I need your creative Energies for a short mini D&D adventure!

[Kinthalis]

Arghhh! The deadline for the Neverwinter Nights Halloween Community Module is tomorrow!

I took my sweet time creating the interior of a wizard’s tower and now I’m left with no story. I’ve been drawing a complete and total blank for the past several days. It’s writers block I tell you! I need the help of you creative D&D’ers and RPG’ers.

First a little explanation. A group of NWN community devs had the great idea of teaming up and creating a Halloween themed module for the game. It would be by the community for the community. A single dev would work on a spooky town, while everyone else got to work on a single interior. Some devs are simply making a haunted house walk through with ghosts and monsters about, others are making taverns and Inns with spooky sounding brews and foods available, etc.

Now My original plan was to have a small 4 story wizard’s tower wherein a short, spooky, adventure would play out. I settled in a murder mystery of sorts, witha twist. I had the following intro for it in mind.

The night air is chill on this hallows eve but the lantern hanging by the wizard’s tower casts a warm glow across the cobblestone path leading to its door.
“Trick or treat!” bellows the elven wizard upon my egress into the tower. The burning coals of a large, stone brazier nearby have been banked and stirred. The erubescent warmth restores color to my face.
“Treat of course master Kinthalis. You are renowned far and wide for your sweet fruit tarts. I will not pass them by!”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. All out, all out. I’m afraid it will have to be a trick for you, child!”

In a brilliant flash the wizard is gone. The warmth in the room dissipates and now it is colder in here than it was outside. The chill pierces my cloak, the mist of my breath lingers in the stillness. Then, strange noises reverberate in the empty hall. Were they always there?

A light suddenly springs up in the center of the grand hall beyond a doorway. A chandelier has been magically lit. Beneath it, a macabre scene is slowly revealed by the retreating darkness.

Three bodies lie dead, each one marking the point of a triangle. Their skulls are smashed almost beyond recognition. The apparent murder weapon lies in between them. A great hammer, its iron head still slick with blood and gore.
Who are these people, and who has slayn them? The mad wizard? Am I next?

I managed to get 5 levels of the tower created, but I have no story other than the intro.

My original plan was to have the hammer cursed/enchanted. As soon as the player touches it, the ghosts of the three dead people appear. The problem being, they don’t recall the last 24 hours of their lives, and they swear they don’t know one another. From there each level of the tower would involve some combat challenge, a puzzle, and in the end of that level, reveal another piece of the mystery: Who were the three people killed, who killed them, and why were they killed.

And those are my questions to you! I need a cool story I can drop in here to complete the module and I’ve got two days to do it. I know there are writers, DM’s, and gamers on this board, if you think you could help me in making my tower something interesting and different to try out for the NWN community, please do!

::Continues to mod like a motherf*&ck::

[What_Exit]

As a player, I probably would not even touch the hammer. That is the first problem. I would be worried it might be cursed, but then I was always a paranoid player. Have a standby of an easier reason for the Ghost to rise up. Use almost any disturbance of the crime scene to be sufficient. You’ll probably have at least one player that will rifle the bodies for valuables. Use it or any other excuse. Always be flexible else players will foil your plans.

What is the incentive for the party to solve the mystery? Perhaps you will need to include a dire warning that the only way out of the tower this night is to solve it?

If you want a mystery, you will need good strong clues and possibly redundant clues. What will keep each “combat challenge” to stay on their floor of the tower? It does not have to be logical but decide ahead of time if it is to follow logic or if “A Wizard did it.”

I strongly recommend one challenge be a horde of spiders or snakes or similar creepy crawlies that are hard to fight as their numbers are huge and to strike them conventionally would injure the character they are attacking.

I’ve never been strong on puzzle challenges, but perhaps the always fun and now ancient Mirror of Opposition could be both a challenge and a clue. Make it a huge mirror that takes up an entire wall so all of the party are involved and require the mirror to be overcome to get to the next level. If you have never run into a Mirror of Opposition before,

“If a creature sees its reflection in the mirror’s surface, an exact duplicate of that creature comes into being. This opposite immediately attacks the original. The duplicate has all the possessions and powers of its original (including magic). Upon the defeat or destruction of either the duplicate or the original, the duplicate and her items disappear completely.”

If they don’t think of or find a way to break the mirror but defeat the copies of them then have a door in the mirror open allowing them to go up. Have the mirror first reveal one of the major clues as a movie style playback of certain key events.
The final challenge should perhaps the three ghosts who have been following you and now realize that all three of them are probably guilty of some heinous plot and act and now wish to foil the party from solving the mystery and revealing what they were or became before the end. For an added twist have it be they were coming together to plot against some good figure, perhaps the Elven Wizard himself or the town or the local benevolent Lord.

Good luck and I hope some of the suggestion might help a bit.

Jim

[Kinthalis]

HaHa! Excellent suggestions What Exit?!

I specially love the twist of the ghosts not being innocent victims but part of some sinister plot. The mirror of opposition idea is brilliant. I’m starting to work on that now.

I do have one room, that, upon the PC’s entering, the doors close and lock and a horde of tiny crawly spiders spawn in surrounding the characters. Gotta have spiders.

Thanks again!

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Rats, giant millipedes, snakes and bats are all good for giving your party the creepy-crawlies.

Maybe have some kind of spell that makes the party paranoid of each other, or just uncomfortable without knowing why (like a low-threshold continuous ultrasonic tone)?

Since it’s Halloween, you might have a black cat make an appearance from time to time. Is it bad luck? Is it a shapechanger? Is it just a cat? Does it know secret passageways that the party could follow?

To really mess with their heads, you could have some kind of teleportation spell that randomly moves them into different rooms, either all at once, or separating the party members from each other.