Showing posts with label one-shot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one-shot. Show all posts

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Tomb of the Moderately Successful Playwright

I give my players an option to do 'side-quests' over Discord chat, in addition to the main game I normally run.

One of my players pitched that he wanted his frog-man con-man to get caught up in a scheme to write a self-help book called the 'Porpoise-Driven Life'.

So I came up with this:


Map-credit again goes to Dyson Logos.


Running this was a blast. The player pried open the sealed door in Room C despite there being a big red X painted over it, so De Veers got out. Percy, the porpoise-man NPC, got eaten. 

I had a lot of fun playing De Veers over text, and having him oscillate between jovial 'what ho there!' conviviality and snarling 'I'm going to eat your face' ghoul-hunger. I can't remember where I got the idea for ghouls who are kind and urbane and sophisticated but only as long as they've been fed: I want to say Arnold Kemp's Goblin Punch, but I honestly can't remember. 


Thursday, February 11, 2021

The Court of Hell

 Made for Patrick Stuart's Dungeon Poem Challenge.

Happy Lunar New Year, ya filthy animals



Map is by Dyson Logos.

This post is brought to you by the childhood nightmare fuel that is Haw Par Villa.








by KiatXKiat

DISCLAIMER: As 'authentically Chinese' as fortune cookies. Everything I know about Chinese hell I learned from peeking between my fingers when I was 10 y/o at gory sculptures. Sorry Chen Laoshi

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Gourmet Food Street


If you're a player in my home-game, please don't read this! I mean, you could if you want, but just think about the joy of DISCOVERY

-----

So my pirate wavecrawl game is going great. The players have finished the Sacre Bleu module (Fairmead is now known as Goblin Republic, which is like Banana Republic but with goblins instead of high fashion) and I seeded a couple of rumour hooks for follow-up stuff. They also have a sentient fungus friend named King Slaver that they dropped off at their home-port, who has set-up in Gourmet Food Street.

Last session, I asked the players which rumour they wanted to follow-up on so I could plan for it.

The unanimous response was FORGET PROFITABLE RUMOURS, LET'S HANG OUT MORE IN GOURMET FOOD STREET!

I love sandbox play.

------


Artist unknown


GOURMET STREET FOODCRAWL
The system is based off the GLOG, and uses roll-under, the Risk Die from the Black Hack and limited inventory slots. $10=1GP. Alter to suit your home game. 'Relevant tables' refer to the appropriate food/stall/NPC tables in Gourmet Food Street.

Mini-Games

Food Crawl
Push your luck. Divide your CON by 2. This is your eating capacity. Whenever you sample a new dish (roll on relevant table) pay $5, bank 50 bonus XP and roll a die. If you roll over your eating capacity, you’ve over-eaten! Deathly sick, vomiting, lose all that bonus XP. Start at d4, increase die size by 1 for each dish.

All U Can Eat
Eating Competition! $50 entrance fee. Roll up competitor names on relevant table. Divide your CON by 2. This is your eating capacity. Every round, describe an aspect of your eating technique and roll a die. If you roll over your eating capacity, you’re out. Start at d4, increase die size by 1 for each dish. Winner gets a food-related magic item. Runner up gets $200. Note: Competitors drop out at the end of rounds 2, 4 and 5.

Rich Lads on Tour
5 loudly-dressed fops from the mainland want to sample ‘local culture’. No taste whatsoever, will overpay for a ‘local guide’. Show players pictures of food: they have 20 seconds to create a name for the dish. Fops pay $10 per syllable, but won’t buy if they lose confidence in you. A bonus $20 for a bogus story about the food’s ‘exotic’ origins.

Food Taster – Diego’s Potions Dishes
A wizard is quitting his stressful wizard job to pursue his dream of being a chef. Wants volunteers to try his recipes. Unfortunately, his only experience in cooking is brewing illicit potions for horse-racing. PCs are given $50, and have to roll on the table. Duplicate rolls just induce vomiting.

1 Too spicy. Lose 1HP permanently. Your vomit is corrosive. Now, how to induce vomiting?
2 Garlicky. Disadvantage to all CHA Tests. You smell unpalatable to monsters.
3 Heavy Meal. Your bones turn to Lead. You can’t run, Disadvantage to swimming.
4 Gassy. You swell up, permanently. Lose an inventory slot, Advantage to floating, Disadvantage to diving.
5 MSG-induced premonition. You have a premonition of the future. 1 bonus reroll this session.
6 Flavour blast. Too intense. Lose your sense of taste permanently. Gain 100XP, transcendental experience.


Save the Soup
A prominent chef has slipped and is lying unconscious! The customers clamour for soup, but nobody is there to cook it! Every round, Test INT to toss herbs and salts into the pot. Failure = -1 Flavour. Success = +1 Flavour. Start at 0 Flavour. Waiter comes to serve the soup in Rd8 rounds.

Negative Flavour A disaster. Rampant food poisoning, you are banned from this establishment.
0-1 Unappetising. Customers complain and start to leave. Chef is unhappy when he wakes.
2-3 Appetising! Soup is saved. Chef tells you he ‘sees a lot of himself in you’, gives you $150 worth of tips.  
4++ Feted! Customers flock to see the cook and shake them by the hand. Make a new influential contact. Jealous chef seeks your downfall. (Note: chef looks like the villain from Ratatouille)


National Geographic, august 1960 :  Pekin, a pictorial record by Brian Brake from Magnum.
Brian Brake, National Geographic August 1960


1d6 Random Encounters

1 Gang of populist Classicists carry signs, harass a member of the New Alchemists. A one-sided beating is about to take place.
2 Two guards put up Wanted posters: they seek someone the PCs know. ‘Psst! Over here!’ A member of the New Classicists waves the PCs over, resentful of local authority.
3 Aggressive tout keeps telling PCs NOT to eat at a particular stall. Lucio has recently read (and misunderstood) a book on Reverse Psychology.
4 Commotion. A frog-man named Blert is being chased by an angry Brewer for eating a jellied bloat-fly. ‘Help! Don’t let him get me!’ He seeks his estranged father, Lutz, lost in the wide world.
5 Angry customers harangue serving staff. At the back, an open door reveals a chef sprawled on the floor next to a dead rat (See: Save the Soup)
6 Vinegar Knight on street-corner. ‘As the milk curdles and the fruit rots, so man returns to vinegar!’ Has pamphlets, knows password to the Pickling-Pits, where the righteous wrestle for the privilege to be interred. They will pay for rare animal specimens.

Where to Find Bangkok's Best Street Food While You Can - The New ...

Saturday, May 2, 2020

One-Shot Adventure: The Day of Fools


ArtStation - Frog bishop, Mariusz Sawiński
Credit: Mariusz Sawiński

I made a one-page system-neutral starter adventure:

The Day of Fools v2.0

These days, I normally run short sessions for new players (around 2.5 hours or so), so I wanted to make something that could be run in that time.

I'd probably run this with Into the Odd.

The adventure's really designed to teach problem-solving. All the ogres are probably too tough to fight on their own, but you could trick them, flatter them, distract them etc. PCs have to figure out how to negotiate with Mellifax and Muddrick without upsetting them as much as possible.

Also I really wanted to have frog-priests.