I need to brainstorm reasons for a very small village to send a group of their youth (15-19 years old) away in a long term errand. Preferably something that is a bit open ended in terms of time, but still requires people to go back to the village eventually.
Things that ocurred to me so far: >Threat of raiders/pirates means village needs party to capital and request help from the King/some noble that's not their local noble >Old Curse/Prophecy seems to be true but it's incomplete and they must travel to remote archive to find complete version >Prominent villager is kidnapped and they need to find funds to pay ransom (or launch a desperate rescue mission) >Village is attacked by raiders, party loved ones are killed and they set off for revenge. >Summons from the king reach the village who must send tribute/representative to capital. One of the party is the representative or they are all part of their protection detail.
Those are the ideas I was able to conjure, and they are nice but neither of them is too great. as a DM drawing a blank, I'd appreciate any help that can be given.
Mason Scott
>The youths ARE the raiders and the pirates, out to reave in the foreign lands, make a name for themselves as vikings and bring back riches and thralls back to their village
Jaxon Anderson
Oooh ooh! I did this exact thing recently, and I'm pretty happy with it The party was sent to make 1000gp within like 10 days as a starting mission. They were given a slap on the ass towards the local metropolis and off they went. They ended up robbing the bank, and burning the place to the ground. They're now very very wanted. This wasn't long term, but I hope it gave you ideas
Leo Kelly
That's a very clever angle actually, for warrior and raiding cultures, to send their young out in a first raid as a rite of passage in adulthood.
I like this notion of giving a fixed goal in goal and leaving to them to decide how to raise it. I might be able to combine this with the above idea.
Cameron Jones
>15-19 years old Why do this? Almost anyone else would be better for any job. They do this shit in anime and young adult stuff since it is the target audience and it is still retarded. If this is your target audience, just stop.
Carson Howard
>Why do this? Almost anyone else would be better for any job. They do this shit in anime and young adult stuff since it is the target audience and it is still retarded. If this is your target audience, just stop. Rite of passage into adulthood is a common thing. Unless there's somekind of prophesy, you shouldn't use some sort of existential threat, but if there's something they need to do to be considered eligible to start a family or vote as a citizen instead of just being their father's dependent, or whatever, that's a good idea.
OTOH, even level 1 adventurers are qualitatively better at most things than regular old peasants, so your so mature cringe at YA and anime stuff is pretty misplaced, if 5 adventurers sprang from the loins of some peasant shitters in a backwater village, they really are the best people to send to save the land or whatever. A religious festival that happens infrequently is happening. The village selects it's (x number) best youth to participate in the festival to ensure blessings for the village and for themselves. They need to bring tribute to the God equal to 1 tenth of the village's wealth. So now they've got to carry a couple of backpacks full of trinkets, and escort the several of the finest goats and pigs to the festival grounds outside the capital.
If the animals get killed on the way, they've gotta raise the funds to buy appropriate replacements, if they go back, they'll be late, and losing 20% of the village herd will cause hardship.
Lincoln Wilson
Throughout most of history, leaving your home village to go off for ANY reason at all was considered a young man's game.
Wyatt Ross
This is the ideal age for training the next generation of warriors. In ancient times, by the time you were 19 you were expected to have secured a career, married and maybe have a child on the way. Noble or other higher-class male youths may delay this until their mid-20s due to university, military school, etc, but the average footsoldier, viking or mongol, etc., would have started their career around the ages of 15-19.
Thomas Morgan
There is a difference between sending 12-year old ninja kids to save a village in typical shonen anime fashion, and sending the 15-19 year old young adult off to war. I mean, your alternative is the 30-something craftsman father of seven, or the 50+ senior likely to die after a day or two's march.
