Issue #6 Flaming Fandango in Faratusa
Well here we are - it’s the closing moments of 2020 and I’m spending my last spell slot to cast ZINE one more time.
I’m really not sure how many of the kickstarter backers out there found their way to these blog posts but if you’re one of them - thanks for taking a punt on these odd little adventures, I hope they’ve brought you and your players a lot of joy.
Let's roll up our sleeves and look at what we’re dealing with in Pocket Sized Perils Issue#6 Flaming Fandango in Faratusa.
Connections to other adventures
Since the hook in this issue revolves around a macguffin, (The Salt Ember Crown), the simplest way to link it to other adventures in the series is to change that macguffin. Here’s three options
- You can this link this adventure to Issue#5 Echoes of Ebonthul, by making the macguffin a piece of ancient technology the party brought back from that adventure - something that will protect the port of Faratusa from the threat of The Fire Chain Pirates. Perhaps Sir Aroldo has somehow swindled it off them and used it to weedle his way into the Governor’s good graces?
- If your group are interested in The Resistance’s struggle against the evil Baron touched on in Issue#1, you can make the Mcguffin a high tech weapon the Baron is trying to acquire from The Governor of Faratusa, or even a hostage NPC artificer/inventor being forced to design weapons. The masquerade ball can be reframed as a celebration of their successful deal and the The Fire Chain Pirates can be allies of/working for the Baron, (who never buys anything they can steal).
- If your group got pulled into some other realm in the final confrontation from Issue#5, The McGuffin can become something that might allow them to travel back. This requires reflavouring Faratusa as some sort of floating island port in whatever astral void the ritual at the end of Issue#5 lead them to.(I actually did this with one of the play test groups and it provided a lot of fun).
Now let’s jump into the zine itself.
The Hook
As always, the purpose of the first page of the zine is to set up the hook and get the imagination train rolling. We’re being a bit lazy here and letting the players fill in the details for our Mcguffin, (The Salt Ember Crown), and a potential ‘antagonist’, (Sir Aroldo Tuft). I’m trying to open up more and more of the creativity in my game to my players and this approach reflects that by letting them decide ‘why’ their characters are invested in this quest rather than me supplying them with a motivation.
The Plan
Once we know what we’re seeking and why we dislike Sir Aroldo so much we jump into planning our heist.
Page two feeds us a little background on the Governor and their obsession with constructs and gives us a narrow window to concoct a plan.
Depending on your group the time for planning can really blow out. This isn’t a problem if everyone’s having fun but if you want to keep things moving consider breaking up the planning into phases. One of my favourite mechanics from John Harper’s very slick, Blades in the Dark, system is the ‘flashback’, whereby players can step out of the flow of play for a moment to retroactively insert a bit of planning they ‘prepared earlier’. We can do something in that spirit for our adventure by letting the party plan in increments from objective to objective. When the party succeeds in getting the governor’s key or getting the crown you can give them another brief huddle to decide what the next phase in the plan is (and always was).
In the interest of keeping this closer to a one shot sized adventure,
I've opted to start in media res with the player characters already in
the building. If you don't mind things potentially running longer you
can have them plan their way in, (just put guards on the gate and front
door, a look out on the tower and roll for patrols everywhere else).
The Map
The specifics of the environment are important to this sort of adventure so this map (on the back of the zine) is intended to be shareable with your players. I’m trying to put more information in their hands and cut down on the need for detailed explanations from you as the DM
There’s more rooms and areas than are likely to be interacted with in a single play through to give the group a lot of room to plan their approach and also create opportunities for the architecture to play a part in the adventure via windows, stairwells, balconies and so on.
Perhaps the most notable ‘extra’ feature is the tower containing the recharge and repair stations for the Governor’s constructs. How is this meant to impact the adventure? I don’t know! It’s a bit of idea bait for your players. Perhaps they want to try sabotaging something here to disable the Brass Servants? Or maybe they’ll attempt to dress up in spare parts and impersonate them? Whatever the party may offer here, ask them to describe what they would like the result to be, identify the skill roll, (or rolls), you feel are required and follow where the dice lead you.
The Party
Hobnobbing with nobles in D&D is fun. In my experience players really enjoy getting the better of some pretentious aristocrat and watching each other put on their best, (or worst), courtly manners. Even before I knew a lot of other details about this adventure I knew I wanted it to include the opportunity for this sort of role play.
