The group is currently searching for the fabled Lost Caverns of Tsojconth but are themselves lost in the Yatils.
I'll have them find The Old Phoenix, a time/space shifting inn (of Poul Anderson's creation, and featured in some of his works) and wind up in a distant, snow-shrouded town where there will be a couple small quests they can complete:
One is the town's baker; he's got a terrible problem. Each year the whole town comes to see his marvelous gingerbread recreation of the village, but this year once he was done, the next morning much of it was wrecked! Suspecting mice, he rebuilt it and put the whole thing under glass, but the next morning, same thing! Now he's despondent that he'll never get it rebuilt and if he does, will it just suffer the same fate?
Turns out there's a gingerbread "golem" loose in the town wrecking things up; the party can (ala "Bottled City" by Kuntz) shrink down, enter the town, and put a stop to the confectionery terror before Christmas Eve.
The next is at the local church. The father can't retrieve the decorations for the fete, he went into the cellar and received the shock of his life by moving shadows who had invaded (restless spirits from the church graveyard). They're shadows, and can be dealt with accordingly.
Finally, when they return to The Old Phoenix they may run into a right jolly old elf and have some good RP fun with him.
I'll post back later this weekend about how it all went.
This inspires me to perhaps finally go with it and run my own Christmas game...inspired of course by Lobo vs Santa.
How did that game go Delver?
It was well received. The innkeeper (see at the end for more on him) gave them a curious timepiece and told them they could go exploring, but they had to be back before the watch chimed. So they entered a large town in a strange place that didn't logically connect to where they'd come in, and despite the fact that they weren't dressed like anyone else and the town appeared to be totally populated by humans, they weren't looked upon as strange (had they found a mirror or reflective surface they'd have discovered that appearance-wise they were as mundane looking as everyone else in the town).
The gingerbread sculpture in the bakery was being destroyed by a cookie golem, which sadly the party handily defeated (I pulled no punches but they hit it each and every one, each round, and I missed every round :( ).
The shadows were almost as easy; the Paladin in the party hedged them out with her protection from evil, the 8th level cleric destroyed a bunch with his turn undead ability, the other fighter/cleric in the group turned a few more and the rest were dispensed with by the martial folks in the group.
Once the dust settled they had to run back across town to get to The Old Phoenix to be returned to Greyhawk, but not before they met Santa who doled out a few useful gifts (a never-melting snowball that can be used once to cast Ice Storm, a bottle of brandy that functions as three draughts of extra healing (3d8+3), and so on).
I screwed with them a tiny bit; when they got back some of the patrons they'd met when they first entered earlier in the evening were just arriving and didn't recognize them; the other guests' past was the adventurers' future. There were a few interesting types in the bar; four halflings, Virgil I "Gus" Grissom playing backgammon with a grey, Holger Carlson and a laptop-armed Valeria Matuchek from Three Hearts and Three Lions and Operation Chaos respectively. Their serving girl while they dined was a (very modestly dressed) succubus who despite the intense detect evil stares and turn attempts from the cleric didn't behave or detect as evil...
Oh and the innkeeper's name was Tom and the players assumed it was Tom Bombadil although I didn't give them any indication that it was (and had no plan of it being him). Ah players, doing half the heavy lifting for me since 1980!
Anyway it was very, very well received and one of my group made me promise to do something "even better" next year.
Oy, do I have some planning to do...
A cookie golem!! I bet the PCs ate him alive. :p
Sounds like fun.
Sounds fun!
I never did run a holiday-themed adventure, but I'm seriously considering a DCC one-shot of The Old God Returns.
Holiday adventures are always a ton of fun; I regret that I'm not running at the moment to do one. Last year's wassailing murder-mystery was fun but I don't think it was as fun as the previous year's Nutcracker riff.
Not really doing one this year, the campaigns didn't pan out to make one viable.