5rd for travelling

[BahneGorkDK]

So i have been wracking my brain at using the 5rd format as a non-dungeon, like travelling.
I have an upcomming session that will begin with the heroes starting a journey from point A to point B and i have been thinking about how to structure the session around this travel with 5rd.

The current "setting" is red hand of doom mixed with other stuff, they will be travelling from the evacuated town that has been hit as the very first, towards a town that is not on the hordes marching route. After that town they plan to travel to the secret hatchery (rhest for those who know RHOD). I have the following encounters basically read: death squad (ambush), looting bandits, attacked wagon of gold, roaming enemy soldiers.

now i suppose i can use these as my rooms, roaming soldiers as the guardian, wagon of gold as puzzle (moral dilemma) should we take the gold for ourselves or make sure it got where it was going, ambush as trick in room 3 and the town is maybe under assault of two or three manticores as room4. Information about the "rhest" site as room5

but it feels lacking to me, how would you design one or more 5rd as travels ?

 

[ExileInParadise]

So i have been wracking my brain at using the 5rd format as a non-dungeon, like travelling. I have an upcomming session that will begin with the heroes starting a journey from point A to point B and i have been thinking about how to structure the session around this travel with 5rd.

Thinking out loud here:
It doesn't *have* to be 5 exact rooms or encounters.

What you have is a recipe for making sure you have a variety of encounters that can also logically hang together.

Now how to apply that to a travelling session.

Going from Point A to Point B maps easily to 5RD - Point A is room 1. Point B is room 5.

40% done before you even start!

"Room" 1: Entrance or Guardian - the start of the journey has an immediate obstacle that makes the outcome of the trip uncertain at all.
Who wants the trip to fail?
Why do they want that?
What do they stand to gain by stopping the trip?

"Room" 2: Puzzle or Roleplay challenge - an obstacle *during* the trip that can only be solved through interpersonal interaction or by logically solving a puzzle to unlock the ability to continue the journey... could be as simple as confusing directions at a fork in the road and a suspect map...

"Room" 3: Trick or Setback - an obstacle that delays, distracts, or depletes the party threatening to derail the trip and make it unsuccessful.

"Room" 4: Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
This is the main obstacle to overcome preventing a successful trip.
Defeating this obstacle assures the trip ends.

"Room" 5: Reward and Treasure
This is the reward - successful trip - job well done - and oh yeah - this other clue puts those obstacles DURING the trip in a new light that happens to open the way to another adventure - such as finding out who the death squad and front man really work for...

So, you've got ideas for:
Looting bandits could be 1 - something that puts the party onto the trip - attacked wagon of gold might be tied to this too?
Roaming enemy soldiers could be room 2 - give them party ways to "pass" these soldiers without combat - can they talk their way around?
This could be one of those tense "passing customs checkpoint" sort of encounter.
Death Squad (ambush) - that sounds Room 3 to me - probably 3 - someone is out to stop the party and this is their big play - before you meet them for real.
Room 4 is probably where you find who sent the death squad - or their lieutenant, advance man, etc.

 

[BahneGorkDK]

Thinking out loud here:
It doesn't *have* to be 5 exact rooms or encounters.

What you have is a recipe for making sure you have a variety of encounters that can also logically hang together.

Now how to apply that to a travelling session.

Going from Point A to Point B maps easily to 5RD - Point A is room 1. Point B is room 5.

40% done before you even start!

"Room" 1: Entrance or Guardian - the start of the journey has an immediate obstacle that makes the outcome of the trip uncertain at all.
Who wants the trip to fail?
Why do they want that?
What do they stand to gain by stopping the trip?

"Room" 2: Puzzle or Roleplay challenge - an obstacle *during* the trip that can only be solved through interpersonal interaction or by logically solving a puzzle to unlock the ability to continue the journey... could be as simple as confusing directions at a fork in the road and a suspect map...

"Room" 3: Trick or Setback - an obstacle that delays, distracts, or depletes the party threatening to derail the trip and make it unsuccessful.

"Room" 4: Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
This is the main obstacle to overcome preventing a successful trip.
Defeating this obstacle assures the trip ends.

