Chatter #14 - April 12, 2001

12/14/2001 — I started the Chatter section on July 27, 2000 when I noticed that the rest of my site was sometimes getting cluttered with lots of text. I'm a talkative guy, after all! So now I talk about my life here, instead of all over the place. Originally this was one huge section, but in December of 2001 it simply became too large to remain as one page, and I broke it into dated sections, as you can see. —>PM

I Have An Idea

...for a scenario. And since I don't know when I'll ever get to run it, much less write it up properly, I might as well note the salient points here. Maybe somebody can do something with it.

Entry point: While travelling the PCs meet an unpleasant group—sort of "anti-PCs", although this wouldn't be immediately obvious. They later encounter a young man, a prince who is travelling incognito for kicks. The prince is being harassed by ruffians or stalked by a wild animal. Presumably, they save him.

As a reward, the prince invites the group to dinner at his father's house—which is a castle, and his father is the King. The King obviously disapproves of his son's habit of travelling alone and in disguise.

A few days later, the King quietly summons the PCs to a private audience. He tells them that he wants to throw a scare into the Prince, to convince him not to be careless with his life. He wants the PCs to kidnap the Prince and convince him that they are going to convey him to the King's enemies. Perhaps if he learns that there are real dangers in the world he will become more responsible.

Alternate entry point (the individual PCs need not know each other in this case): Each PC is hired by a steward of the King to form a gang to capture and scare the Prince, as above.

If the PCs refuse: The King hires the anti-PCs, who (surprise!) really do kidnap the Prince. The PCs are recruited to rescue him quietly—if the King's enemies hear about this, they would take advantage of the situation. The Prince's life might be put into even greater danger.

Not sure what the next step would be...if the party are the faux kidnapers, the anti-PCs would discover the situation and try to kidnap the Prince from the party. If the party is trying to rescue the Prince, perhaps it would turn out that he was actually working with the anti-PCs, in order to get a ransom. Lots of possibilities...