This week was something of a rushed job on my part. It worked out pretty well and I had some ideas of what I wanted to do. I wanted to throw down a some variety of random encounter down... I said before I don't like random encounters. I suppose I should say I don't like purely random encounters without purpose.
In older games, like basic, 1e, and to a certain extent in 2e the game was more about survival than story. So at that time a random encounter was as good as a dungeon crawl, odds are your character would die before 4th level anyway.
To me encounters should drive the story. I don't want to waste time on an encounter for no purpose than to kill something, I just don't have enough time at the table to do that.
Anyway, I knew I wanted one of a few encounters- something to develop the world (some orcs) something to develop story (Stoutfellow dwarves on the hunt for Durn) etc. So I rolled the orcs.
Episode 4:
The guys are headed down towards Newhaven to find the ettin. And run into some Red Tusk orcs who demand payment for "The War effort" The players say no and kill them (this also has become something of a theme... but maybe thats just fantasy RPG).
The town is small, around 150 people or so and this ettin has been rollin around town killing people and causing all kinds of trouble.
The party gets there and they find out that he has been causing trouble over the last several years, ever since the nearby evil wizard got messed up by some adventurers. Its been getting closer and closer and started killing people a few months ago.
Man I hate to admit it, but yet again inspiration from another source. This Ettin is a polymorphed Cleric who was part of the adventuring party. The source material was kind of dense and difficult to understand what was supposed to happen. So yet again I tossed it and pretty much recreated everything from scratch outside of a few broad details.
Once they are in town for a little bit, they figure out that the Ettin has been drawing on this shrine to the Sun god in the northern woods of town. They go up to investigate and run into Mordicai, a young soldier whose father was killed by the Ettin and wants to see this monster put down, he does not trust the party and is getting antsy.
So the original concept had a rhyme that was nearly indecipherable without knowing everything there is to know about the ettin. So I made a new rhyme and drew some pictures with symbols to go along with it. I am a big fan of letting the PC's use their characters skills to help them out. So I made a key to the symbols in the pictures. With the symbols and the rhyme the players were able to put together a rough outline of what happened to the cleric. They didn't know the details but they knew he used to be good.
At this point the party heads up to Oldhaven to find the Ettin. They run into a few Red Tusk orcs and are told they don't want to fight, they just need to get back to help the war effort. The players "let" the Orcs lead them to where the Ettin is. Turns out one head is good and the other head is bad, and the players have to figure out how to cure him. To make matters worse Mordicai shows up with some townspeople to kill the Ettin.
This was a complecated event. I had a lot of work arounds and even killing the Ettin would have been okay. But what he really needed to do was be forgiven for being mean and hateful (my intent was by his god, but the PC's figured out something I did not intend but liked so much I let it work).
The PC's did something real cool here, they found a wand of web earlier and webbed all the townspeople. They then kept just out of reach of Ettin while they talk Mordicai (!) into forgiving the cleric/ettin for killing his father.
To accomplish what they wanted I put a series of challenges in place, a couple of diplomacy checks and a charm person did the trick. This changed a lot of stuff. Mordicai was going to fight to the death and they completely changed how that encounter was going to go. I love it when my players suprise me.
So at this point the Ettin is now a cleric and everything is good. He also mentions to Sam that Sam appears to be a travler- a guy who travels through dimensions but he will need to head north to figure it out. The party then offers to take Mordicai up north with them since he now wants to be an adventurer like they are.
It was a good night and I was really impressed with how my group did.
Let me know what you think, I don't have the riddle or the drawing anymore and it would take some time to recreate. If I can find them I will post them up in here, but otherwise... you will have to use your imagination.
Until next time.
-Ubercroz
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