Wild Sheep Chase, EZD6 Style (Plus maps!)

(There are at least a half-dozen topics I’ve been intending to write about in the few months since I last posted here, and someone specifically asked me about this subject the other day, so it’s the first one I’ll tackle.)

As posted here in the past, I’ve both run and built a ridiculous amount of adventure-specific terrain for a free 5e adventure called The Wild Sheep Chase. It’s simple, fun, and light-hearted – a good one to run for players new to RPGs in general, and a good palate cleanser in between more serious fare for a more experienced group. So when I was thinking about what to run to show off the EZD6 system (details on the Foundry implementation here) to my regular gaming group as well has having ready to potentially run for others of mixed gaming experience, it sprang to mind immediately.

Embellishments

The adventure as written starts in an un-named tavern in some un-specified town – easy to drop into an existing campaign, and not dedicating space to descriptive information that’s not really necessary if run as a one-shot. I, however, can’t resist adding a little local flavor and some potentially interesting NPCs in case the players decide their characters are going to do a lot of social interaction.

I decided the players were in a small town in the wilderness and had just triumphantly returned with news they’d (driven off, slaughtered, or negotiated with – players’ choice) a band of kobold bandits who’d been attacking lumber shipments in the area. Part of their reward is free drinks in the local tavern… which is where things get started. I made myself a simple journal entry to describe the background info and supply a few of the employees and patrons likely to be present:

The Sleeping Dwarf

The party is just back from driving away a pack of marauding kobolds who have been bothering this out-of-the-way town of Eastcliff (situated on the west side of a vast forest, hundreds of miles from the nearest cliff) for some time. Word of their victory has apparently spread quickly, and townsfolk have been gawking and whispering "it's them!" as they make their way through the streets.

Mayor Regina Prosper has just paid them their promised reward and offered them a free meal and drinks at the town's only tavern (which she happens to own). Astute characters may suspect that she's hoping their presence there will draw a drink-purchasing crowd.

It's late in the afternoon when the characters arrive at the tavern. A sign outside depicts a dwarf sleeping atop a large keg. The evening crowd hasn't yet started to arrive. Only a few individuals are present at the moment:

Otis and Lily - a human husband-wife pair who are part owners and serve as barkeeps. They've been informed of the party's impending arrival and their free pass for food and drink for the night.

Bluff - A human who keeps to himself unless spoken to, but if asked will reveal he's a travelling salesman for the Encyclopedia Universalis (for only 5 silver, get a new scroll every month! Guaranteed to be no more than 200 years out of date (with understandable exceptions for information about the outer plains)).

Bergrun and Garadin - A dwarven couple. Garadin: "Our good-for-nothing apprentice of son let the forge get cold while we were off picking up a load of iron. We weren't going to get any more work done today, so we decided to take advantage of the situation and have our first date night in quite a while." Bergrun: "Now don't be too hard on him, Gar. I remember a time a certain other young apprentice let the forge go cold. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how we got our current one." He blushes and they both giggle. The sound of dwarves giggling is strangely disconcerting.

Gnorm - A heavy-set gnome; a regular who will enter the bar moments after the party does. He calls out, "Hey, everybody!" and the tavern staff and other patrons call out, "Gnorm!" as he makes his way to his favored barstool. Otis: "Watcha up to, Gnorm?" Gnorm: "My ideal weight if I were 4 feet tall." (Players will notice as Gnorm climbs up onto his barstool that it's been modified with several ladder rungs nailed onto it so he can climb up easily.)

The Conversion

Because EZD6 is so lightweight, converting the adventure from 5e was really simple, so I thought I’d share how I did it… and since I can’t resist a fancy Foundry map setup, I’ll include a system-agnostic Foundry module at the end with a couple of pre-configured scenes. Spoilers for The Wild Sheep Chase to follow – scroll with care!

I ran the adventure more or less as written once the event in the tavern began, and the main task in the conversion process to create the people and creatures encountered in EZD6 terms. Many of the “monsters” are actually animals, so for those I started from guidelines in the EZD6 manual for animal creation. Others weren’t likely to need stat blocks so I didn’t bother, and a few were just sort of generic builds more or less equivalent to an adventurer’s stats. The only ones that required much thought were the big creature created near the end of the adventure – built on a weakened version of the dragon presented in the EZD6 rules – and the Gibbering Mouther that someone (or multiple someones) might turn into. The latter was created more or less from scratch, coming up with EZD6-friendly descriptions & mechanics for the abilities listed for the equivalent 5e creature. The resulting ability descriptions seemed a little complex vs. typical monster abilities in the system and there might be better ways to do them, but they worked and didn’t feel too cumbersome in actual play.

The remaining task was to figure out how to handle the malfunctioning Wand of True Polymorph in a way that fit with the simplicity of EZD6 while still enabling a sort of cascade of possible failure conditions. What I came up with was this:

• Unlike most wands in EZD6, it can be used 3 times per day, recharging at dawn. At least one charge has already been used, to create the dragon.
• To anyone with arcane knowledge inspecting the wand, a 4+ tells them it’s been modified in ways that breach the factory warranty… and possibly local zoning and environmental laws.
• Because the wand has been… tweaked… it requires the user to make normal spell casting roll against 1D6 of resistance. Even if the spell casting succeeds, a roll of 3 or under adds another die of resistance to every future attempt to use the wand! Yes, it really is in bad shape.
• If the polymorph fails, the target must roll magic resistance of 6+ (or a miraculous save for PCs) – or lower target numbers for creatures with high magic resistance – or be transformed into a Gibbering Mouther.
• On a failure with a roll of 1 not mitigated by a hero die or spellburn, in addition to the effect mentioned above on the target, the wand is destroyed in an explosion that does 1 strike per remaining charge to everyone in a 10 foot radius.

The Results

Combats involving the transformed animals with the above statistics were fairly easy. I’m considering a few tweaks to make things a little more challenging; some are mentioned in the monster stats above, but otherwise I might just add a few more minions next time, depending on the players’ experience and inclinations. The main climactic fight went well both times, with a few near deaths for PCs but with the heroes ultimately succeeding. In one case the dice resulted in the creation of Noke Pudding, which was a tough fight because the characters were still pretty beaten up from previous encounters.

The Maps

Since a possible combat encounter occurs at the Sleeping Dwarf, I created a map of that and a portion of its surrounding environs. I also built a map of Shinebright’s house based on the one provided in the original adventure. Walls, roofs, and lighting are all set up in the scenes, but ambient audio (some nature sounds and some background chatter and bustling in the tavern) have been removed because I don’t remember where I got the sound files or if they’re okay to distribute.

The module was used for my EZD6 game but isn’t tied to that system, so the maps can be used for the 5e version of the adventure or for something else entirely. Download the maps from here:

To install it, simply unzip its contents into the Data/modules folder in your Foundry install location. Go to the world where you want to use it, activate Wild Sheep Chase Maps on the Manage Modules screen, and save. Both maps use the “better roofs” module so you may be prompted to install or activate that or some of its dependencies. Once done, you should see a compendium called “The Wild Sheep Chase” containing both scenes.

Non-Foundry-users who want the maps can unzip the file and look in the assets/images folder for the parts that make up the maps.