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Dr paradox
2019-11-24, 06:25 AM
My game takes place in a fairly frontiersy territory, temperate forest valleys where the town they represent is basically the only town around. They're looking for a macguffin, and have been pointed towards a ruined castle in the swamp, occupied by Green Knights (Dryads/Treants playing incredibly immersed make-believe that they're characters in Chivalric Romance. Whether they even remember they aren't lords and knights is ambiguous.)

As a nested sidequest to be allowed to take the macguffin, the party is recruited to the noble quest to find The Flower of Chivalry, which they claim will cure their Good King Oaken of his injuries. The court wizard, Hornbeam, directs them to seek out "The Ladies o' the Mire," who supposedly know where the Flower is, but have held it secret for a worthy quester.

When they arrive, they find a tumbledown shack with two beleaguered but normal human sisters who explain that there is no Flower of Chivalry, there never was, they've been trying to explain this for years. The Green Knights keep thinking they're being mysterious and bringing them tokens of quests to prove that they're worthy to know the "ancient wisdom."

Here's where I get stuck. There does still need to be a solution to this quest that will let them take the MacGuffin they need, and I would like it to have a reasonably satisfying shape, so from here they should really have to DO something, but I'm a little in the weeds.

One option is that they just go back to the castle and bull**** their way through it ("Don't you see?? The flower of chivalry was within you all the time!") but aside from that, what would appropriately pay off the setup in a more involved way that picking a random flower and saying "Yep. That's the one." Especially since the Green Knights have been searching for years and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Elements are: Sunken remnants of the town the castle was built to support, infested with slimes. An overlevelled monster called a Bukavac they can't beat yet, roaming a part of the swamp as a navigational/aspirational challenge. A poem describing the Flower's supposed qualities:

Its roots are righteous brotherhood
Its stem is justice true
Its thorns are valor’s piercing flame
Its petals, honor’s bloom.

Its sweet perfume is mercy’s balm,
Its color, true love’s blush,
Its dust is golden charity,
Its leaves hold pious hush.


Aside from that, miles of open and monster-infested country with ruins from Orcs, Elves, and two waves of failed human settlers. I'd appreciate any brainstorming you can offer.

Mystral
2019-11-24, 07:16 AM
What you described is a wonderfull monty python type sketch, but makes for poor adventuring.

So how about this. The sisters tell the party their spiel about how they are nothing but normal humans and nothing suggests otherwise, but when the party trecks back to the castle, they encounter a number of situations that they can resolve in several ways that correspond to the poem. For example, they encounter a man with a broken wagon axle that they can help him fix, a beggar they can be charitable to, someone innocently accused of a crime or a pair of star-crossed lovers running away from their home. The PCs are judged according to how they handle those situations and on their motives.

After the situations have been resolved, the sisters appear in their dreams and give them directions to a dungeon where the flower of chivalry can be found. Incidentally, that dungeon is beneath the ruin of the castle, and all those "Green Knights" have been altered by the flowers influence reaching out for a worthy owner. As it turns out, that flower is in truth a set of semi-intelligent magical items, with each of the lines of the poem corresponding to one of the items. Have the thorn be a flaming sword, the roots boot, the stem armor and so on. If the party displayed the virtue corresponding to the item, they can just walk right in and take the item. If they didn't, they have to contend with a challenging encounter to get it.

Once they have the item set, they can either give it over to the green knights for a reward, try to keep it and sneak out, haggle for only keeping some of the treasure or battle their way out. (They could also stay there and become the "lord" of the green knights, but that would propably change the campaign quite a bit)

If they decide to wear or use the magic items, then they discover that while the magic items offer a powerfull boon, they also demand from their users to follow the virtues and lose their powers for a time if the virtues have been neglected (even if the items are taken off for the time). They also staunchly refuse to be sold for money, though they allow themselves to be given away to worthy successors.

jayem
2019-11-24, 09:58 AM
As a vaguely 'inside you all all along' variant. Perhaps on the way back they see a maiden/crone* picking flowers and kidnapped by orcs.
[either a flower acts as a clue to location, prompts the green knights to help]
Once they have rescued the person, that flower becomes the flower of (their) chivalry

*assuming an Arthurian.tale perspective.