Jack Jackson
Here are some ideas... >Prophecy requires a virgin to venture to local shrine and pray for a good harvest, embarrassment follows as awkward young man are teased by the girls and men who've seen war, only for the adventurers to return home wise and world-weary >Young man calls upon his friends to rescue his beloved, leading to a group of would-be-adventurers to go out into the wide world >A aspiring D'Artagnan-clone leaves his countryside home to journey to the capital to take his father's place in an elite military unit, shenanigans and sword-bucklery follows
Adam Hill
>gobs/halflings/peasants from another villiage/robbers steal some protective talisman thing >without it actual fighters are needed to stay in town for protection >enemies aren't so dangerous that martially-inclined youths can't handle it >but it's still somewhat dangerous, so send somewhat-disposable (not attached to family of their own, not vitally economically important) youths instead of more-important adults >fighters have other important things to do though so can't take too long
Bentley Turner
It depends of the tone of your setting, I like Bronze Age/mythic style ones, where gods and spirits are fuckers than mess with you and heroes are deeply flawed with some super human powers, while the average joe can do some little magic in rituals or bargaining with spirits etc. For example the ideas of being raided and having to pay for the rescue is good.Now they need more cows/silver/Horses or whatever is the culture way of keeping in check money, so they send the somewhat prescindible young ones to raise it be whatever means necesary. Or Perhaps the local river god is pissed because some fucker (McRetard) doesn't stop shitting in the river so he has made a river monster to scare the humans, the party has to capture, convince or kill it so the village can again fish or water the cattle. Or McRetard has tried to rape the local Nymph, so now she has send seedlingsa nd plague spirits to fuck the stored crops up. The party has to send for a shaman/witch to tree to reverse the curse, find a way to make the seedling scamp or kill them outright before all the food and seeds get spoiled. Another could be McRetard has a thing for bling, so he tried to scam the local troll king under the montain. Of course he fails, but steals something of value and runs into hiding. Now you have pissed off trolls throwing shit, udulating and trying to steal cattle from the villagers, and McRetarded is being difficult to find, so they send the characters to end it so the villagers can sleep.
Nathaniel Cook
The setting is much like Conan, which some define as low magic and some say high magic, but I mean in the sense that I expect players to encounter more magical and fantastical as further away they go from the village. But those prompts are very good for settings based on more classic mythology, and even are not too hard to adapt into a low magic kind of setting...
Instead of a River Nymph, McRetard could've raped the daughter of a powerful local bandit lord, which the village has no way to reasonably protect himself from. He threatens to burn the whole village to the ground and salt the earth if reparations aren't made, and burn their crops saying he will return after next harvest to make good on his threat if they dont find the thing he wants in less than a year. Or before the rape baby is born.
I feel like the best ideas are those that we can break down and make work on different settings even, so kudos on those user.
Samuel Campbell
It is a constant of society. Young male adults are expendable.
Noah Bell
Most people in the middle ages would begin considering marrying their young at the age of 14-16 and while you'd be working by the time you are 10, you'd be mostly 'helping'. At 16, you better be good enough at a job to earn your keep, be it helping your da at the farm, or start working for a craftsman in hopes to become an apprentice and join the guild later. And to live in a craftsman house and learn with him, you have to make enough money to earn your keep. Nobles would be training since 10 into martial arts, but at 16, they'd be expected to be squiring for a knight, and thus, be war-ready.
16 isn't a crazy age to adventure in the middle ages, and while anything between 16-26 is really plausible, people much older than 26 would need a special reason to live an already stablished life.
While the idea that people mostly died by 30 is false, the life expectancy was closer to 55, so by 27 you were actually in the middle of your life and probably already had a kid or two so that when you are 40 and getting old they can help you around and when you die they can take your place, be it at the throne or the farm.
Charles Johnson
I prefer those kinds of setting, low level and comfy feeling, monsters or spirits are ever fun to add but I can do without. It's a good way to adapt it too, bandits will be everywhere in nearly any fantasy setting. Some more just because. McRetard was send to a distant but allied village in a traders envoy, than also had to make marriage arrengaments between the tribe higher up. McRetard of course fucks it up when he screws the drunken bride to be in good bye feast, he of course bragged about it to the other traders so they got to move fast in a half drunken panic, making some minor monetary damages to the allied tribe in the process and forgetting about a little drunk stable boy in the process. Of course the outraged father claims blood, the merchants money and it's all around a shitty situation, so they send the PC with some wealth to try do defuse the situation.
Tyler Wood
Any tidbit of info of the setting could help us too user, feel free to dump a bit, specially the feel and a bit of geography, isn't the same the endless green taigas of a nomad game, the icy fjords of a viking game, the hundred and more little villages and cities in constant low level warfare of Bronze age europe etc.
Luke Bell
How About...
Something of symbolic value but no actual functionality is stolen from village. A group of travelling traders with some 'adventurers' (refered by everyone in the village as 'nomadic neer-do-wells) travelling along are the prime suspects. Elders reunite and decide to send out party to find the the thingy and bring it back in time for festival And get rid of the most troublesome youth that's always talk of nonsense things such as adventurers and other childish fantasies.
