One Shot Adventure Hooks/Outlines

[hector]

Both in terms of play testing and in just spreading word about the game in general, it seems to me like folks are going to need to run some one shots. As such, it seems a list of adventure hooks and basic outlines might be useful to folks. I'll start us off with something I just found on Reddit from around five years ago: the insurance fraud adventure (which I'm kind of partial too because of its similarity to the Caravan Adventure).

The hook is pretty simple. The party are hired by a merchant to guard a caravan (with NPC driver) on a three-day trip down a pretty safe road. Should be easy money. Two days into the trip, they encounter some armed men, who have a friendly chat with the driver. Turns out, the merchant arranged to have the caravan robbed - the driver tells the party that they're getting (at least) double the money they were promised. There's a cave nearby to hide the goods. All that's left once it's unloaded is a little set dressing - after all, nobody will believe the caravan was robbed if the guards weren't killed defending it...

Of course, the dangerous thing with such a double cross is the potential for a full party wipe. That's fine if this is intended to be the end (or at least close to it) of the adventure, but I'd want at least one tutorial fight that the party has a good chance of winning without casualties. Maybe a group of opportunistic "adventurers" coming the other direction decides that a wagon in the middle of being unloaded is just too tempting a target to pass up. Since there are probably five or six of these adventurers and maybe double that number in bandits, having a bunch of the bandits be cut down by gunfire explains why there are a more beatable number of bandits later while at the same time demonstrating just how deadly the weapons are and how important armour is.

[dysjunct]

Wasn’t this the infamous con scenario for TROS?

[hector]

Not quite, though I did mention the similarities. The one you're thinking of just involves two fights with bandits, the latter one you're expected to lose.

[Agamemnon]

I have two such scenarios I've used for my own tests. One is in homage to the Infamous Caravan Adventure, the other is some swashbuckling musketeer fun. When all of this is settled, I'd love to develop a bunch of such scenarios.