I think having the party be a team of building inspectors would making an interesting adventure premise. An authority figure hires them to assess ruins and decrepit sites to make sure nobody is turning them into evil lairs. Gotta keep the riffraff out. In some cases the party would find villains in the act of setting up shop. Other times this isn’t happening but they must contend with a site’s own resident evil. Or the place itself is totally clean but the seemingly normal village inn nearby is infested with unspeakable horrors.
If I think about it this is really just a variation of when the local baron hires you to clear a forest of monsters before building a new village.
Look, we simply cannot approve these tower spikes. I know you think it’s “cool” and “menacing”, but if we say yes it will be only a matter of time before you put spikes on your platemail as well, and start wearing eyeliner. Then we’ll have to secure your portcullus against oiled up barbarians with thick Bavarian accents and designate this whole area as “straight to VHS” land.
I know you just bought this house two months ago, but that ain’t a septic tank, that’s a pipe leading straight into the underdark. Do you want svirfneblins climbing outta your toilet? You gotta get a sewer hookup. I know this is just how they did it back when the house was built, but that ain’t how it works these days. It was out of code then, and it’s out of code now. I’m gonna be back in a tenday, and I really don’t wanna have to fine you. I’m gonna leave you the Adventurer’s Guild’s business card, they got a department specifically for this kinda high risk plumbing.
“Pal, look. If you had your gold coins stacked in your cave, and put in a couple tables, we’d just call it a ‘counting room.’ Then we’d be talking maybe a little citation for not spacing your dragon-discouragement columns close enough together. But what you’ve got here, with all your gold and gems and statues just like…piled up on the floor? I gotta be honest, I don’t know how you don’t at least have a little wyrmling in here yet. This is absolutely a hoard, and if we don’t remediate now you’re gonna need exterminators by the end of the week.”
You want Avaricious Dragons? Cuz this is how you get Avaricious Dragons.
That would be a fun way to subvert expectations, make it sound like your typical “rats in the cellar” job:
“Yeah, I’ve got a bit of a pest problem in the cellar and you came highly recommended.”
“I mean, we’ve done that in the past, but that’s a bit beneath us now…”
“The job pays quite handsomely.”
“…Well, it better.”
And then the pest problem is a wyrmling and maybe some kobolds
Brilliant. For a while I have wanted to do a Victorian/Steampunk gothic fantasy “monster rally” campaign in the vein of Werewolf by Night/League of Extraordinary Gentlemen/Van Helsing/Universal Monsters, and I think I may have just found my hook.
This thread is feeding my desire for more of this character
Greatest call ever. Yes, absolutely.
I back Vaesen on Kickstarter and this would be prefect for that.
“Look, you got a large body of water on your property that isn’t fenced in. If a women falls in their and dies, we’re looking at a Rusalka moving in. Here’s your order to fence in pond.”
Playing Planescape: Torment is how I learned most of the bureaucracy of at least some parts/planes of D&D because there is a conversation between a demon and a devil at a bar where they are arguing over some mundane aspects of the governments in hell/the abyss and they go into extreme detail about various shit.
This sounds like a Discworld plot invoking relatable 21st century Roundworld problems like absentee landlords and lack of housing.
God, I wish Terry Pratchett hadn’t died so soon.
Hear hear. This has Ankh Morpork written all over it.
I think it’s not just how much gold one has, but whether it can be categorized as a “horde.” You may only have a small amount of gold coins, but if you leave them in a messy–but not too messy–pile, you could end up with a small dragon sleeping on top of it.
brb, converting my 401k to gold to attract an adorable baby dragon
“Horde” is orcs. “Hoard” is dragons.
Ah-hah, you’ve discovered my plan: Attack of the gold coin mimics!
(Or just a lack of English comprehension on my part, really 😅.)
That reminds me, I still need to make PF2E stat blocks for various sizes of mimics. Including a mimic hatchling swarm
Those orcs with their ‘a’ upside down and in the wrong spot.
Okay but like… If I only have a pile like… A foot tall…
Will the dragon be hamster sized, Chihuahua sized, great Pyrenees size, or bear size?
Cause depending on the answer, I have some saving to do…
Hard to say, but it seems like there’s more gold than dragon, usually. (Unless you end up with a Gold Dragon!)
I’m hoping for hamster-sized dragon.
Not all of us can live on Hysperia.
These sound like great prompts for an Acquisitions Incorporated game, or maybe something set in Discworld
Let’s go meta. There’s a Ministry of Chelonism whose remit it is to send teams of interdimensional agents to prevent fantasy settings from becoming too self-aware and ironic, because that would cause them to interact with the Discworld and destabilise their reality.
They constantly muck it up, leaving a trail of universes with retconned cosmogonies and unhinged cosmic geometries.
The worst being that one incident where they left an entire universe in a state where every single particle is governed by the uncertainty principle but only when no one is looking.
Remind’s me of this essay.
