BBC Calling

Lights, Camera, Action


Lights: This would make an excellent starting adventure for a group of players that have never played together before. The Player Characters are strangers to each other and meet by chance in bar. Through a series of seemingly coincidental events, the 'strangers' are forced to trust each other in order to complete a quest.

Camera: While in the bar, the player characters are drawn into a game of chance with a Non-Player Character. During the game the NPC starts to lose and begins putting up strange items as collateral. The GM should rig the game so that each player ends up with a different item.

The first item is a map to a remote cemetery. The second item is a piece of paper with a charcoal rubbing of a tombstone showing the name of a deceased person. The last item is a map showing the location of a buried treasure which indicates a special key is needed to unlock the magical seal guarding it.

At the end of the game the NPC will explain that he buried the key in the grave of a departed friend at the cemetery. He explains that the players will have to work together in order to find the cemetery, retrieve the key and find the treasure.

Action: This can be a fun adventure if the GM handles it right. The players will not immediately trust each other and the GM should do what he can to build upon that mistrust. The adventure cannot be solved without each player sharing his bit of information. It won't do any good for the one player to locate the cemetery because there are a thousand graves there and he doesn't have the name of the dead friend.

The player with the name doesn't know which cemetery the grave is in, and even if he did, he doesn't know what to do with the key if he finds it. The player with the treasure map needs the key to get the treasure. The GM can spice up the adventure by throwing in a shadowy figure who is apparently trailing the group. He can simply be a thief who got wind of the treasure and is hoping the players will lead him to it.

--Jolly R. Blackburn


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