Adventure Calendar 2025 13: The Three Little Pigs

Adventure Calendar 2025

13: The Three Little Pigs

And sometimes the wolf doesn’t bother to hide his intentions at all.

Three brothers build houses out of different materials. A wolf comes along to eat them, but first has to huff and puff and blow their houses in. So the one who built a house that can withstand being breathed on defeats him.

Most PCs would probably go straight for the sensible building option.

The 1933 Disney version gave us the term Big Bad Wolf, which is used afterwards as a nickname for the character type across several stories. Disney used it as the title for his second appearance in a version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1934.

Big Bad is used as shorthand for the seasonal villain in Buffy, in passing by Buffy in season three, and by Spike trying to make himself sound tough starting in season four.

A House Of Straw

The PCs have to defend a supposedly fortified location that proves to have been built by the lowest bidder. And then it happens again. Surely it can’t happen three times?

Chronicles of Darkness at ten

Chronicles of Darkness came out on this day in 2015.

So if you’re still calling it nWoD we can kill and eat you.

Fate Of The Old Republic

Star Wars: Fate Of The Old Republic announced with a trailer hinting at HK-47 and declaring Casey Hudson heading it up. And single player!

One of several games revealed during the (video) Game Of The Year awards, including a Star Wars racer, a new Tomb Raider and a Control sequel where you play a less cool guy this time, and a new Divinity from the makers of BG3, which like BG3 leads the announcements for a high fantasy adventure with body horror, which I don’t get at all.

Adventure Calendar 2025 12: Little Red Riding Hood

Adventure Calendar 2025

12: Little Red Riding Hood

And sometimes the beast you meet in the forest that talks like a person just wants to eat you.

A basic tale about not talking to strangers or telling them were you’re going in particular, Little Red Riding Hood has a girl who isn’t very focused enough on the task at hand, a smooth-talking wolf, an unconvincing disguise and a pretty high body count.

One of a number of anti-wolf stories and the basis for the likes of The Company Of Wolves that links it to retellings of werewolf stories as well as explorations of adolescent attraction and how that might not end great, it has the wolf as a trickster but more directly malign than something like a fox.

The red cloak is sometimes connected to vanity or used for victim-blaming. As a visual it shows up particularly well against snow, here and in the 2011 YA version Red Riding Hood which also does werewolves.

Sometimes Red Riding Hood escapes due to her wits, or her ability to see through a wolf wearing a bedcap as a disguise, or the timely intervention of a woodsman with an axe. And sometimes not.

We also have adaptations where she becomes an expert (were)wolf hunter.

Also, she also always seems to be walking, not riding. What up with that?

The Wolf

A rogue, powerful, seemingly intelligent wolf prowls the dark forest. Can the PCs find it? This may, ironically, involve disguising themselves as better targets. Possibly in red cloaks.

Adventure Calendar 2025 11: Beauty And The Beast

Adventure Calendar 2025

11: Beauty And The Beast

Someone enters a mysterious isolated palace under some kind of curse due to a breaking of the rules of hospitality, and only true love can break it. But since the cursed royal is a guy he’s an active participant in the story, but at least the female lead gets some things to do as well.

Still, as a fairytale romance it has that advantage that both of the characters involved are active.

Beauty And The Beast has a seemingly monstrous kidnapper turn out not to be so bad after all and win the heart of his victim, which is not as good a message as the one about looking past appearances to judge people.

The story dates back to 1740, a novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, though of course characters cursed to be monsters and possible ways out go back further - the Greek gods do this to people who vaguely bother them all the time. It includes Beauty being a secret princess and dreaming of the prince in human form, which is usually dropped in later versions starting just a few years later.

The soulful monster and the one person who understand them is a classic motif. it often works visually by having the Beast be dashing in his own way so he audience can root for the couple.

I’ve written about the loose adaptation for series TV before where Vincent isn’t cursed but just mysteriously beastly, and saves Catherine rather than forcing her to stay at his palace, putting them in a better starting position for them to become close. The secret community under New York provides more episode sources than Vincent, but he stays the defining image of the show even after Catherine leaves.

