Epithalamium IV

Here's what I've got so far: The Great Ziggurat of Epithalamium dedicated to Mah-Kuss the Ever-Wedded is off limits to all but the priests of He Who Takes All Brides, except, every ten years during the Festival of Fecundity. That festival is occuring now and for several days couples and their families will be streaming through the temples antechamber seeking the Connubial One's blessing.

The players, for various reasons, will be tempted to sneak deeper into the temple than allowed, to investigate, pillage, and desecrate-- depending on their inividual goals.

Goals
I had sort of an inkling that giving motivations to each player would be helpful to get a one-off game rolling, but The Rusty Battle Axe's comments were helpful in pushing me further. I start getting a little worried giving players lists of prioritized goals because it seems so different than any D&D I ever played and it seems so boardgamish. And yet, I also have the feeling that this is one of those counterintuitive things that will make the game much more fun (especially in the circumstances of this session). I'm not quite sure why. I think it may be because I am asking for a little story from the players-- not just expecting it to emerge from 4 hours of play-- but I'm putting it into the players hands (no kidnappings or roof collpsings or . . . railroading). So with that in mind here are some more ideas for player goals:

• find a bride (or groom) -- obvious eh? Didn't occur to me for a while. I think this should be possible even in the framework of a dungeon crawl because there will be captives and priestesses sprinkled throughout the temple, and marriage during this festival is very propitious!
• Find out what happened to your mother /sister -- again could be any one of the women encountered, maybe I'll just assign a percentage chance that each woman encountered is the one.
• Desecrate the temple because of a poor marriage -- Mah-Kuss is a sham, you say! Perhaps the characters parents' marriage was ill-starred or the character's own, either way the temple must be dishonored!
• Honor the temple -- carry some special token of tribute deep into the temple
• Steal -- you owe money and need some of the ol' eternal groom's trinkets, he won't miss em.

On Adult Content
Americans are generally puritanical. It bugs me that television can show death by beating but a boob flash is considered morally corrosive. So, while I don't want this to devolve into a big bawdy joke, I do want this to include sexuality. I was thinking of the temples in Japan devoted to phalluses and the Blarney stone and thought what if I combine them? I think my players would probably squirm a little to have to kiss a giant stone phallus to obtain deeper access into the temple.

I envision the temple to be one of fertility and fecundity as well as marrige, so maybe there's a big room with newly wedded couples having intercourse. I don't want it to turn into titillation, I'm actually thinking of scenes that will make my players awkward and stand out if they are trying to sneak into the temple: "So, apparently this is the part of the tour everyone gets busy. You all are the only ones left standing, what do you do now?"

Some more ideas in general:

• An obese women representing a Venus-figure tended by 6 men, a key needed to pass to the next chamber is hidden under one of her massive breasts
  
• wicker women-- these effigies attack, weapons include a few bows
• the groom is a poet in real life-- so I was thinking it would be fun to have a religious text of Mah-Kuss that has 665 metaphors for marriage and that these are callsigns or passwords to move through the temple-- only the priests can't remember all 665 metaphors so anything plausible presented by the players will work
• A gargantuan egg-- no powers, no threat, just an oddity
• The groom and I both spent some time in Poland in real life-- so I was thinking of working some in-jokes in Polish into the adventure, maybe have the local village or some of the hirelings be named Polish curse words.

Today is actually super busy for work, but I couldn't sleep with all these ideas rolling around in my head. I'd like to look up quotes/riddles/limericks online about marriage, maybe sprinkle them throughout the temple as inscriptions etc.

Friday I'll have some time to think of how to lay this all out spatially so that the players have choices. Right now my idea of a chaperoned visit of couples into and out of the temple's antechamber seems pretty linear but I'm imagining once they sneak deeper it becomes wide open from there.