Anthony Morgan
The players are from a very very small island with just a single village and a handful of farmsteads scattered around it. The island has some stone circles that date probably from the neolithic era of that time, and the setting is roughly equivalent to the 1300s. The climate of the island is moderate and the island isn't much bigger than like, 10 kilometers North-South and roughly 8 east-west.
the village has a single small port where traders often stop as the island is part of a scattered archipelago. There are larger islands around, but all beyond the horizon. The island formally belong to a kingdom in the mainland but the boat journey there takes around a week, usually hoping from island to island on the archipelago. Winters are cold enough for snow but not agressively long, and summers are rather mild.
The main religion is poletheism based around a triad of minor gods under a major god. This major god is canonically 'absent', as an observer and architect of the universe, and thus no prayed too, just studied by theologicians. The secondary gods domains are Justice/Truth, Honor (martial focused), and Fate/Destiny/Luck. Tradition says that only Fate God existed on creation and Honor and Justice gods were elevated from mortals who did a jesus.
Players village population is around 50 people and the total of the island is around 100. Very conservative people too, they think people who come from the mainland think they are better than they are and snobs. They also suspicious of people native from the village that stayed away a long time and came back.
They have a bitter rivalry with a neighbouring island who improved their ports and since, trade has been diminishing, but it's not a blood feud. No fight, just resenting their success.
they have no ruling noble as village officially included in the town chart of the capital of the 'Isles'. Effectively, little governamental influence from outside.
Lincoln Barnes
Hajj
John Garcia
None of the shit in OP is a rite of passage or something a mundane as marching around as a levy. None of the tasks are going to occur at the frequency needed to induct any meaningful portion of the population. All of the tasks are of enormous importance to the village's survival. You do not send randos off to negotiate with foreign nobles or for punitive raids. Holy shit, reread the list of things he is suggesting. They are not some cow leaping bullshit. They are "someone fucks up, people die."
>I mean, your alternative is the 30-something craftsman father of seven, or the 50+ senior likely to die after a day or two's march. Any population center able to field 5 man PC parties will also have guards/militia/retainer, village leaders, trackers, that guy "that went there that one time," etc. People that have some experience with the task at hand and would make sense to send to keep people alive and actually complete the mission. Your comparison to send off soldiers is more an argument against sending a batch of level 1 fuckfaces to do anything meaningful. Soldiers are universally lead by someone with more military experience than first time levy. Your 15-19 year olds are there to be bodies, not to call the shots.
Oliver Carter
>None of the shit in OP is a rite of passage This is a fantasy game. While you are strictly correct for real world stuff, given a fantasy setting and the logic that exists behind it what OP suggests isn't crazy.
But, yeah, most coming of age things are going to be you climb that, you hunt this, you bring back something else. It needs to be repeatable and dependable.
But for OP in a fiction land, sending people off on a 'quest' isn't out of the question.
>Your 15-19 year olds are there to be bodies, not to call the shots.
And, again, you are correct here. This is actually something OP should focus in on. That the PC's are actually trying to gain status within the village. But it is highly unlikely that they would be let out to do things that actually matter without adult (experienced warrior) supervision.
That should be part of the story. They are going along to assist wile DMNPC blahblah. Pretty standard stuff, really. They go off, have DMNPC be all wise and worldly, then have him die. Leave the players with a decision to go back to the village in defeat or to continue the mission on their own. Better if you have some sort of time limit so there isn't time to return - maybe do a six month travel montage or something then kill DMNPC.
Tyler Powell
Local lord rolls by to recruit for the army maybe
Connor Miller
But then they aren't coming back
Daniel Myers
Nah, it's a small defensive force. After a short amount of time (less than a year), a treaty is signed and the young ones aren't forced to stay on.
Liam Myers
They are all going for their eagle scout badges and have to hunt eagles in the sacred canyons.
The army stops in town to forage and all the youths are reasonably... impressed.
A little outside the original prompt, but the circus comes to town and party members join up for a little while.
The party are going from apprentices to journeymen and the local guilds don't send clerks into really podunk towns.
One party member, or an npc friend, is forming a marriage party to get his fiance from her father. They must find a way to pay the bride price en route.
They are returning from market on the mountain pass but a landslide forces them to come round the mountain when they come.
