Creating an original twist on a common trope

[NOhara24]

Hello All,

(Dax, Zanzibar, Shruti and Aurie stop reading if you wish to avoid spoilers.)

It's been a long time since I've posted on the playground. After finishing my first sucessful (two year long, with breaks), a decent amount of time has passed, again over a year, and I'm currently running my second real campaign. We're coming up on the third session and I find that my "DM muscles" have atrophied a bit.

The scenario is as follows. My players are currently in Town "A". They need to work on getting transport to either cross the ocean, or go overland. They can't get transport until they get to Town "B" which will be a port town of sorts. (Nothing too crazy here, after all.) What I'm thinking is that they'll meet a friendly solo caravan operator who takes a liking to them and hires them on for protection since they're headed the same way. Plot will revolve around constant attacks on the caravan and ultimately, the question will arise. Who is this friendly caravaner and what is he carrying that people want so much?

My first thought was live slaves because that creates immediate conflict and inter-party drama. Some will see dollar signs, others will see a wrong that needs to be righted, but its played out.

My second thought was something innocuous like sweet rolls and "Oh they're the best in the land and worth a fortune..." But this as well has its issues.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what this caravan can be carrying that would provide some inter-party discussion at the very least that hasn't been done before?

[EvilCookie]

Hello All,

(Dax, Zanzibar, Shruti and Aurie stop reading if you wish to avoid spoilers.)

It's been a long time since I've posted on the playground. After finishing my first sucessful (two year long, with breaks), a decent amount of time has passed, again over a year, and I'm currently running my second real campaign. We're coming up on the third session and I find that my "DM muscles" have atrophied a bit.

The scenario is as follows. My players are currently in Town "A". They need to work on getting transport to either cross the ocean, or go overland. They can't get transport until they get to Town "B" which will be a port town of sorts. (Nothing too crazy here, after all.) What I'm thinking is that they'll meet a friendly solo caravan operator who takes a liking to them and hires them on for protection since they're headed the same way. Plot will revolve around constant attacks on the caravan and ultimately, the question will arise. Who is this friendly caravaner and what is he carrying that people want so much?

My first thought was live slaves because that creates immediate conflict and inter-party drama. Some will see dollar signs, others will see a wrong that needs to be righted, but its played out.

My second thought was something innocuous like sweet rolls and "Oh they're the best in the land and worth a fortune..." But this as well has its issues.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what this caravan can be carrying that would provide some inter-party discussion at the very least that hasn't been done before?

The slave idea seems good if you want to create some inter-party discussion mainly about morality.
What I had a lot of fun with in my last campaign is putting something the players really want inside the caravan. If they desire a specifuc artifact or something of the sorts. This is especially interesting if the merchant is nice to them, so they befriend him first, and then comes the moral dilemma.

Also he could be carrying illegal, perhaps opening up a "black market" plot hook

[Koo Rehtorb]

An obvious question is who the PCs are and what matters to them?

[NOhara24]

An obvious question is who the PCs are and what matters to them?

Sure.

Dax - LG changeling monk, as far as I and the party know he could be out to attain enlightenment.

Shruti - Half-Dragon Hexblade. Out to find the "perfect dragon" and bring him to Bahamut.

Aurie - Halfling Druid. Out to catalog all of the fantastic creatures she runs across.

Zanzibar - Neanderthal Psion. Thawed from a glacier and started wandering. Likes fire and shiny things.

[MrStabby]

Evil spell components might work. They can be hidden but maybe the players could deduce something from the kind of people attacking the caravan.

Maybe do a bit of a Dracula and have a vampire dormant but being moved.

A large egg. No one is quite sure of the species but some people want it BAD.

[Jay R]

The best example of something that needs to be carried a long way to be valuable, but that's very light so a caravan can carry a lot of value is spices from another part of the world. Pound for pound, it can be much more valuable than gold - but only somewhere it doesn't grow naturally.

[NOhara24]

The best example of something that needs to be carried a long way to be valuable, but that's very light so a caravan can carry a lot of value is spices from another part of the world. Pound for pound, it can be much more valuable than gold - but only somewhere it doesn't grow naturally.

After some time to digest and sip wine I think I'm going to go with this - if I play things correctly I can whirl the players into a speculative paranoia that would be greater than any artificial plot device I could come up with :smallamused:

[Kol Korran]

The caravner is an old soldier, loyal to the crown. One of the higher ups i nthe court asked him to deliver a crate, but never open it, and keep it's very existence hidden. He is quite loyal, so he obeyed (adn will try to hide it from the party). He doesn't know what's in it though.

If the party does find the hidden crate, and manages to get it open? Some ideas:
- A small child, in stasis, dormant. Might be an heir? Someone from an unknown race? Someone of unknown power? (Think Firefly! :smalltongue: Or Star wars?)
- Some documents or proof, for a secret the kingdom always denied. (Alliance/ communication with foes, dealing with some forbidden form of magic, the existence of a certain person or place, and so on)
- A gift for the king/ queen's secret lover (Perhaps with a letter), without the knowledge of their life partner?
- A body! But of whom? With instructions (And perhaps reagents) for ressurection/ animation/ reincarnation?
- An egg, of some sort of dubious monster. Yet, when the PCs breached the crate's seal, the magic keeping the egg unhatched is failing. It will soon open. What sort of hatchling is inside? Will the party try to keep it alive? Why was it transported? And where is the mother?

