#road encounter

[dailyadventureprompts]

Encounter: Tossup on the Tollroad

Artsource

Setup: The party are travelling either by themselves or as guards for some caravan, making their way along an old road widely known to have fallen into disrepair thanks to the local lord's mismanagement.

What a surprise then when the party approach an old fortified toll house and discover it garrisoned with troops in the lord's livery, who are now expecting them to pay exorbitant fees for the privilege of crossing into the lord's domain.

The toll collectors are beligerant and one or two even appear drunk. Not paying their toll ads days, maybe weeks to the party's journey, and crossing overland will not only be slow going, but dangerous, as monsters have been known to be creeping back into the region from the wilderness (again, due to the lord's mismanagement).

Challenges & Complications:

Plenty of folks call tollgates "highway robbery" but in this instance it's far more literal. The garrison are infact a group of bandits who have laid their hands on some of his soldier's uniforms, or fashioned crude imitations. The ones interacting with the party have mostly legitimate looking outfits, but those standing back have increasingly flimsy disguises which a perceptive character might notice.

The bandits demand to inspect packs and cargo for "contraband" as a means of seeing whether the party is worth robbing beyond paying their hiked up crossing fee. If one of them finds something good, they make a quick signal to the ones on the battlements which tells them to drop the portcullis after the travellers are through, cutting off their escape before launching their attack.

More than a couple merchants have fallen victim to the ruse already, and the party may notice the their wagons and pack animals tucked away, some of the former showing signs of struggle. The contents of these wagons are sitting inside the fortress waiting to be fenced, meaning a party that defeats the bandits may have stumbled into a small fortune of trade goods, as well as mementos, messages in need of delivery. My advice is to cram this treasure-drop full of quest hooks.

Selling the goods may get the party accused of banditry themselves, turning a potential payday into a brush with the law.

[downfalldestiny]

Elegant 🐎 !.

[okjii]

the last time “partner” was used with as much chemistry, sexual and romantic overtones, and overall Gayness as Jayvik have was whatever the hell Tulio and Miguel had going on in the Road to El Dorado

[normasshearer]

A newspaperman I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature. And he said, "Then, it's there."

84 CHARING CROSS ROAD 1987, dir. David Jones

[babylon38ad]

Close Encounters

[eyesore-boi]

"WISH I COULD SAY SOMEONE'S/NO ONE'S THERE!"

Yeah yeah yeah "FNAF MOVIE COMING OUT OCTOBER 27TH!!" Yeah that may be happening for you, but for me...the original t r u e FNaF movie already came out in 2 0 1 6

Just joking of course i aM MORE THAN FUCKING EXCITED FOR FNAF MOVIE DJAKSBS WE HAVE BEEN WAITING Y E A R S - So I figured to celebrate such an accomplishment i have decided to...not actually draw anything from the movie yet but instead the "movie" we all had as a substitute: FNaF the Musical!

I still absolutely adore this thing, rewatching it while drawing this piece just blasted me in the face with nostalgia the whole way through, and was just a real fun time seeing these YouTubers all collectivly go crazy in their own ways all just for some p u p p e t s -

And also aaaah back then when making FNaF kid friendly wasn't the norm......cough cough security breach >:[

But for real, this was a real fun one to do! Been experimenting with lighting and shading A LOT recently which i think is good, fun to try the simpler designs of the "animatronics" (tho Mat honestly was fun i still remember that shitty bear costume front to b a c k -), haven't drawn Nate before, and Mark...god REALLY trippy drawing him with red hair again hhHnnDHSKSN-

But yeah, all and all, finally posting more of art, real hyped for the movie (planning to watch it on Halloween with some friends...while in my Warfstache cosplays hohoho-), and who knows! Maybe the movie will spark my motivation with...other things...