Epithalamium III

More brainstorming:

• 5 sacrificial women riding 5 snow white, pregnant mules, a sixth goes riderless

• Inside the ziggurat a lagoon of milk

• In that lagoon, an island with holy baboons (vicious)

• Wooden boats carved in the shape of tulips to traverse the milk-lake

• A hallway of censers -- so many that it is nearly impossible to walk down it without sending them clattering, burning oil splashing everywhere

• Piles of saffron, which reveal pit-traps

• Great White (vicious) apes chained to captives who are in turn chained to posts - - catching the attention of the savage beasts will cause them to rip the poor victims in two as they pursue

• Peacocks! (my grandparents actually owned peacocks -- in a wrecking yard no less-- so I'm quite familiar with the lovely devils-- their cry that sounds like "Help!" the buzz of the male's tail as he displays.) Maybe a giant peacock?

• Voluptuous women crying to be freed from rattan cages -- succubi ( or maybe just one of them)

• Caryatid columns hidden amongst the many statues of Mah-Kuss' wives

Epithalamium II

I was up around 3:00AM thinking about the possible bachelor party adventure. Many of my original thoughts were things that happened to and around the players, plots basically. But I know the trouble that lies that way. So I've revised my thinking, this needs to be a location.

Grognardia's post the other day about funny names gave me an idea. See, I've long been one of those folks who've cringed at anything that didn't take the game seriously enough. But I'm revising my views as I see that players can take a game very seriously even if it has silly elements. So, I started with my friends name, Marcus and came up with Mah-kuss the Eternal Bridegroom. And immediately I started thinking of things that would amuse my friends: He of the 12 Titles, He of the 665 Brides, Mah-Kuss - the Tumescent Shadow, Mah-Kuss the Turgid, He Who Would Eat His Young if He Had Any, etc.

I'm currently imagining a ziggurat built in the forgotten past to honor this god/demon and his many brides. Inhabited by a albino, round-eyed, tribe of worshippers. (The groom and I were just talking about how 99% of fantasy badies are dark-skinned, so I'll buck the trend here). And at the base of the ziggurat's interior an avatar of Mah-Kuss which is a huge, bloated, albino worm- similar to a purple worm, except the posionous stinger is an eye that petrifies.

I was also thinking about building in references to the players, although that would be easier if it was switched to a female demon with hundreds of statues of her grooms, hmmm . . . Maybe his groomsmen can have statues and I'll give them imperious names and have them look similar to the players.

As far has things happening, I do still envision the start of play is that all these characters are escorting a small party of women to deliver a gift to Mah-Kuss. And these women then jump with their gifts happily to their deaths into the bowels of the ziggurat. If I make the treasures they jump with enticing enough, there should be plenty of reason to search for a way in to try and retrieve the goodies.

Random sidenote. I have an idea for a golden bowl that the players discover somehow which, when its cover is lifted reveals a somewhat gruesome lipless mouth set in flesh. This mouth will make proclomations and answer questions in confusing and problematic ways. Yeah, that interests me.

Epithalamium

One of my players and good friends is getting married. This coming weekend there is going to be a bachelor party. Not your traditional bachelor party mind you, drinking beer and playing video games was mentioned. One of the other attendees who has not played with us mentioned D&D. The groom would actually like to game. So I am trying to throw something together in a week, not even sure who will be there and if they all are interested in gaming.

In poetry there is a kind of occasional poem written specifically for a wedding, so I figure why not an adventure? Have you ever written an adventure for a special occasion?

I was thinking about the whole marriage theme and came up with some ideas for an adventure locale:

• A "bride" offered to something scary and powerful, à la, King Kong
• A palace or temple devoted to a spouse, à la: The Taj Mahal'
• A temple of some sort of demon with 666 brides
• A mating ground of some awesome and dire beasts, perhaps dragons or chimera
• An alchemical theme, where marriage is metaphorical and various compounds are combined to create something grand à la: philosophers's stone

Maybe my guys can be escorting a bride to her groom, or delivering a gift to an unsavory destination. Thoughts?

Update

I've been doing twice the work for half the pay this season at my job. Next year looks even more dire. All my mental RAM has gone towards trying to do a noticeably good and creative job. I miss posting to this blog. I have a post to follow.