The next adventure introduces an NPC but not for long and I thought it would be fun to introduce them early. Mugwort, a hobbit NPC in the Pony had alleged a chicken thief was due to “them no-good Rangers”. It’s supposed to be a hook for another monster up to no good. But what if it was a Ranger?
🎵 DRAMATIC CHORD 🎵
This was a single 2hr session on Discord, with Sidekick for rolls, and an encounter map on Google Sheets.
The players follow Mugwort and humour the ever-loving shit out of him while he prattles his conspiracy theories. However, a plan is needed to catch the “ranger”.
The hobbit slayer bravely hides in the chicken coop while the rest of the party climbs a tree. When Tarry-Mack the Ranger opens the roof of the coop he is beset by a screaming hobbit! Some skill rolls were in here because it is fun when things go wrong sometimes.
Poor Tarry-Mack has to talk everyone down, and calm the party, and confess that he’s been taking the chickens to catch a Barrow-wight. However it’s not theft because he’s been leaving good money for them. Oh yeah, Mugwort didn’t mention the money.
The party then come help fight the Barrow-wight. This was the bit I didn’t do right, the Barrow-wight was no challenge for the party because I used it all wrong. It should have used hit and run tactics, using its Fear aura power. The Vineyard map I picked had some nice options for breaking site lines and everything.
I kept it still and fought hand-to-hand. Also it had some unlucky rolls, and the action economy was against it.
However, the players had fun in a silly game, so: win. Also, not every encounter has to be hard! I’d just prefer easy monsters to be easy and hard ones to be hard!
Lessons
- Think more about monster tactics
- 2MTT encounters are pretty