I let all the players know at the outset that the game was a casual one-shot and that it would be okay if they didn't see it through to the end. There was a lot of other gaming going on around us, and I expected that attention would wax and wane. I also expected that some folk would be pretty wiped from the marathon. I had designed the encounters for parties of 3, 4, 5, or 6 and just adjusted on the fly as players joined and/or left the table. The pre-generated characters I made and the spell cards I pre-selected were meant to be easy enough for anyone to pick up and run with it.
The party was escorting a caravan to the border town of Northhurst- where things seemed dour indeed. The elven fighter (highest passive Perception) noticed on the road to town that there were some sallow patches of earth and evidence of failing crops. The whole party noticed that the town seemed to be more reserved than they expected, and started looking into the the reason for these clearly bad omens. The local innkeeper tipped them off that Mayor Roland was looking for adventurer types for some errand that he thought was related to the town's ills.
Mayor Roland told the party that some two decades ago a Necromancer took up residence in the ruins of the wizard's tower about a day-and-a-half's hike from the walls of the town. The town had suffered the same sense of dread and agricultural complications back then, but a wandering crusader came and dispatched the Necromancer- although Roland didn't know much about the particulars since he was a much younger man back then. The party struck out for the ruins of the tower with a mcguffin that spit out magical items in exchange for good deeds in hand (the Bag of Beleghast the Benevolent).
The party had a "random" encounter with a handful of goblins in the Yellow Wood, fought with the animated tree and dire wolf guardians at the entrance to the ruins, navigated a series of fire-spitting and spike-stabbing traps (one player immediately clued in to the Galaxy Quest reference), and solved a couple of riddles with an astronomy theme. I tried to squeeze in as much of the usual dungeon fare into the space and time as I could- and all the while I was handing out cards with fun, custom magic items saying "The Bag of Beleghast the Benevolent bursts with magical energy!"
At the end of the adventure the party fought a large undead creature that looked like a cross between a minotaur skeleton and a flameskull standing on top of a giant stone ziggurat that functioned like an eldritch machine complete with a furnace and cranks being tended to by skeletal minions. The boss was not legendary, but it was elite (a status I halfheartedly made up, but definitely need to fully develop for the future). The creature weakened as they destroyed the skeletal minions that operated the machine and powered a roiling sphere of arcane energy at its apex.
There were a lot of highlights- criticals and clever uses of magical items that I hadn't quite intended, but most importantly I was glad to be a part of the fundraising efforts. I didn't quite write up the whole adventure, but I'm happy to let you all have the magic item cards for use in your own games. Beware: These things are meant for casual play only- they are NOT balanced for legit play (they also formatted a little oddly so maybe it's just a read-only).
You can get a hold of the Publisher file for these cards here.
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