"Room" 5: Reward and Treasure
This is the reward - successful trip - job well done - and oh yeah - this other clue puts those obstacles DURING the trip in a new light that happens to open the way to another adventure - such as finding out who the death squad and front man really work for...

So, you've got ideas for:
Looting bandits could be 1 - something that puts the party onto the trip - attacked wagon of gold might be tied to this too?
Roaming enemy soldiers could be room 2 - give them party ways to "pass" these soldiers without combat - can they talk their way around?
This could be one of those tense "passing customs checkpoint" sort of encounter.
Death Squad (ambush) - that sounds Room 3 to me - probably 3 - someone is out to stop the party and this is their big play - before you meet them for real.
Room 4 is probably where you find who sent the death squad - or their lieutenant, advance man, etc.

your room 4 comment makes me think that the goblin warchief at Rhest, the next stop, might actually know about them and have laid out strategems to interfere with them before they ever reach his secret hatchery. So a lieutenant could be room 4. Also even better, i had plans of having them find 1 part of a sending stone set in the loot from last session. If they pick it up, the warchief at rhest will send a message to whom he believes is one of his goons but is now one of the heroes. If nobody answers, something is up, if someone answers and fails deception, something is up. He has access to a hag coven who live nearby his base, the heroes are also wanting to seek them out. So he could easily spy on them thro the hags or by hag agents or tools.

 

[BahneGorkDK]

They have just saved and released roughly 20 civilians from an occupying detachment of the red hand army and ambush a secret weapons transport. The secret weapon they found, was 2 drakelike creatures that can spit acid. They plan on going west, to the town close to the ruins of castle blackspear where they have intel telling them a warchief saarvith, a secret weapon hatchery, a coven of hags, a barons child, a young noble woman they are looking for are all located.

Room 1:
The civilians are trying to convince them to take them all to a knight order's keep, it is in the opposite direction roughly 10-11 days of normal travel, escorting 20 civilians? more like 15 days? 20?

Thats a sort of guardian.

However, if the villagers succeed in convincing the heroes to do this I should have a different 5rd for that?

Room 2:
I have fey connections to the story and the warlock has an archfey patron, so a puzzle or obstacle could be a tricky fey transporting them to the feywild to do something for it and only when satisfied will it send them back?

I have a few reasons for wanting to throw a feywild sidetrek in there.
1: i wanna show them somehow that travelling in the fey can actually work like time travel
2: I have an idea for a fey adventure that ties alittle into some of the things thats been going on
3: they could potentially use the fey as a short cut, travel but not loose the regular amount of days (but i want them to get this idea on their own, hence showing them the time travelling aspect of feywild).
4: The goblin army has warlocks, they have made deals with a fomorian hag. This fomorian hag is also the patron of the hag coven. So this all ties together in 2 things. The fomorian hag wants to weaken a seal on a an entrance to an Eladrian city/fortress/vault and she wants to find a way to release an ancient entity "the hag queen". So there's more fey things going on here in the background. The goblin warlocks has caused nature corruption in the mortal realm and this corruption has taken root in the "heart of the forest" on the feywild side. This is an idea for a feywild quest that could reward them a shortcut to the hag coven near castle blackspear.

Room 3:
The ambush from RHOD.
Some goblins and ogres are seemingly beating and tormenting some poor human farmers. (the farmers are already dead, its a trap).
If the heroes take the bait and charge in, the death squad falls in from behind and tries to kill the heroes.
I have already foreshadowed the death squad to the players (not the characters) in a cutscene where we see the red hand general talk about this. So this will not be a complete surprise and will maybe bring that cutscene back to mind.

Room 4:
Getting to the town Delios.
While the Ambush is prolly gonna be a pickle, if they deal with it from a longrest i think it will be hard difficulty max. So a deadly climax might not be out of order.
However.. the time factor, any combat encounter will eat up time. We play for 3 hours and im not sure 2 fights is managable in 3 hours, especially if the villagers in room 1 takes too much time and they are not even the biggest time concern. We havent seen the loot list from last session yet, so we have to go over that and any downtime stuff they might want to have gotten done in the last 2 days in town. So i foresee about 1hours play before we even leave town one way or another, that leaves 2 hours for travel and climax. A deadly fight will take about 1½ - 2 hours.
Soooo.. maybe the climax is not a fight pr se.
Maybe the climax is a cliffhanger... Next: FIGHT!

