This is kind of a continuation of my last post, in which I asked about creating adventures for low level groups. Well, I have this idea for my first Ravenloft adventure, and I want to run it by you guys to see what you think, and if you have any advice. Here are the major events that occur.
1: The PCs hear that its not safe to wander the village at night because two people have gone missing over the last month. One was the villager tailor Victor, and the other was a stranger named Marmack who emerged out of the swamp a few weeks ago claiming he didn't know how he got here. (This will get the PCs interested because they are outlanders that just arrived in Ravenloft, and will be eager to speak with another suspected outlander.)
2: They investigate and learn
a. Victor left the inn one night to go home, but never made it there. The villagers searched the area for him the next day, but found nothing.
b. Marmack was last seen at the Church of Ezra, where he was inquiring about the region, which he seemed to have no knowledge of.
3: During an encounter with the doctor, the PCs learn his daughter is sick with a rare dissease for which there is no known cure. The symptoms include sores, vommitting, fever, and eventually will lead to death within a couple years. She has just begun the second stage of her illness, and probably has a couple months left.
4: A couple days later, the body of Laura the general shopkeeper's daughter was found in the morning with claw and bite marks on her. The other kids claim they were playing in the old church, and quickly left when they realized the sun had set.
5: Investigating the old church, they are attacked by an insane man in a torn gown with faded red spots on his body, resembling the sores on the doctor's sick daughter. They learn the insane man is the missing tailor.
6: The PCs are attacked by the doctor's assistant (buffed up on strength syrum), who attempts to capture one of them.
7: The PCs invade the doctor's house, catch the doctor, and find the missing stranger who is now insane. The doctor confesses: he was abducting people, infecting them with the dissease his daughter has, and experimenting on them to find a cure. His cure worked, but caused insanity. He claims he knew it was wrong, but it was the only way he could save his daughter. He asks the PCs to infect him and then administer the new antidote, which he believes will work.
Well, how does it look over all? Do you think the antidote should work or not? Any suggestions, comments, questions?
Now, on your idea, I have two suggestions to make:
1) Why don't you turn one or two patients to Broken Ones ? If you are not acquainted with 2E RL, they are a sort of template creature, "humans being subjects to horrible experiments, turned into twisted abominations"...You get the picture
.2) Set the adventure in Mordent...Mad doctors tend to be a stereotype there....ROFL!!
Seriously now, think about setting the adventure in a Renaissance Domain. I think it sounds a bit more proper, with science taking over healing from clerics/believing in faiths.
Cheers!
The PCs solve the mystery and stop the doctor. But he believes he has the cure, he just needs someone to test it on. If the PCs won't let him infect another victim, he asks them to infect him and then administer the cure. The cure causes him to go insane. The PCs are left with a few insane villagers, the insane doctor, and the doctor's sick daughter to deal with as they see fit.
Another possible conclusion would be the same, except the cure works. The PCs would still need to deal with the insane villagers, and would help decide the fate of the doctor. His daughter would be saved.
What do you think? Pros and cons of each?
btw, my vote would be for the first one because it's the first Ravenloft adventure in the campaign, and it would show the PCs how dark and hopeless the world is. On the other hand, I don't want the PCs to get so depressed that they don't enjoy the game.
or they could be working for a high ranking mayor/politician who has heard about the problems?
or the dr was kicked out of a "medical school" for being a fruitcake (for the benefit of non uk readers - thats english slang for being a bit loose in the head;)) and the head man at medical school sees some of his discarded notes/journals and send the pc's to stop him?
the groups "borrower" lifts the journal from the doctor as part of a raid on his home one night and reads the journal and shows it to the pc's who then go after the dr?
hth?
(well its given me an idea for a game) ;)
1) most surelly the doctor if he is experimenting in humans and not in animals will discard the evil he is doing, thinking in the greater good for humanity (if he founds the cure no one else will get it).
2) if the PCs oppose him, insted of fighting or asking their help a second time he will surelly infect himself and/or try to infect anyone of them to try to blackmail them into helping him on testing the cure.
3) That cure won't work for a miscalculation of the doctor nothes, most surelly for his desesperation and rush because of the players actions, and because once illness has advanced to much into second stage it will be imposible to stop... so he NEED it NOW.
4) The cure already caused users to become insane, this new cure should so something works to the patient, posibly advancing the disease to near the point of death, killing the doctor or making him a criature that will try to infect and destroy those who wouldn't help him.
5) If there is any druid, cleric, or scientific oriented character in the group they could fin the doctor notes and then use them to solve the doctgor miscalculations (not that difficult if he only changed a # in the dose... but mortal if it was to low or to high) and then use it to cure those infected (incluthing the doctor's daughter). At this moment the "good" doctor most possibly is incurable so he will have to be put down for the better of humankind, if he escapes he will infect more poeple causing more problems... if you want something darker, maybe the dark powers mutated the illness in him that if its not cured in 10 days or something like that, the ill person became an abomination just like the doctor, possibly unders his control (the doctor will continue looking for a cure, but now for himself, and he experiment with this creatures and discard them when they are not useful any more... of course he will never get a cure.)
6) The insane persons who used the first cure would have to be taken care by a doctor in psicology or taken to a health insitution that will help them... there are some areound... and there is one in particular in an Island... which has the Best Doctor in all the realms... but this is an story for another time.
7) I will put the adventure around Dementliu, Mordent or Lamordia, where that kind of knowledge is just more common
well those are my 2 cents