D&D 3.5 Game Planning Advice Request

[Ted C]

I'm planning to run a game loosely based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The point isn't to make it a comedy, just to use plot elements from MP&THG as inspiration and a sort of inside joke.

What I need are ways to turn scenes from the movie into interesting game sessions. For instance, the search for the "Holy Grail" (actually to be the Goblet of Dionysus -- the High Priest will send the party on a quest to find it) will lead into a forest populated with fey creatures, and the "Black Knight" scene will involve getting past a couple of "Thorns" (combat-oriented fey from the MM3).

Things I need to work out in the short term are how to get the party into some kind of scientific discussion with some castle or city guards. They do have to pass by or through a somewhat antisocial city (they've been trying to expand their territory into the forest, and the elves and fey living there are resisting -- often with terrorist tactics).

However, I'm open to ideas for all of the "scenes".

[Gunhead]

Though I should mock you for using D&D for anything I'll will not, for I am morally superior and do not touch it with the proverbial 10-foot pole.

I have to ask, does it have to be a scientific debate or will any completely out of universe debate do? I mean for example entangle the players into rules lawyering say by having a city guard making a skill check he couldn't possess and getting called on it by someone else?

Maybe something like this if the above is unacceptable: Party arrives. Are told they cannot enter because there's a quarantine to protect from the plague. Other people are let in without fuss, argument ensues. Guard tells them people who are allowed in have been checked for the plague. Party is told to travel x miles to a checking station to be checked. They return to the gate, with a certificate. It has the wrong seal on it. Are sent back. And so on.

-Gunhead

[Ted C]

I have to ask, does it have to be a scientific debate or will any completely out of universe debate do? I mean for example entangle the players into rules lawyering say by having a city guard making a skill check he couldn't possess and getting called on it by someone else?

It doesn't need to be scientific, but it does need to be "in universe". I don't want a rules argument, a la "Order of the Stick".

Maybe something like this if the above is unacceptable: Party arrives. Are told they cannot enter because there's a quarantine to protect from the plague. Other people are let in without fuss, argument ensues. Guard tells them people who are allowed in have been checked for the plague. Party is told to travel x miles to a checking station to be checked. They return to the gate, with a certificate. It has the wrong seal on it. Are sent back. And so on.

That could actually work. The city, due to its ongoing conflict, is quite paranoid of non-humans, particularly elves. Perhaps some long-winded argument over how to tell if the party members are elves.

Or should that be the "witch trial"?

[Gunhead]

Well if there is an elf, or a half-elf if such things exist, in the player party then just go with that and concoct some totally absurd test which they have to pass in order to gain entrance. Or alternatively, go for a catch-22 solution. In order to gain entrance they have to prove they're not elves and the way to do that is to know/do something only an elf could / would know how to do.

Variation, getting in is not the problem. Trying to leave is. There is a plague on the loose in the city and this is revealed when trying to leave, of course exit is only permitted if one can prove they're not going to spread the infection.
Extra aggravation can be added by letting the players know the plague is not even spread by humans but rather by birds or other animals that cannot be controlled. Good luck trying to convince that gate guard.

Here's another. Guard 1 is going to let the players pass but guard 2 asks guard one have they a permit, license, paid fee etc. and you can continue this to a point where guard 1 and 2 are arguing over protocol and the players have to act as mediators in a situation that they know nothing about. Bureaucracy in the wrong hands does more damage than all the nukes on earth combined.

-Gunhead

[Hawkwings]

The players are lost and ask some nearby peasants for directions. The peasants start talking about their collective farm and how the party should help them, since they're there.