KISS HIM YOU FOOL!

The Disney version (released just over a year after the end of the show, so I think of them together) establishes the curse at the start, in a new version also tied to the rules of hospitality, in a super harsh way. It also adds an outside villain so the Beast has someone to fight like fellow X-Man Wolverine.

Of course there are also monsters you can love without them changing into regular dull humans. Guillermo del Toro has a few.

Romance story games cover this ground most directly. Borrowing some GMing advice of old, you can tell a romantic story without any of the PCs being in love if they help it along - getting the young couple out of danger, that kind of thing.

Would that work here? Maybe if the PCs are animated crockery.

Aside from those of course we have curses and misunderstood monsters and the like all over fantasy.

Fantasy and horror PCs could certainly find themselves in a mysterious palace with a strange host. Could they resist taking something more than is freely offered?

In a game with a suitable Weird Level, one or more of the PCs could be transformed and the others have to break the curse by recognising them.

Maybe slightly too late, as when Buffy only recognises Giles after stabbing him in A New Man.

Love And Monsters

Can the PCs help a couple escape the disapproving family of one member, and the angry mob chasing the other?

Adventure Calendar 2025 10: Sleeping Beauty

Adventure Calendar 2025

10: Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty - a princess, a curse, good fairies, bad fairies, a prince who actually gets to do something.

Stick to the rules of hospitality. Especially when the fair folk are involved or they’ll spite you. Then hope the pure evil members don’t want to come to the party anyway.

As classic fairytale princesses go Sleeping Beauty is the most helpless damsel, spending most of the story in magical suspended animation, more a McGuffin than a character, which is an issue for an aspirational figure as well as a viewpoint title character. Since somebody needs to end up in a cursed coma for the story to happen there’s only so much you can do in this case.

(When heroes are revived like this it’s a call to action and the start of a story instead.)

As a result the often dull romantic foil hero prince guy gets more to do in the later parts of the story than usual. In the Disney version he even gets to fight a dragon.

Hell Yes

This also names the wicked fairy Maleficent and makes her a full-on demonic villain, Mistress Of All Evil.

Leading to a live-action deconstruction where she’s... not.

The cursed castle sitting silent for somewhere between a few days and a hundred years depending on retelling makes this more like a later fantasy quest than most fairytales, with a clear villain and dungeon-bashy obstacles. Other adventurers have tried their luck against it in versions where the curse lasted longer.

The Silent Palace

They say the palace is under a curse. No-one has left it for twenty years or more. Many have braved the way in but few have returned and none have broken the spell...

Yes this is a reference

Storm Bram will disappoint if it doesn’t leave a ghost ship wrecked off Whitby.

Adventure Calendar 2025 9: Peter Pan

Adventure Calendar 2025

9: Peter Pan

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie was created as a stage play in 1904 with a book following in 1911, so it takes a more modern look at various fairytale motifs. Peter Pan himself is mercurial and possibly dangerous, needing some sense talked into him, while opposed by the clearly rotten Captain Hook. A group of children are taken to Neverland and they have decidedly different views about this situation. Flying is clearly fun, but that needs some help from fairies who function on belief and audience participation.

In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, so Peter Pan is actually doing good for kids to this day.

Neverland is developed enough to have maps, as well as a spinoff series set there as well as various sequels to the original story. And if a fantasy land has a map, you can probably run a game there.

The name comes from Pan pipes, connecting him to Pan, the Greek god of nature and shepherding and folk music, and Greek gods are generally trouble.

Green men and satyrs often appear with pipes and flutes. One of the most famous M. R. James stories is about blowing an old whistle. The Wind In The Willows features The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, a Pan figure who recently got someone asked to take off a shirt showing him in Westminster Abbey so this is still a thing. (Much to the delight of the Hellebore sales team who made it.)

And he also connects to the idea of fairy abduction, changelings and the like. Compare the Pied Piper, a story where some versions end where this begins.

Also, pirates.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

The sun has not risen. The PCs have to find out why.

