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batsofchaos
2008-03-27, 12:13 PM
I'm in the planning stages for an adventure I'm running on Sunday for my group. One member will not be in attendance, so I thought I'd put together a one-off adventure that could be run completely in the session without being too combat-strenuous, partly because they'll be short the wizard and partly because I don't want the XP levels to diverge too much. I thought it would be fun to run a strictly problem-solving adventure, with little to no combat. Here's a synopsis of the campaign so far, feel free to skip down to the adventure premise:

The campaign is currently built arround the goal of providing safety and support for a colony on a civilization-free island. So far they've befriended a family of ogres that were kicked out of a large tribe for having more brain than brawn, and started a war between the main tribe of ogres and a group of gnolls; partly out of friendship for the smart ogres, and partly because the dumb ones were camped out on a rock quarry that could prove useful for the burgeoning town. The war ended with disasterous effects to the ogres, because the gnoll leader is actually the Big Bad of the first half of the campaign. In between they've started some meager construction on the town. The first wave of laborers and new citizens is arriving on the island in two weeks time, and in that time the only major task they have left is to locate a fresh water source close by.

Here's the premise for the adventure I've worked up. The party is 6th level, and there will be a ranger, a paladin of freedom, and a cleric in attendance:

The goal of the adventure is to provide a source of fresh water for the new town. The party has several options for getting water to the area, many of which are fairly labor and time intensive. There is a huge river that could have a tributary run off the side to the village, but the river is about 15 miles away, most of which is thick jungle. Possible, but would be a lot of dangerous work, especially considering the jumgle is home to a large tribe of lizardfolk. There are also some rivers that run through the mountains nearby, but diverting would be a Herculean effort. There is a possible quick solution in the form of a dried up lake-bed located within a mile from the planned town. The leader of the ogre family they befriended has some information about the lake-bed, if asked: The lake used to be large and clean, until several years ago it became blighted and filled with festering disease and sludge. Two years ago it mysteriously dried up.

If the party opts to investigate the lake, they can follow the dried river-bed up into the mountains. The river dead-ends at a 350-foot cliff-face that has a cave about twenty feet up. The bed close to the glive face is muddy and infested with mushrooms and molds, and the cave itself is oozing sludge. Another cave across the other side of the cliff-face has a waterfall cascading out, leading down the mountains towards the big river. The mission then becomes finding out what'sGetting up the cliff-face would be exceedingly difficult, and air and ground is festering with disease. Not too far in the way is blocked off with muck. The other cave is forty feet up from the ground level, and has a lot of water flowing, making scaling and entering very difficult and dangerous. The best option for getting into the cave is to try and find another entrance.

At the top of the cliff face, not too far away, a fairly large river runs down into the mountain. The river is fairly low as a result of the season, and there is easy access into the cave system along the side. The river goes straight for about 200 feet before becoming a waterfall, dropping 300 feet into a large lake. 100 feet down there is a natural balcony that can be scaled to, and then scaled down the rest of the way to the lake, but doing so would be difficult and dangerous. before the waterfall, the river branches off into winding tributaries that can be navigated, some of which dead end, but most end up at the lake without too much headache.

Once at the lake, the two big exits can be seen; the once that's working on the far side, and the one that's blocked. The blocked one has been slightly walled up with muck, and further in there is an aboleth that somehow got stuck in the tunnel. It's dried out and dormant. Killing it won't be difficult, since it's mostly dead to begin with, but the real task comes from removing it, cleaning up its pollution, and getting rid of the muck that's blocking the water. If the party can manage, the river will be restored and the lake will refill with water.

So my questions come as thus: Does this sound like a fun adventure? My party has shown that they won't mutiny if there's no direct combat, so I'm not worried about that part of it, but does the rest of it sound enjoyable?

Will it be either a cake walk, or too challenging? I have no preconceptions on how they plan on removing the aboleth, so that's totally on them to figure out. Is there something really simple they could do to remove it that I haven't thought of?

Is there a way that they can bipass the caves easily? They won't have the wizard, so they can't just feather-fall down the waterfall, and the two entrances on the cliff-face have their built in dangers, but anything I neglected?

