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View Full Version : Brand new DM, brand new player, brand new to EVERYTHING. HELP.



Harpalyce
2016-08-06, 11:47 AM
Okay, so.
A friend of ours decided to introduce our little group to Dungeons and Dragons a while ago. Of course, we were hooked. Then said knowledgeable Dming friend dropped off the face of the earth, and now somehow I've been voted into DMing position after only a few nights of play. I'm figuring out everything as best as I can, but I preface my post with this so that you guys can all maybe tone it down a bit with the jargon. Talk Dummy To Me.
On to what I'd like help with:
The Lake of Woweee Didn't See That Coming
I've written up a little adventure just to kind of test my wings a bit, involving the party battling its way through a series of dungeons in order to sneak into a drow house. The Matron mother of this house is an insane (and of course cruel) old lady who has built a labyrinth with a dweomer on it that creates portals to actual worlds that directly or indirectly reflect PCs subconscious fears. I had my players write down a small list of their characters' fears for me, and three of them wrote sea monsters/ behemoth/ andsuch. So I made this lake. Players enter this big cavern (by way of a giant toilet pump waterfall, which I'm proud of enough to bother mentioning) with a door at the far end of a dark lake. Thin strip of rocky shore edges one side of the pool (think Mines of Moria entrance) and as they file along this narrow walkway, they are attacked by a Kraken. My players are all Level 3, but luckily I'm not planning on them fighting this thing very much, as it should quickly gather them all up and drag them underwater, where they will be safely released with perhaps a few bruises.
Once below, they will see that the lake bed is actually a huge volcanic rift, the walls of which have been carved into a merfolk city. Between them and this beautiful city are several guards. The idea here is that the kraken is more like a gigantic city guardian, and the guards have been alerted to our presence and have come out to investigate. The players will fight, most likely fail since they can only breathe for a few rounds, and then be netted and taken below. I plan for the merfolk guards to use a creature similar to a barnacle in appearance which they place against the characters necks. It bites down, sends out awful little barbed tendrils into them, and converts water to oxygen so their captives don't drown. Clearly, they are prepared for this kind of situation.
From here on is where my plans get a little sketchy.
What I'm thinking is, the guards drag our players down into the city, into some kind of hanging temple or maybe some kind of creepy cavern lower down the rift, closer to the magma vent where the gigantic scary water things swim. (When they first saw the city, I described how enormous beasts far below make the light from the vent waver and flicker as they pass over it.) The location of the following events is still a little hazy for me, but what I want is for the captive players to witness a freaky ritual performed before one of those big underwater spiders that build air bubbles below the surface. I like having a spider here, because the end of my big adventure is them fighting a statue of Lolth the Spider Queen, so I'm going pretty spider. Anyways, they perform this ritual, and the spider rears back and uses her enormous stinger to stab each of the PCs in the stomach, injecting them with millions of tiny merfolk eggs, and then the merfolk will return them to the surface. The idea being that this isolated lake is overpopulated and this is the merfolk version of interstellar travel- grab whatever eventually walks by, inject it with your little parasites- magically transferred to their god/queen for infusion- and then hope that your spacecraft explodes near a source of water.
I'm also thinking of giving them some sort of buffs brought on by carrying the little things, kinda like how pregnancy makes your skin and hair so nice, but, you know, useful.
Beyond the fact that my details are still pretty hazy, my biggest issue is that I feel like I'm really railroading them here, and I know that my wild and stubborn crew cannot be lead to water, even if it is full of mpreg and cool architecture. You guys got any ideas how I could expand to give them some options while still keeping a cool story? I'd really, really appreciate the help. I just joined the site yesterday and have been super impressed with how kind and helpful everyone is!

Also, if this is the wrong place to post this, can somebody point me in the right direction? Still figuring stuff out.

BurchardOfEn
2016-08-06, 12:17 PM
If you are worried about the railroading(which I personally would be considering the story as you've laid it out thus far), I'd recommend changing up how the prison bit will be handled some to allow for the party to try to figure some route of escape. You can choose to make this difficult and force them to stay longer in this area that is terrifying for the party to handle. To do that, you'd need to change at least one thing here to make it a lot easier for it to be more free to act.


I plan for the merfolk guards to use a creature similar to a barnacle in appearance which they place against the characters necks. It bites down, sends out awful little barbed tendrils into them, and converts water to oxygen so their captives don't drown.

To make it easier to not railroad the party, change this to the merfolk granting gills/temporary amphibious nature to their to-be portable egg sacs. This way if the party has a Rogue or someone particularly strong, then they could try to get through the door of the cage. Be sure to have stats written up for merfolk guards that they could beat. If they lose against the guards, then enter the spider scene. The spider scene could also occur if the party chooses to just watch the ritual instead of try to get out of Dodge.

With a free-bound party, you should dissuade them from entering the waters near the magma vent(irresistible heat damage works well for this) for the sake of keeping them from killing themselves as well as verisimilitude. I would also figure that the merfolk would be intent on reclaiming their escaped would-be egg sacs, so the party would need to be handling that staying out of their grasps as well as dealing with whatever creatures roam the upper waters. All the while, they must obviously be trying to find the portal out of this for-them hellish dimension.

How you handle their eventual escape from that world is up to you, but I could recommend that if you keep them there to say level 9 or 10 that an Aboleth could be a fitting portal guardian.