Room 5:
whomever climax is, bears the mark of saarvith and maybe a letter or drawing of the heroes with simple lettering "Stop dis" and maybe something connecting to the nearby hag coven that is assisting the goblins.

The party is lvl 7 btw

 

[Stephan Hornick]

Great tips, Allen!

In addition, I would totally go for a dangerous cliffhanger when already in combat. Something, where they cannot possibly plan around and stump the next session's begin, but a dangerous situation that they must face. Possibly when the PCs attack those goblins and ogres and one of the goblins grins broadly and points behind them: "You fallen for trik. Now we slaughter you too."
And shortly after you describe how figures step out of the woods behind them and loose arrows on the party, you end the session.
You should probably not describe how many or what foes have arrived, but let the players' minds picture it themselves. You can either have the PCs only rush to attack or have one or two already make an attack (but not all). It should still be the first couple of seconds of combat.

 

[BahneGorkDK]

so far (and the session is tomorrow)
room1 will be the survivors beggin for escort to a knight order keep, roughly 20 days travel and 12-14 days back. This will deffinently not be something they want to do, they know that the red hand horde reaches the throne city in roughly 40-45 days and they have not dealth with castle blackspears secret hatchery of lizarddrakes that can spit acid yet (thats where they wanna go, completely opposite direction).

Just so that it doesnt feel like "gm is purposefully giving us something we cannot do to make us feel bad" i do have the option (so do the players) of assigning the 20some strong soldier unit (im testing colville's unit war system) to the escort service. Though they might would have wanted to bring them along to castle blackspear. so.. all in all i think it will be a good tuff decision, stare into the faces of innocent people and say "we cannot help you, we have bigger fish to fry". I think that is a cool enough guardian, also it could be a room2 switch for room1.

room2 puzzle or RP i dont have a good one yet, could be the fey with the fey adventure i was thinking about, both to show the players and pcs that feywild can be used for shortcut travel and for showing more about what is going on and the possibility of learning more about the hags they have their sights on, weaknesses etc... but im not sure i wanna divert them before room3 and if they decide to shortcut the town and go straight to castle blackspear via feywild the ambush is circumvented (room4 climax).

room3 trick,setback(delay) a monk among the survivors that would like to travel along with the heroes, his monastery is on the road to the town the heroes wanna travel to. no biggie.. but when they stop at the monastery, One door is half open and sounds of rummaging is comming from inside. Bandits are looting the monastery, but the only reason they could get in was the half opened door. The monk will yell at the bandits "sacriledge" etc.. they are looting after all. Tables and chairs have been thrown and smashed, there are blood trails and spatters as well and no monks.... will the pc's blame the bandits and cut them down? or will they believe them when they say they did nothing? Either way at some dramatic moment one of the bandits will get pulled away by and undead and dragged off to a secret entrance to some ancient catacombs the monk did not know about. The prior has found it and explored it and fallen under the influence of some ancient artifact now animating the dead and grabbing live people to some nefarious ends.

room4 climax - marked for death encounter from RHOD, death squad ambush

room5 loot and intel a drawing of the pc's "stop dis", *hagname* see dem go to Delios.

im tempted to throw in the feywild portal here instead, moving room2 here or it could be that room2 is the first encounter with the fey and here after defeating the ambush it shows up again with the fey adventure. Trouble is if they dont know about time moving slower in feywild for travelling shortcut, there isnt much incentive to take the feys quest and divert from their travel to castle blackspear. They have a doom clock. So another idea here is to not give them the choice, have the fey simply transport them to the feywild. Exactly how im not so sure and it should feel organic, not like "GM wants us to go this way", but should feel like okay that npc would totally do that to us.