Is there anything glaringly wrong with the concept? I read yesterday that aboleths enter a dormant stage when dried out, and the cave system is close enough to how limestone caves work that I'm not overly concerned with unbelievability, but is there something against the rules, or inherently broken in the design?

Thanks for any comments!

JBento
2008-03-27, 12:24 PM
Advice: When designign an adventure in which there'll be a spellcaster as a player, check their spell lists EXHAUSTIVELY. :smallcool:

The above is in no means a critic to you, and if it sounded mean I apologise - lack of body language over the internet makes me sound ruder than I'm actually being. The adventure sounds fun and all, but checking the cleric spell list you'll find the dreaded Stone Shape. This will allow the cleric to carve stairs into the cliff at his leisure, as well as do some river-diverting.

It is, however, a 3rd level spell, and your 6th lvl cleric only has 2-3 of those, right? So he may be reluctant to use them that way, especially if you give them time constraints -----> no "cast 2 stone shapes today and come back tomorrow. Rinse. Repeat till water flows freely."

batsofchaos
2008-03-27, 12:34 PM
I suppose I should have mentioned this originally, but the Cleric is actually a DMPC, so I could just as easily 'forget' about that spell. I don't really want to purposefully nerf the party, but that is something I'd be willing to do for the adventure. On the plus side, Stone Shape only works on 10 cubic feet plus 1 cubic foot per level, so 16 cubic feet. A staircase is about two feet wide and a foot tall, so they'd only get eight feet per casting. Down the waterfall, that's 38 castings, at three a day that would take 13 days of nothing but casting. So although they could do it in the two weeks they have left, are they really going to do that instead of explore the cave?

JBento
2008-03-27, 12:49 PM
Expect your players to do the unexpected - if they're ANYTHING like me and mine, they will.:smallwink: But two weeks is quite a bit to be doing not-as-much (though remember, it's two weeks of game time, not real time - I've found players who'll complain of a 15-minute coffee-break are all too willing to let their characters steam for two weeks :smallannoyed: ).

The cleriuc being a DMPC gives you a safety line, to be sure :smallsmile: even if two weeks already cuts down the danger. Make sure he forgets about Summon Monster III, too, which can summon an hyppogriff that would otherwise ferry characters up or down the cliff :smallsmile:

batsofchaos
2008-03-27, 12:54 PM
The cleric usually prepares buffing and healing spells, so I think it'll be manageable to forget summon monster spells. He's more of a support character than anything, and the rest of the party expects it. :smallbiggrin:

JBento
2008-03-27, 12:56 PM
Forgot. Amidst the unexpected stuff you should expect, one of them will probably involve talk regarding the enslavement of the aboleth. Yes, they'll talk about it. They'll probably even be able to rationalise it even if their technically Lawful Good...

Hal
2008-03-27, 01:09 PM
Well, is removal of the Aboleth the only realistic solution to getting fresh water to the town? Your players might feel railroaded if it is.

In situations like this, I like to plan out or conceive of 3-5 options that the players might choose for solving a puzzle like this. It lets you prepare for the most likely options they'll choose while not limiting them to one solution you've already chosen as "correct."

That aside, another option for a thinking puzzle is to do the old "Bureaucratic Maze" concept. People who've arrived in town can help solve the problem, but person X needs something from person Y, who needs you to talk to either person A or B, but person A is a dead end, yada yada yada. It's kind of a trope from video games, but it works pretty well if you plot it out properly.

batsofchaos
2008-03-27, 01:43 PM
JBento: If they want to try and enslave the aboleth, they can try. The DMPC cleric would probably have some qualms with the idea, but they'd be convinced of it. I'd probably warn the Paladin of Freedom that enslaving a sentient creature isn't exactly in line with their code of honor, either the good or the free part. Still, if they wanted to they might be able to do it. The aboleth would not do so willingly, even if offered freedom from being stuck, and would attack the party if revived. Also, no one on the mission will have access to any dominating spells, so I'm not sure what they could do exactly...

