Hoping for advice:

I'm looking at the next leg of our campaign being a "race for the MacGuffin" scenario. The PCs (Rolemaster) have been chasing an evil sorceress for a while now. I want to let them catch up but put them in a position where they can't actually kill her. I'm thinking she's working for the king or some other powerful figure and vengeance will be swift. Instead, they're given the opportunity to complete the job themselves. The employer doesn't give a crap who does it and doesn't care what happens to them afterwards (so maybe an underworld figure).

The problem: I've never run or even read an adventure like that. Can someone point me to some good resources? Advice from the geniuses here is considered good as well.

Don't have her working directly for the king. Have her working for someone high up, though -- say, the royal court wizard or chamberlain. Make it clear that killing her will not just cause them grief but unseal a big can of worms politically. So they're better off hog-tying her and shipping her back to her boss COD.

If they're still grumpy, sweeten the pot with a royal favor or two, or access to the royal court. Being able to put a petition before the chamberlain or the king might be worth staying their hand.

Just lift it right from The Three Musketeers.
Powerful Patrons, wicked Femme Fatale antagonist and an race to get the McGuffin.....

Make her ambition the result of a powerful and desirable but cursed artifact she carries, which they will likely kill her for and take from her. Once they have it, have it compel them to complete the quest the same as it did her. Make it so that every week spent pursuing the quest it gives some sort of positive bonus, but negative ones if they are not adhering to its compulsion. Something similar to the one ring, make it want to return to its master, make other groups likewise covet the goal or the cursed item itself.

That sort of adventure has popped up as an element in larger modules now and then, and pretty sure its shown up in Dungeon magazine at least once.

Possible recent example might be Lady Rezmir from Tyranny of Dragons. Shes one of the movers and shakers of the whole plot and I liked the basic way she was presented and ran with that. Having her very savvy and playing the PCs to further her own goals while helping them to off her rivals and all through keeping one step ahead of the PCs.

When the PCs finally decided it was time to confront her and put an end to her plots. They found out that she had been maneuvering them in such a way that since they had offed her rivals, there was now no-one to actually pin her assassination on. The PCs were practically her lieutenants at this point through their own covert infiltration of the cult. This worked in the PCs favour though as They had made alot of friends in the cult and so in turn Rezmir could not simply off the PCs either.

Quote from: Ginger;1131364I want to let them catch up but put them in a position where they can't actually kill her.

IME when an NPC says "Don't kill me!" and puts her hands up, few PCs will actually kill her. Generally they only go homicidal once the GM says "roll initiative"

If it is a race for the McGuffin then she could have information that the Pcs need to either find it or get through the traps once they get to it.

She could also have something or someone that the PCs want so that they do not want to just kill her and be done with it.

Quote from: S'mon;1131407IME when an NPC says "Don't kill me!" and puts her hands up, few PCs will actually kill her. Generally they only go homicidal once the GM says "roll initiative"

Sadly no. That has not been my recent experience... friggin' murderhoboes!

GameDaddy03/28/2020
In my recent GammaWorld game the players got in a fight in the desert with another biker gang, They launched a nuclear tipped neutron missile at the other gang and missed. That wasn't the bad part, but it was flashy and spectacular, and they managed to create a horrific radioactive sandstorm, and irradiated some more of the post-apocalyptic wasteland for another hundred thousand years or so. No... the real problem was they were busy hosing down the other biker gang in the very best traditions of murder-hoboes of the post apocalypse. They completely obliterated another small biker band with a photon grenade, had run  another part of the band back into the hostile radioactive sandstorm they had created. All that remained was this biker chick with an Uzi, and her side-kick, some floppy looking dude with a rocket launcher, who was taking pot-shots at the players. Well the mutant biker players close to use their death stench and other mutant abilities on the chick, and for three rounds she stands at very close to point blank range exchanging gunfire giving an good as she got, wounding two of the players. Now when she and her sidekick are standing alone at last, the player all rush her, to try to finish her and her companion off...

Axiom03/28/2020
... this cant end well.

GameDaddy03/28/2020
at point blank range. And get this. She literally gets down to 1 Hp and surrenders. She and her sidekick drop their weapons and hold their hands up high. The players like sharks in the water close in for the kill, and refuse to accept her surrender. They all open up at point blank range and every one of them misses. She holds up her hands attempting to surrender a second time and the players completely ignore this. One the players a mutant biker by the name of Psycho Suzie (on account of the way she treats her boyfriends) rolls right up to them and announces, "I'm going to use my pyrokinetics on them."

 Like the little girl in firestarter, with her mind she can literally light stuff up and bring the burning fires of hell.

I'm like "are you sure?"

 and Psycho Suzie is like  "yah, no way I'm going to let her live" and proceeds to turn the two into living human torches.

