I've been looking for a way to include some more down time activities in my campaign (the campaign being Tales of the Yawning Portal. Hey, I'm new and also a bit lazy...). So far I've managed to connect the different tales quite nicely, but my players feel the need to flesh out their characters a bit more. One of them (a female tiefling ranger) would like to pick up carpentry (don't ask); another one (a male orc barbarian) managed to pick up a sheep along the way, and now wants to spend some time with an animal handler to learn how to take care of it and maybe teach it a combat trick or two...
Anyway, so there's a certain need to hang around in a town for a while. Now rather than me just saying "ok, six months have passed and you are now all proficient in whatever skill/trade you set out to learn" I like to actually let that take some time. And that means staying at an inn, having to pay for your food and lodging, and thus having to find the odd job to keep the coinpurse filled and the innkeeper happy.
Enter the notice board.
There's 9 boards with a total of 50 quests, which will keep us going for a while. My guesstimate is that the quests take anywhere from half an hour to an entire session to complete. The quests are presented as a short outline, which is just enough to get inspired, and leaves plenty of room to get creative. I love that. Depending on how you run them the quests can be as combat heavy or as RP heavy as you like, though in general the RP element seems to be slightly more pronounced. (By the way: the author also offers a couple of quests that are written out more fully (e.g. 'Forced Labor' and 'Rok & Rowl') and I recommend you get those as well.)
Design and presentation are superb. I've printed the boards on A3-sized paper (297 x 420 mm or 11,7 x 16,5 inches) and actually stick them on the wall while running our game - just like the real thing. My players love it!
In another review I read something along the lines of 'too much of it is just for a laugh'. Though I understand why you might feel that way, I most definitely and whole-heartedly disagree. First of all: there is no such thing as too much laughter (OK, that just my opinion). And second: whether you run these quests tongue-in-cheek or totally seriously is up to you as a DM. Yes, even the one about the missing pantaloons can be extremely serious. What if Duke Livingstone finds out? Will there be repercussions? Assassinations? Civic unrest?
Considering the amount of fun we are going to have with them, these notice boards are worth every penny two times over. At least.
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