Turkey Feathers Run Notes

By Tim Emrick

"Turkey Feathers," by Jan Adamson, is an AD&D 2nd Edition adventure that appeared in Polyhedron Newszine #101 (November 1994). It was converted to Blue Rose and Narrated by Tim Emrick; conversion notes are available here. This page gives some additional notes about the initial playtest, held November 26, 2005.

Recruitment and Briefing

The playtesters were Erika Emrick (playing A'isha, a spirit dancer), Chris LoBue (playing Brock, an animist), and Cindy Dye (playing Jack, a ranger). I had originally hoped for 4-6 players, so rather than saddle new players with multiple characters, I scaled back some of the encounters (see below). The stat blocks for all six pregenerated characters are available here.

    When we met for the game, the first order of business was choosing characters and going over a few of the rules. (One of the three players owned Blue Rose and had run a short True20 Adventure Roleplaying campaign; the others had only read the Blue Rose Fast Play document.)

Introduction

The adventure requires the heroes to drive 500 turkeys cross-country to a post town, where they will be sold as delicacies for an annual festival. If the heroes fail, their employers will go hungry this winter. They have one week to make the trip, and are given mules and a wagon to transport bags of feed for the flock.

    The first challenge came the first night, when the turkeys roosted in trees overnight, and had to be lured and/or chased out of the trees before the drive could resume. This took a little bit of discussion and trial and error, but they persevered.

Wayhouse/Nightwatch

The next obstacle is a young couple who have set up a fence and toll gate to block the path. In the original adventure, Sandy and Cally are weretigers, However, this race is higher-level in d20 than in AD&D, and Blue Rose includes no weres (and thus no silver weapons), so they seemed well beyond the capabilities of 4th-level Blue Rose heroes. I converted the weretigers anyway, but offered doppelgangers (from the Blue Rose Companion) as an alternative. With only three players, I was doubly glad I'd prepared for that change.

    [The weretiger stats have not been copied here; see the conversion notes about adapting the True20 Bestiary version of the weretiger.]

    The heroes talked their way past the roadblock, but the "farmers" followed them to steal some turkeys that night. The heroes detected them, and got the drop on them instead. This allowed them to take down the poachers fairly easily; Sandy spent most of the very short fight stunned, before massively failing a damage save and dying, and Cally was knocked out with unarmed strikes and a cryston.

    The heroes questioned Cally about her motives and origins (since Sandy was obviously nonhuman). After much debate, they decided to release her, but on the condition that she help them drive the turkeys before they let her leave with her mate's body. She reluctantly agreed, and the heroes watched her carefully enough that she never had a good chance to flee.

River Crossing

The next challenge was a river crossing. There was a ford, but recent rainfall upstream was causing the water to rise. Exploration upstream showed where the river had been diverted by a rockfall. If a few rocks were shifted, the river would return to its old bed--behind the herd of turkeys. They managed to do this, with Cally's very grudging help.

Smelly Guests

That night, two dire wolverines entered the camp during A'isha's watch. As she attempted to sneak back into camp without disturbing them, Cally woke, and was frightened by the huge animals, so hid. Her muffled shriek woke the animist and ranger, who wisely held still. The animist spoke with the animals, and satisfied their curiosity about these strange new creatures and their gear. He managed to Bluff them into believing that the birds were "friends, not food," and the wolverines soon grew bored and wandered away.

Stampede/A Shortened Ending

The next leg of the drive was through a narrow, rocky pass, where guiding the birds grew much easier as the path grew narrower. However, halfway through the pass, a couple of mountain lion cubs spooked the herd, causing the turkeys to stampede. Through quick action and good Handle Animal checks, the heroes managed to avoid more than minor injuries while regaining control of the birds. The ranger decided to do something more lasing about the big cat he glimpsed, so tried tracking it through the rocks along the pass.

    Here is where I detoured the furthest from the module as written. In the original, there are two more encounters: a "lady in distress" who tries to gain the heroes' trust so she can drug them, allowing her accomplices to steal the herd; and a showdown with the thieves at the loading dock, to recover the bag of money they received for the stolen goods. We were running to late by this time to do two more longish encounters, so I dropped them and improvised the lion hunt. Because Blue Rose does not offer any other big cat stats, I used the rhy-cat stat block in the Bestiary (minus the human-level Int and psychic ability).

    The ranger found the mountain lion, but his first arrow only angered the cat. The resulting fight drew the others' attention. While the ranger and lion traded glancing blows, the animist fired his cryston and the spirit dancer ran closer to get a better shot with her sling. The arrows and sling bullets finally started to take a toll [better than Hurt results] after the cryston staggered it; a solid arrow hit then disabled the beast, and the cat fled before it could be killed. The ranger was lightly hurt, having narrowly avoided worse injuries.

    The heroes continued onward, parted ways amicably with Cally, and came to port to sell the turkeys. They had only lost a dozen or so in the stampede, so netted a nearly perfect return for their employers.

Other Observations

Two players tended to use their Conviction for skill checks rather than attack rolls; they tended to roll much lower on untrained skills and the occasional important Handle Animal check than on their attacks, so needed it more then. (However, most of their rerolls kept defaulting to 10.) The third player (the spirit dancer) never used any Conviction, because she had good dice luck so never felt the need.

    If the Blue Rose Fast Play document hadn't stressed the idealism of the setting, the doppelganger encounter probably would have been more brutal and bloody. (The ranger's practical Nature was torn between easy long-term solutions vs. harder short-term compromises that wouldn't alienate his companions.) As it was, Sandy's death was mostly accidental: he had rolled well on damage saves until that last one, which took him straight from Wounded to Dying, and then he failed to stabilize the next round, before the heroes could administer first aid.

    Overall, all four of us enjoyed the game, and all are eager to play Blue Rose again, as well as the True20 Adventure Roleplaying adventures I plan to run in the near future.