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View Full Version : DM Help An all-bard camapign



Brendanicus
2016-11-01, 11:23 PM
So I plan on running a short, low-level, all-bard campaign. However, I need help fleshing out the plot. I want the main goal to be to make peace between two quarreling clans (Could be humans, dwarves, etc.), but I am not sure what sorts of cool quests the players could go on to accomplish these goals aside from ones that involve dungeons or a few skill checks.

Any good ideas for some bardic madness?

LibraryOgre
2016-11-02, 12:32 PM
If they're all bards, draw on that. It doesn't need to be a musical competition, but make it some sort of team competition between the two clans that a third group can upset, where bardic adaptability and buffs will pay off.

My immediate image is of the Myth Series by Robert Aspirin... in one book, they stole a trophy that traditionally went back and forth between the two city-states. To keep it, they had to join in an ersatz football/rugby/Blood Bowl game, and play their hearts out against the more specialized players. With a group of Bards, they might wind up using magic and cycling through players, while the rest of the team took part in shenanigans on the sidelines, including buffing the team with bard song.

Or, there's the traditional version, where they get to arrange (against the leaders' wishes) the marriage of two kids from opposing sides who love each other. Romeo and Juliet, but with less suicide.

Or, there may be a third group putting pressure on one of the two, and dealing with the third group lets tension between A and B calm down.

Tutorix
2016-11-02, 01:18 PM
I guess ideally you wouldn't offer any quests. The bards would come up with their own plans, and your role would be to distract the bards and disrupt their plans, perhaps with the aid of a creative encounter table. It would be a town of lovely women, angry husbands, skinflint burghers who pay their wedding singers only half of what was promised, stupid muggers that believe bards are made of gold, members of the town criers and puppeteers guilds who have some animosity towards minstrels. Meanwhile the feud progressively gets worse, wizards get called in, monsters start to roam the sewers and eventually the streets. That at least is how this would go in a work of fiction, but I don't know how practical any of it would be in a game. Good luck!

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-02, 01:29 PM
I'm just getting images of a Barbershop Quartet as an adventuring party and it amuses me to no end.

Bohandas
2016-11-02, 01:32 PM
The all bard party concept immediately makes me think of the Spellsinger novels by Alan Dean Foster, as well as the Jack Black movie Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny. Check those out.

EDIT:
Or even better, check out Yellow Submarine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Submarine_(film))

exelsisxax
2016-11-03, 08:19 AM
The Party could deliver a gruesome serving to both groups on the most brutal of dance floors, thus proving their superiority and claiming leadership of both, then easily preventing future conflict.

Bohandas
2016-11-03, 08:04 PM
They could quest for the perfect chillout song, or seek out a legendary playwright capable of writing a story demonstrating in an indisputable manner why the two sides should reconcile.