Literally everyone knows that going and making a bargain with the Bog Witch will end badly. Everyone has been told... but what’s on offer is sometimes so enticing, and what’s being asked is so trivial, that maybe you’ve just got a good deal?
Bargaining with Hags is always an affair fraught with danger. But here’s the thing- Hags are amazing manipulators and planners. When they ask for your firstborn child, it’s not because they want to eat them- that would be far too mustache-twirlingly evil. No, instead they spin a story about how lonely they are, and how they’ve always wanted a child to raise as their own, and how the presence of an innocent might temper their own behaviour. What a Hag requests is always reasonable, without any context... it’s when they want it, or how they want it delivered, that makes it ghastly. In my game this week, a woman had made a bargain to make her partner’s farm more profitable, for the first and last wagons of oats from the harvest. She didn’t tell her partner about the bargain, and so he failed to deliver, leading to him being captured by the Hag at their wedding. When she led the PCs to the Hag’s lair, they bargained to have him set free, and the party’s Knight was given information (which she desperately wanted) on how to find the last descendant of the King, if she promised to place a specific ring on his finger, as the Hag was fulfilling a promise she made long ago. Now, hands up if you saw warning signs there? You did, excellent! How many of you would still take the bargain? On a side note, another player pickpocketed the Hag, and stole a coin which the Hag had previously asked her to simply deliver to a particular merchant, on a specific day. Who thinks that’s going to end poorly? There are a few important things to consider as a Game Master when making a bargain for a Hag: • Assume the Hag knows a lot more than the PCs (a combination of scrounge, foresight, and mundane prediction) • Find loopholes. Make loopholes. Make loopholes big enough to drive a wagon through, and make the PCs see them, then use a different one. • Make it sound easy. Make it sound like the Hag is just asking for the simplest thing in the world. And sometimes, it will be. What comes after might be the stinger. • Make it go wrong. Promised to deliver something to someone before they die? Have them hit by a wagon as the PCs approach them, or crushed by a falling building, something that seems ridiculously unlikely. • Make the consequences sinister and creepy. The Hag will want revenge or repayment if you don’t deliver, so she’ll take it out on (some squishy inconsequential target). Or she took your eye, or fingernail, or breath, as a consequence. • Leave a way out. You can always make another bargain with the Hag. This one won’t be nice though. It might be running over a man with a wagon before someone else can talk to him, or killing a kid before they become a wizard, or something horrifying. How you can use Hag Bargains in your game: • At low levels, a Hag is almost unbeatably strong- dozens of hit points, physically and magically powerful, and likely in a location where they have an advantage. If you make this clear up-front, the PCs are more likely to listen rather than simply rolling for initiative. • Sending a group to make a bargain with the Hag for someone else (a noble or Lord, for example) might have dire consequences. • Have the consequences up front- someone failed or defaulted in their bargain, and they need help. Maybe the only way to save them will be going to kill a different Hag, who knows? (Originally posted on Game Masters Stash on 1 February 2019) Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
May 2022
Categories
All
|