MichielHagen
2016-09-21, 07:00 AM
Hi,
in my current campaign i have two situations in which i am not sure what to do as a DM, story-wise.
I was hoping maybe someone can give some ideas that will point me in the right (or better) direction.
Summary of what has happened in short.
The world is medieval, but magic generally does not exist. However, recently young humans have been found that have extra-ordinary powers.
The party consists of a group of youngsters (16yr) with these "super powers", they consist of:
- Player A can control and detect life force. He will make attacks that drain life force from opponents and can transfer life force to its allies.
- Player B has telekinese and has some form of flying and can make ranged attacks with objects.
- Player C can make short teleport jumps
- Player D can control rock. Has rock armor, smashes hard, can throw rocks, move ground.
- Player E is a male playing a female. Based of a mushroom.....can grapple and make spore attacks (sleep, heal, ....)
The youngsters have previously in the campaign saved a town, and have become slightly famous.
A Duke has contacted them and asked for their help, in return the Duke will finance them (and their PC leader) so more specials can be helped and trained in their safehold.
The Duke has recently found a temple buried in his lands. They have spend months digging and have entered the temple a few weeks ago. The expidition returned with items with strange powers (simple magic items, but magic does not exist normally, so they are very rare). When the expedition went back a second time, because they were not able to get into all rooms the first time, none returned.
At this time, the Duke has asked the help from the party. He gave them each one of the magic items he found, which he expects to get back when they are finished exploring the temple, but any new items they find are theirs to keep. The party accepted and went into the temple, they discovered that there were 7 doors, and every day, a new door opened. They have finished 6 of the 7 rooms now, including the one in which the expidition has died. The rooms consists of puzzles and challenges, each time resulting in a small treasure room.
My problems:
1. The party is wondering about the existance of such temple, clearly it is not man-made (or at least not normal man). Why was it build? They expect to have this answered after the final room. But they do not know, i have no answer, it was just a dungeon i made.
I do not want to disappoint them, so i am thinking of making this part of a new story. The idea i have now is:
The temple was build in a time long ago, when magic did exist in this world. At that time, they have fought demon-like creatures from another realm. They were defeated, but they knew that the demons would return, they build this temple with powerful artifacts (which they are not, they are only items worth about 3k gold each) which can only be retrieved by the best of the best of the people, so they can defend the world.
Or maybe it's a cycle, because i have no explanation for their special powers as well.
What if the cycle is that the demon realm, and the human realm once in 2000 years start to converge. When the convergion begins, the realms are not together yet, but this does trigger the birth of humans with extra-ordinary powers, parts of the demonic-realm have blended in with those children. Over the course of time, the demons will be able to connect with the human realm, and it is up to the humans with special powers to stop them. The temple is their to warn them and provide them with help. The only way to beat the temple, is for there to be special humans. And if there are special humans, it means the time the demons are coming is there.
For my next chapter i already had planned a special human who unwillingly summons portals for a short time, where demons escape from. Maybe this person is a catalysator, he feels there is a portal that wants to open, but isn't quite there yet, the person can open it. The party is to understand what is going on first, they are just called in to defeat strange beasts. They must follow the path and realise it is this young man that is actually opening them (by accident). The young man must be killed,
Anyway, back to the temple, what if i create a new 8th room, that only appears when all 7 rooms are completed. Should i give the full story there? Why the temple was made, what is going to happen? I prefer giving just hints or a vague prophesy, but why wouldn't the full story be there if the people who build the temple know what is going to happen, to prepare them.
I can create the story with pictures (like in prehistoric) which would leave them guessing, but again, it would not make sense.
