excellent input here thus far. Much appreciated.
I play the research session tonight with the paladin character.
I have gone with a mixture of
1 riddles (these bypass the magical wards that are placed on the books)
2 research rolls (3 chances here, these will mostly determine the time taken and any mods to skill checks below)
3 skill checks (linguistics, read rules, locate secret opening)
4 roleplaying (gaining access to restricted areas of the library via library staff) bribery, role-playing
Success in this research task will give the PC two maps, one showing the physical location of the Secret Armoury and the other giving the detailed layout (but not contents) of one third of the armoury itself. The other two detailed maps will be made available to them through two different NPCs.
You'll definitely have to post how it goes, afterwards.
90 min session completed. Went Well!
a little roleplaying and some rolling and some riddles.
I had created two lists of books as follows:
COMMON Book Titles (Pick 3)
1 Rivers of Blood -20 READ RUNES
2 Lords of Darkness -10 LINGUISTICS
3 Unholy Light +20 READ RUNES
4 The Witching Hour +20 LINGUISTICS
5 Creeping Doom -30 READ RUNES
6 Guide to Blood Moon Rituals -20 LINGUISTICS
7 Gaze of Death -10 READ RUNES
8 The Soul Eaters +20 LINGUISTICS
RARE BOOKS (Pick 1)
1 The Druagr +20 LOCATE SECRET OPENING
2 The Dark Lords +10 LOCATE SECRET OPENING
3 The Light Bringers +30 LOCATE SECRET OPENING
The list of titles was given to the PC by a librarian assistant after the player had given him an idea about the sorts of topics he was interested in researching. The PC could not simply say I am looking for a secret armoury of relics for killing vampires so he had to speak more generally about the topics whcih worked out pretty well.
The player only could see the titles and not the mod. I just used the mod to get them to make some checks.
He wanted to read all the books but i limited him to 4 total.
He actually failed one or two rolls early on but that was fine, it just meant he needed to spend more time there researching.
Once he made his checks i gave him a riddle (just used two riddles but had a 3rd if needed)
The player wasnt sure what form the information was in so the riddle answers of MAP and MIRROR
revealed he was looking for a map behind a mirror somewhere in the library.
He had to roleplay when talking to the front desk librarian and had to convince him to get access to a restricted area of the library (a private room/library)
once in the restricted area he found one map in a secret opening (skill check made) in a fountain in the room and another map inside one of the rare books.
Overall pretty successful session and im pleased how things went.
I actually didnt know myself where the maps would be hidden at the start, i just knew to make him search for cliues to find them. It worked! I thought hiding one map under a fountain (type of mirror) was pretty clever after revealing he was looking for a mirror in the riddle and I came up with it on the spot