Author: Mad Czar Fnord (---.89.253)
Date: 05-10-2000 15:21
One of the more successful adventures that I have run in my adult life was a Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing game in which the party began as members of a travelling circus.
This granted them:
a background vehicle ("My father raised me in this beloved troupe" or "Sure, I'll take a job as your blacksmith as far as the City of Luddese"),
a wander-in excuse ("So THIS is the famous Brag-Fattah Circus, eh?"),
and a reason to socialize (--"Peanuts! Get your red hot peanuts!" --"Say, I'll have some of those weird things...").
Of course, no circus is an adventure, so I needed the "hook." That came when the Chaos Horde raided the circus' camps. I had sent the party into town for "supplies" and upon their return, they find that some of the tents are burned down and the survivors are packing up to route around the "troubled area." Well, guess what? The whole continent was becoming troubled for some mysterious reason, and within a day of travel into the mountains, the circus was all but destroyed by a second, follow-up raid.
Viola! Party is together reardless of social background or race or class, they are united by violence and revenge, and they are drawn along into the campaign plot by the mystery of why normally furtive and sparse bands of raiders would attack en masse a well-defended (well, not well enough, but you know...) but otherwise-harmless circus troupe. Season with some scary gore (the raiders stole nothing... they just killed anything in their path) and well-timed illusions and they felt almost doomed, hunted. They were....
David "Mad Czar Fnord" Artman
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