I am currently running a “dungeon delving” campaign (in the Ptolus campaign setting), and one of the characters has decided that she wants to get some side income by carving chess sets out of monster carcasses they have come across and selling them.

This is novel enough that I feel I ought to develop some further plots from this. So, any ideas for:

  • the kind of people who might buy such chess sets
  • what kinds of shenanigans might develop from something like this - supernatural or otherwise?
  • GoldSeal@dice.camp
    3·
    4 days ago

    @juergen_hubert
    Buyers are probably novelty buyers: rich or well-off wanting to impress.
    A gift for
    - son/daughter graduation
    - husband anniversary
    - guild master (maybe bribe?) / superior birthday
    - winning a chess tournament

    Shenanigans
    - there’s a thief who started ‘collecting’ them
    - anyone who loses a match experiences violent emotions
    - they move at night by themselves
    - one church forbids playing with them, citing recent violent case

  • gnufuu@lemmy.ca
    1·
    4 days ago

    Are your maps based on square tiles by any chance? What if a chess figure suddenly attacked someone who’s standing on a threatened tile according to chess rules? The nature of the attack could be based on the monster the piece is carved from.

  • I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org
    1·
    4 days ago

    No Country for Old Gnomes has a side plot where one of the characters started whittling and her figurines became popular and she was accidentally famous even though no one knew who she was.

    Maybe the chess sets become a popular collectors item but everyone believes it must be someone else that made them - your PC is just selling them. Or someone thinks the PC is a copycat of the true artist and the pc needs to prove otherwise or risk their reputation. Maybe someone starts buying up all the chess sets to create false demand then reselling them along with some copycats, tarnishing the PCs reputation. Many opportunities for shenanigans.

  • Susaga@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    As a plot hook, you could have some rich jerk commission a custom chess set made using the bones/hide of a powerful, possibly endangered creature.

    A rival could show up, trying to use monster parts to make checkers tiles.