My trickiest scenario ever

From: hcarteau_at_k8lJ03h8mY9-UjWgoFNpZjzq7XabeHV7O0K27JZj53FuU1O-f00EuYlCE6l_8L9h0Xy
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:39:30 +0200


On saturday, my players went to the Temple to all Tricksters in Thanor, off the coast of Wenelia, to claim an important item for Fay Jee's future. And they were drawn (kicking and protesting) in the Contest of Fools, a scenario beautifully written by the esteemable Ian Thomson in "Shadows over Pavis".

It was a success. I spent the afternoon in full-bore loony tune mode, using different voices (game show host, whining underling, crazy repeater etc.) I could see the players very surprised at first, then the first smiles, then laughter, and they got into it pretty quickly, such as my 18-years old daugther doing her incredible "mindless bimbo" act in the seduction trial. But the best was the Jester trial.

In Ian's original version, the PCs have to entertain a bad-humored crowd of hungry trolls. In mine, they realized they had to entertain a bunch of bad-humored... rokari thugs. Rokari are a long-time recurring ennemy in our campaign. You should have seen their faces when they overheard "By Saint Rokar, send in the next victims, I mean act, hur hur". Priceless.

It gets better : they had planned a Moliere-style little play in which the rich merchant is ridiculed by the poor but clever valet (à la Scapin). But knowing what they did about the rokari, they changed their act and dressed up the dronar as a horal, then a talar, only to have her miserably fail at swinging a sword or counting coins. It was so inspired I gave them +10, and they passed.

And that was only one of the many good moments of this afternoon. So I advise those of you GMs who haven't dared a trickster scenario yet to go for it. Be warned it's completely draining, much more than a "regular" scenario. I couldn't keep it up more than 5 hours.            

Powered by hypermail