I am lucky to have such a great group of role-players at the table with me. From moment one of this campaign, we have had great interactions and roleplaying. From characters meeting each other and convincing Rajot to let them join the Slayer’s Take, to meeting all my various shopkeepers around Asarius, to digging into their Anamnesis stories.
This week, however, was their first time taking on a quest line that was more than go to a place and kill a monster. I wanted to introduce a small mystery, keep them in the urban setting a bit more, talking to people instead of navigating wilderness. They had avoided the two contracts that would have been more social challenges last week. Not a lot of the group took social skills, but I wanted to give those who did a chance to shine. I also wanted to introduce some of the trouble brewing in the lands.
One of the folk had a terrible time with rolls, but got to hang out with his little brother for some fun. Another group got to meet an interesting herbalist and find a new mentor. The third group took a good path, rolled really well, and followed the trail through to the end. The trouble was poison candy, and he decided to go talk to healers to find out if they had seen any ill children, other than the one they party knew about. He was able to follow the line of poison treats to the right part of town, and then bribe some children for more information.
This led him to the location of the Candy Man, where he paid the fortune teller on the corner for a “reading of the bones” for this man/gnoll’s future. He chose a medium price point of her services, and so she gave him information about his weekend street preaching in the area, and a collection of his leaflets. Had he paid a bit more, she might have told him that he lived up in a different part of town, but the bones only “know” so much. This led to successful finding and capturing of this cultist. Mission done.
There’s a lot of talk about making sure that if your party Needs to know a thing, that you don’t put it behind a roll. For instance, if our bard had not rolled so ridiculously high, could he still have gotten enough information to solve the case? To combat this, I tried to drop a variety of clues with the initial contact with the poisoned (goblin) child. So, if their initial lines of investigations had failed, there may have been other avenues to pursue, including going to talk to that same child again. The one that had trouble with his investigation rolls, I left with folk very willing to keep their ears open for information at a later date, so that could have come round in the next few days to give them another tip, had they needed it. And all the people they did talk to, had a variety of information, based on the rolls. The base, so long as it wasn’t a failure, was enough to move them to the next step. I also gave them both investigation and persuasion rolls to help – if one was bad, the other might be good.
All in all, I think a successful foray into more traditional mystery questing. Next up, is inviting them to head north and into the Netherdeep module. Already primed to be suspicious of visions and whispers.