The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth Adventure Log

This seems to be a pretty common thread. I keep hearing about Big Trouble in Little China on various sites. The villains certainly are pretty fun characters! Pinhead was one of the best as well...

 

You can definitely have some fun with this trope.. especially if the party has drifted from being "somewhat heroic" to trigger-happy "chaotic greedy" and it's time to tamp down the mindless mayhem (unless of course it is a mayhem-based campaignm in which case have at it).

Having an abandoned henchman who was thought to be deceased is a good plot to get players to think twice about screwing over their "red shirts" for little or no reason. I think we've all done it and often had a good laugh doing it in a game, but once in a while its good to throw in some consequences. Having the deceased henchman come back and pull a Count of Monte Cristo on the party is one good way..

You could go another route too - call it the "butterfly effect" approach. A somewhat common trope in fantasy is the unusual coincidence; in a game for instance, the PC's happen to be in a town to hear a rumor about a quest that they happen to be related to in some way.

So take this situation.. The campaign is set in a civil war, where the king died without heirs and two warlords are duking it out for the crown. The PC's get wind of a rumor that there was another heir to the crown, born and raised in secret. Several adventures later and at no small cost in blood and treasure, they track down the rumors ending up in the area where they first started adventuring. Working against time and fighting off agents from both warlords and others who do not want a new king crowned, they close in on where the heir is believed to be (they having been raised with no idea of their true lineage). Finally, after much hard adventuring the party ends up at a small farm outside of a farming village, the only inhabitant an old woman who raised the boy the PC's are looking for.

And the old woman tells them.. "Marag? Why would you be looking for my boy? Has something happend to him? He left with some men in town about a year ago who said they would pay him in gold to be their porter. He said he would come back and buy our farm from the local baron, but he never returned."

At which point the party remembers Marag the porter, the henchman they hired back when they were first level. The henchman they left in the hobgoblin lair on the second level, after they'd gotten in over their heads and had to beat a hasty retreat.. as the poor henchman's cries for help echoed behind them in the tunnels.

Probably would be a Kodak Moment for both characters and players ; )

 

That's just mean! :twisted: I love it.

 

Every action has consequences, which is typically the driving force of my games. I have an adventure I like to tell yes, but the players drive that story wherever it may go, good or ill. They've come to discover on frequent occasions the ramifications of their decisions. Case in point (and one of my favorites): During a venture into a massively re-worked White Plume Mountain, they captured a vampire in a portable hole. Shortly after, as they knew he was in there, they sent in a gnome prisoner to see if anything was still in there. Well, he was and they lost the prisoner. The hole was folded up and stored for later attentions.

Much, much later, the party chose to open the hole in a field region somewhere near Bissel (if I remember correctly). The gnome prisoner, now a vampire thrall, another gnome they stored in there thinking he was dead and the vampire all escaped. The vampire itself went gaseous form after a brief battle and went into hiding... only to track the party as they traveled from country to country.

They learned much, much later of a horde of undead streaming across Gran March, wiping out whole villages and hamlets.

Much, much later than that, they learned that not only did the local militias not destroy the vampire, but he's still unliving somewhere near Gran March or Keoland.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have yet to do a real good attempt at the former henchman enemy, though. They did turn a mapmaker into a real hater of the group once.

 

Maylin did struggle with the decision to flee the Caverns, but in the end he was sure he’d die if he stayed.
Since my son was born we’ve been on hiatus. Maybe when we start again he’ll consider some sort of rescue effort. Losing a cleric on the verge of casting raise dead is a big hit.