Adventure Series: Great Literature into C&C...

Luther · Post by **Luther** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:15 pm

I was flipping through the collected works of Shakespeare when something occured to me. Some of my favourite adventures/games of the past had heavy literary influences. Dungeonland, for AD&D 1e was based on Alice in Wonderland and there was even an adventure for Warhammer called the Tragedy of MacDeath (I'll let you figure out what this was based on) so why not translate other stories into C&C/D&D adventures.

I can think of a few that would be very interesting (I'd particularly like to see and adventure based on the Tempest). What I'd like to see is everyone mucking in and taking the basic storyline from one of the 'classics' and turning it into an adventure outline.

I'll start with 'The Wizard of Oz...'
The Wizard of Od
PREMISE

One of the players is a person from our own Earth (possible themselves)and they are whipped from their home in a magical maelstrom (created by magic, a side effect of a particle physics experiment like the LHC, or the Wizard himself, who needs a mortal from another realm to fight the Wicked One) and dumped in the Land of Od.

Upon landing in the middle of a halfling village, they accidentally kill the Wicked One of the East and the Angel of Od gives them a pair of Magical Boots that invests them with the powers of a Level 1 Cleric. The player then embarks on a mission to find the Wizard of Od and a way back home.
ADVENTURE BASICS
The PC has three 'mini-adventures' in which he faces three challenges and picks up three travelling companions with different reasons to see the Great Od: a none to bright (INT 9) wizard who wants a to raise his mental abilities; a ranger who has lost the heart to fight the evil in the woods due to the Wicked of the West turning his fair maiden into a tin statue; and a scout who is AWOL from the Grand Army of Od due to cowardice who reluctantly shows the party a shortcut through a heavily bandit and monster infested section of the road they must travel.
Once they get to Od, the wizard sends them to destroy the Wicked of the West, in her lair, a tower perched on top of a small mountain. Engineering Dungeons and the new Towers of Adventure set would be very useful here to design the Wicked's Mega-Dungeon, which the PCs enter at the base of the mountain through a secret entrance and work their way up to the top of the tower to confront the Wicked herself.
SPECIAL MONSTERS/ADVERSARIES

Intelligent Crows (attacking the raggedy wizard)

Briar Children (infesting the ranger's forest)

Bandits, Cunning Traps and Vermin (in the tunnel bypassing the road)

Jitterbugs, Owlbears, and other assorted wandering monsters

Flying Monkeys (attack the party as they near the mountain)

Goblins, Hobgoblins, bizarre traps and other assorted dungeon encounters.

The Personal Guard of the Wicked (Oh-we-oh! We-oh-Oh!)

The Wicked of the West (Lvl 12 Wizard)

Taranthyll · Post by **Taranthyll** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:29 pm

Believe it or not, I've actually done a Wizard of Oz - inspired campaign, with flying monkeys and the whole bit.

I found that it was important to base the campaign only loosely on the story - once the players twig to it, it becomes kind of a parody.

Luther · Post by **Luther** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:56 pm

Granted, and then there's the Dungeonland example of going a bit too far (where everything attempts to kill you).

In the case of The Wizard of Od I've provided some D&D-esque twists on some of the main story concepts (the four party members are the basic fighter,cleric,wizard,thief setup, with similar reasons and setups to the original characters) and placed a large dungeon crawl as the main setpiece.

That's the sort of thing I'd like to see folks aspire to in this thread. So pick a favourite story and let's see what you come up with...

Deogolf · Post by **Deogolf** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:57 pm

I'm sure that it is a common source for ideas. I know it was for me when I was working on Wheat Hollow: The Harvesters - a little bit here, a little bit there. I doubt most would recognize it though - I got them from some somewhat obscure children's stories from the 20's and 30's.

Heck, even Gary pulled things from other stories (as you mentioned before) - EX1 & 2, Isle of the Ape. Some really good stuff, though!
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Taranthyll · Post by **Taranthyll** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:07 pm

Okay, how about an adventure based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

A missionary priest, bringing the word of [insert God here] to savage tribes inhabiting the wildlands of your campaign setting, has gone missing. His reports back to the church were becoming increasingly sporadic and cryptic, and then ceased altogether.

