Greetings! Book Gnome here with another odd idea for your role-playing game sessions. I read a lot of strange series and books, many of which might not be as familiar to your adventuring groups you play with. Over the years of running and prepping game sessions I have borrowed bits and pieces of stories to help breathe life into my adventures.
The two that come to mind first are the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle and the movie Legend directed by Ridley Scott.
The Last Unicorn is ripe with ideas to borrow for an adventure. The Titled Last Unicorn finds out she is the last of her kind, the rest driven into the ocean by a Red Bull. On her quest to find out where her kind vanished too, she encounters a witch Mommy Fortuna and her monster menagerie, a bumbling wizard, an amorous tree, bandits, and a foul king in that despises unicorns. There also is a talking cat and a drunk skeleton, again, a gold mine of a movie to borrow from. I loved the idea of Mommy Fortuna and her monsters, many of which are fake with illusions to make them seem real to those that believe it. she did have a real Harpy, with disastrous results.
For my adventure I changed things up both times I used it. Daddy Fate’s Traveling Menagerie of Magical Monsters appeared in my Blood Tide campaign around 2010 for a one shot to explain how our paladin met her unicorn steed once she gained the find steed spell. The group was traveling and found a fantastical looking encampment with brightly lit circus wagons full of monsters. The group realized the owner was a cruel man that was not caring properly for any of his actually magical creatures, so they freed the monsters. they befriended the unicorn, the harpy, and the manticore in the process, gaining boons of protection if they ever encountered them again. In this case Daddy Fate was just a human.
The second time was my Abyss Modified Out of the Abyss 2019 campaign at a game store. The group had escaped the Underdark and needed to get an ally to Baldur’s Gateand had the option of teaming up with a group of merchante moving wine, a traveling good company with mostly mining gear, and Daddy Fate’s Traveling Menagerie of Magical Monsters. The bard in the group met Daddy Fate, a far more charming version this time and the group imiddeatly chose to help the Menagerie, no questions asked. In the process of traveling they got to experience life with a magical circus, putting on a show for a town of haflings, each of the monsters preforming an act as well as the characters all helping too. They really bonded with the circus. Then betrayal. Daddy Fate and his minions stole the entire towns population and fled while the party was away on another quick job. The group learned that this was no ordinary monster based circus troop but a multi dimensional monster smuggling ring run by ogre mages. Daddy Fate and his crew had a quota to fill for a buyer and used the party as means to collect. In the end the party fought Daddy Fate, an ogre mage using storm giant statistics and some modified abilities, and were victorious in freeing the goodly monsters as well as the halflings. Being a three session distraction from the main plot was great.
The Legend based adventure was not as grand and was more based roughly on ideas from the movie. Lilly, a princess, is friends with a wild boy named Jack that lives in the woods. There is a evil monster named Darkness that uses Lilly’s innocence to kill off one of the last two unicorns in the world, causing rapid onset winter, goblin chaos, and the like. Darkness is a large red demon like creature with massive horns that tries to also take Lilly as a bride. Jack is tasked with being the hero by a group of fey that blame him for this whole mess. There are monsters, battles, and a dancing gown.
For the adventure, the group had just found a unicorn heart that an undead miniboss was attempting to use for a spell. With the heart of the unicorn being a powerful magical item the group was informed by a mystic ally to return it to the unicorn before the world falls away into endless winter. Snow immediately fell in sheets as the party made their way though a icy forest, passed a creepy witch, encountered some fey, and eventually had an impromptu rodeo as they attempted to put this heart back into a unicorn that, without a heart, turned into an evil horse known as a Nightmare. While they were attempting this a large red demon like creature with red horns was attempting to tame the nightmare and thwart the party. Chaos was had and at the end of the session the group succeeded in breaking winters grasp, saving the unicorn, and having a weird movie recommendation as homework.
These are just two examples of using movies and books as adventures, what have you used for your games?
