keeping an eye on the merchant and the bounty hunters. There's one hard to find item that a party member has backstory reasons to be interested in that I'm going to have be present at the market, but I'm trying to find ways to add interest and adventure to the event besides just watching the merchant and bounty hunters to make sure there's no funny business (and possibly create a distraction to allow some room for funny business.)
Also, how can I add the backstory item (kind of a discontinued magi-tech circuit board) to this market without basically just giving it to the player? I want getting it to be more interesting than just making a few information gathering checks to find it and bartering checks to get a price he can afford.
I'm running a game right now and need some help brainstorming for an upcoming session. The system isn't important but the setting could be described as early/mid-20th century urban fantasy where magic is open but usually at pretty low levels (some enchanted items here and there and a fair number of civilians with a cantrip-level spell or two).
The party has tracked an NPC merchant they suspect is up to no good to a massive flea market where he is setting up shop. They caught up to him the night before the market opened, just as a pair of bounty hunters also tracking the merchant caught up to him. After a fairly tense stand-off-y session of negotiations, the PCs now suspect that there's more to what's going on than they had realized and want to meet with the person who hired the bounty hunters for more information. The hunters won't leave without the merchant and the merchant isn't going to write off the table he's rented so they whole bunch of them, party, merchant and hunters are sticking around for the flea market.
The party doesn't have a lot in the way of individual goals during the flea market besides keeping an eye on the merchant and the bounty hunters. There's one hard to find item that a party member has backstory reasons to be interested in that I'm going to have be present at the market, but I'm trying to find ways to add interest and adventure to the event besides just watching the merchant and bounty hunters to make sure there's no funny business (and possibly create a distraction to allow some room for funny business.)
Also, how can I add the backstory item (kind of a discontinued magi-tech circuit board) to this market without basically just giving it to the player? I want getting it to be more interesting than just making a few information gathering checks to find it and bartering checks to get a price he can afford.