Hal: They certainly don't have to refill the lake to get water. They could dig tributaries from the main river to the town, or try an divert a river further up in the mountains. Doing so would require at least a months labor of digging, which would be well within their rights and the arriving workers would understand (especially since there's a functioning well that will do for now).

Digging a tributary may be difficult, since the lizardfolk would not take kindly to outsiders 'stealing' their water. Additionally, they've not experienced the rainy season yet on the island. Unless the tributaries are fortified by professional aquafers, they will destroyed when the rainy season comes.

Diverting from the mountain would be a workable option; they may even opt to diverting a different river into the lake. They could reasonably run a tributary from the river at the cave entrance to the dried river-bed. It's up to them. Removing the aboleth is the fast option, though. And I think that exploring the dried lake and figuring out what's blocking the water will pique the party members' interests into investigating.

The goal is not to railroad, and I'm not going to force the party to do anything. If they want to skip the caves, they can skip the caves.

Subotei
2008-03-27, 07:23 PM
Having water is a fundamental for life - firstly I'd prepare an argument for "why dont we build the town where the water is?" which is an obvious solution to the problem. If you want to build it at point X rather than point Y then you need to have a good reason lined up.

Secondly rivers aren't necessarily the only drinking water resource - if they decide to sink a well? It is a lot simpler than deciding to construct a new canal. If the action is occuring near the coast it'll probably be saline so you could argue its undrinkable perhaps.

batsofchaos
2008-03-28, 01:45 AM
It is not the adventurer's decision where the town goes, the city-planner picked out a level spot that would make the best town-square and they followed instructions. The other element is that the city is planning on a quick growth, which a well cannot adequately cover the water supply for.

Dr Bwaa
2008-03-28, 01:53 AM
Honestly, the best advice I can give you on making a good "Thinking Adventure" is to read through the Tomb of Horrors (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a) and learn from it. Don't actually use anything in there on your PCs, or at least not all at once. But ToH is a thinking dungeon. It has some really great ideas and if you read between the lines it speaks volumes about how to set something up to make your PCs think through it instead of brute-forcing their way through.

I realize this isn't directly applicable to the OP, but I believe it is still sound advice. Ever since I ran it for a couple of friends, (ever since I read it through for the first time, really, and more since then) it has inspired me tremendously.

batsofchaos
2008-03-28, 05:03 PM
I've never been a fan of Tomb of Horrors. It's a thinking adventure in the sense that the players have to question and second-guess everything they do for half an hour before making a decision and when they make the decision, they still have a 60% chance of being changed into their opposite gender, stripped of all possessions including clothing, impaled on spikes, transported back to the entrance, and vaporized. It's a Tomb of Sadism, really. I'm all for keeping the dangers real; if the players do something stupid they can get massacred, but Tomb of Horrors is a party-slaughter. The expectation is that everyone will die at least once, and the adventure ends when all the players have been sufficiently spooked into leaving, or they actually find Acererak and get their souls eaten.

What I especially dislike, is that if the party weaves a path of destruction through the dungeon, kill all the monsters, disable all the traps, slaughter Acererak, and loot the place, in a years time EVERYTHING will be restored. The demi-lich there is not actually Acererak and will be replaced, the treasure will be refilled by other adventurers, and a group of demons (that the party never has the opportunity to kill) will replace all dead monsters and reset all traps. If the party decides to nuke the hill, the dungeon will STILL be recreated.

I run campaigns with a single assumption in mind at all times, regardless of campaign or ruleset. What the adventurers do matters. They can change the world, for the better or worse. Things that they do modify locations over the course of the game. If there's an abandoned tower filled with monsters that they get hired to clean out, then they should be able to come back later and see it repaired and filled with grateful people. If they kill the tribe of orcs that has been raiding the village, the village should thrive and prosper as a result of the easier time they have. If they reap destruction in a freaking tomb on a hill, than the tomb should be freaking ruined!

Tomb of Horrors is an absurdist nightmare in the same vein as Waiting For Godot, only without the wit and charm.