Homebrew - Festival Games Pt. 2
After I finished up the first part of Festival Games, I realized that I had just created events specifically towards physical skill and prowess. While most characters at least have some Strength or Dexterity, there are plenty who would rather use the powers of their mind to help them earn prizes at a festival. From guessing games to a battle of words, there are plenty of events that rely solely on the mental acuity of the character, allowing them to excel where others would falter.
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Festival Games!
This second part of the festival games provides an additional 7 mini-games to engage your players and give the wizard a chance to earn some prizes. Each skill has a mini-game that they can participate in, though many skills can be used for the same mini-game as the event in question could be approached from multiple ways of thinking. A character that is well-rounded will have an easier time at many of the games because they have multiple skills that they could use to help them earn some fancy prizes.
Our seven games here are Corn Maze, Guessing Game, Husbandry, Lie to Me, Riddlemaster, Shell Game, and Talent Show. These games are a bit more low-key and several may take multiple days before the winner is announced. Games like the Corn Maze, don’t even typically have a prize but rather the experience of navigating the maze is the prize. Similar to how the real treasure are the friends we make along the way, the joy of getting lost are the real prizes we earn along the way. I do offer up how you can use a Corn Maze in an event, like if you are doing races or maybe even a dungeon - but most festivals probably don’t have blast-ended skrewts that village commoners must fight off to get through it. Then again, wouldn’t that make things a bit more exciting?
Things like Husbandry, though, are based on a character’s ability to best judge animals and they are free to make multiple guesses and attempts. This may take just a few minutes to a few hours as they slowly move through the pens of beasts, talking with the owners, and judging each beast’s abilities. They then make their check and only at the end of the festival (or the second to last day, or the like); they learn if their guess was good enough to earn them a prize. The tricky thing about this game is that there is no set DC, but instead, the GM rolls a d100 and divides that result by 4. For example, if the GM rolls a 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything), the DC would be 10.5 (rounded down to just 10). Anyone who rolled their check and had at least a 10 or higher would then earn a Minor Prize, if they had 5 over it (15+), they earn a Moderate Prize as more of their guesses were correct for the animals, and if they roll 10 over it (20+), they earn a Great Prize as their guesses for best animals is spot on. The d100 roll acts as the quality of animals and how hard it is to judge who is the best animal by far. If the GM rolls a 1 on the d100, then that simply means it is obvious to all that there is only one or only a couple of beasts that will win all of the best in show prizes available while a 100 on the d100 means that it is very hard as all the animals are fairly equal in quality.
Talent Show is another game that can take multiple days before the contestant knows the results. This event doesn’t have a set DC, though most medium-sized festivals will be set at DC 13 with higher DCs if the GM has a specific NPC that is a strong contender. This event only features a single skill check, but this gives the players a chance to think about their characters and what weird talents they might have. It could be a good singing voice, juggling weird objects, doing a comedy routine, and so much more. Once they decide on their performance, they then make their skill check and then wait hours or days until the rest of the participants have performed. If they rolled at least as high as the DC for the festival, in this example 13, they earn a Minor Prize for putting on a good show and entertaining the crowd. If they roll 5 or higher (18+), they earn a Moderate Prize, and if they rolled 10 or higher (23+) they earn a Great Prize as they win the competition. If multiple contestants (read: characters) roll 10+ over the DC, the one who rolled the total highest wins the Great Prize and the other wins a Moderate Prize.
Prizes!
More and more prizes! Like last time, there are three categories of prizes to win; Minor, Moderate, and Great Prizes. Each prize is based on how well you do in the competition with regular commoners, including children, expected to win multiple Minor Prizes and only a single Moderate Prize for the entirety of the festival. Only 1 or 2 Great Prizes are ever expected to be earned from a single festival, though adventurers always seem to turn such expectations on their head.
A Minor Prize is roughly equal to 5 cp to 1 sp and is more about winning a prize than earning a really good prize. These simple prizes keep people interested in the festival, offering free food, drinks, or chances to win free prizes. Moderate Prizes are more expensive, about 2 sp to 5 sp, and are things that are pretty exciting for many to earn as it could mean free food for a day or oversized and comical prizes that someone can place in their home and remember the fun of the festival. Great Prizes are rare and hard to come by with no real cap on how much they cost. These are typically with the festival for years and years before being won and can be used in advertisements to draw people’s attention to the festival and encourage them to go and try to win it. Minor magically-enchanted prizes that, while not always super useful, are at least interesting and fun.
Of course, the characters shouldn’t be the only ones to win prizes. To keep excitement up at the table, and encourage players to participate in the festival, if their character wins a prize they can also win a prize in real life. Of course, you probably don’t have any magical daggers just lying around, but you can bring different candy to the table. Or perhaps candy isn’t your thing, in which case you could buy extra dice or minis, handing those out as prizes to the players based on how well their characters are at the games.
Closing Ceremony
Every festival has to end, and the fun can’t last forever. Perhaps the festival goes off without a hitch and no animated scarecrows suddenly come alive and begin sacrificing commoners to gods of harvest and prosperity. Then again, what’s a fall festival without a bit of criminal activity attempting to cheat at the games and win prizes they haven’t earned? Luckily for the festival, a party of potentially well-trained and organized adventuring parties are there just in case a witch attempts to animate a large wicker man and send it careening through the festival grounds.
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