Friday Fantasy: Eve of Destruction

Eve of Destruction refers to the chief villain and the situation in which the Player Characters find themselves by the end of the scenario. It starts simple enough. In fact, it starts with a fantasy roleplay cliché. A village in peril. Beset by bandits. A desperate mayor. The Player Characters. Low Level. In a typical fantasy roleplaying scenario, the Player Characters would be hired by the Mayor to root out the bandits which are have been preying on the town and its surrounds. Then they would search area, locate the bandits, and strike, disrupting their operations and in the process discover that the bandit leader has a spy in town. Fortunately, Eve of Destruction is much more interesting than that and presents the players and their characters with a challenge or two, not all of which are combat-based. Eve of Destruction is a scenario for ShadowDark, the retroclone inspired by both the Old School Renaissance and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from The Arcane Library. It is published by Jeff Stevens Games and is designed for use with Second Level Player Characters, but includes notes for scaling the scenario down for Player Characters of First Level and up as high as Seventh Level.

Eve of Destruction begins with the Player Characters in the town of Sunset Hill where they are approached by its mayor, Eugenia Stumpy. She wants help in dealing with a group of bandits that have been predating on the town and the surrounding farms, as well as generally being a nuisance, including the scenario suggests leaving obscene graffiti on a tavern wall, when not raiding or robbing. Once they decide to take up the job, the mayor warns them that the bandits’ leader, known as ‘Eve of Destruction’, is a known killer, but lets them know roughly where the bandits’ camp is. The journey is interrupted by the discovery of a band of Goblins holding up a wagon and once the Player Characters deal with them, the wagon and its passengers turn out to be Tart’s Traveling Thespians, who just happen to have been hired to perform a play for a nearby group of bandits. Coincidence? Of course, but it also turns that the actors of Tart’s Traveling Thespians no longer want to perform, having been rattled by the Goblin holdup. Ideally—and the scenario assumes so—the Player Characters will see this as an opportunity. After all, if the actors do not want to do it anymore, and were expected by the bandits, meaning that they could just roll into their camp, surely the Player Characters could go in their stead. The upside is that the Player Characters will be able to get into the camp unopposed, the downside is that they will have to put on a performance.

Eve of Destruction encourages all of this with a complete, five-page script that the players, as their characters, are expected to perform. Whilst all of this is going on, two of the cast, that is, two of the Player Characters as the cast, each receive a message. One is from ‘Eve of Destruction’ herself, another is from her deputy, Roark Gould. From these messages, the Player Characters learn that all is not well in the bandit camp. The leader and her deputy do not trust each other and want to kill each other, and have hired members of Tart’s Traveling Thespians. Eve of Destruction has the potential for a great third act when the Player Characters can hopefully bring the house down—on both the stage and on the bandits. How the former plays out likely depends in part upon the characters’ Charisma (or performance)-based checks. How the latter plays out is left open-ended and player-led, calling for roleplaying and intrigue upon their part, as well as a more experienced Game Master to handle it. Even so, some suggestions as to the possible outcome at the camp would have been useful as would details of the other bandits at the camp and their disposition and how the Player Characters might sway them in direction or another.

Physically, Eve of Destruction is cleanly and tidily laid out. Bar the cover, the scenario is not illustrated. It could do with a map.

Eve of Destruction is a short, entertaining scenario that is easy to slot into a campaign. It takes a classic fantasy roleplaying set-up, in fact, a cliché of a classic fantasy roleplaying set-up, and gets the players and their character to do something different. To get the Player Characters actually roleplaying themselves by performing stage as well as mixed up in some double-crossing intrigue and potential shenanigans. The scenario does leave the Game Master with a bit more work to do at the end than it really should, but the set-up and getting there is entertainingly different.