>First session, the party is passing through a village.>There's a small mage tower there, so it's not a complete shithole, maybe they can pick up a job there.>When they arrive, the locals are nowhere to be seen>In fact, the village seems deserted, as if the population just vanished.>As they approach closer, the party begins finding bodies of the murdered locals.>All their stuff is completely untouched.>Soon they find the killers as well, it's an undead horde.>For some reason the skeletons are exclusively wielding scythes>Puzzled party explores, until they find the terrified survivors holed up in a cellar somewhere >Turns out, they've been living under the rule of a wizard>The wizard was a necromancer with some enlightened ideas about using the undead as laborers instead of the living.>It was all fine and good, a real utopia, until one day the undead started massacring everyone they could get their hands upon.>The villagers promise to just hand over their stuff, if the party helps them get to the necromancer's tower, so that they can lynch him>Very soon they find the necromancer too.>He randomly had a heart attack a few days ago, died and lost control of his minions.Rate the idea
>>98288225>Le wholesomechungus good necromancerYou don't play games+go back/10
>>98288225>kill random undead>leave>oh but like the backstory is that it was a utopia of undead farmers but then the guy died so the skeletons killed everyoneThis is a shower thought, not a fun adventure idea.
>>98288225it works on a technical level, but there's clear limits. the "mystery" is pretty limited. what happens if we go to the wizard first? we'd find the answer before we even found the question. and assuming we did play through it as intended, now what? we killed the undead, there's no greater threat or antagonist, just a moral lesson about a well-known limitation of a low-level and generally unviable flavour spellif i can cast animate dead then i can cast summon undead spirit or summon demon which are both significantly faster, more reliable and more cost effective.it's good filler if you need something to end a session with though
>>98288225>>First session, the party is passing through a village.That's a wild assumption already.
>>98288225>Good necromancerAbsolutely retarded. 10/10 if playing a system designed for retards like D&D. 2/10 in any other system.
>>98288225Fine as a concept for a story, unsatisfying as the first adventure of sorts the PCs get up to in a game. Players are there to do shit, not to listen to a storytime, and as a session what you're describing sounds tightly on rails and without players acutally having much of a chance to impact anything, make meaningful decisions or anything like that.
>>98288225Depends entirely on the setting. In some settings, undead are automatons that only do what they are commanded to do and nothing but what they are commanded to do. If this is such a setting, then I rate it 0/10. However, there are also settings in which the undead are malignant and evil, prone to hatred and violence, and a necromancer's influence directs them and thus can stymie those tendencies. In such a setting this is good, 6/10.
>>98288225Its going to be a lot of boring combats if they're all the same automated skeleton with a scythe. You're probably stuck with 5-room-dungeon adventure arcs so having a bit of variety by thinking of different sorts of undead farming equipment will spice it up a bit. >undead with scythes, general labour >undead ogre that towed the grain gathering cart, chained to cart now uses as huge flail >grainery fight with some sort of millstone and or windmill automation >necromancer knew he was dieing and wasn't going to make it to lichdom, saw his automatons and found them horrible as an option for himself, hadn't thought of it that way until death was at his door, pussies out and that hidden fear and contempt infects his undead farmers who go nuts Need to scatter a few villagers hiding places in the encounters so the players have some clues and things to talk to. Kid hiding in a haystack is classic.
>>98288225The only thing that's differentiating it from the standard "undead attacking the town" story is something at the end that the players have no way of knowing. It might work in a short story but as a scenario it's pretty boring and one dimensional.
>>98288225It’s a pretty mild gotcha twist that nobody would hate, but also probably wouldn’t stick with them.
>>98288225Feels a bit flat and short. You should add a layer by having the necromancer be murdered or abducted and the party has to find out what happened.
Make the undead sapient, they’re staging a slave revolt, and the players can choose a side. If they side with the skellies, they get a hubtown full of helpful undead with weird halloweeny magic items, boons, etc.
>>98288225That's a classic troupe. We seen this time and time again, nothing wrong with that and often a good starting mission if done right. Also a perfect example on why most people don't trust necromancers, the reason most places don't raise dead for cheap labor. Though keep the story bits short and sweet. I am guessing no one wants to hear the morals on undead labor and the risk it brings, look what happen to Hollywood when they let a bunch of DEI writers make classical IPs their Soapbox and made their bad Tumblr level AU fanfics with their mary sue OCs in it.
