My First Nyambe Adventure

[gospog]

Hello, and thanks for putting together such a cool site!

I just got the Nyambe book, am about half way through, and am already sketching out my fist scenario!

It's going to be a one-shot (for now), and will lead to other adventures, if there is sufficient player interest. (I think there will be!)
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Anyway, the basic premise is this: the players are all adolescents in a villiage. Villiage tradition states that for them to become adults, they must go out and hunt (and kill) a mighty beast.

The N'Nanga who leads the villiage elders instructs them to kill a lion that has been plauging the villiage.

Out in the jungle the group runs into thier first complication: the lion is in fact a Dire Lion! They have a brief encounter with it, fare badly (perhaps) and the Dire Lion retreats.

They are approached by a hermit who tells them the (brief) tale of a Mchawi who terrorized this area until a clever Nanala tricked him.

The Nanala scared the Mchawi so badly, that the evil wizard hid part of his spirit away in a magic gourd. When the Mchawi was later killed, the rest of his spirit passed into the gourd as well.

This Dire Lion is the reincarnation of the evil Mchawi. But until the PCs find the gourd and put his spirit back into the Dire Lion, he cannot be killed. Luckily, this old hermit (the Nanala?) knows where to find the gourd, but it will not be easy...

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What I am hoping for is more ideas to refine this story. I am espescially interested in things I can add for flavor.

Also, I will be generating characters for the players to use. Any suggestions?

[Nyambefan]

I am glad you like the site! How did you find it?

These are some great ideas. Some adventure hook questions come to mind. These are just questions to spark more ideas, nothing more.

If the Dire Lion can't be killed why does it retreat in the initial incounter? Does the hermit show up and it flees because it is scared of him/her? Does the mchawi only have partial control over the dire lion so sometimes it is not under his influence?

Is the hermit actually the nanala that originally started all of this?

Is the nanala an ancestor spirit now? Maybe of one of the pcs?

This sounds like an interesting scenario.

[gospog]

I am glad you like the site! How did you find it?

I linked to it off the Atlas Games main site.

If the Dire Lion can't be killed why does it retreat in the initial incounter?

Hmm, this is exactly why I posted, to find glaring inconsistencies like this!
My first answer is going to be "arroagance", and I will think on it more.

Does the hermit show up and it flees because it is scared of him/her?

Ahhh! Now, that would fit in with comes later. Yes...

Does the mchawi only have partial control over the dire lion so sometimes it is not under his influence?


At first, I rejected this idea, but the more i think about it, the more I like it. With only part of his soul in the Dire Lion, the evil Mchawi can only exert partial control. Makes sense to me!


Is the hermit actually the nanala that originally started all of this?

This is what I am leaning towards, yes. I might make his espescially old and lame, and therefore hesitant to resolve the situation himslef now. Hence the young heroes...

Thanks for all of your feedback! I will keep you posted as I work on this. Very exciting!

[Randy Shipp]

For a group of 1st level characters, how many rounds of combat do you anticipate with that CR 5 Dire Lion before having to have the hermit show up? Seems like the characters really have no good chance of survival against such a beast. I'm struggling with something very similar as I plan for the start of my Nyambe game this Sunday.

Randy...

[gospog]

I'm not sure if the players will be 1st level or 2nd, but you raise a valid point.

My answer? Who says a Dire Lion needs to be CR5? Drop the HP and the AC, etc... Make the encounter appropriate to the group.

The story's the thing.

I'll be running this in early July at at a Con, so thanks for the feedback. I'll have more info on this scenario as I complete it in the coming weeks...

[Nyambefan]

Gospog, any news on your storyline? I'm just excited to find out what you have done with these great ideas.

[Randy Shipp]

gospog said:

I'm not sure if the players will be 1st level or 2nd, but you raise a valid point.

My answer? Who says a Dire Lion needs to be CR5? Drop the HP and the AC, etc... Make the encounter appropriate to the group.

The story's the thing.

I'd be more on board with this if I could find anything in the DMG or Monster Manual that talks about how to create smaller versions of monsters. Considerable space is spent talking about how to make bigger, nastier versions of existing monsters, but no clues (that I can find) on how to create a young dragon or a lion cub.

In any case, I'm not sure I'd make the Dire Lion too much easier anyway. For a game tailored to my tastes, this would have a couple of untoward side effects. First, I'm much more inclined to warn my players that the characters need to conform their actions to their environment than to let them believe that the environment will always be tailored to them. If, after stalking what they think is a normal lion, they top a rise and see a ten-foot long, 800 pound dire lion with tusks, they need to consider the possibility of running like hell instead of charging. Again, I know that's a taste issue, but that's my taste.

Second, if I'd decided that a Dire Lion was too powerful for the effect I wanted to create in the encounter, I'd subsitute something with a little less punch, such as an ill-tempered normal lion (or two), an mpisimbi, or something else entirely. If I'm going to have my party encounter a dire lion, I really want it to make an impression on them, and I don't believe I'd achieve as much by watering it down.

Now, having said all that, I AM concerned about my level of skill at GMing D&D. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to learn to calibrate the difficulty level of the encounters relatively quickly so as to avoid character casualties that are my fault. I want a dangerous, even deadly environment, but I don't lust after seeing PCs die. It's a fine line.

I'm anxious to hear more about your game idea, too! Two of my players and I got together tonight and rolled up characters. I wound up with a Shombe n'anga that has nice Wisdom, but may be bordering on barely survivable Str and Dex (7 Dex...ouch). He'll be trying very hard to stay alive until later levels. He may actually be the first to wind up with some kind of armor on... The other is a pretty average gamba...no stat over 13 or 14, I think. May let this guy point buy his stats instead, since he's quite a bit less well off than the n'anga, based on point buy totals.

Randy...