[ETA, wait Dryad's that must allow a literal inside you all along variant!]

Squire Doodad
2019-11-24, 09:46 PM
EDIT: My idea is similar to jayem's, but this is more "give the party a bit-sized dungeon for them to go through" instead of "quick fight and then serendipity gives an instant solution". Whichever works of course, I'm working off the "from here they should really have to DO something" bit.

Off the top of my head, it could be that the flower is real, it's just not one that the party or the sisters has heard of and its only found in the surrounding area. The The party might be returning when they bump into a traveler (an alchemist under attack from orcs or something) who had just talked to the treants/dryads, and he remarks that the flower resembles something he heard of (a flower called the "Crimson Knight" known for its sharp thorns and amazing color, the Knight bit of the name works for the Chivalry part); he then becomes a temporary guest character for a short bit while the party finds the flower.
The flower fields are deep in the swamp, somewhere near the Bukavac's lair so they have to go find it at [time it is away from home], at which point the party can complete the quest. The flowers also have something of a loosely symbiotic nature with the slimes, leading the area to have a lot more slimes in it than the others. It doesn't need to be a "only blooms once per decade" thing in the slightest; it might just be that the flower largely only grows in that area, and so it is a trial to get them as you have to go through hostile territory to find where the flower grows. Aside from the flower being in a difficult area, the rest is largely bogus - the dryads are all loons, the ladies of the mire are just some locals, and the only chivalrous part of the flower is its name.

Kaptin Keen
2019-11-25, 01:50 AM
Green Knights (Dryads/Treants playing incredibly immersed make-believe that they're characters in Chivalric Romance. Whether they even remember they aren't lords and knights is ambiguous.)

If I were playing a character in that game - I'd pick any random flower (maybe find a rare one, ok, sure), then make-believe it was the Flower of Chivalry. I'd make up a grand tale of how I acquired it, and all the chivalrous acts that went into it. There'd be dragons, and princesses. And possibly a bluff check.

There would however, not be any real, actual Flower of Chivalry.

Also, I'd expect to get away with it.

Dr paradox
2019-11-25, 03:12 AM
If I were playing a character in that game - I'd pick any random flower (maybe find a rare one, ok, sure), then make-believe it was the Flower of Chivalry. I'd make up a grand tale of how I acquired it, and all the chivalrous acts that went into it. There'd be dragons, and princesses. And possibly a bluff check.

There would however, not be any real, actual Flower of Chivalry.

Also, I'd expect to get away with it.

Oh sure, totally. On the other hand, I don't believe the group has a dedicated bluffer anymore since the bard died.

I guess the question is, does it NEED more than that to be a satisfyingly meaty quest? Talk to the king --> Talk to the wizard --> Talk to the sisters --> Go Back to the King, with only my random encounter table to liven up the trek through the swamp seems a little thin. What about complications or things that can make their fake flower sufficiently convincing?

Coventry
2019-11-25, 06:00 AM
How creative are your players? You could always give the problem to them and let them solve it.


You have reached what looks like a ramshackle hut in the middle of the swamp. You approach the two sisters, and after a few minutes of figuring out that you are not hostile, they are willing to talk to you. You ask your question about the 'Flower of Chivalry', but their answer is not what you expect ...

The younger sister rolls her eyes so hard that the room seems to spin. The older sister sighs, and says "Oh, no, not again."

"Those jerks are at it again, Rose."

"I heard the nice adventurers, too, Gloria."

"The last time they got this idea stuck in their heads we had people traipsing through our tubers and rice for weeks!"

"I was here, Gloria."

"We almost starved! If it wasn't for that Orc ..."

"Yes, Gloria. Give it a rest, Gloria. Or at least let's talk to these folk right here." Rose turns to you while her sister continues to go off on her tirade about those "crazy" green knights. "We haven't figured out how to convince those guys that we are not who they think they are. Apparently, they have prophecy that they absolutely believe to be true, and nothing will convince them otherwise."

"... show them the thing, Rose? ..."

She stops to remember "the thing", brightens up and then continues, "Oh, right. Here, we might be able to help you, anyway. When this happened maybe 15 years ago, one of the people they sent to us came back after ..."

