The Midnight Harvest Festival is a festival thrown by a being known as the Pumpking. It occurs over the course of a single night, and brings the participants to a demi-plane of the Pumpking's own making.
A mix of a carnival and festival, the Midnight Harvest Festival touts games, events, and contests throughout its span. The Pumpking meticulously built the festival to ensure anyone who shows up can experience as much joy as possible. All games are free, and everything awards tickets which can be exchanged for magical items of various strength. The festival lasts for one full night, denoted by a ghostly blue candle directly in the center of the faire grounds. At the end, all individuals who attended wake up with all of their prizes strewn about their room.
There are six main creatures at the Midnight Harvest Festival: The Pumpking, Fulas, Barry the Boar, Armin, Kort the Ogre, and The Shrunken Head. Here's some details you could choose to use or ignore about them!
The Pumpking - The Pumpking has simple motivations here - he wants everyone to have a good time. The Pumpking is secretly a lich who feeds off of joy - it doesn't seem to have any adverse effects on the people he is feeding off of, but no one who ascended to lichdom is innocent. This is a detail you could choose to completely ignore, or to have as a bigger plotline in your campaign. By our design, the Pumpking's phylactery is the tickets bearing his face themselves, simply due to the fact that he knew the odds of someone rounding each up was very very low. Personality wise, the Pumpking is seemingly aloof and an almost gentle giant like being. He has a massive presence about him that emanates power, but he doesn't seem aggressive by any means. He roams around the festival grounds ensuring everyone has a good time, and takes the start and finish of the festival to give a big speech.
Fulas - Fulas the Scarecrow is a bit of a goofy character, who runs most of the booths at the festival. They are a bit dense(straw for brains) but extremely well mannered and goads on the attendees constantly. The only Fulas that is explicitly rude to the attendees by default is Dunk Tank Fulas, who will mock the participant for every missed attempt. Personality wise, Fulas should be upbeat and always happy to see whoever comes to one of their booths. Each Fulas could be exactly the same, or you could add a spin to each one and have some fun there. The only booths NOT run by a Fulas are the Arm Wrestling, the Mimic "Cup" Game, and the Cauldron Toss.
Barry the Boar - Barry is extremely mundane, but means well. He has absolutely nothing interesting to say, but drones on for as long as he can. He hosts a knot tying class consistently throughout the festival, awarding people who stick through his long windedness with a special rope(detailed below)
Armin - The disembodied arm who runs the arm wrestling booth, Armin can't speak but has a lot of personality. It always tries to show off and goad any passer-bys into stepping up to the table, pointing at their arms and miming that they're too weak. It will flex constantly and just generally be a nuisance.
Kort the Ogre - Kort runs the Mimic "Cup" Game, and absolutely knows he's cheating. But, he's so confident about his "skill" that unless someone has a keen eye, he'll gladly get away with everything. He fondly talks to the mimics when there's no one playing the games, and can be seen whispering to them constantly when he thinks no one is looking. They must be funny, because he's constantly giggling at whatever they're talking about. Kort feels generally slimy, but seems above board to the common eye, and appears to put on a fair game. After all, some of the joy of success comes from when you keep losing and finally get that last win in.
The Shrunken Head - The Shrunken Head runs and is a part of the cauldron toss. She doesn't mind being tossed around, and is generally just happy to be a part of the festival. If needed, Head will in fact help participants with the Cauldron game. If players aren't getting a shot, have the Shrunken Head say some encouraging words and give them a small bonus. The Shrunken Head will make general conversation with the participant in between each throw, appearing back into their hands after landing each time.
The Midnight Harvest hosts a series of events, here are some of them with suggested rules for them! A map of the festival grounds is included below as well.
- Barry's Rope Tying - Barry the Boar has a short knot tying lesson. If players sit with him and listen to him ramble for a short while, they'll be given a special rope that has advantage when tying a knot with it. It also appears as a simple rope necklace until a word is spoken, when it extends out to a 50 ft. length. Use this time to mess with the players a little bit, delving deep into Barry's remarkably mundane backstory.
- Cauldron Toss - Participants attempt to throw a shrunken head into a series of cauldrons behind the counter worth various amounts of points. They have 10 throws to score as many points as possible. The close one (DC 10) is worth 1 point, the middle one(DC 13) is worth 3 points, and the furthest(DC 16) is worth 5 points. Participants earn 2 tickets for every 5 points rounded down. Roll 1d20 + proficiency for each attempt.
- Dunk Tank - 5 attempts to throw a ball at a target to dunk Fulas. DC 18, with Fulas lightly mocking them each throw. Dunking Fulas awards 10 tickets. Roll 1d20 + proficiency for each attempt.
- Candle Knock - take turns throwing a leather ball at ghostly candles on the back wall. When a ball passes through, the candles dissipate. Roll a D20, above a 10 hits a candle and when all candles are gone the person with the most wins 5 tickets. No limit on attempts to play.
- Oh My Gourd - Another simple guessing game. Guess the size of the gourd and the closest wins another 50 tickets. At the end of the festival, the gourd is split up amongst the attendees.
- How Many Oozes? - A game of pure constitution. How many oozes can you fit into your mouth and still be able to speak? Each Ooze adds 1 to a Constitution saving throw, starting at 10. Participants are awarded 1 ticket per ooze fit into their mouth.
- Mimic "Cup" Game - A game that lasts 5 rounds. Each round awards 5 tickets, and each time gets harder. Requires Perception checks, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22. The last one is rigged, intending for everyone to lose, but a person with a keen eye can catch the scam.
- Liar's Dice - Play actual Liar's Dice with your group! If Fulas wins, nothing happens. If someone else wins, they get 10 tickets. A charismatic individual will have an easier time convincing Fulas of things.
- Arm Wrestling - You know how this is, strength roll! DC of 17 to win, 5 tickets on a win, but if someone tries to wrestle multiple times, the arm visibly gets bigger and the DC rises by 2 each time.
- Strong Man Contest - Surprisingly, this one doesn't entail raw strength. An intelligent person will note that this particular one simply needs to be hit in the perfect spot, but that spot repeatedly changes. DC 17 Intelligence roll to find the spot. The spot gets harder to find each time, the DC increasing by 2. Each win awards 5 tickets, and attempts with raw strength will get it close but never quite hit the bell.
- Shooting Gallery - hosted in a building that looks extremely small on the exterior, once a person steps inside the building looks considerably larger. There are 10 targets down field, using their Dexterity they can attempt to shoot down the targets. DC 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 as they get further, with 1 ticket per target.
- The Arena - Participants face off against crude effigy versions of random enemies. Pick a handful of your favorite monsters and have the players square off against them in narrative combats, awarding them 10 tickets per round and going until they are defeated. Healing is prohibited, and the fights get progressively harder. This would be best done as a more narrative combat, asking the player what they want to do and describing them and the effigy creature clashing blows to circumvent the tediousness of initiative. If anyone "dies" while participating in the arena, they instantly reappear at the festival gates.
- The Maze - This would probably be best run as a skill challenge. For example, have players use Survival to navigate the path better, or Athletics to swiftly avoid an exploding zombie. This should be a decently hard skill challenge, however, because in the center of the maze is 100 tickets. If anyone "dies" while participating in the maze, they instantly reappear at the festival gates.
- Prize Tent - Finally, the prize tent. We could put a list of items here, but you should go through and include items that your players would enjoy the most. Consumables should cost less than permanent items simply due to their nature, and the higher the rarity the higher the ticket cost.
