Help a GM with a Plot

[deathbyhokie]

SO I'm currently running a campaign, and have come up with a good plot idea. I plan on, in the near future, splitting the party in half, both in game and out of game, for several sessions. As the party is 7 people, i sincerly doubt that either side will run into problems with not having what they need. I plan on re-uniting them after a few sessions, and having a nice dramatic battle. Now, I need some help figuring out what to do with them in those few sessions.

Right now, the idea is to end a battle with 3 of the 7 party members, plus a kinda-possessed villian (long story) getting sucked out of the real world, and into a crystal. The heroes left in the real world, then, have to figure out how to release those stuck in the crystal.

Those in the crystal end up with the unpossessed Villian, who is less of a villian without the malevolent force controlling him. However, the malevolent force is still around, chasing the heroes. SO now that i've set up the situation, two questions:

1) What sort of things should be needed to release the folks trapped in the crystal?
2) What kind of adventures can I throw at those stuck in the crystal? Running from an undefeatable force for 3 sessions is going to get old quick, so I need to do something else.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[AslanCross]

1) The typical quest plot for releasing trapped characters is bringing the crystal to where it was created and destroying it there. It's especially important to clarify what the crystal is exactly.

2) Again this depends a lot on what the crystal is and how it operates. The interior could be some kind of dreamscape where a lot of things are creepy and surreal. (The crystal may have been corrupted by the evil force, and so the interior of the crystal is all messed up.) They could also interact with other people the crystal has sucked in before, perhaps helping quarreling neighbors inside get along. Or perhaps they can learn the key to defeating the evil force. Dreamscapes can actually become pretty good horror material, if your players are into that. Random conditions dependent on will saves might help.
You could also limit their actions by having their existence inside the crystal depend on a "fissure" to the outside world that they have to keep in touch with, or else the crystal completely consumes them and they cease to exist. (Actually trying to exit through the fissure would involve going through a powerful current of negative energy that will kill them instantly)

[theMycon]

Trying to figure the nature of their prison? Somehow correlate it with a way to keep the villain from getting repossessed, or to manipulate said malevolent force/keep it trapped while they get out.

If they're not aware of the other group's activities, you can make this use the ideas you liked, but ultimately threw out, for the other party's job.

[Mewtarthio]

For the guys in the crystal, you could always throw them into a surreal, nightmarish dreamscape. The malevolent force is after their minds/souls, right? I'm pretty sure there are rules for running dreamscapes out there (I bet Vorpal Tribble knows them by heart).

[Waffles]

A twisted nightmarish landscape seems to be exactly what one would expect if they got trapped inside a crystal, wouldn't you think?

I'd rather have the crystal be some ancient storing device. Time would not flow inside, and originally it was a small town that fell victim to the local wizard's experiments. It would always be dusk, full of extremely apathetic people who would not die and had been trapped inside of it for some thousand or so years. Ramshackle huts, dead trees, polluted streams that do not flow, all sorts of depressing things. The interesting parts would come from the relatively new denizens of the crystal and the pieces of land that had been annexed by the crystal over the years.

Not that I know what the people outside the thing should be doing. Hopefully it'll be fun.

[MorkaisChosen]

If you've played NWN, you could have a look at the weird bit with Castle Khaled (can't remember the name of the forest)- the crystal could be a prison for some huge crime, a sort of eternal purgatory, and they have to find some way to either just escape of make up for the crime (in th game someone had to judge who was responsible for it, but you don't want it totally plagiarised).

[valadil]

I'd actually run the crystal a lot like a dungeon, but with dreamier, cloudier, (marshmallowier?) fluff.

I'd also try to make sure that the people in the crystal had an integral role to play. You don't want to entertain them by making them jump through hoops while the other players do all the real work.

To start with, I'd have the crystal group earn some way to communicate with the PCs. Maybe they find a cloud with a giant antenna sticking out of it. Give them a dungeon's worth of gameplay to get to the antenna. Once there they can use it once a day as per the sending spell to whomever holds the crystal.

The other group should have by now figured out that they bring the crystal to its point of origin in order to destroy it. Or however else it needs to be destroyed. I'm just going with the example that already seems popular in the thread. The group can figure this out however you like and should begin their voyage.

It should be noted that time in the crystal passes differently than in meatspace. This is important if you're letting them communicate once per day and one group rests more often than the other group.

