Gaming Sunday

I was prepping a (hopefully) cool module for yesterday's game in an attempt to make Mike Ferguson's visit to our gaming group as good as possible. When an email from him the night before said he was regrettably unable to attend, I lost a bit of momentum. The adventure as conceptualized was a mystery/dungeon crawl but, at the time, I wasn't overly happy with my lack of details. So, at my brother Scot's suggestion, I decided to put that module on the back burner and think up a full-on jaguar-folk adventure. (The jag-folk being the bad guys of the planar campaign and nearly TPKing the group in the previous battle.) I didn't want to use the jag-folk in Mike's intro module since they really wouldn't resonate with him (or his PC). This was 10:30pm before the day of the module.

The end result of some intense thinking and scribbling? Not a bad time! Pressed for a comfortable amount of prep time, I utilized the stats of the jag-folk warriors seen last time as well as the same leader. What the heck, the players wouldn't know the difference. I also came up with a half-assed plot involving the jag's kidnapping of a transmuter who was pressed into service to fashion a magic item that would (and did) overpower the stone golems protecting the Protectorate's headquarters on Sigil (how's that for a run-on sentence?). The party managed to find the plot, beat the cats and even discover how they control the oft-fought cat-headed obsidian quasi-elementals--an ancient pact with an elemental lord named Kosh gave the jag-folk warrior caste a handful of "elemental wells" to summon the creatures from. Did you follow that? Eh, guess you had to be there.

To sum up, you needn't always be overly prepared to run an adventure. I had my bad guy stats, a map stolen from Necromancer Games' Fane of the Witch-King, and a loose thread tying points A-B-C. Sprinkle in some of my wacky NPCs, simmer for 6 hours with players, and you've got a recipe for some gaming goodness. Serve with pizza and enjoy!