Then 5rd Feywild adventure
i have been thinking about ripping off critical role's 2 episode of Vox M. going to find that bow.
room1 - nymph is not willing to let them pass, can they convince her?
room2 - the stalking satyr - can they convince him to guide them?
room3 - this could be a location like the happy dance campfire, that is there to derail travellers or a tavern you dont want to leave etc maybe The Theater.
room4 - the heart of the forest is being infected, corrupted and it is done by infecting the unicorn of the forest. A druid was lured into the forest and feywild and corrupted so that he could summon the unicorn (Legend - Trap) so it could be infected. I have this idea of the unicorns being the personification of the feywild forest heart on the prime. So by corrupting the unicorn, you can infect the feywild forest heart and eventually completely corrupt it and once that happens the darkfey has control of all the seals and gates preventing them from pouring forth from below.
room5 - information about the hags near castle blackspear and the swamp they have created. I have plans of providing the players the oppertunity to claim the castle as their stronghold. But if there is a swamp of misery around it as there is now, they might not want it. So the swamp has to be something that can be removed. Im thinking the hag coven has weakened the veil and thus allowed a swamp in the feywild to creep into the prime and this can somehow be reverted. Either only by the hags or by some other means, first option means they have to make a deal with the hags and cant solve it by combat (which i was already thinking shouldnt be possible with a hag coven. Even tho they have helped the goblins they are not members of the red hand and they have other business. They have no loyalty to the red hand and are willing to betray them...for a price, deals deals deals!!!).

Destination Delios

 

[Stephan Hornick]

Just so that it doesnt feel like "gm is purposefully giving us something we cannot do to make us feel bad" i do have the option (so do the players) of assigning the 20some strong soldier unit (im testing colville's unit war system) to the escort service. Though they might would have wanted to bring them along to castle blackspear. so.. all in all i think it will be a good tuff decision, stare into the faces of innocent people and say "we cannot help you, we have bigger fish to fry". I think that is a cool enough guardian, also it could be a room2 switch for room1.

I like that very much!

Room 2 could just be that the PCs come up to a conflict and possibly overcome it, to give the players the impression of success and progress.

room3 trick,setback(delay) a monk among the survivors that would like to travel along with the heroes, his monastery is on the road to the town the heroes wanna travel to. no biggie.. but when they stop at the monastery, One door is half open and sounds of rummaging is comming from inside. Bandits are looting the monastery, but the only reason they could get in was the half opened door. The monk will yell at the bandits "sacriledge" etc.. they are looting after all. Tables and chairs have been thrown and smashed, there are blood trails and spatters as well and no monks.... will the pc's blame the bandits and cut them down? or will they believe them when they say they did nothing?

Either way at some dramatic moment one of the bandits will get pulled away by and undead and dragged off to a secret entrance to some ancient catacombs the monk did not know about. The prior has found it and explored it and fallen under the influence of some ancient artifact now animating the dead and grabbing live people to some nefarious ends.

And here it is: room 2. I think the bandits is a typical room 2. You would expect something like this. The players get the impression they know what the adventure will be about.
But then: Room 3! Undead. That is something, the players didn't expect. This is a sudden turn of things which spikes the mood.

im tempted to throw in the feywild portal here instead, moving room2 here or it could be that room2 is the first encounter with the fey and here after defeating the ambush it shows up again with the fey adventure. Trouble is if they dont know about time moving slower in feywild for travelling shortcut, there isnt much incentive to take the feys quest and divert from their travel to castle blackspear. They have a doom clock. So another idea here is to not give them the choice, have the fey simply transport them to the feywild. Exactly how im not so sure and it should feel organic, not like "GM wants us to go this way", but should feel like okay that npc would totally do that to us.

I probably would just have put the portal there and one of the undead with a thick tome at his waist. The tome could then describe his experiments with the portal and his interpretation (before he became an undead), and now the PCs have the sudden option to travel to the keep (they wanted to go to) or to the refugees (the didn't accompany) in one big stride if they dare use the portal. It could connect to room 1 and give them the opportunity to do both after all.


But how did it play out in real? You have already GMed it, I understand. Sorry for the late reply. I'm looking forward to your description of how it went down.

 

[BahneGorkDK]

I like that very much!

Room 2 could just be that the PCs come up to a conflict and possibly overcome it, to give the players the impression of success and progress.


And here it is: room 2. I think the bandits is a typical room 2. You would expect something like this. The players get the impression they know what the adventure will be about.
But then: Room 3! Undead. That is something, the players didn't expect. This is a sudden turn of things which spikes the mood.


