What should I do this week?

[dunlaing]

My players are playing a bunch of monster race characters. One of them has an order of priests* that he's feuding with. I decided that they had hired a sorcerer/demon summoner who was coming to town to help them summon a demon and bind it to a virgin (to make her into a Slayer). I figured that this would be a cool way to create an interesting good guy to fight my PCs' bad guys.

So the player finds out that the priests are up to no good and he... leaves town for the better part of a month after hiring someone to look into what they're up to. Huh. Color me stunned. I mean, he's the one that came up with the priests and his hatred of them, not me.

So what do I do?

Option 1: Stick to my Simulationist gut response and have the priests succeed in creating the First Slayer while the group is out of town.

Option 2: Ignore what ought to have happened and just have the ritual happen once they get back to town.**

What do you think? And if you like Option 2, what are some good ways to handle the ritual? A heroquest that the priests will try and the pcs can try to stop?

__________________
*Wizardry types
**the original plan was that the group would find the priests and have a chance to stop them by messing up the ritual.

[pete_darby]

Oh, I choose door number one, serious butt kickage, and lots of other monsters wandering around going "Hey, why didn't you get this guy? That slayer chick killed my brother AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!"

Then have the slayer go crazy and the PC's have to save the Wizards that they hate from her. Or not, up to them.

Damn, that's getting dangerously near a premise...

[simondale]

So the player finds out that the priests are up to no good and he... leaves town for the better part of a month after hiring someone to look into what they're up to. Huh. Color me stunned. I mean, he's the one that came up with the priests and his hatred of them, not me.

So what do I do?

Hello.

A couple of questions

Do you want the slayer/priests to be the big focus of play?

Why did the character group leave town? The players might have different priorites for the group that they may want to explore.

***

My temptation would be to go with the out of town stuff and just let the ritual succeed. Maybe have a report come in by carrier-bat from the hired watcher at some point and leave it at that.

"the ritual's going ahead, this is big, too big.  I'm leaving town. I don't want anything to do with this. "

I'm guessing the character's don't know what the ritual is for? So the results of the ritual could be a surprise?

***

If the slayer were to be the main focus of play I'd be tempted to make the slayer kin to one of the player's characters: sister or daughter, ideally.

Give the character the keyword "Slayerkin" or "Slayer's Father/Mother" and use it as a negative augment when dealing with members of their community.

"She's your blood: the slayer is your responsibility".

Really make the character's hate the priestly order.

YHQWV

Best,
Simon

[dunlaing]

Hello.

Hi!

A couple of questions

Do you want the slayer/priests to be the big focus of play

It doesn't really matter to me whether the slayer becomes a big focus of play. If the players respond well, she will, if not there are other things that can be the focus. The priests were created by a player during the Goal creation part of character creation. His Goal is to hunt down these priests. So, yeah, they should be a big focus of play.

Why did the character group leave town? The players might have different priorites for the group that they may want to explore.

They left town because they felt like they had unfinished business. They had previously agreed to go out and stop an orc band from raiding some villages. They did it, but then had to come back to town before they could raid some opposing villages. So now they're heading out to raid some villages. The PC who hates the priests just plain didn't try to convince the other PCs to either stay and deal with the priests. He also didn't even try to stay behind.

If the slayer were to be the main focus of play I'd be tempted to make the slayer kin to one of the player's characters: sister or daughter, ideally.

That's a pretty good idea, but it doesn't really fit the PC's backstories.

[Mike Holmes]

They left town because they felt like they had unfinished business. They had previously agreed to go out and stop an orc band from raiding some villages. They did it, but then had to come back to town before they could raid some opposing villages. So now they're heading out to raid some villages. The PC who hates the priests just plain didn't try to convince the other PCs to either stay and deal with the priests. He also didn't even try to stay behind.

So there's something that the player decided was more interesting about messing with the other orc village (what world are you playing in, anyhow? Are the PCs orcs, too, or something else?). Play off that decision.

