Description
As your Group is walking in any stretch of open terrain have them roll perception (Difficulty 5) checks. If they succeed, they notice a small LED emitter attached to a nearby object (tree, rock, etc.) that shoots a laser that is invisible to the naked eye. If any of the PC‘s walk in front of the led emitter, the following happens.
A square panel in the nearby dust, grass, or whatever type of terrain you run this encounter in opens, pushing whatever type of terrain covers the panel to the side. A robot wearing a stylish suit and hat rises out of the blackness that is the now open chute and scans the players. Tell players with mental powers they feel their mind being probed. (This is the robot downloading language information from the minds of the PC’s.)
The robot then addresses the characters in a stylish, New-York-esque accent (Think Morte, from Planescape Torment. Obviously we can’t all sound as great as that voice actor, but the style is what is important here, not the actual tone of voice).
“What’s up fellas? The name’s Tyrosacavadaro [Tie-roh-sack-ah-vah-dar-oh], but my friends call me Ty.
“I see you all have just entered our famous establishment, ‘The Crackov Calamanto.'”
If they ask about the establishment, have Ty explain, in his cool accent, that this is a famous theme park. If the PC’s comment on the relatively empty landscape, I would have Ty say something like this:
“Hey, she ain’t in her prime, but she’s still kicking! Have a look at one of the attractions! But first, I’m going to need to see some tickets. That’ll be 28,000 drontamnas [Dron-tam-nahs], each.”
If player offer shin, have the robot scan the shin, and then do a conversion in its head.
“25 shin, each!”
After receiving his payment, have the robot offer a tour. I love having Ty do witty, sharp commentary on all the fantastic attractions. The more bland the landscape, the funnier this stuff is.
“Now don’t tell anyone I told you this but that rock right there is the meanest sonnova bitch this side of Rollwind pass. Oh no I think she heard me, let’s move on.”
“Try out our brand new Tree! Fresh from the factory boys. Go ahead, climb to your heart’s content! You’re only young once!”
“Now this here, it’s my favorite. The boys in management call it the localized aqueous felicity spread, but I call it ‘Fun Puddle’.”
Have Ty conclude the tour after showing three to four “Attractions” and go back into his little panel. Departing the players with “If you need anything, just call.”
The players will notice where he jumped back into the ground there is some disturbed earth and a shiny metal panel.
The players will now be able to say they’ve experienced the Fantastic Funhouse. The House of Happiness! The Crackov Calamanto!
The vibe I want to put off is a twist on the broken robot trope. The twist is that the robot works perfectly fine, it’s the mission that is “broken.” Ty’s job is to sell tickets by talking up the good qualities of the park and getting people to enter. Since the park has long been an empty lot, a clearing in a forest, or some other uninteresting piece of terrain, he really has his work cut out for him.
Details
- Level:
- 4 (12)
- Motive:
- Sell Tickets
- Environment:
- Literally any
- Health:
- 20
- Damage:
- 4
- Armor:
- 1
- Movement:
- Short
- Modifications:
Positive social interactions at level 6.
- Combat:
Standard combat. This is not supposed to be a combat scenario and I wouldn’t run something like this with murderhobos. There are plenty of good encounters for those kind of groups, this is not one of them.
- Interaction:
The robot is a very charming, witty, and friendly salesman for his lost park and will do whatever he can, sometimes mentioning very personal, intimate details of a PC, if he thinks it will convince the PC to enter the “Park.”
- Use:
Great for the crunch time when traveling between any two locations.
- Loot:
The robot will give each player a small snowglobe that shows a fantastic park with mile high rollercoasters and a total square foot area of what must be a few hundred miles in every direction. This is considered an oddity.
This is fantastic, great for some light comic relief.
Exactly what I was going for! Not everything has to be grimdark sad or a violent brush with death. My favorite part of numenera is the fact that things like this seem to work so well in its setting.
I’m new to this site so I’m not sure if the comments section is the appropriate place to ask this, however; is there anything you think I could have done better in writing this? I am very interested in becoming an active contributor to this site and I’d like to have the best quality I could. Any criticism you can give would obviously help me with that.
I think the idea is perfectly fine standalone, and perhaps the only criticism might be that the encounter is a fairly one-time throwaway occurrence.
You could try adding some ways in which repeat visits to Tyrosacavadaro might be useful. Perhaps in his many years as a ‘guide’ for the ‘park’ he has picked up some interesting rumours which he could mention in passing, e.g.
“Now see this fearsome beast in the Offical park Zoo”, he said, pointing at a dead rodent on the ground, “many adventurers such as your fine selves passed through here recently and made away sharpish after seeing such a ferocious visage!”
Of course, the other thing is that he presumably still has all the money and objects he has been paid with somewhere, and the hole leads to some kind of storage unit or perhaps even an immense underground complex. These don’t need to be described or explained, but for those lacking imagination, you could provide some helpful hints to GMs that these are ideas that could be pursued and presented to the players.
I like this! Thank you for the feedback!