Timed Con Adventure Mechanics/Brainstorming

[Blutimate]

Hey all,

I'd like your thoughts on a few ideas/ potential mechanics for a con adventure I'm cooking up.

I had an idea that won't leave me for a con adventure. I'd like to start writing it up and I have about 3 months to craft and play test it before trying it out at OwlCon. I have been reading a ton of adventure modules and I'm trying to create a setting where the players are effectively looting a partly-evacuated area that has a built-in "live" time limit, a lot like the mechanic in #82, The Bride of the Black Manse module.

So, my ideas are:

- a flooded area like the Deep Carbon Observatory that is still flooding, forcing the PCs to make choices about the area in which they will explore.

- a zone that causes exponential harm the longer you stay (so, if they are not out in 4 hours, they won't make it out), like radiation or the like.

- a zone with a massive hoard imminently invading/returning (so, orcs due in about 4 hours, perhaps delayed by some magical trickery crafted by one of the pc contacts or the returning army of Hooja the Sly One from Pellucidar)

- or a zone that has something catastrophic coming (like a comet hitting a planet/ portal closing/ Deity bringing down apocalypse)

My objective is to create a setting that has about 12 potential encounters but only about 3-4 that the players can realistically do in the time slot. Just like Carbon, I'd like this to mean that the players will miss out on certain events/locations and effectively feel rushed like in the Black Manse.

I feel like peppering this kind of module with things the players would want to loot, but am struggling a little with how best to have the story make sense. Everything truly valuable would likely have been taken. I could try to link in elements like a lost vault, something (or someone) left (intentionally or otherwise), or a person effectively refusing to evacuate without their prized possessions, but not everything should fall into these categories.

I recognize this will be a challenging module to write, but I believe I'm up for it. I'd like to school my players in conducting cost-benefit analyses on the fly and force them to make hard decisions in a small time frame. I'd like every avenue they take to be memorable in its own way.

Any feedback would be welcome.

David Rose

P.S.-To clarify, I only want the characters to have 3-4 encounters (combats, exploration, role playing) during the module. I believe that any more would add a significant amount of time to the typical 4 hour time slot.

So, just for an example, say a catastrophic plague had fallen on a town and a group of wizards were going to teleport the town into the center of the sun in 4 hours. Since they are focused on this difficult spell and it will not start working until they have completed, some adventurers decide to reenter the city to get some possessions/items that other townfolk have paid them for and maybe some for themselves.

They can fetch the relic of Sir Plourde the Mighty, a chain coif blessed by the gods of Law.
They can check on the prisoners (including an incarcerated foreign dignitary) held in an oubliette. underneath the town's inner keep, a motte and bailey that was manned by a small detachment of guards.
They can go to the graveyard and dig up the coffins of two of the town lords to preserve the remains, in their well-stocked mausoleums.
They can check on the welfare of some lost family members, possibly still unaffected and alive.
They can raid Lohse the Wise's wizard supply store/house (a simple 2 room area).
They can raid the lair of Gruff Hawkins, a local thug who held camp in a cave under a seedy tavern.

Of course, it won't be as simple as walk there, complete task. The spell will certainly start having some effects before the wizards are finished and most of the folk that did not die from plague have been... changed... and no, zombies is too easy. The encounters will all require some problem solving, rushed scheming, and combat (preferably 2 combats).

[catseye yellow]

i had this idea for lotfp adventure contest that PCs are on a rescue/exploration mission in the ancient vampire town. so they have daylight hours to finish the task (find the missing child/grab the loot). i wanted to come with a mechanic that would advance the clock dependent on their in-game a actions. like as if time they've got is HPs and each setback/obstacle is a successful hit that diminishes their remaining time. once sun sets vampires come out and they have to run for their lives.

[Blutimate]

Catseye Yellow,

That sounds totally cool! I hope you got something for the trouble of writing that adventure.

Some of the concepts for your style of adventure are the mainstay of a good Shadowrun job - timed with the threat of discovery increasing by the minute (runners hit a building with a handful of graveyard shift security guards in an office that will get full of corporate workers in the morning).

I like the idea of the countdown being tied to their actions; although, I'm not sure if you read the Manse or not, but it is real-time- things change during every hour of real time. For the convention, I think this is the trick.

I think that your adventure could be modified for this. Perhaps there are different types of monsters that start waking up before the sun is fully set, hiding in the shadows. Don't worry, I will stick to my own ideas, but I hope you continue to use that idea in adventures that you put on for an assortment of venues.

David Rose