by Jason Campbell
Last week I ran a D&D 5e one-shot at a friendly local game shop, “drop-in” style so I don’t know who the players would be. I thought it’d be fun to write about how the two groups of players handled the situations. Each session was limited to 3 hours so some of the story may have been changed for time reasons.
This was an adventure in the City of Altburg, my own creation. The players were tasked with traveling to the city and selling a gem for a poor widow they’d befriended earlier. They had the name of a friendly jeweler, Erkin Grintooth, which is where the adventure started. From that point I’d written a few bullet points of probable encounters:
- (Secretly) the gem the party is trying to sell is magic and part of a set of three.
- They hear that there have been break ins at jeweler shops in the city.
- After they leave Erkin’s jewelers they’ll encounter Erkin in the street, but they’ll notice something odd about him. He tries to convince them that they should break into other jewelers in the city to find more gems.
- (Secretly) the Erkin who confronts the party in the street is actually a doppelganger. He just killed Erkin, stole the gem and is trying to trick them into finding the other 2 gems. The Doppleganger was hired by a crime lord named Periwinkle, a Duergar.
- Another jeweler, the orc Mok Musterson, also has a gem in his possession. He doesn’t realize it’s magical or part of a set.
First Session
The first session consisted of four players playing a rogue, a paladin and 2 wizards. They asked for directions to Erkin’s shop and went directly there where they find out that Erkin does indeed know the widow they are representing and offered a large amount because he was friends with her husband. Erkin tells them that there have been burglaries at other jewelers in the city. The party used a detect magic spell to determine that not only was the gem they had magical, but there was a magical gem in a cabinet in the shop. Erkin shows them that gem also and is shocked to realize that the gem was not unique. He didn’t know it was magical either. The party convinces him to let them take both gems with them.
- The party split up as follows:
- The paladin goes to talk to the sheriff where he finds some information on the burglaries.
- The rogue and one wizard go to the thief quarters to see if any of the rogue’s contacts know about the burglaries. They don’t find out any valuable information.
- The other wizard goes to talk with another jeweler in town. He encounters the doppelganger disguised as Erkin who tries to convince him to break into other jewelers. The wizard recognized something’s wrong with this “Erkin” and questions him.
Meanwhile the Paladin comes to meet back with the wizard and sees the scene from a distance, where the wizard signals him something’s up. They end up realizing that this is a doppelganger, the rogue and other wizard return to help in the fight, and they defeat the doppelganger, finding that he did work for the crime lord Periwinkle.
Second Session
The second session consisted of five players playing a fighter, bard, monk and 2 sorcerers. They begin by getting directions to Erkin’s shop and going directly there. Along the way they hear about burglaries at jewelry shops. They don’t know anything is special about their gem as they don’t have access to detect magic. They are also suspicious of Erkin. The party doesn’t find out that Erkin has one of the matching gems. They get a good offer for the gem but tell Erkin they want to get a second opinion and head off to get an estimate from Mok the orc jeweler. The fighter stays behind lingering outside the shop to see if anything’s going on.
- Mok gives them a lower estimate for the gem, neither he nor the party knows anything is special about the gem.
- The fighter lingers at the shop, where Erkin does nothing suspicious. Eventually the doppelganger shows up and tries to kill Erkin. The fighter interrupts what now looks like a fight between the real Erkin and this intruder who looks like Erkin. The party returns during the fight and they subdue the doppelganger.
The party save Erin, who tells them he has another matching gem. The doppelganger confesses to the whole plan due to intimidation.
(At this point the players take an inordinate amount of time devising a complex plan to try and trap the crime lord boss. I end up needing to force their hand to get the story moving.)
Mok the orc jeweler is found suspiciously hanging outside Erkin’s shop. He ends up confessing that he has been pressured by this crime boss to get info on the gems from other jewelers. He admits that the boss’s thugs come by his shop every night at 11pm to get any new information. The party then waits for the thugs, manages to kill one and capture one and they find out the whereabouts of the crime boss.
The party confronts the crime boss, defeating him and finding out about the gems.
Resolution
The first session went more or less how I would have predicted. They made good use of detect magic and later identify spells to figure out the uses of the gems. They immediately suspected the doppelganger and finished the story there.
The second session was different in that the party never really figured out what the gems were for. The fighter hiding out outside the shop was what really changed things. I could have just avoided the doppelganger attack, but that would be altering the actions to avoid something which was was a good idea by a player. Letting them find the doppelganger so early left a lot of time. However they spent maybe 40 minutes trying to concoct a plan a la Oceans Eleven so that the game ground to a halt. I had to have something act on the party to keep the story active, so I turned Mok into a sort of villain, although he wasn’t written that way initially. That then left enough time that they defeated the thugs (another thing I created on the fly). At that point we had a half hour left, and the players were really anxious to defeat this big bad, so I set up a challenging fight but one that would be finished in a half hour. It worked well but it’s interesting how the two scenarios both resolved well, but in completely different places.
Have you ever run the same scenario for two different groups of players? What happened? Did it go how you expected? Leave a comment and tell us your experience!