I probably would just have put the portal there and one of the undead with a thick tome at his waist. The tome could then describe his experiments with the portal and his interpretation (before he became an undead), and now the PCs have the sudden option to travel to the keep (they wanted to go to) or to the refugees (the didn't accompany) in one big stride if they dare use the portal. It could connect to room 1 and give them the opportunity to do both after all.


But how did it play out in real? You have already GMed it, I understand. Sorry for the late reply. I'm looking forward to your description of how it went down.

We finished this about 3 sessions ago.

So they were offered the job of escorting survivors to the steel keep, which would take 24 days one way and maybe 18 days back and in 40 days or so the red hand will be at the throne city so that was NOT appealing. Though they did consider it, there were innocent people staring them in the face after all.
I cheated alittle and had an npc suggest their 20 man unit do the escorting instead, and then the dwarf player said "yes, true, but what if we need them at the castle" and i was like YES!!! more dramatic decisions!! They opted for this though and one of their retainers a bloodhunter - ghostslayer and another retainer (former PC) also went with them (good way to get the non-dead former PC out of our hair). The bloodhunter will investigate the ghostlord on behalf of the party, thus splitting away from the escort eventually.

They had no problems taking the monk with them, they instantly thought "Bandits!" the wizard and warlock sprinted around back to make sure they could not escape as one of them had overheard through a window. The wizard saw 3 figures coming out, malnourish, hoods up, dishevled, bows and short swords. The third one to the back was in a scuffle with someone moving very stiffly. The wizard cast blasting wave or something, aiming to move them back 15 feet but doing 24dmg, the bandits were a mother and her two teen children aka commoners now dead. The last bandit was the father, bandit cap stats or veteran, he came into scuffle with ghasts/ghouls and together the pc's and he chopped down the undead. There were trails from the other monks to the hidden catacomb entrance.

The father ended up on his knee's trying to drag all three bodies to him while sobbing, they were now charcoal as the warlock had cast a fireball in there as well. He was gone when they came back up from the catacomb, he will show up later possibly with the baron's evil knight looking for justice.

I have discarded the feywild for now.

Room 4 was the climax with THE necromancer.
Room 5 was history knowledge, clues from the prior's diary, reward in the form of their names mentioned in a letter to a bishop in the throne city (fame).

It took 2 sessions in total.

Next session started with the worst heavy rain and thundestorm i could describe, banging on the monastery doors 2 bloody people, one draggin the other survivors of a goblin attack on their travelling wagon! Party immediately went out the door to find these goblins "save the others please!". This was more or less simply the ambush encounter from the RHOD book. I pretty much forgot about 5RD after the monastery

 

[Stephan Hornick]

A pity that they killed the innocents... Did they at least speak to the father about it later or have conflicting roleplaying within the group? (Trying to get a feel for your group) Anyway, great emotional and moral decision moment, I believe.
I love your idea with the heavy rain and the survivors!

 

[BahneGorkDK]

A pity that they killed the innocents... Did they at least speak to the father about it later or have conflicting roleplaying within the group? (Trying to get a feel for your group) Anyway, great emotional and moral decision moment, I believe.
I love your idea with the heavy rain and the survivors!

The player actually wanted to just control them, they had no idea they were just a family turned robbers. It was alittle ploy on my side, in case they took the time to not be violent they would get rewarded with saving "innocents" and if they went in guns blazing the opposite most likely. The details were that the wizard snuck up to peek in a window, failed a stealth check and the father who was keeping watch at the main door near the window yelled "quick get what you can i dont think we're alone" and proceeded to barricade the doors with a table and he did yell one more thing "get out the back door, i'll buy you some time". Wizard was the only one who heard it and went invis, the warlock saw this from about 100 feet away cast expeditious retreat to run around the back. Both of them ran around the back, wizard was there first cast her blast wave and yelled "Stay back" or "stop" or some such. The object was not killing but pushing, but the spell did 28dmg and they failed their saves and commoners have 4 hp.

Then the warlock came round a corner and cast fireball because the room was filling up with ghouls and ghasts, he did check in with the wizard if it was clear for a fireball. The 3 people were not moving, one i described as having it's head at an odd angle after the push.