[Green Elf]

Zanzibar - Likes fire and shiny things.

A gold bomb with a lit fuse.

[Bohandas]

A minor member of the royal family

[Segev]

His caravan carries these fruits (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44996) from a truly far, far away land, and the attackers all wish to be repeat customers.

[J-H]

Rare arcane components.

A half-dragon child. Either the dragon wants the kid back, or the dragon's enemies want the kid. Both are afraid to move too openly, and work through proxies. Xorvintaal, etc.

The caravaner is the dragon, but he's keeping a low profile.

He's a retired adventurer from a neighboring country. His old enemies are trying to keep him from interfering.

A battle-useless but economically-useful artifact or rare magical item

A collection of books that someone (rightly or not) believes contains useful necromatic tomes.

He got the wrong dude's daughter pregnant three years ago and there's a price on his head.

Ten pounds of starmetal.

A genie's lamp. Empty? Full? Maybe he's trying to free the genie?
Maybe he is a genie and they want to enslave him.

If you can't decide, make a list, and roll dice.

[Segev]

It actually isn't the cargo. The caravan leader's Halfling rogue assistant is, if one can find a way to discover this, actually an elven child. This may not even be known to the caravan leader. Said elven child is actually not a rogue at all; he merely claims this because of his high skill ranks. He's a level 20 wizard...who disjoined an artifact some months ago, and has permanently lost his magical powers. See, he'd been adventuring with his adopted human brother's party, and retrained his commoner level to wizard early on, and rapid-leveled from there. This, unfortunately, made him many enemies. He thought by leaving his party and hiding out as a "Halfling rogue," his enemies wouldn't find him and he wouldn't drag his party down.

Unfortunately for him, at least one enemy has narrowed his location down to this caravan, and wants revenge, or an item he has, or maybe just his spellbook (which, while useless to the elf, is still a powerful container of arcane knowledge).

[Stealth Marmot]

My second thought was something innocuous like sweet rolls...

Hey now, when someone steals my sweet rolls that is SERIOUS business. I call the guards immediately.

[RazorChain]

I actually like the slave idea....but the twist is who that slave is.

[Koo Rehtorb]

A baby dragon, intended as a gift for the (insert local equivalent of ruler).

[runeghost]

The cargo is tribute, destined for a evil temple, genocidal warlord, or despised wizard-lord.

The cargo is magical waste-products, volatile and dangerous, that will be illegally disposed of.

The cargo is perfectly normal. The caravan-master is smuggling magical wagons. (Made from dryad trees and treants?)

The caravan is a distraction and a cover for the transmission of secret messages. Currently current message is a matter of war or peace, or possibly even survival.

The caravan is actually from parallel world, traveling in the PCs world from Point A to Point B, where it will return to it's native plane. The goods are perfectly normal in the PCs world, but extremely in-demand / illegal / dangerous in its native plane.

[Bohandas]

Sympathy spell tuned to bandits

[CharonsHelper]

I'd avoid the slaves - as that means that they would have fought off several groups of freedom fighters before figuring it out - which seems like a "gotcha" moment.

I'd go with drugs which can be used either medically or sold on the black market for bigger bucks. The PCs have to figure out which the friendly caravan owner was going to use them for. (if they care)

[Stryyke]

Nothing but empty crates. The driver is actually a part of a group of local bandits. He "befriends" them because he thinks he can get rich off of them.

[Hopeless]

Unknown to the caravan one of the various caravans accompanying them is actually being driven by a polymorphed silver dragon whose also a former Sorceress and currently Druid whose actually over 4 thousand years old and being actively hunted by various factions because she's what the follower of Bahamut is searching for.

The Neanderthal Psion would be especially interested as they actually remember this person back before she was reincarnated as a dragon.

The bad guys include a sect of vampires whose kingdom is being threatened by an old friend of hers whose location has been lost in time as he has become a lich and she's the only one who can locate him.

The reason is that his name like a certain Harry Potter villain can't be spoken as the last time the Vampire King did the lich cast a spell gradually turning their kingdom into an active volcano and they're running out of time to thwart this!

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Running with the empty box idea, but instead of the caravan being run by bandits, the caravan is a decoy run by local law enforcement to draw attention away from a different caravan that really does have something theft-worthy.

Alternatively, the caravan is transporting an imprisoned Good-aligned (though not necessarily powerful) Outsider of some kind. His motive could range from 'carrying it off to be sacrificed in an evil ritual' to 'rich noble wants it for his menagerie' to 'it's under a curse and he's taking it somewhere to have the curse lifted'.

The whole caravan is an illusion and the leader is a wandering spirit--he just poses as a caravan master because he gets lonely wandering the empty wilderness he was killed in. The party gets the option to lay him to rest if they figure it out.