1st Adventure - Campaign Diary: Archipelago Adventures - Pt. 38

Last week we discussed trying new things for starting an adventure, but what adventure is our crackpot team of fuck ups actually going to go on? I talked about this earlier, and its been hinted at here and there, but let’s do a recap.

The players are going to take their brand new, level 1 characters on an adventure to investigate a smuggler’s cave near town. There has been reports that a few ships have been seen nearby, and the guards want to disrupt any smuggling operations before it gets too big. Captain Malosi can’t send his guards as he is understaffed, but he can convince the city to cough up some money to send a few adventurers to the cave and check on it, clear out any issues and report back. The smugglers are actually goblins and hobgoblins preparing for a future attack on to the port city, and the party can learn about the future enemies in the game.

This is a pretty simple quest, and we want to create it as something to bond the characters together over a common element. The issues with new adventurers and having characters like Grim the Rogue and Belac the Stronk and Bojangles the Druid is that they normally would never be around each other, and it can be hard for players to remember that this is a group game and we should make allowances and suspend doubt.

I’ve seen a lot of threads of people complaining about their character wouldn’t travel with these other characters, and how other players should match with these other characters and blah blah blah. I could go in and complain non-stop about how you should create a character, but this isn’t the venue. Let’s focus on building the adventure.

Bringing Characters Together

Now, how can we go about building an adventure to bring characters together? We have to find ways to create situations where multiple characters have to work together to solve the problem. This can come across as a puzzle, though I hesitate to do anything with puzzles as those are pretty polarizing. Some people love puzzles, while others hate them completely, not much middle ground it seems.

What could be potential events that require multiple characters to work together?

Combat is a big one. Combat requires multiple characters to work together or else people are going to die. The game is designed around multiple characters and encounters can quickly become a slaughter once you start whittling down the number of characters in it.

Traps can pull characters together. If you design a trap that works only when two or three characters trigger it, the two characters then have to come up with a solution to get out. Maybe one throws a rope up, someone else has to pull the other one up and they start interacting at the table. Then again, maybe one character drop kicks another character into the trap… that’s kind of working together right?

Skill challenges are great because, they require a wide variety of skills and you can adapt them to best match your party. Challenges don’t even have to be very complicated or require a huge setup. You can make it as simple as a Rogue detects a hidden door that he can’t budge open, he is forced to ask the fighter to come over and his his burly muscles to open it. Boom, you got characters working together. And if that wasn’t enough, you could put something behind the door that the other party members have to help with. Maybe there is some sort of arcane trigger behind the door that the party can make out, now they need the wizards help to bypass it. After that, they need the cleric to cast light so they can see in the dark or need the cleric to preach to them about their sins and eternal hellfires. It’s up to you! Whatever you think would work best for your group!

Based off of paragraph size above, I think you can tell what I’m going to include in this opening adventure, and you are correct if your answer was combat, traps or skill challenges. I think they all are important, and can serve to make certain characters feel special about their abilities and class that they choose. D&D is built on a system of strict class features, so it is pretty easy to figure out what would challenge those classes and what they are good at.

The Adventure

So the adventure is going to be in a cave, there will be not-smugglers to fight, there will be traps (maybe old ones from actual smugglers that the new inhabitants have put in) and we will need a few things that will require teamwork to complete.

Now, this is a level 1 adventure. For those who have ran level 1 characters, you know how amazingly squishy level 1 characters are, and for that very reason… I’m not going to include bugbears in this first quest. They deal 11 damage on a hit, and if they surprise you, they deal an additional 7 points of damage. That first 11 damage is enough to drop a d10 class, and if you surprise the barbarian, that’s enough to drop them in the first round. It’s also especially dangerous for our d6 classes, as 11 damage is one point away from permanently killing them in a single hit. We want a challenge for our first adventure, not a blood bath.

So, that leaves us goblins and hobgoblins we can work with. Goblins are always good fodder, and will be the sentries outside the cave. Probably one is curled up sleeping, while two others are gambling and not paying much attention to the outside world.

Further in the cave, we can stock it with hobgoblins and goblins, plus a hidden area with a few traps along the way.

In this opening encounter, the party can (hopefully) sneak up on the goblins outside the cave, and they have a few options. The quest-giver, Captain Malosi, has asked them to clear out the smugglers from the cave, which could mean violence. In this setting, it is assumed that the party will attack like the good little murderhobos they are, and is another way we can set them up to having to work together.

A single character, at level 1, can not take out all the goblins by themselves without one of them running off to alert who ever is inside the cave. This is its own skill challenge, and for most parties shouldn’t be a big problem. So long as someone isn’t screaming at the goblins, the party will get a surprise round and can attack from a distance and stop the three goblins from running away.

Now, I chose three goblins because goblins have 7 hit points. Characters will have things like shortbows or light crossbows or javelins that they can throw at the goblins, and we are looking at an average of 6-7 damage (1d6 average is 3.5, average 16 in the top stat for a +3 modifier) to 7-8 damage (1d8 average is 4.5, average 16 in the top stat for a +3 modifier), of course cantrips will average between 4 to 5 damage (d8 & d10 popular damage die for cantrips), so they lower the curve a bit. That means, a party of 4 can drop three goblins in a single round, with an extra character remaining as backup in case someone rolls a bit low on their damage. This situation requires the party to work together, pick their targets and learn a bit about each other’s weaknesses or strength when it comes to range and sneaking up attacks.

Now, lets talk about ancillary things. What time of day is it when the party comes to attack this cave? I think we are looking at late evening by the time they finally arrive, and dim light or darkness can really cause some good moments for those creatures who lack darkvision… like me. Another thing is that this cave will have to be near the ocean, so then it is actually useful for smugglers. We can include a flow of water that enters into the cave, which makes anyone playing a triton or something excited as they can sneak in through the water.

Traps And Encounters

So, our players have dealt (maybe) with the threat outside, and the goblins have either alerted the cave to them, or the cave is still unaware of the players. Getting through the front entrance, we can introduce one of the old smuggler traps that the players could set off. A simple string trap could be placed over the walking path into the cave that will require someone with a high Perception to spot it. This trap can be largely harmless, as we dont want to kill the party… yet. This string trap will lead to a small bell inside a room not too far from the entrance and will alert our goblinoid friends of intruders. If the party can avoid also setting off that trap, they deserve to be able to sneak in to the cave complex.

After that, our adventurers will fight through a cave complex with hobgoblins and goblins. We should expect them to fight 3 more times against goblinoids, as an ‘adventuring day’ is set up around 5 to 6 encounters. The goblins out front count as 1, plus 3 more in the cave bring us to 4. Our 5th encounter will be something a bit more hidden that the party can stumble on, where some old smugglers hid a few valuables… though its protected by a skeleton or a spirit or something different, just to break up the fights and put something fresh in there for them to fight…. plus, gotta get that treasure hoard!

The last fight against the goblinoids should have something unique going for it, and I think introducing our first special hobgoblin, the Hobgoblin Nanti built a while ago can be the perfect adventure topper. Plus, we can have the fight take place partly on a small goblinoid sloop, the water and on the dry cave floor. This could be an exciting fight, or rather dangerous as the level 1 characters will be attacking a CR 2 creature after already fighting a few times before that. But, we can work with what happens if they fall to this creature as well. They can be tied up, regain consciousness and then must find a way to escape from any still living goblinoids and report to the city of all they found!

Next week, we are going to lay out our cave complex, finish filling in the encounters with a few traps and we will be finished with our first adventure! Then we will be jumping on to the next quest and see where this takes our intrepid adventurers.