Guard the Gourd

Every autumn Marrowdown weighs the biggest pumpkin in the valley on the town scale at seven in the morning, in front of everybody. Maud Cressy has entered forty-one times and has never won. Every single year, something has happened to her pumpkin the night before.

This year she has grown the Duchess: eleven hundred and forty pounds. She has hired four strangers to sit up with it from sunset to the weigh-in, for ten gold each and breakfast.

There is one rule at the Weighing, and the Reeve has never bent it. If it has a hole in it, it does not go on the scale.

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🦡 WHAT COMES IN THE NIGHT

A crow at sunset. Six giant badgers at midnight, following a trail that somebody laid on purpose. And at three in the morning, something the size of a hay cart comes up out of the reeds for the biggest fruit in the valley.

Killing things is easy. Keeping every one of them from taking a single bite is the game.

🎲 A 47-page comedy siege one-shot for D&D 5e — 3-4 hours, 4 players, level 3.

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📦 WHAT YOU GET

▪ 5 scenes, every one written out in full: read-aloud text, what happens if they fail, what to do if they skip it

▪ 3 painted battle maps in three versions each — DM, player, and a copy with no grid. 70 px per 5-foot square, so it drops straight into Roll20 or Foundry already aligned

▪ 4 ready-to-play 3rd-level characters, finished. They are optional: notes for running it with your own party are included

▪ 1 original creature with a full stat block, written to be deadly and to have a mercy

▪ 3 printable handouts, 3 roll tables, 11 secrets and clues at three different costs

▪ Written help for when the party goes sideways, and a section for your first time running a game

▪ 7 paintings of the adventure to show your players

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😂 THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want a funny dnd one shot where the joke is the premise and the danger is real

▪ Your table likes defending one thing against everything, all night

▪ You want an autumn session that is not a horror story

▪ You want a real choice at the end: one that nobody at the table will agree on

▪ You are new to running games and want the read-aloud text already written

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🗓️ SET IN LOWMERE

The valley of The Lowmere Year. This adventure stands completely alone and needs nothing from any other, but Hessa Bramm the cheesemonger and Sheriff Odett Quill are in it, and in other adventures of the valley too.

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📄 THE FILES

▪ A4 — 47 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 50 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ 9 map images (3 maps × DM, player, no grid)

▪ 7 paintings

▪ 2 table-scale battle map PDFs, A4 and US Letter

🗺️ The battle maps also print at table scale: two extra PDFs lay every map out at one inch per five-foot square across numbered sheets with a cut line. Print them at home, tape them together and put miniatures on them.

Five downloads: the adventure in one zip (both paper sizes, colour and printer-friendly), the map images, the paintings, and the two table-scale map PDFs.

The printer-friendly build is the same book in pure white, nothing removed.

⬇️ Instant digital download. Nothing is posted to you.

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📜 THE SMALL PRINT

Compatible with Fifth Edition.

Made with AI assistance: the text, maps and paintings of this adventure were written and generated with AI, then edited, checked and laid out by hand.

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🕯️ ONE GOOD EVENING

Games for a table, and for a chair by the fire.