So with that cryptic ending i abruptly leave...just like how FNaF does hAHAHA G O D THE LORE IS IN S H A M B L E S -

[thegreatyin]

I AM SO DELIGHTED THANKS. there is literally no greater honor than having one's made up freak get mistaken for a canon character

[burkh4rt]

[secretceremonies]

84 Charing Cross Road (1987) | dir. David Hugh Jones

[dailyadventureprompts]

My party just hit level 3 and have acquired the deed and portfolio for the accounts of the deceased lord of that manor. They’re heading for a large city to cash it in. I’m drawing a blank on what to throw at them along the way. Help? There’s a classic evil wizard marauding around the countryside/borderlands building up an army of mutants but I’m not sure what to do with all this. Anything you have would be useful 🩷

Alright, I imagine your classic mutant wizard is going to be an antagonist later on, but we want to build up to that reveal so here's three random encounters while you build out the city:

The party run into a caravan that's going the same way as them. Like all folk of the road they're happy to gossip and (along with 3-4 other random plothooks/details/worldbuilding bullshit) they mention seeing strange, misshapen creatures creeping around their camp on a previous night. Not only is this a cool ghost story that'll have your party on edge/expecting an attack, it lets you foreshadow the wizard's eventual appearance.

Something that relates to WHY the wizard is building a mutant army. A monument to a past tragedy, a shrine to a god with a story that inspired them, evidence of the ruling power they want to overthrow. Have an unrelated regional monster hanging out around it so the encounter pulls double duty as both challenge and world building.

A little scene Detail the environment surrounding the city, tell us about the local region, the climate, the economy, the people. You can also have this pull double duty by telling us what's *wrong* in the city, because something is always wrong before the adventurers do something about it. Critically, this should have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WIZARD, because you need something for the party to be doing right now while you're still building up the antagonist.

[dndsettingsinfo]

Brothel [32×50] by Atraxian Bear

[abirddogmoment]

Just a couple of moose in the canola

[youraveragedeltafan]

WAS THAT THE ATTACK IN '86????

[omniblades-and-stars]

If I had my way, the last confrontation with TIM wouldn't have been another convince the bad guy to shoot himself. It would have been a Tomb Raider style QTE where you knocking him flat on his ass, crush him under your boot, and then you shoot him.

I guess the paragon v renegade choice would just be whether you spit in his eye first.

[pathstobliss]

Troll Encounter

[lupinuslepidus]

sometimes there are fieldwork Incidents and sometimes there are moments of serendipity, and we stumbled into one of those this week. after not having, like, seen a single other living soul anywhere we were doing dispersed camping, we ran into a dad who was taking his three lil girls (ages, like, six thru eleven) and a dog on a jeep trip. it was getting towards eight at night and we hadn't yet picked out a camp spot, and he asked if we had a battery he could borrow to inflate an air mattress (we did), so we ended up following them and pitching camp right next to them.

highlights:

we were happy to have a campsite & new people to interact with, and in exchange he was clearly relieved to have some help entertaining the kiddos while he took a breather

crew members got to practice their sci comm skills by explaining what we were doing out there

the dad runs a food truck in a city in Nevada in his daily life, so he gave us the best mac salad i've ever had and (according to our one crew member that wasn't vegetarian) a fantastic hawaiian barbecue.

in exchange for the mac salad i gave him some of the tofu stir fry i was making for our dinner, got past some of his skepticism about vegetarian food through the power of Delicious Peanut Sauce. also, in the name of cultural exchange, i put aside my reservations for a moment and won goodwill by trying a bite of the hawaiian barbecue (it was good)

the girls were all EXTREMELY excited about bones. cow bones. other crew member instantly befriended them by showing them a cow bone she'd found. it always really, really warms my heart to see kiddos excited about poking around in bushes and looking for bones

i mostly hung out with the six-year-old, who helped me set up my tent, and helped me draw -- after letting her go at my sketchbook for a bit, i set her up with my green glitter pen and a separate page.

i asked all the kids what their favorite animals were and gave them doodles to keep

after the kiddos went to bed we all hung out by the campfire and ran through our campfire song repertoire to entertain the dad ("big rock candy mountain" is our current go-to and is a pretty safe bet)

the next morning, we headed out for our work day before they woke up, and they'd cleared out by the time we got back, but when we opened up our kitchen gear box, we found a thank-you note telling us to look up their food truck next time we're in the area, along with supplies for s'mores.