Could the sacrifices have to be willing, or just people that have to be killed? Could she be conditioning them to believe this is a heroic sacrifice? Their families will be compensated or it’s just for the greater good?
I assume directly engaging with the Guards would have negative consequences - it could be interesting to see how they deal with some ally (I am currently picturing somebody distributing the pamphlets) being apprehended and how they deal with that… direct engagement seems most likely (with consequences), maybe roleplay (probably leading to combat anyway) or maybe a prison break. Could Deception your way out though, or Persuasion depending.
I’m not digging the soldier/deathtrap setup personally. Maybe I’m not imagining it right, but if I played that I feel I’d be like, “Eh, DM put work into it and it was fine.” It doesn’t engage me however. Perhaps a non-combat encounter regarding the arrest would get you in front of the head of the guard. Perhaps depending on roleplay you’d end up (1) having them on your side, (2) they let you go and tell you to stop making trouble, (3) you get thrown in jail and now we have prison-break of our own.
Maybe ambushed in a back-alley encounter. Is there a faction that specifically wants Lolth summoned? They either directly attack or hire thugs to attack the party.
There was some game I did a while ago (can’t remember the specifics), but you went to a big town and you had only so many “days” in the town before things got crazy. So the DM would keep track of time passing more than usual, and I believe there were rolls every morning/afternoon/night or something - It was something like with every failed roll the unrest grew (not that the players necessarily knew, or knew how many failed rolls it would take for things to explode). It was a way to put time pressure on the players though and make them act faster.
Not sure that this helps at all in your scenario, but it’s all I have.
I am not a big fan of time-based mechanics like, particularly if playing virtually.
That said, I ran a virtual session wherein players needed to (in whatever way) open a door and fight (unless they did something batshit interesting) and if they were too slow it was going to get harder. Since we were virtual, and they were taking like 10 minutes to talk and they were told there was a sacrifice happening, I revealed to them,
“By the way, I have rolled 5 d20s so far. Anyway, back to you.”
They are calling Lolth (spider demon goddess) because they are evil. Not complex motivations. I’m thinking the average citizen would not love that.
The sacrifice has to be a male of power. I have Drizzt as an NPC and they plan to sacrifice him. Before they caught him they rounded up some noble husbands and are still keeping them in prison as backups if needed.
I think there is lots of opportunity for non-combat encounters, but I’m struggling with coming up with combat. For the newspaper one, I’m picturing breaking into the warehouse filled with newspapers as the baddies are starting to burn them. I like the idea of a combat where the goal is something other than “kill them all”
They are on a strict clock, they have 4 days to disrupt this ceremony
re: soldiers, hey have a meeting set up with a bunch of disgruntled veterans - think Vietnam Vets in the 80’s - so those are the ones they have to impress or win over somehow…
Bruteforce, “Murder In Baldurs Gate” was sorta like that.
this was 5e playtest (D&D Next). I read through it a few months ago and it’s … weird. the players are mostly observers to the action and it seems super hard to DM.
But it is set in a city that goes more and more towards rioting and chaos, so I should look it over again.
I’d keep the combats in enclosed areas with reasons that it wouldn’t be massively disruptive - like the back-alley combat I mentioned (or any ambush in a hallway, etc.) The warehouse is a good one. Maybe have a reason they have to leave the Capitol and you have far more leeway to do whatever.
Do you have a BBEG - is it the Queen? You could have some kind of champion, Hand of the Queen. Maybe the Queen wasn’t even particularly into this but the Hand has convinced her… Maybe he’s a Commander of the army and there’s an external force he wants to use this for.
Possibly summoning Lolth isn’t even 100% obviously bad-evil, it could completely be 100% Lawful Good. The Queen is the absolute law of the land, it’s Good because protecting the land, it’s Lawful because they are abiding by a moral code and it’s also fully legal anyway.
I’m kind of twisting your party into being accidental baddies at this point…
Then again, if the Commander had conquest on the mind instead of protection it would no longer be Good, it’d be probably Evil or at least Neutral. You can still call it “for the good of the realm”, but the motivation to prevent it is Good.
I’ve been thinking on this some more. Not my campaign and props to you for DMing but as a player I would question, why?, which is why I gave an idea above. Your party might be totally different than my limited experience of players but I’d be very interested why the Queen is summoning a god. Does she think she can control it? Is it a Warlock or Paladin-type situation where she serves the god?
Went through my first character “death”, petrification actually. I think he’ll come back eventually, we just need to level up enough. Hopefully our Cleric doesn’t die though - it was actually very close to a TPK but in the end was just me. I was retiring that character anyway, at least for a while.
Separate campaign, had a character with a terminal disease. Just tonight had him Reincarnated via a one-use cauldron. The whole party agreed it belonged to me.
Told the party I didn’t think I was strong enough to kill myself and use it and one of them needed to, had a whole speech, then left the room and told them to let me know when they’ve decided who would kill me because I didn’t want to know…
Two characters were holding my hands at the end. One told me to look at my reflection and be sure I could tell my face goodbye. I did, and… fade to black. Rolled for my new race.
I’m a damn Goblin y’all.
That’s awesome. Fury of the Small. And disengage as a bonus action can be great - unless you are a rogue and you already have that.
Have you followed Critical Role? One of the PCs was a goblin in their second season (no spoilers please, I’m only halfway through season 2)
I never got into S2 because it’d be, what, hundreds of hours of commitment?
I started in S3 with a very vague understanding of the prior plot. It’s not my favorite but good enough to have on while cleaning or whatnot.
Have you seen Dimension20? I like Brennan Lee Mulligan as DM a bit more than Mercer, and usually like the actors a bit more (it changes based on the campaign.) This campaign is free online, most others are subscription exclusives.
And yeah, Fury of the Small for 2 attacks (as an Armorer, thereby giving them disadvantage on anybody not me) and then running away, possibly making them take an opportunity attack if I have an ally next to them? Awesome.
Good choice. S2 referred very little to S1 (so far) so I assume S3 will be easy to enjoy on its own.
I had heard good things about dimension 20, especially the DM. I’ve got some of the podcast episodes on my phone, I’ll check them out.
Can you recommend a jumping on point
His campaigns are bonkers but still so good. Crown of Candy is perhaps my favorite, but only Ep. 1 is on Youtube. It’s a full world based around “food” - Candyland is the kingdom we start in, there’s the Milk Sea or something like that, the Meatlands, Vegetania.
I know it sounds stupid but I got quickly hooked, I didn’t think I’d cry over a gummy bear dying (for example, not spoiling). The absolute insanity being contained inside 5e by a fantastic DM with good improv actors, so good.
Another cool thing he does, he often brings somebody new to D&D into each campaign and has them sit next to an experienced player to help if they get stuck, they always bring a fun chaos into it. Having a first-time player use a gravity well to a chained Goblin to float over a pool of magma… And Brennan is very yes-and, he was like, “Holy shit, this I have to see.”
I usually only listen to things on podcasts. Their podcast has 17 episodes of “Fantasy high” and another 20-30 episodes but I don’t know what campaign they are in
Last night in the campaign where I play a rogue, we had been investigating someone building automatons/robots for unknown reasons, and we found a Cult of Orcus that wants to put him in one of the robots.
I know I should oppose this, but Orcus-in-a-Robot-Body sounds pretty awesome, and I might be on board with that.
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It can be frustrating but “subversion of the DM expectations” is sometimes fun! As long as it’s not a consistent and oppositional dynamic, and you trust your DM to be on-board. Sounds like this isn’t a prewritten campaign (or at least I’m unaware of it). DMs running prewrittens would probably be less amenable to complete 180s (in my experience).
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