I introduced an adventure hook to my players this week. They were in a mountainside town offloading (laundering) gold they had acquired (stolen) from an abandoned (monster filled / ghost protected) Dwarven mine that had been abandoned for seventy years.
The next morning all the fathers of youngish/teenage girls head towards the mountains, picks in hand, to find gold. That way they can finally up and move out of town, start their lives over in a new place before The Dragon returns and demands a new maiden sacrifice.
Hook introduced, the players heroically….. try to convince the women The Dragon is likely to only take virgins. And then after a day or two wander out of town in the opposite direction of The Dragon’s nest.
I love Dungeon World – in a D&D / Pathfinder game I’d have to force the situation back towards the dragon / sacrifice angle or abandon at least an hour’s prep work. As it is, I can forget the thirty second made-in-the-shower dragonslaying expedition and throw something entirely different (made on the fly) at them.
(If anyone’s upset about them taking advantage of the situation, know that the one who instigated the scenario also fell into magma during this session, losing both legs [shattered on impact, then the flesh burnt off as he sank while our Druid tried to pull him out] and being permanently scarred waist-to-hairline.)
I wouldn’t so much forget about the dragonslaying, as make sure ignoring it comes back to bite them (literally) later!
yeah, pcs ignoring dangers is fun because you can advance them until it’s too late. Be sure that the impending doom affects something the pc care about, though.
maybe have the impending doom not even be directly tied to the dragon; there’s miners desperately mining due to the dragon, and then they might mine too deep…
Well, you know that if any PC DID convince a village woman to not be a virgin anymore, it only takes once to create a rugrat… and THAT could be something a PC would want to preserve from a dragon’s rampage.
GILLIAN! YES!
One of the PCs (who worships a deity of ‘revenge, lust and deception’) is blood-bound to a half-demon. His bloodline is the only thing that can allow the half demon to transcend his elven nature and finish his transformation, which is bad news. As it is, that PC is the only surviving member of the family and is highly sought by the cult of the demon.
But what if he had a child….
That lass might just end up kidnapped. In fact, I think I’ll get her name from the player next session, write it down, and refuse to explain why (for a few game-months anyway). This ties in perfectly with the major Front.
They’re also going to inform the Dwarves of the cleared-out mines so they can return and kick the magma forge back into production (something the party needs in order to refine their small stash of adamantium). So we’ve got a town of amateur miner wantabes digging around the (highly xenophobic) dwarven colony. And the dragon is no doubt going to notice half the town missing / the vast quantities of gold that have suddenly appeared. Dragons can smell gold, right? Throwing in the Kobolds who were contesting for ownership of the mine from the Ant People, the Ant People survivors who scattered to the winds with their eggs hoping to set up new colonies in the area, and the angry fathers…. there’s plenty of Front material here.