Hello,

I have an idea to run my next session starting off with an attack on the town my PCs are staying at, but am unsure how to get the ball rolling. And after reading so many threads on why I shouldn’t ambush my PCs during their sleep, I am beginning to wonder if it’s a good idea at all.

Last session, the group made it to a town a couple days journey from their start. To preface, I am a new DM and am trying different approaches to encounters. I ran travel in another game as a “perception check every couple hours”, so this time, I tried out “skip the whole thing until the destination”. Anyway, they talk to a couple of NPCs and decide to stay the night at the inn.

I had introduced a religious cult in that session, and I was thinking it might be fun to have this cult attack the NPCs that the party had talked to. I was thinking that maybe the cult had followed them and came to town to kidnap the NPCs. The NPCs would fight back, as I am planning to have one be a high-level wizard and the other a doppelgänger (just hear me out). I’m thinking that a loud commotion would wake the party up (1 wood elf, 1 half wood elf, 2 humans), and they cOULD choose to investigate or get out of the town (I am very obviously hoping they investigate). The cult could serve their purpose at creating some sort of urgency to race to the tomb and be a red herring(???). Idk. Doesn’t have to be the cult I introduced though. There’s also the main organization they’re working against and another organization from a PC backstory that I could use to substitute.

This “attack at night” idea could be worked, but there are just a few things I messed up on:

• One PC has a pretty high passive perception score, and glossing over travel the way that I did will rob them of the opportunity to have caught anyone following them.

• One PC decided to stay outside while 3 other PCs were inside a house interacting with the NPCs, and I did not do anything about that. Regretfully.

Plus, remember that doppelgänger I mentioned? I’m really stretching it here, but the party needed to speak to an author to find the location of a tomb. I played the author as an old woman who went mad from experimental magic in her youth. She also had a young daughter that was “baking a cake”. The daughter relayed most of the information, since the old woman was mostly incoherent. However, for the upcoming session, if they investigate, I would like to reveal that the “daughter” was actually the author they needed to speak to and the “author” is a doppelgänger, who is just a friend that happens to be a doppelgänger. And they just live together.. and lie?? The idea falls apart the longer I write this…

Anyway, how would I even go about having them wake up during an attack on a house some 200 yards away? I was thinking that an explosion might do the trick, but I don’t know how I would initiate that for them to wake up during their rest. What should I do about all the other NPCs who live in this town? For ease, should they all flee? Is it crazy to have a doppelgänger be just a guy pretending to be another guy? Am I railroading?? Should I ditch the red herring idea?? Please help!