2. My second problem
The Duke has a daughter, who also has a special power, she can duplicate parts of super powers from people she has touched. She has currently touched the whole party. The party was completely unaware of this, but has become more aware. However, the campaign did not go as planned. I assumed the party would each day after finishing a dungeon room, return with the Duke to his home, since the next room would not open for 24 hours. The party however decided to stay inside the temple, in which no other humans dared enter anymore. Which meant that every hint and story i had planned for those 7 days have gone to waste. I wanted them to slowly realize the powers of the daughter and that she is evil. I lured them out of the temple once though, in which something happened. Here is the hints they got so far.
- The Duke and his daughter have met one other special before the party. It was a firestarter, who was found burned to ashes, along with his girlfriend. The party never asked further about this story to anyone, so i guess this hint was lost. I would have given them more information, like the daughter seemed to like the firestarter. The truth is she became jealous and killed both the firestarter and gf.
- She seemed very interested in the party about their powers, asking how they worked. They did become suspicious about this.
- She fell in love with one of the party members, this is clear to the party, she seems very claiming about this player attention.
- The remaining items from the temple that were in possesion of the Duke, were stolen, no clues to how they got into his home were found (she stole them).
- Her dog died (by her own mistake she took too much life force from it), but the party hasn't seen the dog since, since they never went back to the home of the Duke.
- The most imporant information they have about her, is that her life force has increased a lot since their meeting. The Life Force player detected this, his first conclusion was that she was NOT the daughter, but someone else pretending to be the daughter, who also stole the items and killed the dog. A reasonable conclusion, but wrong. Anyway, player A did confront the daughter, claiming she was not who she said she was. She laughed at first, then became angry and left. Just after this, they went in the temple and finished the 6th room.
Now my initial plan with the daughter was to somehow start a big fuss with the player she was in love with somehow, in which she got so angry, she would start to fight. However with the party inside the temple, and the player she is in love with absent next session, this seems not an option.
I have several ways to go about this:
- The daughter frustrated with the accusation of player A wants to kill him and will go after him
- The daughter waits until player A confronts her again, she gets angry and starts to fight
- The daughter will try to steal the players artifacts, although i am not sure how she would be able to do that while they are wearing most of them.
Anyone got any ideas i might be able to use?
in my current campaign i have two situations in which i am not sure what to do as a DM, story-wise.
I was hoping maybe someone can give some ideas that will point me in the right (or better) direction.
Summary of what has happened in short.
The world is medieval, but magic generally does not exist. However, recently young humans have been found that have extra-ordinary powers.
The party consists of a group of youngsters (16yr) with these "super powers", they consist of:
- Player A can control and detect life force. He will make attacks that drain life force from opponents and can transfer life force to its allies.
- Player B has telekinese and has some form of flying and can make ranged attacks with objects.
- Player C can make short teleport jumps
- Player D can control rock. Has rock armor, smashes hard, can throw rocks, move ground.
- Player E is a male playing a female. Based of a mushroom.....can grapple and make spore attacks (sleep, heal, ....)
The youngsters have previously in the campaign saved a town, and have become slightly famous.
A Duke has contacted them and asked for their help, in return the Duke will finance them (and their PC leader) so more specials can be helped and trained in their safehold.
The Duke has recently found a temple buried in his lands. They have spend months digging and have entered the temple a few weeks ago. The expidition returned with items with strange powers (simple magic items, but magic does not exist normally, so they are very rare). When the expedition went back a second time, because they were not able to get into all rooms the first time, none returned.
At this time, the Duke has asked the help from the party. He gave them each one of the magic items he found, which he expects to get back when they are finished exploring the temple, but any new items they find are theirs to keep. The party accepted and went into the temple, they discovered that there were 7 doors, and every day, a new door opened. They have finished 6 of the 7 rooms now, including the one in which the expidition has died. The rooms consists of puzzles and challenges, each time resulting in a small treasure room.
My problems:
1. The party is wondering about the existance of such temple, clearly it is not man-made (or at least not normal man). Why was it build? They expect to have this answered after the final room. But they do not know, i have no answer, it was just a dungeon i made.
