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what would the name of a rock band with penelope helen and clytemnestra be
what would the name of a rock band with penelope helen and clytemnestra be
Hiya!
Im prepping a ball for my players to go to (its hosted by the mob, half of the PCs are the children of the leaders), and I'm wondering if you had any suggestions on stuff that could happen there! I have a couple of events and bits of gossip and stuff, but I'm running out of ideas (most of the ones i have are expanded on thanks to forums and friends). Thanks!
Drafting the Adventure: Throwing a Party
There comes a time in every adventuring party’s career where they must attend some kind of celebration, whether it be in their own honor or as part of a larger adventure. Ranging from peasant festivals to the indulgent fetes of the upper class, celebrations are to regular social encounters what dungeons are to a random skirmish. Just like dungeons, celebrations are at their best when the group is attempting to explore and navigate a larger structure, looking to discover a way to their goal while fighting a time pressure while fighting against the clock, all the while attempting to dodge various hazards that will slow them down or eject them from the premises. While not every bash the party attends has to be run like this, having an idea how to run a celebration-as-encounter gives you access to a framework that can support important dramatic beats for your campaign, or launch unexpected new ones.
The Timeline
Think of your celebration as being divided up into acts or phases, depending on the general temperament/activity of the guests and the major events you’d like to see take place. When building your acts it’s important to have a goal in mind, something the celebration is building towards regardless of whether the guests or the heroes know about it. This goal often intersects or contrasts in some way with the party’s own objective, forcing them to jam themselves into the sharped toothed gears of polite society in order to get what they want. Here’s a brief example below, where the group’s goal is to ingratiate themselves with the influential duchess.
1 The guests arrive: general meet and greet, folk are a bit tentative
Party meets their intermediary and gets introduced to a few people before getting to split off. Their quarry is nowhere in sight
2 Full Swing: guests loosened up by good drinks and good company
the Influential Duchess finishes up with social niceties and begins talking with friends, the party might have an in, but they need to figure out who the duchess will open her conversational circle for.
The Long Awaited Viscount arrives fashionably late making a spectacular entrance, all but announcing his attempt to woo the Duchess’s daughter
3 First Dance: The party, their new acquaintances, and the duchess are all swept up into the dance, with only the most stubborn of wallflowers being spared from participation.
Atleast one of the party members has a chance to talk to the Duchess, but she is distracted worrying about the Viscount's intentions for her daughter.
Briefly introduce the party to the Viscount and the Daughter, let the party know they’re on some kind of collision course.
4 Refreshments: guests are in very good spirits but the Duchess is on war footing, walling her and her daughter off behind a circle of close acquaintances and trusted social allies. Any forays the party makes is likely to be seen as a ploy of the Viscount's to gain access to her daughter.
Cut out of the loop, the party must contend with all those who don’t pass the Duchess’s muster, but if they made friends with the shy handmaiden earlier, they have an in.
5 Second Dance: The duchess’s wall temporarily breaks for social propriety, letting the party begin to close in once again.
During this dance, the Viscount covertly releases a monster he had polymorphed and secreted onto his person. In the rampage, he and the daughter run off.
The party is forced to decide between battling the monster with improvised weapons, or pursue the Viscount, trusting that the guards will take care of it.
6 Here’s where the story turns: Do they duel the viscount and the daughter preventing them from leaving, or let them slip away? Do they battle the unleashed monster, proving their bravery before the assembled guests, or are their casualties among the attendants?
This example celebration obviously has an unexpected and violent twist at the end, but it’s possible to run one completely straight and have just as meaningful story affecting consequences.
Below the cut, I’m going to give a few different archetypes of the sort of encounters one can have during a celebration, and how to run them in a way that will save you time both during your planning and at the table.
The Opportunities
Less than an encounter, an opportunity represents a narrative thread available to the party during a particular phase of the celebration’s timeline. Ideally there should be more opportunities than the party can capitalize on at once, through some may be hidden unless the party is adventurous or perceptive. Don’t feel a need to be too rigid on how an opportunity “triggers”, as you want to give the heroes an excuse to enjoy all the delightful content you’ve made for them. Lastly, some phases are going to have less opportunities, so once these are exhausted, feel free to move ahead.
Here’s some examples to consider:
Fleeting: Directly related to events that are going to occur in later pheses of the celebration, these opportunities represent a way for the heroes to get ahead of the challenges to come. Think of them as keys to doors that the party have not yet encountered, with the challenge of a celebration-as-encounter being figuring out which opportunities are going to pay off in future phases.
Reoccurring: These stick around for most of the celebration, filling out your list of available opportunities. If a party member doesn't’ know what to do in a particular phase, have one of your Reoccurring opportunities seek them out. Gossips are likely to want new people to chat to, and someone seeking aid will likely grow more bold as the situation gets worse.
Stray threads: Unrelated to the celebration itself, a stray thread is a bit of worldbuilding, rumor, or quest hook that draws the player’s attention away from the mission at hand. These can be great ways to foreshadow upcoming events, or present options for the party for after their current adventure resolves.
Wallflowers: If one of your players feels like they’re not the party type, don’t worry, there’s likely some NPCs that don’t want to be there either. Staying as far away from the social battlefield as decorum will allow them, they’re likely to have wound ways to amuse themselves and be glad of some company. Wallflowers might need to be generated on the fly, but try to match them to the introverted character’s interest. A groundskeeper shares a flask with the uncivil barbarian, the awkward wizard stumbles across a great aunt playing chess against herself on two different boards. The troublemaker stumbles into a couple of bastard cousins playing cards in the smoking room.
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One thing about dale is he’s gonna yearn.