Did you let the PCs know exactly when the ritual would occur? This is important. If you said that it was going to occur soon, and the player in cquestion ignored this, that's one thing. If they didn't know that's another. What I wouldn't do is to first tell the players that the ritual is coming soon, and then delay it until their return. That's the worst kind of dramatic editing in that it sucks the power out of the conflict due to it being an obvious out of game construct. You'd be telling the players that every choice is separate from all the others in terms of drama - and that's just bad form. What you want to do is keep the character knowledge consistent with the drama about them.

For example, if they player knew that the the ritual would probably occur if he left, then the decison to leave is a decision that you can make dramatic. In that case, I'd say that when he returns, the slayer has been created in their absence, and do as people have suggested in terms of threatening something close to the character. Doesn't have to be that the Slayer is a sister or something, just that the slayer is now threatening something that the character holds dear. For example, if the players seem to have some affection for defending their village (I'm sorta assuming from their desire to go out and face the other village), then when they return, the slayer could be ruling the village, propelling the Priests into full power over all village affairs (heh, and maybe they can't get their reward for taking on the other village). Basically, make the choice to leave produce further conflict for the character. Very simple.

If, OTOH, the player didn't know precisely what was going on in terms of timing, I'd definitly hold off on things until they return. There's always reasons for delays to have occured if you need to fulfill some inner need for simulation. Further, if you really want, just factor in the additional time into the bonus for casting the ritual per the rules. Maybe they were just being careful (if this is a long-term plan, that would make a lot of sense). In any case, I'd have the investigator reveal what they know, making the character look good for having hired them in the meanwhile.

A couple of notes on how I'd handle this second scenario. First, I might have the investigator turn up dead. That can be more interesting than him just telling the characters what's up. I can't say without a lot more info, whether or not this is a good way to handle it, but, basically, this isn't a punishment to the player or character, so don't do it if the NPC investigator was somebody important to the character (unless you really want to rachet up the hate). The idea is to still make the PC look good, but just to make the Priests more the villains.

If you do have the investigator show up dead, have an easy to discern trail of evidence lead directly to the Priests, and reveal what they were doing. Maybe the PCs search his home and find notes on what was happening. Two things are important here. First, the evidence should be the sort of thing that the PCs can't miss. The idea is not to make a player challenge to figure out what's going on, but to make the characters look good figuring it out. Second, the evidence should tell about the timing of the ritual, but not name names. That way the PCs won't be able to easily get the authorities to challenge the priests. Meaning that the PCs will have to deal with it themselves. This is all pretty easy to orchestrate as in, "When you take him back to his house to rest there before burial, you see a note jotted down hurriedly on the desk." Or maybe he told someone else, who the PCs can run into (this is good because the hearsay can be as complete or incomplete as you like).

Oh, and leverage the threat some. Again, have the information imparted indicate that success at the ritual will be bad for more reasons than just the priests being empowered. Find something the players (note, not necessarily the characters, but players) are concerned about, and make it so that the ritual succeeding will either hurt or menace that thing. For example, if the players seem concerned with making their characters heroes revered by the village, then have the Hero Quest threaten to overshadow or eliminate their efforts from the thoughts of the village. There has to be something that they're concerned about.

Whatever the case, this should all be put together to maintain a sense of time pressure. Have the information about the ritual get imparted to them just as they arrive home. At the point at which they learn about the ritual, no matter when that is, this is what they learn: If they act now, without resting (have them make fatigue rolls or something from the trip home, to emphasize that they thought they were at the end of their travels), they might just have time to stop the ritual. They might be able to make some quick stops on the way, but no time to make long arguments to people about what's going on, etc. If they can't get a resource with a simple contest, they have to do without it.

As far as the ritual itself, I'd definitely make it a Hero Quest. The PCs must enter the appropriate Otherworld to stop their foes. If they have the resources available to do this themselves, that's fine. If not, and they can't get them in short order, then make their option that they have to barge in on the ceremony. The "gate" to the otherworld stands open awaiting the return of the questers with their slayer, and the PCs have to find a way in. Make it clear that it's too late for them to stop the people on this side - the gate's already open, and the ritual is ongoing. So they can lie, convince, hack, dash, or otherwise make their way into the gate.