"... ooo, I liked him, he was a pretty one! What was his name again? ..."

"Jessie-something ..."

"... no, that's not right ..."

"Gauss-something? I don't remember ..." Rose turns back to you, "Anyway, he brought this metal plaque, and told us to show it to anyone else that they sent here in the future"

With that, she shows you a metal sign, that has the following poem inscribed upon it:


Its roots are righteous brotherhood
Its stem is justice true
Its thorns are valor’s piercing flame
Its petals, honor’s bloom.

Its sweet perfume is mercy’s balm,
Its color, true love’s blush,
Its dust is golden charity,
Its leaves hold pious hush.

"I think that they mean well. They certainly believe that story. They do come out and check on us when the weather gets bad. But they have this notion in their noggins, and just shake their heads knowingly when we tell them that there really isn't any such thing, here."

Now, let the players run wild.

For example, they may decide that "Rose" is a flower, and "Glory" (-ia) is an aspect of Chivalry.

They may miss that (I slipped that in there just to amuse myself) and instead decide to track down "Jess-something", to see what that person did to assuage the green knights. He can tell them that that the green knights do have a prophecy, and that the sisters are being protected from all the bad things that could happen BECAUSE of the prophecy.

Maybe the party tries to interpret the poem, and come up with a real answer. If what they come up with is good enough, and bring it back to the green knights, the green knights will debate whether "this answer" is better than "the last one", some will choose the help the party, while others scoff.

Maybe they try to bluff their way through, and get caught. At which point things get ominous ... and then the green knights burst out laughing because the party put on a good show to watch. (pulling an elaborate prank is a very "fey" way of thinking, after all).

Late Addition: Just had this thought: Maybe they decide to take the plaque back to the knights ...

Even Later Addition: Wait ... what was that about an "Orc"?

Kaptin Keen
2019-11-25, 06:19 AM
Oh sure, totally. On the other hand, I don't believe the group has a dedicated bluffer anymore since the bard died.

My view has always been that - when your skill modifier is low, you'd better work to stack bonuses until you feel safe. I'd pump each of the sources - king, wizard, sisters - for their expectations, then use that input spiced up by my own ideas and genre tropes, to try and tell a tale they'll eat. Because it fits their insane imaginings =)


I guess the question is, does it NEED more than that to be a satisfyingly meaty quest? Talk to the king --> Talk to the wizard --> Talk to the sisters --> Go Back to the King, with only my random encounter table to liven up the trek through the swamp seems a little thin. What about complications or things that can make their fake flower sufficiently convincing?

Oh, each could be a quest of their own. And you could bring skills besides Bluff into it. Of course, most of the skills are generally on the skill monkey character. But still, everyone has some skills, right? Maybe the wizard requires a book from the top shelf (Climb check), the king requires some sort of heraldry check, and so on. It's hard to be precise without knowing what skills the party has.

There could also be actual combat. Maybe the king will only talk to a jousting champion?!

I dunno - but I hope my ideas aren't totally inane =)

Lord of Shadows
2019-11-25, 06:27 AM
As a nested sidequest to be allowed to take the macguffin, the party is recruited to the noble quest to find The Flower of Chivalry, which they claim will cure their Good King Oaken of his injuries. The court wizard, Hornbeam, directs them to seek out "The Ladies o' the Mire," who supposedly know where the Flower is, but have held it secret for a worthy quester.

If the Green Knights are expecting the Flower of Chivalry to cure their King, they will likely react badly if they are brought something that doesn't cure the King. Chances are that the Knights themselves, and those who came questing for the macguffin, have tried and failed enough times that the Knights will be skeptical of anyone running up to them declaring, "I found it!"

Does the King actually have some ailment that requires the Flower to heal?

If yes, then I would go with something like what Mystral suggests (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=24276148&postcount=2):


The sisters claim that they are only normal humans (and nothing suggests otherwise), and they insist that there is no Flower of Chivalry, there never was, and they've been trying to explain this to the Knights for years. The Knights keep thinking they're being mysterious and continually bring them things to prove that they're worthy to possess the Flower of Chivalry. The sisters beg the party to please deliver a "token" back to the Knights that may finally convince them that the sisters are being truthful. This "token" can be anything, maybe a rare seedling tree, or maybe just some rare seeds. Whatever. It will have no special properties. If a party member asks how the Knights will know what the token means, the sisters reply simply, "They will know."

