Necropolitans, episode 65: But would that not set fire to the villagers?

Our friendly neighbourhood undead are called in to deal with a landshark problem, in Episode 065: But would that not set fire to the villagers?.

I like this kind of thing: some ordinary folks doing a thing and needing help, expressing gratitude for their help in small and community-focused ways. It's not epic adventure, it's not grand treasures, it's offering a feast and showing the PCs some of their local traditions and making them part of the world. These villagers are going to tell tales of this day for generations.

There need to be more fights involving helpless bystanders that the PCs need to worry about or protect from things. This gets increasingly hard as adventures take place in far-flung places with few or no inhabitants. It's one of the few ways to rein in PCs from using powerful AoE abilities, and to force them to pay attention to things that aren't the optimal target - while PCs can blithely ignore weaker enemies that either can't hit them or whose HP damage is trivial, they can't do so if those enemies are attacking innocents.

"I'm feeling like I'm owed something." - a classic, reusable Jaal quote.

Direct Links

1. RSS feed for all episodes
2. Episode 001: Character Generation
3. Master list of episodes
4. Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
5. Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
6. Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
7. Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)