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Totally Guy
2008-11-22, 09:20 AM
D&D was cancelled this week and the week after so my next session will be well and truly into the christmas season. So lets change things to make it special.

I spotted a DIY gingerbread house kit, so I've got all the walls and roof, some icing sugar to stick it all together and many sweets to decorate the thing with.

How can I intergrate this into a D&D session. The party are in an elven city and will soon be travelling into unexplored forests so the opportunity is easily there.

I could have a squad of goblins stealing a gingerbread wall and the party try to figure out what this prop is for.

Or I could build the house first and have combat with a hag of some kind.

Or have a kindly witch ask the adventurers for help assembling the parts she'd baked.

I need a cool scenario. I think it's better to have the players build the house themselves but that takes up D&D time and kind of relies on metagaming.

Attilargh
2008-11-22, 10:41 AM
The characters must follow a trail of breadcrumbs to find the children kidnapped by the evil hag. On the way, they will meet an irate hermit ogre and his awakened donkey bard sidekick, rescue a girl from a pair of awakened wolf beguilers, and find a pair of cursed boots that target the wearer with Otto's Irresistible Dance. The final showdown shall be against the hag in her gingerbread house on chicken legs.

Hal
2008-11-22, 11:12 AM
Alternatively, as they travel through the forest they hear the screams of a gingerbread man/golem as he's being eaten by a troll.

Prometheus
2008-11-22, 12:04 PM
That's a tricky one. I say given them a quest that has nothing to do with Christmas spirit. Instead charge them with the task of building fortifications against an on-coming onslaught of zombies, orcs, imps or what have you. Instruct them to show you with the gingerbread house, specifying that some of the decorations are representative of magical items or traps. Imagine the conversation:
"Be sure to stagger the gumdrops in a non-grid pattern so that the first wave is knocked out by the blast. Then that's when the henchmen shore up the flanks with the candy-cane scythes. At all costs, we have to protect that marshmellow...Did you eat it already?"

Bonus points for allowing the PCs to eat the candy that is removed from the battlefield as you describe the carnage.

Kami2awa
2008-11-22, 12:13 PM
A creation spell has gone horribly wrong and things are being transformed into the wrong material; trees have turned up made of ivory, animals are made of living metal, a cloud comes crashing down out of the sky having turned to glass. The effect is centred on a particular forest, and the radius of the curse is spreading by the minute towards the city. Journeying into the forest, the players come across the gingerbread house as the source of the disaster, containing a cursed artefact or mad sorcerer (maybe now made out of gold or something else bizarre) who must be stopped to end the transformation.

Starbuck_II
2008-11-22, 01:03 PM
The characters must follow a trail of breadcrumbs to find the children kidnapped by the evil hag. On the way, they will meet an irate hermit ogre and his awakened donkey bard sidekick, rescue a girl from a pair of awakened wolf beguilers, and find a pair of cursed boots that target the wearer with Otto's Irresistible Dance. The final showdown shall be against the hag in her gingerbread house on chicken legs.

No, way, a plot twist: they must save the Hag from the evil Halflings (they aren't real children just the size of a child).

The pair are sister and brother of Belkar and just as evil. :smallcool:

hamishspence
2008-11-22, 01:15 PM
Elaine Cunningham did a chicken legged house owned by a Witch of Rashemen, in Daughter of the Drowr book 3 of Starlight and Shadows trilogy.

For greyhawk fans- Baba Yaga, the classic mythological character with said house, is the tutor of the dreaded Witch Queen Iggwilv, who is an epic mage.

I haven't seen 3.5 stats for Baba Yaga (Iggwilv is statted in Savage Tide campaign in Dungeon mag) but suspect she ought to be pretty high- her old student is level 30 and can cast epic spells.