On the way back to the castle, the party encounters a number of situations that they can resolve in several ways. The encounters should evaluate the points of the poem:

Righteous brotherhood
Justice true
Valor’s piercing flame
Honor’s bloom

You can continue with the list, or judge them at this point and use the rest of the poem as hints to help get the actual Flower. After four such encounters, the players are likely to be on to the fact that something is up. Perhaps the second half of the poem will be found etched in stone at the location of the flower, and each line refers to a spell - or type of spell - needed to unlock the Flower.

Mercy’s balm
True love’s blush
Golden charity
Pious hush

Once judged as worthy, the sisters appear in a vision and give them directions to a dungeon/location where the flower of chivalry can be found. Mystra had some additional ideas here. I would hesitate to have the Flower composed of multiple parts. The players might start getting "macguffin strain" at having to do so much. A quest into an ooze infested swamp for the Flower sounds just perfect.

If the answer is no, and the King needing a special flower to be healed is not actually the case, then things could boil down to a Bluff Check, or the party could try to find out why the Knights think that and figure out how to actually heal the King, if the King even needs healed at all.

Hope this helps.

hamishspence
2019-11-25, 08:08 AM
In historical fiction "The Flower of Chivalry" is a common nickname for especially respected knights. Maybe it can be a person rather than a plant?

Anymage
2019-11-25, 08:12 AM
Just a thought: The Green Knights are all fey/fey adjacent creatures. Unless you've explicitly said otherwise, fairy tale creatures are very much bound by story logic. The strange old man who challenges you to guess his name must reveal it somehow (even if he tries to do it where you can't see), and must keep his word if you do manage to guess it. As such, these creatures have bound themselves to the laws of chivalry and heroic questing. Sitting around being a ruler will be metaphysically harmful because that gets in the way of good knightly questing, and wasting away being sick will spin you into a sickness story while simultaneously keeping your questing story from taking hold. It's the nocebo effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo) amped up to eleven.

Which gives you a two part quest. The first is simple. Have the PCs find out what I said about fey essentially feeding on narratives, and having tied themselves to stories of questing knights they suffer for not questing. (How much you have to spell it out vs. how much you can just let the PCs find out about story-feeding and have them figure out the rest on their own is up to you.) The quest, then, is to get King Oaken out of his court and on a chivalric quest. You don't just need a random flower and some BS, you need to get him to truly believe in the quest.

Whether or not there's an actual flower at the end of the plot, King Oaken can sprout blooms. Turns out that the Flower of Chivalry was in him all along, he just needed to be pulled from his throne and sickbed to actually live chivalry in order to bring it forth. The PCs just have to help spin a compelling quest of it.

jayem
2019-11-25, 05:44 PM
Whether or not there's an actual flower at the end of the plot, King Oaken can sprout blooms. Turns out that the Flower of Chivalry was in him all along, he just needed to be pulled from his throne and sickbed to actually live chivalry in order to bring it forth. The PCs just have to help spin a compelling quest of it.

That's sort of where I was going when I realised we are talking about someone who (is the avatar of something that) can spout blooms



In historical fiction "The Flower of Chivalry" is a common nickname for especially respected knights. Maybe it can be a person rather than a plant?

That was also in my mind, although I do think an actual plant flower should (ambiguously) come into it.

Dr paradox
2019-11-26, 03:47 PM
Back with some more thoughts.

First, some clarification and answers.


Does the King actually have some ailment that requires the Flower to heal?

As I pictured it, no. Good King Oaken's malady is as much a part of the game in emulating the archetype of the Fisher King as the rest of the knights emulating Lancelot, Gawain, and so on, so a flower they bring would just be a "magic feather." I might change this though - they haven't even been to the castle yet, so it's all fluid.


In historical fiction "The Flower of Chivalry" is a common nickname for especially respected knights. Maybe it can be a person rather than a plant?