Adventure Calendar 2025 8: The Pied Piper

Adventure Calendar 2025

8: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

Dick Whittington made his fortune catching rats and that reminded me of another story about a highly successful rat catcher who had more trouble getting paid: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.

A town has a serious rat problem, and a guy in a strange costume comes and says he can make all the rats leave, the town elders agree to pay him if he can, and he plays a magic pipe and the rats line up and follow him out of town. And now the town elders go back on the deal. So the piper switches to a different tune that night and leads all the town’s children away, and they are never seen again.

The lesson here is pay your freelancers.

We’re entering the Scarred For Life part of the fairytale collection here, aren’t we?

Sure, there are versions where the town elders pay up and the kids return, or the piper takes them to a nicer place where people pay their bills, but those are adjustments. There are also versions where he leads the rats to the river to drown and you are left to draw your own conclusions about what happens to the kids.

We had a picture book of this when I was little, and the piper was colorful, elfin and a little bit sinister.

Disney actually made this as a short in 1933, with one of the nice endings, but see also this classic creepy stop motion animated film by Jiří Barta (trailer) and the not much less creepy version from Cosgrove Hall. Compare the version with Donovan for a less devilish take.

There’s also a DC villain turned hero in The Flash rogues’ gallery and the time a Dire Wraith does it in ROM: Spaceknight.

Rat Catchers are of course the archetypal not-really-heroes of Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, but come with a Small But Vicious Dog rather than magical pipe. Skaven seem to prefer drums and bells, which feels like a missed opportunity.

For magical rodent problems that definitely aren’t panto fare, see the story of Bishop Hatto.

And pipes in general are a bit sketchy in fairytales...

Catch A Rat Today

Ah, the most basic MMO mission, get ten rats out of a basement. But where are they all coming from? Is there a Rat king or other guiding intelligence behind this? Is it targeting specific victims? Maybe a nightclub attacked using Animalism in Vampire...

Adventure Calendar 2025 7: Snow White

Adventure Calendar 2025

7: Snow White

Seven. See what I did there?

Founding Disney Princess, Snow White has the rightful heir to a throne cast down by her stepmother, threatened due to vanity and forced to escape, taking refuge with Dwarfs (not Dwarves) and saved from apparent death by true love’s kiss.

This story has had plenty of deconstructions and reconstructions, including Snow White And The Huntsman taking direct influence from Warhammer Fantasy as well as Snow White: A Tale Of Terror, several central roles in Once Upon A Time, and the recent live-action-ish Disney remake.

(There’s always been some horror in the mix, the Disney version models the Queen’s transformation on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.)

How much agency Snow has varies from version to version - the Disney version is actually pretty active, though she doesn’t get into any sword fights.

But you can still get miniatures for them.
(This set is from the 40s or 50s.)

Also there’s a kinda evil or just unhelpful magic mirror. I’m all about that.

Who Is The Fairest

A vain monarch takes against one of the PCs or someone close because they just happen to be better at something the monarch takes pride in. Reason to drive them out, and possibly a self-perpetuating problem...

Where DO you get your ideas?

So a joke about Caine from Vampire: The Masquerade could win a fight with some cartoon guy led to the suggestion - what if he was trying to find a worthy enough sacrifice. And that’s a great motivation in this setting.

Adventure Calendar 2025 6: Puss In Boots

Adventure Calendar 2025

6: Puss In Boots

Puss In Boots is yer basic helpful magical animal. Get him a pair of boots and he’ll help you pretend to be the Marquis de Carabas and bluff your way into high society.

Now the star of his own series of Shrek spinoffs, where he’s a swashbuckling rogue who also happens to be a cat and which don’t have much to do with the original story but are a lot of fun. I’d play him in the right kind of game.

Fear me, if you dare!

Talking animals are a mainstay of some genres but less so in others. I’ve never gotten to actually pull out the Buffy Christmas special with talking mice needing the PCs’ help. Maybe someday.

I Hear The King Has A New Adviser

Who is this mysterious nobleman making such a splash at court? Who is his unseen adviser? Why does he give so generously to the local animal shelter?

TOON Second Edition

TOON Second Edition! On Backerkit in a couple of weeks! Really!

