Waylaying Traveling Merchants

My idea for a repeatable quests would be to check with a bandit faction npc officer. This Bandit might have random job offers
or no jobs at all.

One of these jobs is waylaying a traveling merchant caravan.
The Bandit tells the pc that he has info on a shipment that plans to skip Rookroost as if he is too good for the Bandit Kingdoms.
The bandit explains that this caravan is overburden with all manner of things and as a show of good will he wants the pc to help relieve the merchant of some of his goods.

I was thinking that there could be a number of ways to rob the caravan.
However, the pc only has enough time to do one or two things and so they must choose what would best fit the characters talents.
Fighter-It might be best to make a roadblock and then attack the caravan head on.
Thief- It might be best to tie ropes to the trees and swing in and backstab everyone quickly.
other methods might be to disguise oneself as a maiden in distress or use stealth and sleight of hand to sabotage a cart that drops a few bags of things off the rear of the wagon.

Each method has drawbacks and different rewards.


Btw, I can write dialogue and craft ambush areas, but scripting anything might do me in.

sounds great, but there's going to be ~some~ scripting to make it happen.

It sounds like it'll be more of a party quest than a solo, but we can make it work for both. It just depends.

Anyways, how about we make the conversation port the pcs (i can handle that, no problem) to the area that they're going to do what they want to do in.

For the roadblock: a road with a couple of barricades and some ditches set up, along with some defensible positions... the line of npcs walks up, someone comes up to talk to the pcs, who will attempt to intimidate the people into giving up their goods peacefully. One or two guards resist anyways, but by and large everything happens quietly.

For the sneaky approach: we'll make a lil canyon where the npcs have set up camp at night, the pcs can sneak in and loot things, but if they get caught all hell breaks loose.


It doesn't just have to be a badly quest, either. Slavery growing now that Iuz has occupied the Bandit Kingdoms (Or combination of free lords, whatever you want to call it) and it could be efforts to free captured slaves.


Anyways, great quest idea padre! it's for sure going to be implemented, but as it's your idea let me know what you think about methods.

Mammon wrote:

sounds great, but there's going to be ~some~ scripting to make it happen.

It sounds like it'll be more of a party quest than a solo, but we can make it work for both. It just depends.

I thought that might be the case. My problem here is I do not know what is possible. I could write the conversations and it can be edited to fit which possible scripts.

Mammon wrote:

Anyways, how about we make the conversation port the pcs (i can handle that, no problem) to the area that they're going to do what they want to do in.

I think porting them to the area they choose would be fine. Not sure if that would be done in the informats convo or maybe on a kind of command table in a private room of the Dirty Dog. Might be easier to just have the players choose in conversation but it might also give the Dirty Dog a little extra special something that you mentioned somewhere on here.

Mammon wrote:

For the roadblock: a road with a couple of barricades and some ditches set up, along with some defensible positions... the line of npcs walks up, someone comes up to talk to the pcs, who will attempt to intimidate the people into giving up their goods peacefully. One or two guards resist anyways, but by and large everything happens quietly.
For the sneaky approach: we'll make a lil canyon where the npcs have set up camp at night, the pcs can sneak in and loot things, but if they get caught all hell breaks loose.

All of those possibilities sound good. Creating a variety of possibilities seems like a good way to go. I think it encourages the player to explore what they can attain or do within their party. I especially like the chance to use the intimidate skill. Also the camp out gives the players a chance to stand around the fire together while the leader has everyone review their role in the heist.

Mammon wrote:

It doesn't just have to be a badly quest, either. Slavery growing now that Iuz has occupied the Bandit Kingdoms (Or combination of free lords, whatever you want to call it) and it could be efforts to free captured slaves.

I think setting slaves free would be a great reason to waylay a caravan. However, freeing slaves would offer a much different reward than freeing a merchant of his shipment.

Heh, so true, Padre.

We'll work up different versions of the quest once we get the areas for them built.

Freeing slaves or captives for one of the groups already present in the BK might make for an interesting way to gain favors or even join player factions.

Also a great way to get your face on a wanted poster.