Once there, they have to do the quest themselves, and will catch up with the original questers at the final station. There, they'll have some conflicts, and, most interestingly, a choice about how to end the quest if they win. This could radically change one of the myths of the tribe or the like.

If they fail, even better. Then the slayer returns, the negative threats happen, the PCs are brought back as sacrifices for the next ritual, their hate for the priests becomes greater, they have to escape, open up the heroquest again, and re-edit it once again to fix the "damage". Or just face the slayer themselves. Lots of fun options. Again, if the player made a conscious decision to leave knowing that this sort of thing might happen, then have them just return to it at this point in the action. Dead investigator, something they like threatened by the existance of the slayer, etc.

Either way it sounds like fun to me.

Mike

[dunlaing]

So there's something that the player decided was more interesting about messing with the other orc village (what world are you playing in, anyhow? Are the PCs orcs, too, or something else?). Play off that decision.

I don't know how much thought the player put into it. I think he just didn't bite on the bait and went with the inertia of going off and doing what they were thinking of doing before he found out about the priests being in town.

They aren't raiding an orc village, they're raiding a human village. They went out to stop an orc band from raiding one city-state's villages and convince it to raid a different city-state's villages. In the process, they lost their orc band but decided to continue the raiding anyway.

The PCs are a Gargoyle, a four-armed spider monkey, the opposite of a Hellion, a Reptile-man, and an Invisible Stalker. They're all atypical of the setting (which is a homebrew). I started the campaign by playing the tenet-setting phase of Universalis with each player getting 5 coins, and three of the tenets were "The PCs' races are unusual in the setting," "Each PC is a different race," and "The PCs are *not* the Good Guys."

Did you let the PCs know exactly when the ritual would occur?

No. I told the PC whose goal is to hunt down the priests that these priests had just shown up in town recently and were looking for something. He then hired a criminal to find out what they were looking for and left town.

(I'm snipping a lot of good advice because I don't have responses--but it is good stuff)

A couple of notes on how I'd handle this second scenario. First, I might have the investigator turn up dead.

A seperate PC found the investigator by using his contacts. His player rolled a Complete Success on his relationship with organized crime in the city and (it being that sort of night) the investigator was described as being very similar to Harvey Keitel's character from Pulp Fiction. At the end of the night, both players were so happy with the investigator that they bought relationships to him with hero points.

**this is one of the coolest things about HeroQuest. You can just throw things up against the wall all night and then at the end of the night, the players tell you what stuck by cementing it**

Since they paid for him (and thus must think he's cool), I'd rather keep him around.

For example, if the players seem concerned with making their characters heroes revered by the village, then have the Hero Quest threaten to overshadow or eliminate their efforts from the thoughts of the village. There has to be something that they're concerned about.

I can use that (as well as pretty much the rest of the post).

Thanks Mike and simondale!

[Mike Holmes]

Sounds like a cool set-up.

Since they paid for him (and thus must think he's cool), I'd rather keep him around.

Agreed. Then in that case, have him have been attacked by some agent of the priests. Still alive, but only because he's really cool (they'll spend more HP on him by the end of the night). He can't say for sure, but he found out that something big is going down tonight. Something to do with some "slayer" (have a PC make a roll to figure out what that is).

What did you decide was the valuable thing that summoning the slayer would threaten? I have to ask.

Mike

[dunlaing]

Sorry I took so long getting back to you...

The PCs haven't made it back to town yet, so they don't know what the slayer's going to threaten. Since we're not gaming again until the 5th (skipping thanksgiving weekend as I'll be in FL), I don't know either. :)

The PCs have been going to pretty great lengths to get themselves accepted in Delos (one of many city-states based *very* roughly on ancient greek city-states). The Slayer will probably be fighting demons/vampires/etc. in Delos and becoming a folk hero, so she'd be threatening their relationship to Delos primarily. I think that's a big enough deal, as they've spent mucho game time (and hero points) trying to boost their relationships in town. If not, they each have specific relationships in town she can deal with. (one of the PCs has let loose a horde of spider daimones in the sewers for instance)