Adventure Calendar 2025 5: Dick Whittington

Adventure Calendar 2025

5: Dick Whittington And His Cat

Dick Whittington And His Cat is and odd one because Richard Whittington was a real person, a merchant who became Lord Mayor of London. But it wasn’t a rags to riches story and didn’t involve using his cat to solve a rat problem and make a fortune as a result.

The story starts our far less fantastical than the likes of Jack And The Beanstalk, but it gets mixed with Puss In Boots at some point too.

The Streets Are Paved With Gold

The adventurers hear of a city where they could really strike it rich. A gold rush boom town or the like. (Cue The Simpsons joke.) What will they actually find when they get there? And will they help any other poor souls drawn in by the same stories?

Starfleet Academy

Starfleet Academy, January 15, very teen drama character intros, as is only right and proper.

Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Ash, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Sixteen years late for a The Watch House Christmas special but oh well

Adventure Calendar 2025 4: Jack Tales

Adventure Calendar 2025

4: Jack Tales

Jack is an archetypal tricky everyman found in the UK and also in Appalachian folklore. An underdog getting into and out of trouble with his wits and trickery, having run-ins with authority and the supernatural.

He’s basically a player character.

Jack And The Beanstalk has a young naïve example, so feels like a separate thing.

Fables had Jack being the same guy (as it did with the romantic foil Prince IIRC) getting a spinoff series where he actively spread stories to empower himself, with inevitably mixed results.

There’s also a Samurai Jack episode called Jack Tales as a reference but he isn’t the same storied Jack, it’s just a nickname and his usual method of solving problems is more direct in an equally player character way.

Jack And The Keep On The Borderlands

How do PCs deal with an archetypal PC? A band of adventurers follow rumours to a dungeon and find it’s already been cleaned out. Someone already rescued that dragon from that princess. They start to hear tell of a legendary hero going around doing the kind of stuff they should be doing. When they finally meet this guy, whether he’s a thief blessed with some wits and a lot of luck or a literally archetypal adventurer and the exemplar of the role they play in the world, will they ally with him or try to get him out of their way?

Adventure Calendar 2025 3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Adventure Calendar 2025

3: Jack And The Beanstalk

Chosen because it’s the local big panto this year, Jack And The Beanstalk is the one where a poor boy is talked into selling the family’s cow for some magic beans, but they’re real magic beans so that’s okay, and they grow a giant beanstalk that could provide enough beans to be the basis of a revived farming business but instead he climbs it all the way to a castle above the clouds where he robs the giant owner, escapes back down and cuts the beanstalk down so the giant falls and he can keep the loot, including a talking harp.

It sounds really weird when laid out like that..

It’s adjacent to the various Jack stories about an underdog trickster type, this Jack does win with a bit of trickery but a lot of luck.

Castles in the sky are a classic fantasy motif, and magic items like fast-growing vines and animated musical instruments as well.

What I most wonder is who just sold him a perfectly good magic bean?

The Magic Merchants

Disguised godlike types giving gifts to the kind and punishments to the guilty? Or just getting by on the barter economy?

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come trailer

Talk and stills at People, via Bloody Disgusting

How to follow such a sharp and self-contained ending? Expanding the threat to Samara Weaving’s Grace, bringing in some genre royalty - David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Big Bad! - and Kathryn Newton as a sidekick with Final Girl cred of her own. Will going big work? Looks fun!

Forks Out

Forks Out, a Beignet Blanc Mystery on Sesame Street

Weird Level: 1000!

Maybe I use this tag too much.

V5: Stolen 1.07

Vampire: The Masquerade

Stolen

1.07

Lessons

Beck

Maebh

Reverend Beck finds Maebh a few nights later, directed by Antha, to inquire about other possible suppliers of antiquarian books and other artefacts. She agrees to ask around in return for a favour owed, and meet him at his church after a service.

That night’s service is private for Kindred and guests, from the Book of Nod itself. He speaks on Lilith’s offer of knowledge and power, the warning that “I do not know what the Awakening will do for you, for you are truly Cursed by your Father. You could die. You could be forever changed.” And that Caine took that step bravely. And next that he entered a city and mortals came to him seeking power in turn, showing themselves more corrupt than he. And that he returned to solitude and sorrow, reason to gather.

