The last post about Spaghetti Fantasy was very appreciated, so why not double the fun!?
In my Spaghetti Fantasy games and fiction, “Pinocchio-like” marionettes are a constant presence: the primal model, of course, is the novel Pinocchio, written by Carlo Collodi in XIX Century, but also the “opera dei pupi”, the Medieval and Renaissance European puppet shows, the “teatro dell’arte”, the carnival masquerades, and so on.
In my Old School – OSE adaptation, marionettes can be mistaken for wood golems, but they retain their own identity, free will, and personality. They lack any mechanism, clockwork device, or engine; only the magic of Blue Fairies brings them to life. Typically, they cannot lie, as doing so might cause parts of their body to grow in strange ways.
As a reward for completing tasks or to end a lifetime of suffering and humiliation, marionettes may be granted by the Blue Fairies to become real human beings. Promising them the same effect may be used to deal with them. Sometimes, however, they are happy to remain as they are.
In the Spaghetti Fantasy Unchained, a small/tiny/indie publication I made, you can find the stats for this kind of creature, intended as a monster or an encounter.
Now, I’m glad to share 1d4 Marionette Lairs ideas and 1d4 Marionette Adventure Seeds for your Old School Games:
1d4 Marionette Lairs
1 – Il Gran Ghigno: A wooden, brightly painted puppet theater, where twisted marionettes attend grand-guignolesque shows (not so willingly) performed by humans.
2 – The Plant: The workshop of a kind but absent-minded toymaker, who tirelessly crafts marionettes day by day, unknowingly following the commands of his devious creations to build an entire wooden army.
3 – Catchfools Forest: A dense forest where giant wooden spiders made from assembled marionette parts weave webs from their former strings.
4 – Mangiafuoco’s Van: The abandoned remains of a caravan, infested by a herd of broken zombie puppets. Only a Blue Fairy Sigil outside the cracked door prevents the dead marionettes’ outbreak.
1d4 Marionette Adventure Seeds
1 – A Path of Wood and Blood: A desperate marionette tasks the party by escorting it in its search for obtaining a human form. Or, if you prefer, for restoring their previous, wooden one.
2 – Wood War I: All the Wooden Nations are in upheaval. Puppets, ventriloquial dummies, clockwork automata, manikins, and scarecrows battle one another for control over the Blue Forest, the sole reservoir of their magical wood.
3 – The Puppet Curse: A mysterious illness is spreading among people, causing them to slowly turn into wooden marionettes. It’s the very opposite of the common wish the Blue Fairies grant to good puppets: are the two things related?
4 – The Miracle Map: A reckless street urchin puppet invites the party to join him on a quest. Claiming he obtained a cryptic map from a talking donkey, he believes it leads to the Field of Miracles, where gold coins supposedly grow on trees overnight… What could possibly go wrong?
These are 4+4 ideas for your Spaghetti Fantasy games, but the complete file contains 10+10 of them, the Marionette as an OSE creature, and some other content.
Hero Engine 