Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 forgelord Oct 03, 2009 1:28:19	As some of you may have noticed by now, I frequently ask for ideas for new adventures I'm making. The more material to work with the better. Anyway, here's my newest adventure idea. The PCs have heard strange rumors about Moonwood Village, the mysterious settlement in the middle of Wolftooth Forest. People have been disappearing. Big packs of abnormally large wolves have been spotted. The PCs decide to investigate. At the village, the PCs are greeted warmly and welcomed. Still, the residents seem a little strange. They are given a place to stay and food. The people of Moonwood say they want to do everything they can to help the PCs unearth this mystery. The PCs discover a man in a cage, and he reveals to them that the people here are strange, that a large wolf bit him and his wound turned green and sick, and when the residents here saw it they locked him up. He tells the PCs not to mention this or they may be harmed, but to be watchful and discover the truth. Later that night, the PCs are attacked by wolf-like humanoids. The same wolf-like humanoids that had attacked them on their original journey to Moonwood Village. The people here are, of course, lycanthropes. However, they're a unique, ancient breed that, when they bite you, actually infect you with lycanthropy, and you become one of them. The PCs must discover the truth and put an end to it. Any ideas for plothooks and other ways to make the adventure more interesting? It starts at level 9, by the way. I'll probably try to make it take them to about level 12?
#2 rovin Oct 03, 2009 8:19:11	Unless your players are idiots, they're going to see through the "mystery" here the minute they hear your place names.  You're telegraphing way too much.  Also, how are the PCs supposed to "put an end" to things?  If it's a small enough hamlet I suppose they could slaughter every resident, but that seems a little extreme.  Outside of that, I don't see what they can do to stop it. An escape/survival scenario where the PCs realize they're surrounded by weres in the heart of (less obviously named) enemy territory, that I could see working.  But going in and slaughtering everyone once they realize what's going on, or chastising them for being naughty so they stop?  Not so much.
#3 forgelord Oct 03, 2009 10:42:39	Yeah, I did think it would be a little to easy for them to see the mystery. I never really thought about what they would do to stop it. I guess they'll have to escape with the man in the cage helping them. However, my PCs like fighting, and the only encounters I can think of are a few to get through the forest to the village, a few while they're in the village, and a few while they have to escape the village. This seems like a really short adventure to me. Besides, my PCs won't just be content with escaping. They'll want some sort of solid conclusion. They need to know that they problem is taken care of.
#4 Neutronium_Dragon Oct 03, 2009 20:03:44	The village would have to be isolated and with few people passing through the area in order to have remained undetected for so long, but this also makes it unlikely that any rumors of people disappearing would start - unless the werewolves were the ones who started the rumors, but that would be a foolish gambit on their part. An alternate scenario: the werewolves aren't responsible for the disappearances, and generally keep to themselves and aren't actually evil. (The 'convert people to their kind' thing should probably be dropped - that presents *far* too many problems if it can happen so easily.) They do want to keep their secret a secret. The problem is that some other creatures have moved into the region, or at least become more active. Perhaps they have a wolf-like aspect to them (even gnolls could work for this, especially if you use the varieties found in Dragon, but barghests would also be an obvious choice), and those are actually responsible for the attacks. The problem for the PCs is that they don't know this, and if they come to the reasonable conclusion (based on sketchy reports) that there are werewolves in the area then the actual werewolves might end up having to play games with them to try to lead them away from their own members and towards the actual threat. This could be spun any number of ways, from eerie to comical, depending on the tone you want to present.