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Post by DangerousPuhson on Jul 10, 2019 17:18:44 GMT
We've got the big dungeon sitting on the horizon - a lost civ site, to be sure. But what do people think of the idea of a more modern construction - a fortress-style HQ for the Bloodrock Excavation Guild (name pending)? Something akin to Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, but swarming with BEG overseers. Could be the good target of a heist-style adventure, and maybe even clearing it out later in the campaign when the party gets stronger.
Thoughts?
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Post by The1True on Jul 11, 2019 12:24:47 GMT
Sounds kickass!
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Post by grutzi on Jul 11, 2019 18:51:50 GMT
Sounds good. These guys need someplace to work from and organize their divisions and mercenary troops after all.
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Post by DangerousPuhson on Aug 7, 2019 19:42:50 GMT
Remind to run you guys through my "Heist Booklet" - I think it would be perfect for this.
In a nutshell, about a year ago I ran a heist adventure for my group where they infiltrated a palace as the target of a major burglary. I had the palace mapped out as a series of numbered rooms, as well as mapped the grounds around it containing several outbuildings that provided additional loot/opportunities/secret entrances/etc.
The REAL fun part of the heist, the part that gave the players the most agency and hijinks and adventure, was in the little booklet I made that accompanied it. Basically it was a journal kept by an NPC thief who was staking out the palace grounds because he too was going to burgle the place (he was killed before he could enact anything). The booklet had all these little snippets and factoids about the palace, the workers there, schedules, the good loot, possible traps and dangers, some easy layout observable from the outside, and so on. All was told in the perspective of someone watching the comings and goings, going through the trash, looking through windows, etc. My party took the booklet and started building a plan to infiltrate and burgle the place, (Ocean's 11 style) using the information in the booklet.
They leveraged the gatehouse captain's gambling debts to get them inside, they abducted the majordomo beforehand and disguised themselves as him and some guards (using uniforms they had to piece together from various suppliers to the palace guard), they bought some helpful magic items to bypass specific obstacles, they timed their departure with the daily wine barrel export cart, they worked out some of the clues for opening combination locks, and a whole bunch of other shit. It went down REALLY well. I just put a bunch of potential opportunities in a booklet and the players latched onto whatever they thought might help them in specific situations. They loved it.
I think we could do something similar with this. A sandbox-style heist, so to speak.
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Post by The1True on Aug 8, 2019 18:44:01 GMT
Still love the idea! Should we aim to make our side-quests 1-2 page "one page dungeons" (with maybe an extra intro page for context/links/special rules if really necessary) to make them easy for the DM to run? Handouts like your journal could be limited to one page 'scrolls'/maps/illustrations. I know some people feel the one-page format is dead, but I think in this case it might be legit?
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Post by DangerousPuhson on Aug 8, 2019 18:51:21 GMT
Yeah sidequests as a 1-page (2-page probably, for book spread purposes) format works best I think. Different pages for different hexes in the sandbox might be worthwhile, condense the area down to being self-contained in one spot. Especially because I think people would get more value out of it as a collection of little standalone areas/dungeons threaded with connections, ensuring that should something not be to a DM's liking, it's modular enough to work around, swap or remove. Exceptions of course for the larger areas (3 settlements, big dungeon, BEG stronghold).
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