Today we were supposed to have six people come play Tammeraut's Fate, the adventure from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but half the players had to cancel with relative short notice, so I threw together an adventure yesterday (well, Sunday, but you get it) to work with the remaining three.
I'd been planning on putting Uskarn and the whole Tammeraut's Fate story in a region of my homebrew world called Nephimala, which is essentially the equivalent of 1880s America (my setting has guns and trains and stuff like that. And laser pistols... it's an eclectic mix of technologies due to a rapid industrial revolution and a long-lost advanced civilization.)
Anyway, while Uskarn was going to be on the northern coast, in a kind of salty sailor region akin to New England, there are also parts of the setting that feel like the Wild West (though ironically, it's more of a Wild East.)
The premise of the adventure is that the party is traveling by train back west to a big city, and along the way they're forced to stop in a tiny town called Teh Hevuarga (the name is an old inside joke among my friends from back home) after there's some reported damage to the tracks about 60 miles away.
The rail company offers to take passengers to the next town, past the damage, in stage coaches with an armed escort, but the coaches won't be there until late the next day, so they've got about a day and a half to spend in Teh Hevuarga.
Shortly after finding this out, a half-orc woman with a young aasimar child asks the party for help - she was entrusted with the girl to take her to the city. She was rescued by a group of Marshals who found that the Red Rattler Gang - a massive organization that threatens the entire frontier - was going to sacrifice her as part of an infernal ritual. While the Marshals try to hunt down other members of the gang, the woman is trying to get the girl safely away, but she suspects that the damage to the track was sabotage, intended to trap them in the town so that the girl can be taken and sacrificed.
The party then needs to find a proper place for the girl and the woman to hide and then prepare to defend the town from Galero's Crew - Galero being the local Red Rattler big shot, and, as it turns out, Galero is actually Galeromon, a devil.
Around town there are some friendly NPCs, some secret Red Rattler members, and a bunch of noncombatant civilians.
The party has until sundown to figure out their defenses, and then Galero rides in with his crew and threatens the town with destruction if they don't give up the girl.
Given the Wild West setting, I used firearms and dynamite from the Dungeon Master's Workshop chapter in the DMG.
With three level 9 party members, the crew I gave was:
Galero, a Barbed Devil
A Nightmare for him to ride (though the Nightmare didn't attack - it just gave him 90 feet of flight speed.)
An Archer (Volo's) armed with a rifle (serving as his main lieutenant)
8 Scouts armed with revolvers
And then, in town before the fight starts, there were two Cultists and an Apprentice Wizard hiding among the populace, who, if exposed, can be eliminated from the final combat.
There were also two friendly NPCs that could help:
The Sheriff, a Bandit Captain armed with a +1 revolver
The Madam, a Spy with a Shotgun
These characters help in the fight if asked.
I imagine that this is an adventure you could easily scale to the level of your party. You might make the Scouts into Bandits or Cultists and use a lower-level devil (Barbed Devil is CR 5) if you want this to be more doable for lower-level characters. You could also monstrous humanoids like goblins, gnolls, or the like as your gang members. You could even consider using very low-level devils, though I think having humanoid cultists works best, with a devil commanding them.
You can also emphasize the ability to fortify the town, reminding the players to create cover and bar the doors.
Map-wise, I created what I hoped was a pretty classic one-horse western town. There was a small rail office, a sheriff's station, a general store, a brothel (and obviously feel free to alter that if you are running a more PG game) a Church, a Temple (in my setting there is a monotheistic religion and a polytheistic one, but at least in this country the two get along fine,) and a saloon. I mapped out the first floors of each of these buildings, plus second floors to the brothel, saloon, and the bell tower to the church, as well as the roof of the general store, using a second battle mat for the second level.
The bandits can make use of the buildings, taking cover behind them, but the players can, of course, also do so. And then you can have a cool wild west shootout, defending the innocent against a wave of diabolic villains.
I figure the adventure challenges the players first to do a kind of social investigation, then perhaps some environmental evaluation - not really puzzles or traps, but figuring out the most defensible position - and then having an endurance fight against a large number of foes.
Let's see: I also had dynamite for sale behind the general store, and half of the lowest-level gang members carried two sticks a piece, which they could throw. But if they were hit with a natural 20 with a firearm or failed a dex save against a fire spell (or something similar) any remaining dynamite on them would blow up.
Anyway, I ran it tonight and it was really, really good. We had a College of Swords Bard, a one-armed Beast Mastery Ranger (with a Skeleton for their "beastly" companion) and a Divine Soul Sorcerer. They managed to run the Apprentice Wizard out of town (he's a hustler who uses minor magic to cheat at cards) and the Bard seduced one of the Cultists (the Sheriff's deputy) and tie him up before the fight.
I will say that an RP-heavy party is going to have a lot of meat to chew on in the pre-combat part of the adventure. Running it, you'll want to really have the gang members make use of cover, but having Galero flying around on a Nightmare, he can really strike terror into the party (as a Barbed Devil, he was going around flinging fire everywhere.)
One note: the gang wants the girl alive, so you don't have to put the party in a position where the girl is going to actually get killed if they mess up in combat. In fact, if the gang gets her, you could even create an adventure of trying to recover from losing the fight and chasing after Galero or his surviving crew and stopping the sacrifice from taking place.
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