raemus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 24
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Post by raemus on Mar 31, 2015 13:26:53 GMT -8
My players are about to perform a train (lightning rail) heist in Eberron. All they know about it is that it is heavily guarded by Warforged and Automatons; worth 45,000 pp, has it's own train care (for security purposes they believe) and is riding from Sharn to Korranberg in Zilgaro. So my question for you all is, what is the funnest/awesomest/crazy thing I could have be the actual target of the heist?
Things they specifically don't know. What it is. Who owns it. Who is going to take it when it gets where it is going.
This is sort of time sensitive as I will be running it on Thursday 4/2/15
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Post by lowkeyoh on Mar 31, 2015 13:47:59 GMT -8
You gotta make it something they won't be morally ok with taking. Slaves is a good one. Or mages being taken somewhere someone wants stolen to be used as mana batteries. Medicine for orphans. A town's payment of protection money to the mob so they don't get wiped out.
Something that makes them feel bad if they take it. And if they don't feel bad, has in game consequence when people learn what ruthless, soulless, cold hearted people they are.
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Post by weaselcreature on Mar 31, 2015 14:51:14 GMT -8
Are they fans of Firefly (the BETTER be!). You could pull a page from them without telling the PCs ahead of time (also alluded to in lowkeyoh's post). They get hired to steal back some goods "stolen" from a merchant (where the merchant is actually a crime boss), and after the actual heist is performed, they find out it's medicines/potions for a village suffering from a disease without a decent cleric around (or some such moral quandary...medicine is tougher in a high fantasy setting, especially Eberron, where the world is saturated in low-level magic). Do they cross their boss and bring the medicine to the town, or do they fulfill their promise and return the goods to the one who hired them? If they are fans of Firefly, they will have it dawn on them when the truth is discovered. Are they Mal or are they Jayne?
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tomes
Supporter
Hello madness
Posts: 1,438
Currently Running: Dungeon World, hippie games, Fallout Shelter RPG hack
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Post by tomes on Mar 31, 2015 18:35:10 GMT -8
And don't forget... they may not be the ONLY ones who know about this train car... what happens when they run into other desperadoes who are also hell bent on getting the goods?
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Post by uselesstriviaman on Apr 1, 2015 9:45:00 GMT -8
I know nothing about the Eberron setting, but could the "cargo" be a pretty, little, big-eyed, innocent Princess in a frilly pink dress?
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raemus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 24
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Post by raemus on Apr 1, 2015 12:08:10 GMT -8
Thanks for the answers guys, keep them coming. The more ideas the better.
A little more backstory: They were hired by their sovereign (Prince Oargev) whom is attempting to get enough cash to start up a new nation of Cyre (he has many different possible schemes but all of them take lots of cash) and the Prince learned of this cargo through a contact within House Sivis or Kundarak.
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Post by bourbonrations on Apr 12, 2015 23:11:31 GMT -8
So, how did it go?
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raemus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 24
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Post by raemus on Apr 13, 2015 7:43:44 GMT -8
A comedy of errors honestly. First, they never attempted to make any sort of plan together, winging it as they went. This meant 3 plans, none of which were thought out, subtle, or very clever. Second even though I was giving out bennies rather frequently, The Players couldn't roll well to save their lives and were constantly running out of bennies.
In the end one character took advantage of a second crew's attempt to steal the treasure (while the other 2 players covered him from a distance). The fighting portion ended with a second set of guards and a ceaseless miss-miss until the players started to use tactics to win the day.
My favorite part of the caper was when they came against the final road block... the door to the cargo/treasure room. The door had 2 protections on it (not counting it being super heavy duty and armored).
First if the person touching the door did not have a Dwarven Dragonmark it would fire off a Lightning Damage field it had 2 Charges. The players used dead bodies to trigger the trap, after detecting something was there and after the second charge went off they unanimously declared the door to be a "recharging" trap that was unbeatable. A few of them were visibly upset. Until the "leader" tossed a third body against just in case... When nothing happened and they stared at me in confusion we laughed at how set in their D&D ways they were.
Second, the door had an intricate but mundane lock on it, however the lock was enchanted so that whenever it was unlocked the handle and other mechanisms would turn invisible leaving what appeared to be a blank surface. When the handle disappeared the whole group freaked out and figured it was a stalling tactic to allow more guards to arrive (true) and began searching the rest of the room for the hidden "real" door. However the player of the roguish elf that picked the lock stared at me for a while and then said "I reach for where the handle was," found it and opened the door. The players laughed like crazy at the simplicity of it all.
The treasure I settled on was 150 potions of Greater Healing (Dragonmarked House Property - they only managed to take 90), and the Staff of the Hierophant (Morgrave University Property). They managed to hide in a different car until they got to Wroat, and left with the treasure.
As the first SW game we have ever played/run, I really enjoyed it.
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Post by fray on Apr 14, 2015 19:43:05 GMT -8
That sounds like it was a fun time!
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Post by natebob on Apr 16, 2015 1:05:32 GMT -8
That sounds like a lot of fun. I like how you, either purposely or not, played on their previous Dungeonering Meta-Knowledge and used it against them.
I guess it goes to show to 1) Never get involved in a land war in Asia and 2) Never go against DM when a pile of treasure is involved.
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raemus
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 24
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Post by raemus on Apr 16, 2015 7:26:45 GMT -8
I have to admit that the door having two "charges" on it... was just the way Gadgets seemed to work (10 power points gets eaten up quickly) but the Invisible Lock certainly was on purpose.
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