So I live in the country, and as such, work as a ranch hand, doing menial tasks for decent pay. Today, my job was mowing and weedeating, which, if you don’t know, are a couple of very mind-numbing chores. This, combined with the fact that I left my headphones at home and had no music to drown out the thoughts, meant I had plenty of time to think and plan for my upcoming D&D session this weekend. And a few things occurred to me:
1. Nobody in my group has seen or listened to Critical Role.
2. Our party’s rogue has an almost identical backstory to Percy (enemy house took out his family and kidnapped his sister forcing him into hiding until he can bring justice to his foes).
3. I need a few quests to get the party from level 5 to level 9.
Those three thoughts caused my two backwater country boy brain cells to rub together and come to a single conclusion: I could very easily steal the entire Briarwood arc from Critical Role. Who’s going to stop me? Nobody I know except the rogue’s player’s mom knows anything about the show. I can plagiarize all I want and they’ll never know.
So here’s what I’m thinking: The party is currently on a mission to retrieve some magic items from a tomb after being hired by the owner of a magic shop in a small village. When they return to said village, the locals are throwing a feast for the return of the rogue’s house. The duke of the enemy house (accompanied by our fighter’s old enemy because we can’t have only one backstory be relevant) rolls through town and, misunderstanding the reason for the feasting, assumes the townsfolk are celebrating the union of his son and the rogue’s sister. He may or may not see the rogue depending on how the party plays it out but hopefully that inspires the party to go crash the wedding. And also the duke turns out to be a werebear as opposed to a vampire like Silas Briarwood. Voila, awesome questline.