The sorcerer and bard were adamant they deserved a day on the beach. Even the somewhat workaholic cleric of Kord went along as they had been pounded by a clay golem and had a bunch of cursed wounds to deal with.
The practical challenge for me was to set up for this downtime session while being flexible over where they could end up as the wonders of teleport were now theirs to command so which beach they went to could vary for the whole coast. Their intention was to go for a day and be back to sleep. As a DM that meant how to prep enough to support this chill-out downtime session without over-preparing some place that was unlikely to be returned to.
Powerpoint-filter-fuzzed beach photo
Prepping the beach session
So I figured my approach was to prepare an overlay of activities that could then be dropped on top of wherever they went to.
Thus
1. plan out the session in broad strokes that could be tailored to location
2. sweep up known aspects and differences in the southern cities they could go to
1. I started off with the five-room dungeon as a framework to hang the whole thing off - in the absence of anything else it gets me from zero to something - guardian, RP/NPC, puzzle, boss fight, treasure/revelation
Not being super familiar with the genre I did a quick scan of TVtropes for what the kids mean by Beach Episode then threw some things together - a sea monster, information on the coastal dregs of the conspiracy they crushed early in the campaign, finding suitable overnight accomodation.
I figured an actual beach location was worth working up along with a little thought on food and the tempo of the day.
I ended up with a couple of half-formed scenes in mind, nothing overly elaborate but some ideas that were different to the snowy northlands they had been spending most of their time in.
2. I was able to restrict choices by zero-ing in on what places they already knew and thus would be able to teleport to.
I had a dig through the character back-stories to figure out what might be there - the bard's tied most brightly to the coast - they had once lived in one of the cities, with some distant relatives, before fleeing in self-perceived disgrace after a failed performance. From that I could pull out - the cousins, their house, the locations they had performed at, and the bards old troupe.
A scrub through the family tree found a pair of relatives from that general region and a check of the colour of the draconic bloodlines for the rulers gave me some more ideas of the character of the various cities.
Looking at how this got worked up with my single page session prep workflow; I expanded out the 'step 4 - detail hooks' a lot with all this information on the southern cities, their nature and who is from where. The 'step 2 - carry-over hooks' was shrunken because it was only going to be those things that were interacted with on their way out the door.
Running the session.
There was a some wind down from the previous session; tidying up slain enemies, saving mortally wounded minions, and generally making safe the unholy artefacts they had wrested from the ruins - perhaps a half an hour of 'denoument' from the previous session.
Next after a long sleep people woke, breakfasted, briefed senior members of the noble house what they had done yesterday and were given their blessing to go recuperate for a bit - another half an hour shaking themselves free of their normal obligations, packing provisions and deciding who of their entourage got the last 'slot' in the teleport spell to come with them.
Then they set out, teleporting to the house of a relative that the sorcerer had visited in the city the bard had spent time with. After handing off mail and borrowing a coach and a guide they set off for the beach.
And then sat on the beach.
The cleric lay under an umbrella and periodically threw healing spells at herself, rolling to overcome the substantial difficulty to heal the cursed golem wounds.
The sorcer and bard lolled about in the sand and sea with their hanger-on, the bards old 'wild times' companion, now turned artificer and tomb-diver, maker of the sorcerers homunculus body.
We used the "Ultimate RPG Campfire Deck" for that time spent idly chatting, suggested by the players themselves.
After that tough morning they all had a siesta and finished off the snacks they had brought with them. Then a swim and a wander over to a nearby barbeque shack before finally taking the coach back to the city.
Dinner at a bar/restaurant/shisha place was followed by venturing over to the local theater - an old elven amphitheater still in use. The bards old troupe were putting on a very melodramatic tragedy, something like Macbeth but with more scenery-chewing melodrama. After watching her old troupe and not being so impressed, the bard, with the magical support of the sorcerer took the stage for the next performance slot and ran through their well practice retelling of the saga of the last quest of their grandfather the duke, of questing to a mystical plateau, finding a lost city and venturing into the forgotten temple of Amman to gain his blessing. Excellent performance rolls brought the house down.
They retired back across the road to the bar in glory and held court there, only the sorcerer was open to any approaches so I rolled up some random interested parties, both of whom then utterly failed charisma checks to be interesting enough to maintain any connection beyond the night. Altogether they continued until the small hours of the morning when the sorcerer teleported them all home once more.
Lessons Learned
From a DMs point of view this was me taking my foot of the gas almost completely for the session and letting the players drive the action, which was 'swim' and 'sunbathe' and 'chat amongst ourselves mostly' - fine with me and they all enjoyed the welcome break for their characters after a couple of sessions of hard slog through jungles and demon-infested temples.
My suggestion to run a beach ep is to almost 'let the boredom happen' during that beach day, where normally one might have 'suddenly...' encounters and events, substitute with descriptions of how idyllic the weather is and sensory perceptions of the sun, sea and sand. If the players themselves do not fill the time with things they want to do, just let the clock spin past and maybe the day passes without much actually happening - which is fine! A good carousing table to hand to close out the day is no harm either.
No comments:
Post a Comment