By placing the key to the vault on the Governor’s person we make it necessary for the player characters to mingle with the party guests to get it, (although they’re welcome to attempt to open the vault some other way).
In running this part of the adventure I would expect chaos and prepare to embrace it. The random table here is meant to assist you by providing some prompts for unplanned NPC banter.
The Security
On page four we meet our security detail. In this adventure I’ve opted for constructs to fill the roll of guards & servants, whirring and clanking down the Governor’s marble halls. The reasons behind this choice are
- To add to the fantastic flavour of the adventure
- To justify having one stat block for the entire mansion staff
- The comedy element offered by role playing with -2 intelligence automatons
- To avoid the discomfort of players choosing to murder flesh and blood servants who are just doing their job.
The Brass Servants are CR1. You’d need to get around 10 of them before the encounter turns deadly. I don’t give their exact numbers in the zine, (much like storm troopers in The Death Star, I imagine there’s always more of them than the heroes want to deal with). Any combat with them early on should include the risk of more arriving.
If you don’t find them intimidating enough you could give them a trait similar to pack tactics, (something like ‘Clockwork precision’), and allow them advantage when they have an ally adjacent to their target. In general however, the Brass Servants are meant to be cannon fodder - there are deadlier foes further down the line.
The Score
If the party succeeds in getting the key off the governor and dealing with the guards in front of the vault then all they need to do is wind up the clockwork mouse and it will pop into a hole in the wall and unlock it.
This runs dangerously close to being a puzzle. It’s not much of a puzzle but it’s obscure enough that the players may get it twisted in which case you could use wisdom/perception and intelligence/investigation checks to try and point them in the right direction.
The Gold’lem
Cautious players will scope out the vault before entering and possibly spot the glyphs. Reckless players will not and will awaken the Gold’lem. The Gold’lem is an animated pile of treasure and is pretty much a faster and more heavily armoured version of a Gelatinous Cube with extra damage immunities. It’s around CR4 and deals a suitable amount of damage for something that a cautious group should be able to bypass entirely. It’s intended as a consequence for rushing in without looking.
The Twist
I couldn’t finish a Dungeons & Dragons kickstarter without dropping a dragon on players at least once! Nagamerah is CR6, she’s essentially a young ‘white’ dragon with better mental stats and a climbing speed instead of a burrowing one to make her more classically a D&D Red Dragon.
If Nagamerah isn’t scary enough we also have some CR1 ninja pirates, with fire whips, jumping out of the crowd, one of whom is Aroldo, (our traitorous antagonist from page one).
This is a deadly encounter and, depending on how easy a time the party has had till now, it could be bad news for them. For this reason I'd suggest that Aroldo launches his coup when the party are still in the cellar or elsewhere in the mansion. This will give the group some space to assess the situation and decide how & IF they want to engage with it.
Beating the Fire Chain Pirates in a fight isn’t what the party came here to do - they came here to steal a treasure and embarrass Sir Aroldo. Depending on the situation they could attempt to sneak away with their prize…
However if the group decides they’d like to foil Arldo’s coup d'etat there are some elements they could try and exploit.
Rather than a pitched battle in the Grand Hall they could attempt to lure the Pirates or Sir Aroldo somewhere Nagamerah would struggle to follow (being a large creature).
There’s also Nagamerah’s chains. I only vaguely hint at lore for the Fire Chain Pirates in the zine but if we imagine them as airborne raiders, riding on magically bound dragons then breaking Nagamerah’s chains may turn her from a foe to an ally? At the very least she is likely to be a little upset at her former captors. Perhaps the last moments of the session will be a conversation with a dragon rather than a fight with one?
That’s it!
And so we’ve come to the end of this kickstarter. There’s still 14 more levels for D&D characters to reach and 20 more letters of the alphabet to cover but I’m going to take a short rest and roll some hit dice before I think about how I might go about that.
I’m keen to add some more generalised entries to this blog in the near future, (perhaps a bestiary and some loot tables etc), so stay tuned for that.
I’m also going to put the zines up for sale on Drivethru RPG and possibly Itch sometime in Jan so if you’re interested in that - that will be a thing.
To all of you who backed the kickstarter, ran the zines with your friends and sent me emails saying lovely things about them - Thank you, these adventures were small but the decision to share my creativity with strangers wasn’t, the supportive community out there made me really glad I took the plunge.
It’s goodbye for now but we’ll be meeting in a tavern to map out our next adventure before you know it.
Warmest Regards,
Brendan Barnett
