This relatively simple adventure will likely cover only one or two gaming sessions, and can be used to introduce you and your friends to the game. Important features include the introduction of an important city (Crosspoint), and an introduction to the horrors waiting to crawl up from the underground.
This adventure is designed for two to six characters of first level. (When RPG adventures say “for x characters”, they always mean “player characters”. They aren’t counting the Adventure Guide.) At least one of the characters must be from Crosspoint, all of the characters must be in Crosspoint, and they must know each other enough to band together when the opportunity arises.
- Players’ Background
- One of the player characters’ uncles has inherited a house from a less fortunate cousin who died of a rabid dog attack on the waterfront (the dog was found with the body and was put down). The uncle would like to clean the house and repair it enough to sell. He has no use for a house on the waterfront. He is willing to pay twenty shillings (total; the characters can decide how to split the money) to his nephew to hire people to do it. This is a…
- Guide’s Background
- A part of the underground has broken through to the basement of the house. Through it, an Oruat (or two) and a giant cucumber escaped. The cucumber may or may not be dead, depending on your needs.
- The Adventure
- The adventure will mostly consist of trying to track down why the doors and shutters keep opening, and why the basement door is stuck, and finally confronting the Oruat either in the basement or perhaps in the upstairs room. This adventure involves only one real variable for you to keep track of: the Oruat. There are few secrets in this house, and no dungeons filled with a multitude of strange creatures. You can add as many variables as you feel…
- The Upstairs
- No description available
- The Basement
- No description available
- A Glimpse of the Underground
- You crawl down the crevasse ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet, until you come to a wide opening in the earth. The ground is cracked and crushed in a line directly beneath your feet, as if God had taken the two sides in hand and smashed them together. There is a large pile of something wiry just outside of your light. Rocky outcroppings and overhangs make your light cast flickering shadows on the walls.
- The Wrap-Up
- The characters now probably know that there are things that live below. Perhaps they’ll want to try and explore further; you may decide that there are more intelligent creatures of the underground who occasionally travel above ground. Or perhaps there is an older city beneath the city of Crosspoint, and something must be retrieved.
- Plot Thickeners
- It’s a good idea to keep situations fairly simple. The players will complicate things all on their own. Role-playing games are a lot like stories with four or five or more main characters. However, if you wish to add complications to the adventure, you might find it fruitful to give the uncle some nefarious connections, or to make the uncle innocent but not his cousin. Perhaps his cousin’s money ran out, and he opened his home to unscrupulous…
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