Anyway the crystal group should be responsible for figuring out where the crystal came from. Maybe its creator put a spell on it that stops people from locating its origin with magic, but didn't put that spell on the inside of it. At any rate, the crystal's origin is somewhere in the crystal and its up to the PCs trapped inside to find it and then communicate that location to the other PCs who bring the crystal there.

I imagine destroying the crystal will invoke some sort of boss fight. I think it would be ideal if you could get both sides involved somehow. What I'm picturing is some big nasty monster whose individual aspects are represented by several smaller facets within the crystal. So the outside group would fight some beast with full bab, sneak attack, and both kinds of casting while the group inside sees a fighter, a rogue, a mage, and a cleric. As the inner group kills off individual enemies the outer beast gets weaker. If the group inside manages to grapple the mage, there goes the outside beast's arcane casting. When the cleric inside dies, the BBEG's healing ability stops. You get the idea?

[Dr Bwaa]

I imagine destroying the crystal will invoke some sort of boss fight. I think it would be ideal if you could get both sides involved somehow. What I'm picturing is some big nasty monster whose individual aspects are represented by several smaller facets within the crystal. So the outside group would fight some beast with full bab, sneak attack, and both kinds of casting while the group inside sees a fighter, a rogue, a mage, and a cleric. As the inner group kills off individual enemies the outer beast gets weaker. If the group inside manages to grapple the mage, there goes the outside beast's arcane casting. When the cleric inside dies, the BBEG's healing ability stops. You get the idea?

I like that a lot. Can effects go the other way as well? As in, can the outside PCs affect the "BBEG party" inside? Or what happens if the outside PCs kill the thing before all of it is dead on the inside?

[MorkaisChosen]

Maybe it casts spells on both sides at once, and magic (debuffs et cetera) that the Outside group casts go In. Also, there could be a bit of damage passed from Outside to In (split four ways, probably).

[valadil]

Glad you guys like the suggestion. I do too (or else I wouldn't have suggested it) and am lamenting the fact that splitting the party like this would not work for my 4 person group.

I left the details of outside to crystal buffs/debuffs/damage up to the GM. No idea what the level of the group is so it's really hard to estimate. I like the idea of damage being split up evenly among the 4 crystal copies of the BBEG. Not sure what goes beyond that though. I worry that it would get to the point that so much stuff is being inflicted on the BBEG and then duplicated across his clones that he just implodes. Sticking with the outer being limited by the inner's actions (so grappling the mage would take away the outer's casting) and damage goes in (to speed up dropping individuals inside) should be reasonable.

[Prometheus]

I actually thing the original premesis of running from an unstoppable force can actually go on for 3 sessions with a variety of interesting experiences, especially in a dreamscape. Of course, it has to be just slow enough that they can easily avoid it without obstacles, but just fast enough to be able to pop out at any time (I'm assuming that it can pass through the obstacles easily), and force them to go through the obstacles quickly. If you want to give a higher perception of fear, make the lines of where the unstoppable force begins and ends blurry. Maybe it is surrounded by a massive shadow which descends up the characters when they lose ground, for example. Or maybe it has the power to draw in moderately near object closer.

As for what to throw at the party, it may very well depend on their level, but here's some ideas:
Terrain: Only well used skills and magic can get you across, and slowly at that.
Monsters: You have to either defeat them quickly, or deal with them attacking/following you while you are primarily moving.
Fatigue: Eventually, your characters will run out of spells and run out energy, but still the unstoppable force will march closer and cause them to push their limits.
Escape: Maybe there is a way to hide from it, but it involves great peril or difficulty to achieve, Perhaps the characters are forced between attempting to hide and risking themselves in the process, or going with the status quo.
Minions: Who says the unstoppable force has to be composed of a single mass? It could summon or be composed of little spirits that aren't as threatening but can catch the players and either possess them or drag them into the unstoppable force.

[holywhippet]

For the party outside the crystal, I'd suggest two ways of setting them free. They can either get a hammer which has been forged/enchanted to break the crystal - or they can work out a particular sound frequency which will shatter it. Both require finding someone knowledgable - I'd say a dwarf for the former and a gnome for the latter.

I'd also provide a way for the people trapped inside to get free. Just in case the people outside stuff things up or get killed.