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.
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.