Running a Fey One-Shot: Need Ideas

[Xavrias]

Hello Playground,

I will be running a one-shot adventure for 3 of my friends in the next few weeks and after bouncing some ideas around we decided on fey. They will be starting at level 7 or the equivalent. The party consists of a level 6 Treant/level 1 monk (savage species rules), a level 5 sorcerer/1 wildmage leprechaun (homebrew race) and a level 1 fighter Dryad (which was sort of pieced together by me and the player).

The one shot will be played over the course of a few sessions, I'm aiming for maybe 3 or 4, 5 hour sessions. What I'm struggling with however is just base ideas for the adventure. I was thinking maybe intrigue between the winter and summer courts, or fey vs civilization? I'm really not sure.

So in summary, I'm just looking for some basic adventure ideas and would like your assistance. Thanks all.

[Crake]

You could do a little switcheroo in the roles that players normally take? Perhaps the party has been unsuspectingly abducting people in the forest by inviting them to parties, not realising the passage of time, and the next thing you know it's been 3 months. So a group of adventurers show up with trigger fingers, ready to rush in and kill everyone. It's up to the players to either negotiate with, or defend themselves against the adventurers. Maybe have a backup plan for if it goes too smoothly, or if they manage to get away without any combat, for example, perhaps the adventurers were hired by an evil wizard who needed the bark of a dryad for a ritual, and when the adventurers fail to kill you, he comes along himself, and the players need to fight him off, perhaps even with the help of their new adventurer friends (in which case, have the wizard bring some backup of some kind).

[Ninja_Prawn]

What I'm struggling with however is just base ideas for the adventure. I was thinking maybe intrigue between the winter and summer courts, or fey vs civilization? I'm really not sure.

One thing I've found with running fey campaigns is that the whole mysterious aspect of fey stuff is hard to maintain when the Player Characters themselves are behind the curtain. Thus, if you're focusing on intrigue between courts, it can be quite difficult to make the game feel different from how it would if it were about intrigue between human nobles.

I think you need humanoid characters in there somewhere to give the players a sense that they're involved in something strange and magical. Whether that's a hostile force encroaching on an enchanted forest, or as prisoners who've been kidnapped by fey, or as adventurers seeking to explore the wilderness, I'd say that humanoids are a key piece of the puzzle.

On the plus side, you've got an excuse to include lots of powerful NPC spellcasters in a way that won't be world-breaking, and you can really ham up the 'demanding noble' thing.

Since you've got a treant and a dryad in the party, there's an obvious plot hook: anyone who hurts trees and plants will look like a vile monster to their eyes. Does the dryad have a home tree that they're bound to? You could spur them into action by threatening that.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Xavrias
So in summary, I'm just looking for some basic adventure ideas and would like your assistance.

If you can find it, Tales of the Old Margreve is said to be excellent for its ancient-forest atmosphere, complete with fey and woodland encounters.

I've never seen a copy myself, but the PDF is available on the Paizo website (http://paizo.com/products/btpy8hp6?Tales-of-the-Old-Margreve).

[EvulOne]

A blighter with a bone to pick with the players woods hires a group of Orcs to cut it down. He or she will of course have to bring tougher monsters when the players start to kill off his orc lumber jacks.

[Firechanter]

At some point in the adventure, they stumble across an orphaned child, and find themselves obligated to protect it from harm until they find suitable foster parents. Bonus points if the child is a Tiefling.

...
What? All those Fey Foundling Paladins must come from _somewhere_!

[Xavrias]

Since you've got a treant and a dryad in the party, there's an obvious plot hook: anyone who hurts trees and plants will look like a vile monster to their eyes. Does the dryad have a home tree that they're bound to? You could spur them into action by threatening that.

The backstory is actually that the treant used to be the dryad's tree. And it got awakened. There's a rule where Dryad's can only go like 300 yards from there tree? So now the Dryad can actually move around, which is useful. I was definitely thinking of using the humanoids as the enemy, kinda as a switching of roles one would be used to.

Also, EvulOne, I like the idea of a blighter. Might be the perfect villain for this kind of party. And Palanan, I will be sure to look that up thanks!