The wizard player did try to figure out how the wizard would handle this, they did not share many words with the father i think most were just in abit of shock to find out it was a mother and two teens and a father. I think everyone really didnt know which leg to stand on so they kind of glossed over it i think. I helped alittle with having an npc monk survivor say "well, they were thieves and would likely have met the same fate at the hands of the moon knight" which is one of the new baron's knights that acts as judge, jury and sometimes executioner on behalf of the baron. The pc's had a run in with her in the town they recently convinced to evacuate. I had a offscreen chat with the warlock player about how she was a bully and after a quip match in the tavern she was furious and wanted to do what furious bullies does. She cornered him in a street at night with her 7 retainers and beat him, warlock being a streetsmart guy recognized that she was a bully and it was a bully moment. I did not want a fight to the death, so it was a simple "beatdown" hurt pride and such.

The father might have sought out this knight to ask for justice, not knowing the pc's history with her. He will likely end up being punished for stealing from the monastery himself. He might show up during the founders festival of the next town, which is next session, just as they are starting to make a name for themselves being recognized by town speaker, other knights and people as well all of a sudden they have to deal with this blemish on their reputation, what will they do?

 

[BahneGorkDK]

I think i will try and re-visit the travel 5RD for the trip into the blackspear swamp.
We got a hag coven lair, a castle ruin with RHOD warchief+dragon, lizardmen camps scattered throughout and a wizards tower.
and im thinking about adding more, like minions of the hags, one or more big swamp nasties like the frogmoths from volos, maybe a hydra.

Travelling to Hags would be 1 5rd
Travelling to castle blackspear/RHOD warcamp is another 5rd
and i will try Angry's open world approach on the swamp region in general, poi list, hazard list, traveller list, monster lair list

 

[Stephan Hornick]

I'm looking forward to reading what it will be like.
Once you have an outline of the adventure, I would love to see how you make it into a 5RD or scenes and how you structure your session/adventure itself.

 

[BahneGorkDK]

Im gonna prep sites, situations, agendas and the like. I am using RHOD as the outline and im merging it with siege of castle rend from strongholds n followers. So what is Rhest in RHOD will be Rend Castle. But RHOD is the population and tactics and agendas for the warchief and dragon and his minions. the hags is something i have tagged on and the swamp will resede when the black dragon is chased off or killed so the pc's can take over the castle and get a stronghold. The hags have the dead barons heir as captive at their lair, which is not the castle, he can legitimize the pc's claim of the stronghold and even give them titles of the barony. Though they will have to topple the new baron if they wanna use it for anything, he will not allow such upstarts. There are sedition already and the pc's met a knight last session publically looking for insurgents, rebels and criminals. So it's now something that exists and there are some of these elements in the town they are in now just before heading into the swamp.

While i have the RHOD module's outline, agenda, timetable etc..... i am trying to prep lego blocks that i can put together as a response to what they do at the table. Some of these might never get used, like the lumber ranch that has a secret deal with a local vampire lord, they get some of his blood for workers elixir and provide him with slaves from the south. Also he knows and they dont, that prolonged exposure to his blood will eventually dominate them to him and turn them to ghasts.

Thats one of my blocks, others include published modules like sinister secrets of saltmarsh, which has been alluded to by a note on a map and as comments in some reports from the goblins also they have seen the goblins wield exotic metal weapons that the dwarf knows about and knows trade with it is very strict.

There is also the brothel in town, run by a woman from the throne city her crimnal past has chased her here and moved in on her business. She is no longer owner but basically middle management now that pays profits to criminal elements from the throne city that uses such locations to stow away kidnapped targets to be released when ransom is paid and other stuff.

I actually dont have alot of stuff for the swamp yet

 

[Stephan Hornick]

You seem to be loosing me, so I just ask: What is "RHOD", "Siege of Castle Rend" and "Strongholds n Followers" and how would you use this for your preparation?

 

[BahneGorkDK]

You seem to be loosing me, so I just ask: What is "RHOD", "Siege of Castle Rend" and "Strongholds n Followers" and how would you use this for your preparation?

RHOD is red hand of doom, siege of castle rend is an adventure in MCDM's book Stronghold n followers (Matt colville) so basically rhod and siege are two separate published adventures