So, next strategy-- teach by example and open the floor to questions. Thus, I'm putting this in a forum thread, so that there's opportunity to discuss how and why I'm doing things or to ask for clarification about points. I might brandish moderator power to rearrange the questions and answers as more content-containing posts go onto the thread, but people should feel free to ask questions and work along. This first post is mostly a declaration of intent.
As a rough outline of what I'm going to make-- I'm starting with a small-town rugged-surrounds inn, looking to have CR 1-2 content which can be done in chunks with party mates optional and ideally doesn't get used up too quickly. Centipedes are a very good choice here because they're not very threatening, and we can thus deploy many of them in sequence to produce the sense of hostile grounds that need to be slugged through (the tiny ones can be reliably killed by cantrips and are slower than PCs, they do 1 HP damage with DC 10 dex poison -- they well earn their CR of 0.125), when we tend to be stuck having CR 1 content be done in a couple minutes.
The current outline looks like so, which I'll update to be links as the discussion of making each part gets put together.
- The bartender at the inn mentions aside that a patron got a rather-nasty bite, but was too drunk to remember by what exactly. Looked like a giant insect, and she'd like to know more about it.
- PC finds drunk mercenary who tells a story about the bite, but it indeed just sounds like a drunk fellow. PC can try a number of skill challenges to get more information:
- Knowledge: Nature (DC 11) -- Identify the creature (a 0.25 HD vermin) by its description.
- Heal (DC 15) -- Identify the wound, determining that it's a monstrous centipede.
- Survival (DC 15) -- Identify likely candidates based on the tale and the surroundings.
- Search (DC 15) -- Find a bit of chitin left behind from the scuffle
- If all checks fail, PC misses out on a little XP but gets helped along by the mercenary having a moment of clarity.
- PC returns to the bartender to relay information, and she hires the PC to investigate.
- Knowledge: Nature (DC 11) -- know the critter, and thus know its habitat; suggest they're probably underground.
- Amble about like a mook until you bump into an insect hole.
- PC once again returns to the bartender with information, and she hires the PC to poke about in the centipede lair, and gather information about how many are down there.
- This will be a demonstration of tiered rewards, and will resemble the orc scouting quest out of Ruqel.
- PC returns with the results from scouting (bonus cookies if they're thorough). Bartender says she can afford to hire the PCs to kill off some of them-- just make there not be so many until she can get help from the powers that be.
- This will be a demonstration of an area-clearing quest, where PCs are "done" after they've slain an arbitrary number of a creature.
- PC returns with tales of slaughtered centipedes. Apparently that was a terrible idea, because now they're angry and all scuttling about, causing trouble. The PCs will need to hold them at bay while the authorities get the ones already on the surface.
- This will be an example of a multiple-challenge quest and a defense quest-- specifically, probably "bounty" / "defense" / "bounty" / "defense" for taking ground and then holding it twice.
- Bartender relates that the authorities have posted a bounty on the largest of these centipedes, as in the rucks while the PCs were underground literally beating centipedes back with a stick there was a larger, more-vicious one that got away.
- This will be a simple assault/bounty type-quest, with a higher-CR (for the quest, so CR 1) "boss" centipede to fight, along with its attendents.
- PCs hopefully didn't die, and have a final turnin.
2. Tooling an Antagonist
3. Tooling a Lair
Q&As
Unfortunately, placeables aren't really designed to be used this way. It's possible, certainly, because placeables have a tidy slot for code to execute when they're used-- and therefore we can do pretty much anything when a placeable is used. But this walkthrough is in theory to be an example of me using very simple tools to get a relatively-long-playing and complex (hopefully interesting!) quest.[20:12] <Rumple_C> zelknolf, how about a slight expansion on area transitions to include transition from a usable. like clicking on a ladder, for example.
If this one actually produces results, I'll likely make some advanced stuff and document the process, and will include stuff like using events and sending people places (which will also allow you to make cool stuff like portals with randomized destinations. Just in case you have an NPC with Craft Portal who is a jerk).