A New Way to Craft a D&D Story: Part III

Disclaimer:  This is now Part III of an I don't know how many part series that is looking at my thought and creation process for the last quest that our local D&D group played.  The short of it is that I bought a booster pack of pre-painted miniatures with the intent on writing a story that included each of the miniatures.  Part I went into my initial thoughts with each of the miniatures, Part II looked at the developing story, and Part III will cover a somewhat major reworking of various story elements and the near finalizing of the whole story, which will (should) be covered in Part IV.

Part II left off with the development (but not yet the full story) of the female human wizard Bara Gol'iza who turned out was associated with the Red Wizards of Thay, the decision to include the groups previous employer Cruenthas Chorster, and there was a question as to Gauntlet Charles' role in the series of events., and finally, how everything ended up fitting together into a semi-cohesive story that was able to be played from beginning to end.  Oh, and the parts that I had to cut out while we were playing in order to finish the story in a single play session.

The inclusion of Gauntlet Charles was something that I was hoping would connect with the PCs.  He was my plot hook of sorts, although he himself would not play a direct role in the overall story.  Charles existed just to help get the PCs out of Baldur's Gate.  I knew why he was leaving Baldur's Gate, and I knew that wherever they were going would also be related to Charles.  That was when I made the decision that he would travel to a town to stay with his sister.  And her husband.  Knowing that, and coupled with the then still idea that the Clay Golem was going to wreck a small town, I started looking for a place that was far enough away from Baldur's Gate that the PCs could not just turn around after the quest and head back.  At first I settled on the town of Triel, which is east of Baldur's Gate, and north of Scornubel along the Trade Way Road.  At this point I did not know that I had misread the entry in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide on Triel and thought that it was a settlement of Gnomes and Halflings; I was actually reading the entry on the Trielta Hills to the north, but this even came much later in the editing process.

So Gauntlet Charles would lead the PC's east through Scornubel, then head north along the Trade Way Road towards Triel where they would meet up with his sister Carole, her husband Horwan Greenpatch, and their daughter Yarrow.  The family would be out in the front yard of their Halfling hole (still haven't figured out how to translate Hobbit-hole without it sounding dirty).  Yup, for whatever reason without any thought of trying to make a statement, Carole (a Human) had married a Halfling and they had a child together.  The group would be welcomed inside for second lunch and conversation would start up with Horwan talking about a group of Dwarven miners who were coming down out of a mining camp in the Trielta Hills and had had a run-in with some kind of a swamp witch (Bara Gol'iza and the Bullywugs).

This is where the story stopped for a while. I did not know what kind of a run in had happened.  Were the Dwarves attacked?  Did this swamp witch pose some kind of immanent threat to the Halflings and Gnomes in Triel?  If this was the case, then the story would end up with the PC's traveling north towards the Trielta Hills, coming across the swamp, finding the swamp witch and the Clay Golem. . . but no, because how would they then find out about other towns villages attacked by the Clay Golem if they came across them so quickly?  This is when I took a break, went to work and started to rework story elements.

After getting home from work, I had reworked a lot of what I had just written in the previous three paragraphs.

• I created an encounter to happen for the group as they traveled towards Scornubel.  Since Beardsnboubon would be joining us for the first time, I wanted to have a fun way of introducing him without it being a stereotypical, "You see Guy in the tavern.  He looks friendly and well armed.  He joins your group."  So I decided that, after confirming with BnB that he would be okay with the idea, that I would have him being attacked by Gnolls while out harvesting rare ingredients for his culinary cuisine.
• I decided to have Horwan not at Triel.  Having Horwan missing, but knowing the direction he was last headed would give the PCs an incentive and reason for continuing to be engaged in the story, which now had moved away from an escort mission with Gauntlet Charles into a rescue mission for Horwan Greenpatch.  But why would Horwan be missing?
• That was when I decide that he would be part of a caravan that traded goods with the Dwarves in the Trielta Hills.  The caravan came upon Cruenthas Chorster who asked to tag along as he headed north towards Waterdeep.  Before reaching the Hills, he directed the group off the Trade Way Road to the east as he said there would be some kind of component that he needed to help brew healing potions (I had Horwan have a potion on him to legitimize this part of the story).  Then the group came upon a swamp that seemed to appear out of nowhere, they were attacked by Bullywugs, while seeing a Human woman off in the distance who seemed to be floating less than a foot above the swamp.  During the battle Cruenthas seemed to be gathering mud from around the human woman, but Horwan was shot in the leg by a poisoned arrow and he escaped north towards the mining camp.  Horwan made it to the camp, but had to have his leg amputated and was still recovering, hence his reason for not returning immediately to Triel.
• But why was Cruenthas gathering mud?  Because he knew some information about Bara Gol'iza's past, that the mud was created by some kind of magical means that he did not know, and that through his own research, that the mud might be used to help repair (reseal) the cracks in Bellamon's phylactery; I do not know how this would actually work, but then again, I am not a magic user with decades of knowledge to draw upon.

For whatever reason, having Horwan no longer in Triel seemed to be the lynch pin for the rest of the story falling into place, which will be covered in what I believe with be the final part of this series that I naively thought could be covered in a single article.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Scour the Land