I do not want to disappoint them, so i am thinking of making this part of a new story. The idea i have now is:
The temple was build in a time long ago, when magic did exist in this world. At that time, they have fought demon-like creatures from another realm. They were defeated, but they knew that the demons would return, they build this temple with powerful artifacts (which they are not, they are only items worth about 3k gold each) which can only be retrieved by the best of the best of the people, so they can defend the world.
Or maybe it's a cycle, because i have no explanation for their special powers as well.
What if the cycle is that the demon realm, and the human realm once in 2000 years start to converge. When the convergion begins, the realms are not together yet, but this does trigger the birth of humans with extra-ordinary powers, parts of the demonic-realm have blended in with those children. Over the course of time, the demons will be able to connect with the human realm, and it is up to the humans with special powers to stop them. The temple is their to warn them and provide them with help. The only way to beat the temple, is for there to be special humans. And if there are special humans, it means the time the demons are coming is there.
For my next chapter i already had planned a special human who unwillingly summons portals for a short time, where demons escape from. Maybe this person is a catalysator, he feels there is a portal that wants to open, but isn't quite there yet, the person can open it. The party is to understand what is going on first, they are just called in to defeat strange beasts. They must follow the path and realise it is this young man that is actually opening them (by accident). The young man must be killed,
Anyway, back to the temple, what if i create a new 8th room, that only appears when all 7 rooms are completed. Should i give the full story there? Why the temple was made, what is going to happen? I prefer giving just hints or a vague prophesy, but why wouldn't the full story be there if the people who build the temple know what is going to happen, to prepare them.
I can create the story with pictures (like in prehistoric) which would leave them guessing, but again, it would not make sense.
2. My second problem
The Duke has a daughter, who also has a special power, she can duplicate parts of super powers from people she has touched. She has currently touched the whole party. The party was completely unaware of this, but has become more aware. However, the campaign did not go as planned. I assumed the party would each day after finishing a dungeon room, return with the Duke to his home, since the next room would not open for 24 hours. The party however decided to stay inside the temple, in which no other humans dared enter anymore. Which meant that every hint and story i had planned for those 7 days have gone to waste. I wanted them to slowly realize the powers of the daughter and that she is evil. I lured them out of the temple once though, in which something happened. Here is the hints they got so far.
- The Duke and his daughter have met one other special before the party. It was a firestarter, who was found burned to ashes, along with his girlfriend. The party never asked further about this story to anyone, so i guess this hint was lost. I would have given them more information, like the daughter seemed to like the firestarter. The truth is she became jealous and killed both the firestarter and gf.
- She seemed very interested in the party about their powers, asking how they worked. They did become suspicious about this.
- She fell in love with one of the party members, this is clear to the party, she seems very claiming about this player attention.
- The remaining items from the temple that were in possesion of the Duke, were stolen, no clues to how they got into his home were found (she stole them).
- Her dog died (by her own mistake she took too much life force from it), but the party hasn't seen the dog since, since they never went back to the home of the Duke.
- The most imporant information they have about her, is that her life force has increased a lot since their meeting. The Life Force player detected this, his first conclusion was that she was NOT the daughter, but someone else pretending to be the daughter, who also stole the items and killed the dog. A reasonable conclusion, but wrong. Anyway, player A did confront the daughter, claiming she was not who she said she was. She laughed at first, then became angry and left. Just after this, they went in the temple and finished the 6th room.
Now my initial plan with the daughter was to somehow start a big fuss with the player she was in love with somehow, in which she got so angry, she would start to fight. However with the party inside the temple, and the player she is in love with absent next session, this seems not an option.
I have several ways to go about this:
- The daughter frustrated with the accusation of player A wants to kill him and will go after him
- The daughter waits until player A confronts her again, she gets angry and starts to fight
- The daughter will try to steal the players artifacts, although i am not sure how she would be able to do that while they are wearing most of them.
Anyone got any ideas i might be able to use?