I’m about to start the final Council Meeting and the run up to the Timat fight. As part of that I’m going to start writing short summary arcs for the players to play.
Each arc should have around 30 minutes to an hour of content with mostly social interactions (& occasional combat) each story should be given as a campfire starting.
So the players are camped up around a fire talking about their adventure together and one says do you remember this;
There should be a quick summary of what happened and then give the players control over the story to “talk about what happened”
Here’s the missing arcs of the story.
Story threads I don’t think we’ve resolved:
- all of Hawthorne’s love interests
- (Ray, a girl that is from the Roadhouse. She’s the I can fix her type. She’s a cultist that only slightly bought into the propaganda, she will replace the cultist in Xonthals tower)
- (Verith, a doppelgänger that is from Lost mines of Phandelver, they had a fling with this party member but now works for the other 2 members thieves guild)
- the maths puzzle at the University (The Arcane Brotherhood, Sea of moving ice. I made the school like the College of Winterhold)
- Lord Neverember’s reaction to our blatant overspend (the players spent 000’s of gold on the councils credit card)
- Tim’s general goods (a merchant that the party is favourable with that gives them good discounts. They have been preparing for the upcoming fight by stacking magical items that might help)
- that wizard that owes Snapping gold? (The polymorphed sheep one shot where the apprentice turned their master into a sheep and they lied about their wealth so the party beat him up and demanded that he pay the party back the money they were owed)
- the Merrick twins bounty (two party members run a thieves guild that polymorph as a dead party member and blame them for the crimes that they commit)
- Nyx’s parentage, but we never really got into that backstory so it can be a mystery
- what’s the latest with the beholder in the shady bar (the yawning portal)
- the orphanage in Phandalin, the party helped fund an orphanage that was built over the ruins of the old manor
- the party stole the wages of the mining company (4 months ago)
- the party held democratic votes for a new mayor of Phandalin, the old one was pushed out through the players shape changing into them and embarrassing them.
For the first one shot
We need to plan out around 2 hours of content.
I think that we should storyboard.
Tim’s General Goods, The magic puzzle & Lord Neverembers Overreaction
I think the story breakdown should be:
- Scene set, we are on the eve of the battle against the cult of the dragon (the story isn’t there yet as they have the final council meeting to go to) but I want this to be a reflection so it makes sense for all the characters to be here. Also reminiscing about the past sitting around a fire makes so much sense. It would be all the major faction leaders/main characters sitting around a fire after a day of planning. Focus on the calm beauty despite what is going to happen tomorrow.
- They are all sitting around the campfire, admiring their new gear, give the players a chance to describe what they got from Tim’s and what it cost them.
- Then jump into the scene allowing for a mini shopping montage of what this small town (Waterdeep) trader has been able to stock up when they have been almost doomsday prepping for killing dragons.
- We return to the camp fire, the players laughing at how Nyx looked like she was going to die on the spot at the prices.
- Lady Silmerhelve would pick up with talking about the strange equation that popped up at the college and it’s links to the spell plague and potentially some strange abjuration magic that they can’t quite figure out
- Jump to giving the players a bunch of mages to play around with. What are they doing with this magic? how does it link to the main story?
- Have it end with some dramatic turn of events and cut back to the campfire
- Then hopefully as a final funny endstone, the session should end with Lady Silmerhelve laughing about how different the party looks when they are not dressed up in the fanciest of winter gear (of which Lord Neverember starts spitting feathers after realising that’s what the party spend all that money on (invent what he thought they spent it on)