Harpalyce
2016-08-07, 03:18 AM
If you are worried about the railroading(which I personally would be considering the story as you've laid it out thus far), I'd recommend changing up how the prison bit will be handled some to allow for the party to try to figure some route of escape. You can choose to make this difficult and force them to stay longer in this area that is terrifying for the party to handle. To do that, you'd need to change at least one thing here to make it a lot easier for it to be more free to act.



To make it easier to not railroad the party, change this to the merfolk granting gills/temporary amphibious nature to their to-be portable egg sacs. This way if the party has a Rogue or someone particularly strong, then they could try to get through the door of the cage. Be sure to have stats written up for merfolk guards that they could beat. If they lose against the guards, then enter the spider scene. The spider scene could also occur if the party chooses to just watch the ritual instead of try to get out of Dodge.

With a free-bound party, you should dissuade them from entering the waters near the magma vent(irresistible heat damage works well for this) for the sake of keeping them from killing themselves as well as verisimilitude. I would also figure that the merfolk would be intent on reclaiming their escaped would-be egg sacs, so the party would need to be handling that staying out of their grasps as well as dealing with whatever creatures roam the upper waters. All the while, they must obviously be trying to find the portal out of this for-them hellish dimension.

How you handle their eventual escape from that world is up to you, but I could recommend that if you keep them there to say level 9 or 10 that an Aboleth could be a fitting portal guardian.

I was planning on them being able to make escape attempts at any point, since they now have the barnacle for breathing and could breathe if they managed to swim away. Then they pop up on the shore and rip the damn thing off their necks (or leave it, cuz as ugly as it is, it is pretty useful!) and run through the door. And I figure that they are just in nets, so it shouldn't be that hard to make an escape attempt- they just have an entire city to deal with when they do. I do really like the idea of the limiting point of the heat from the vent to keep them from wandering too far down. While I do want them to kinda be able to see those deep sea behemoths, I don't actually want them getting tangled up with those monsters down there. I haven't planned out what they are, but whatever they are would be the size of gods compared to my weak little party. How should I handle a chase scene up through the city? I imagine most civilians wouldn't get in their way... maybe a guard or two are posted along the walls, and they could roll agility checks to dodge around them. Maybe I should figure out some sort of trigger for a trap that would allow them to leave their captors behind in the ritual chamber (because wow I do not understand the mechanics of chase scenes and also I doubt they can outswim people with fins) or cause some mayhem in their city that would be more important to deal with than catching them, like knocking over a huge statue that falls down through the rift, catching both ends against the walls and destroying homes as it sinks downwards. Ooh, and if this huge statue made it all the way down to the beasts below, it could stir up those massive denizens of their underwater hell... you've got me brainstorming!

Chokuto
2016-08-07, 04:17 AM
Best piece of advice for any DM, get a set of index cards (I picked up a 100 pack from the thrift store for $0.50) and write down a list of names. For your particular setting you'll want some merlock-ish names, but you should have some normalish ones too in case they run into other prisoners/slaves. Nothing will make you seem more polished or more ready than being able to instantly come up with the name of what ever rando NPC the PC's take an interest in. And trust me, they will ALWAYS take an interest in some nobody you had nothing planned for.

BurchardOfEn
2016-08-07, 10:27 AM
I was planning on them being able to make escape attempts at any point, since they now have the barnacle for breathing and could breathe if they managed to swim away. Then they pop up on the shore and rip the damn thing off their necks (or leave it, cuz as ugly as it is, it is pretty useful!) and run through the door.

I feel like the temporary amphibious status being granted to the party through merfolk magic could still work and make sense, but I gave that suggestion initially because I, for some reason, thought that the barnacle was going to interrupt with a party member's actions.


And I figure that they are just in nets, so it shouldn't be that hard to make an escape attempt- they just have an entire city to deal with when they do.

An entire city of people who could cause them to drown and are effectively faster than them, yeah, I feel like escape attempts in this situation by a 3rd level party isn't too likely to work out if the entire city knows about it. I mean this because if they're doing it in some major part of the city then there's the guards that are carrying them as well as any regulars posted that are around with one of those probably going off and setting an alarm that would drive even more guards into the area and blocking off the usual exits of the city. At a guess, we're looking at probably 10 to 15 to even 20 guards to fight in that initial encounter which is quite likely to leave the party dead, especially since they already presumably tried and failed to fight the initial set of guards carrying them.

To counter this, consider maybe having the guards carrying them take a detour or go through a less busy part of the city? That way it wouldn't be as much of a swell of guards. As for why they'd do this, maybe there's been something going on in the plaza, or the guards just don't want to bother with carrying these to-be egg sacs through crowds of people. This also would not ruin the possibility of describing the plaza to your players if you wished that as the guards could choose to take some side paths after they were in sight of the plaza already.

As for how I'd figure the encounters in that scenario, I'd guess around 4-6 guards for the ones carrying them, then 2-3 for busy area patrolling or non-busy area stationing. 1 for non-busy area patrolling. 4-6 for busy area stationing. You could mess with those numbers pretty easily obviously depending on what seems fitting or challenging. I do think that it seems unlikely that the party would immediately seek to go right back to where the kraken was though, and I feel like there being some form of monstrosity guarding the way out is a classic bit that would fit well with this. A more level appropriate creature is the Chuul now that I think about it.