Yep, that's the root of the name. I kind of figured they heard the expression at some point and, being both romantics and plant-people, assumed it was a literal flower.


On to some potential solutions!

First, the simplest approach - add some combat once they arrive at the sisters' house, let them work out a solution without any further wrinkles, resources, or hooks. For the fight, I was thinking Sir Hawthorne, designated villain and rogue knight.

See, the Green Knights are part Dryad, which means they have a fey charm ability. But, they use it exclusively to make people "play along" with their fantasy, so when they charm someone they take on the personality of one of several roles: Sir Hawthorne the Blackguard, Lord/Lady Rowan the Innocent, Sir Alder the Comrade, or Hickory Jack/Jill the lout.

I can foreshadow that these aren't literal individuals so much as archetypes earlier, then I can have a Green Knight show up at the sisters' place, and then learning that the players are on the quest, it will then transform and take on the role of Sir Hawthorne to challenge them and demonstrate why the sisters just want this over with.

Afterward, the players can pick any given flower, or they can go to the slime infested village where a particularly convincing variety is climbing the walls of the ruined temple.


So how about this. The sisters tell the party their spiel about how they are nothing but normal humans and nothing suggests otherwise, but when the party trecks back to the castle, they encounter a number of situations that they can resolve in several ways that correspond to the poem. For example, they encounter a man with a broken wagon axle that they can help him fix, a beggar they can be charitable to, someone innocently accused of a crime or a pair of star-crossed lovers running away from their home. The PCs are judged according to how they handle those situations and on their motives.


On the way back to the castle, the party encounters a number of situations that they can resolve in several ways. The encounters should evaluate the points of the poem:


Righteous brotherhood
Justice true
Valor’s piercing flame
Honor’s bloom



I do really like this idea. If I were to use it, I would actually make it so that the "people" they encounter are all Green Knights once again simply playing out various roles. (It's seriously frontiersy. There's literally no traders, no tinkers, no travelling priests, no economy outside their troubled village. There's a handful of backwoods types like the sisters living in secluded family cabins and such, a temple where they make offerings, and a lodge where they occasionally meet to trade and brew alcohol, but that's about it.)

My question is the way to trigger these encounters. If they decide they just want to go back to the castle and buffalo the king, I don't want to MAKE them engage with the Chivalric nonsense. Maybe I can have the sisters mention that the knights tend to set off towards a particular landmark after generously interpreting their protests? So the players can make an active choice to investigate the Flower of Chivalry on the knights' terms, at which point they will begin encountering the trials.


Just a thought: The Green Knights are all fey/fey adjacent creatures. Unless you've explicitly said otherwise, fairy tale creatures are very much bound by story logic. The strange old man who challenges you to guess his name must reveal it somehow (even if he tries to do it where you can't see), and must keep his word if you do manage to guess it. As such, these creatures have bound themselves to the laws of chivalry and heroic questing. Sitting around being a ruler will be metaphysically harmful because that gets in the way of good knightly questing, and wasting away being sick will spin you into a sickness story while simultaneously keeping your questing story from taking hold. It's the nocebo effect amped up to eleven.

Which gives you a two part quest. The first is simple. Have the PCs find out what I said about fey essentially feeding on narratives, and having tied themselves to stories of questing knights they suffer for not questing. (How much you have to spell it out vs. how much you can just let the PCs find out about story-feeding and have them figure out the rest on their own is up to you.) The quest, then, is to get King Oaken out of his court and on a chivalric quest. You don't just need a random flower and some BS, you need to get him to truly believe in the quest.

Whether or not there's an actual flower at the end of the plot, King Oaken can sprout blooms. Turns out that the Flower of Chivalry was in him all along, he just needed to be pulled from his throne and sickbed to actually live chivalry in order to bring it forth. The PCs just have to help spin a compelling quest of it.

This is an excellent idea, but I feel like there's just no way to get the players to make the leap to this solution. Maybe the sisters can intimate the King lacks the chivalry he's sending knights questing for? If they try this solution, I'd absolutely give it to them, cuz it's great.


Thanks for all the input friends. If you have any more, or anything else to add, please let me know.