The church hires the PCs to lead an expedition to find the missionary and bring him home. The story works best if the missionary in question is a friend of the PCs - perhaps he has done favours for them in the past, such as providing free healing when they needed it.

Part I: Into the Wildlands

The PCs must organize an expedition into the heart of the unexplored wilderness. The journey is long and arduous and one by one, expedition members are killed by hostile natives, savage beasts, and illness. Finally, the PCs who are now alone, hopelessly lost, and low on supplies, are captured by a tribe of natives who bring them to their village. Much to their shock the leader of the tribe is none other than the subject of their quest - the missing missionary.

Part II: Staring into the Abyss

The missionary seems happy to see his old friends and directs the village to hold a feast in their honour. As the days pass and the PCs recover from their ordeal they realize that all is not well with their friend. He appears to revel in his command over the native tribesmen, which seems out of character for the usually mild-mannered priest. Captured enemies from rival tribes are subjected to brutal treatment, and even sacrifice, and close observation of the priest leads the PCs to realize that he has not converted the natives to his religion; they have converted him to theirs - and a dark, terrible religion it is. The priest's apostasy is unsettling to the PCs, and their investigations into the nature of the cult eventually change their status from favoured guests to potentially dangerous outsiders, and the suspicion and hostility of the tribesmen increases. The PCs investigations in the discover that the priest is an utterly mad megalomaniac who is planning ritual to summon a horror from beyond time and space (because no adventure is complete without a little Lovecraft) that, in his madness, he believes he will be able to use to make him the undisputed ruler of all the Wildlands, which he will then make over into his perfect Utopia.

Part III: Endgame

This is the climax of the adventure, in which, the PCs must find a way to prevent the ritual from being completed, defeat the insane priest and his followers, then escape and make their way back to civilization.

Luther · Post by **Luther** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:19 pm

Cool! I like that one alot!

I was actually going to do something similar (Apocolypse Now) for Dark Heresy. But it works just as well here.

I'd throw an underground temple the PCs have to infiltrate to find the truth and stop the summoning...

serleran · Post by **serleran** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:18 pm

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas makes a wonderfully inspired story about an illusionist gone haywire... or something.

I find folklore tales, like stuff by the Grimms, to be better suited to the task. Or, Edgar Allen Poe.

Luther · Post by **Luther** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:36 pm

serleran wrote:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas makes a wonderfully inspired story about an illusionist gone haywire... or something.

That would make for an extremely strange adventure. Care to share the details/lay out the framework?

Quote:
I find folklore tales, like stuff by the Grimms, to be better suited to the task. Or, Edgar Allen Poe.

Actually, I've always seen these as 'encounter' mines, where the parts are very useful as individual encounters or wandering monster results in other stories.

As an example, take the Billy Goats Gruff. Leave out the goats (or have their remains strewn about the river) and you've got a great encounter with an unusually intelligent troll under a bridge who demands a toll from folks trying to cross. A party of 1st level adventurers will find the thought of fighting the troll daunting and will have to come up with some other way of bypassing it...

Aladar · Post by **Aladar** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 2:35 pm

Dante's Inferno!
I have the old JG module laying around that I ran a couple of groups through back in the day. Very high attrition rate for the players
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Luther · Post by **Luther** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:32 pm

Aladar wrote:
Dante's Inferno! I have the old JG module laying around that I ran a couple of groups through back in the day. Very high attrition rate for the players

I would love to see that. Better than that though, I'd love to see a modern updated version with the full 9 circles.

Maybe you could do that and share it with us...?

voynich · Post by **voynich** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:35 pm

the original author of the inferno product released by judges guild has a full manuscript, including all nine circles, which was going to be published using 3.5 dungeons and dragons. now, it is unknown what will happen to it. according to posts by that author, it is greatly expanded and detailed.
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Aladar · Post by **Aladar** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:22 pm

That would be great, if it were to be released I would definately buy a copy.
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