Adventure Calendar 2025 2: Cinderella

Adventure Calendar 2025

2: Cinderella

The lead Disney Princess, the story of Cinderella is also popular for pantomimes as it has a beautiful and somewhat feisty heroine, a villainous stepmother and ugly stepsisters, a fancy dress transformation suitable for a costume design showoff moment. No fight at the end but you can’t have everything.

The motif of finding the heroine through a lost shoe goes back as far as a Greek story told around the BCE/CE turnover, but Cinderella mostly codified in France with Charles Perrault in 1697, after an Italian version in 1634.

She generally only has so much agency and ends up needing a lot of help, though some versions give her a more active part. See Sapsorrow, the version dramatised in The Storyteller, where she escapes a terrible fate and makes a new one for herself with a magical disguise and some dress theft.

And a happily ever after

The lack of a fight at the end makes this less immediately adaptable to standard RPG shape, but the mix of magic, fancy royal events and attempts to subvert it lends itself to toying with it as the PCs are the ones trying to help or hinder something like this. See Witches Abroad for an example.

I’ve actually addressed Cinderella for Relics, with the Fairy Godmother’s Needle as a quietly powerful item that can remake clothing and allow someone creative to spin up beautiful fashions and flawless disguises. I also found that there’s no standard origin or name for the Fairy Godmother so I made her Aglaea of the Three Graces.

You Shall Go To The Ball

The PCs get a chance to attend the fanciest formal event of the season - whether they want to or not - and perhaps get mixed up in romances and schemes, and maybe see someone there who needs some PC shenanigans style help.

Adventure Calendar 2025 1: The Snow Queen

Adventure Calendar 2025

1: The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

As the example I cited in the intro post this seems as good a place to start as any. Scottish Ballet is doing it this year and The Ice Tower is currently in cinemas about an actress playing the queen and a fan getting caught up in the world.

It was also the starting point for Frozen though the result is pretty different - see early designs here that are more like a blue Cruella before making Elsa a beloved superhero.

The Snow Queen isn’t a traditional story, it was published in 1844 in a book literally called New Fairy Tales, but it’s familiar enough now.

It starts with the Devil creating a mirror that shows only the worst in everything and breaking it in an attempt to invade Heaven and that’s just the prologue. One of the splinters goes into a boy named Kai’s eye and this makes him a target for the Snow Queen, so his friend Gerda sets off to rescue him. On the way she has various side adventures and is helped and hindered by royalty, talking animals and the like.

It’s very much the kind of story you might get from playing Once Upon A Time. So for RPGs it would be an easy adaptation to kitchen-sinky fantasy, while the motley assortment of heroes trying to rescue someone from a sinister powerful type’s fortress is one of the most basic story outlines we could take.

The Devil’s mirror could be a plot hook all on its own - I could drop it into Relics or some World Of Darkness games with ease.

Cold-tinted glasses

A pair of antique spectacles made with glass from the Devil’s mirror, allowing a user to see the flaws in everything. Useful for engineering and proofreading and the like, but likely to leave you with a negative view of the world.

Adventure Calendar 2025: Fairytales

Adventure Calendar 2025

0: Fairytales

For my seventh year doing festive adventure ideas daily (click December 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 in my blog archive) and this year a number of stories sorta kinda related to Christmas - fairytales.

The Princess Bride poster

Has it got any sports in it?

Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...

Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.

Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

The Princess Bride

Here in the UK theatres put on pantomimes for families around this time, a uniquely British mix of classic fairytales, vaudeville humour, audience participation and crossdressing. A lot of the stories will also be familiar from the Disney canon. Ballet companies bring out the likes of The Snow Queen as well for the Christmas season, so those are fair game too. Now to find a list with enough of them...

If I run out I will borrow from The Storyteller, not least as it included a story about running out of stories.

December

Low the tide, low the light

Comes the sun again

Thea Gilmore, Sol Invictus