Changing Gears

This weeks game ended abruptly.

One of the player's suddenly decided that their character had misgivings about plunging deeper into the dungeon.  Mostly feeling bad about invading the homes of Ogres that had not really done anything bad.

Now, the conceit of this game when we started was a basic dungeon delve.  The combination of playing over Skype and real life constraints made a pre-populated dungeon appealing to me to run.  I tend to run sandboxy games, so this game was a change, and so I had no sandbox or other content prepped. 

Normally when a situation like this comes up, I will pause the game and have a moment of real talk with the players.  Talk about what it is they are looking for as players, mention that we may need to break early so I can prep, etc.  However, in this case, the player who started this change of track had to abruptly jump off the call.  It was only about 15 minutes from our usual stopping point, so I had a quick chat with the rest of the group before signing off.

This left me in a situation where the player's had a stated goal to go off and see if anyone needed some wrongs righted, and me with no content beyond the immediate vicinity of the village and dungeon.  First I looked over my random notes from previous sessions to see if they sparked any ideas, no luck.  Next I opted to check out the Adventure Lookup to see if I could find something that could serve as a springboard.  After playing with the criteria, locations, enemies, intended level, I found a few that fit the bill.  One of them I actually owned!

I spent a few hours over the next 2 days quickly jotting down the main strokes of the module and how to make it fit with what little setting I had already established.  Some basic stats and we are ready to go, at least for the next session.  I didn't want to put too much effort into this until I know they are going to take the hook.  I have also worked in some clues and events that could serve to lead them back to the original dungeon with a reason to keep delving deeper.  

And if they don't? That is fine, I have at least bought myself some extra time to get an idea of what they are looking to do next, and to create some content around that.