The only problem? The sidekick had been launching rockets at the players, and he was still carrying four rockets in a pouch which all simultaneously detonated delivering 20d6 of damage. Somehow every single one of the players had moved in so close they were all caught in the blast radius. Only one biker survived with like 7 HP. everything else ...gone.

Another spectacular "Jim Ward" Style near TPK brought in a recent GammaWorld game... because murderhoboes of the apocalypse.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1131421Sadly no. That has not been my recent experience... friggin' murderhoboes!

GameDaddy03/28/2020
In my recent GammaWorld game the players got in a fight in the desert with another biker gang, They launched a nuclear tipped neutron missile at the other gang and missed. That wasn't the bad part, but it was flashy and spectacular, and they managed to create a horrific radioactive sandstorm, and irradiated some more of the post-apocalyptic wasteland for another hundred thousand years or so. No... the real problem was they were busy hosing down the other biker gang in the very best traditions of murder-hoboes of the post apocalypse. They completely obliterated another small biker band with a photon grenade, had run  another part of the band back into the hostile radioactive sandstorm they had created. All that remained was this biker chick with an Uzi, and her side-kick, some floppy looking dude with a rocket launcher, who was taking pot-shots at the players. Well the mutant biker players close to use their death stench and other mutant abilities on the chick, and for three rounds she stands at very close to point blank range exchanging gunfire giving an good as she got, wounding two of the players. Now when she and her sidekick are standing alone at last, the player all rush her, to try to finish her and her companion off...

Axiom03/28/2020
... this cant end well.

GameDaddy03/28/2020
at point blank range. And get this. She literally gets down to 1 Hp and surrenders. She and her sidekick drop their weapons and hold their hands up high. The players like sharks in the water close in for the kill, and refuse to accept her surrender. They all open up at point blank range and every one of them misses. She holds up her hands attempting to surrender a second time and the players completely ignore this. One the players a mutant biker by the name of Psycho Suzie (on account of the way she treats her boyfriends) rolls right up to them and announces, "I'm going to use my pyrokinetics on them."

 Like the little girl in firestarter, with her mind she can literally light stuff up and bring the burning fires of hell.

I'm like "are you sure?"

 and Psycho Suzie is like  "yah, no way I'm going to let her live" and proceeds to turn the two into living human torches.

The only problem? The sidekick had been launching rockets at the players, and he was still carrying four rockets in a pouch which all simultaneously detonated delivering 20d6 of damage. Somehow every single one of the players had moved in so close they were all caught in the blast radius. Only one biker survived with like 7 HP. everything else ...gone.

Another spectacular "Jim Ward" Style near TPK brought in a recent GammaWorld game... because murderhoboes of the apocalypse.

God is real, and He has a really nasty sense of humor.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1131421Sadly no. That has not been my recent experience..

I was not talking about surrendering after a fight. I was talking about surrendering with no fight.

Quote from: S'mon;1131495I was not talking about surrendering after a fight. I was talking about surrendering with no fight.

The party has been good about accepting surrenders so far. It won't totally derail the campaign if they do kill her. They'll just have to deal with the consequences of angering a powerful person. I'll make it absolutely clear that they know that as soon as someone says "I stab her."

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1131366Don't have her working directly for the king. Have her working for someone high up, though -- say, the royal court wizard or chamberlain. Make it clear that killing her will not just cause them grief but unseal a big can of worms politically. So they're better off hog-tying her and shipping her back to her boss COD.

If they're still grumpy, sweeten the pot with a royal favor or two, or access to the royal court. Being able to put a petition before the chamberlain or the king might be worth staying their hand.

Good idea.

Any thoughts on actually structuring an adventure around competition?

Quote from: Ginger;1131590Good idea.

Any thoughts on actually structuring an adventure around competition?

I assume by competition, you are going to use NPCs (if you start having competing PC parties then things get much more interesting).

You probably want to have a set of benchmarks for this race/competition. For every benchmark the PCs complete they get closer to the goal. Kind of like a mini-adventure path.

Let's say the task is 'find the skull of Aravis the Unyielding'.  The party will need to:
-> fend off an orc assault on the town where Aravis originally came from
-> negotiate with a dragon for a history book on the adventuring party he dealt with
-> take out a wizards' cabal that seeks to obscure the location of the skull with ritual magic
-> find the head of the monastic order that Aravis belonged to, and convince him the party needs to borrow the skull
-> arrive at the monastery where Aravis's skull is kept, and then fend off attackers who want the skull for themselves.

While this is occurring, the competing NPC party might be doing things. They might be following the PCs, even attempting to impede them (depending on the nature of the competition). Or they might be tackling similar tasks (which means you'll have to stat out those NPCs).