I ran the first session in Shelter last night, and here's how it went.
I told the party that they left the Fire Forest, heading down the now burned-out Elfroad and up over a mountain pass (no skill challenge). As they came out of the mountains and down the road I described seeing Cornerwood ahead of them and the guys a mile off who yelled and started riding toward them. At this point I had them make Perception checks to avoid being surprised by the hobgoblins, who attacked.
After the battle, I had the Cornerwoodians invite them into town for a meal and a story, which the party agreed to. It was only mid-day at this point, so Torrent advocated pushing on. The party bought horses and hit the road.
I laid out the choices of the Eastern versus Western Way. A side note here: The adventure doesn't really present a whole lot of information that the party could use to choose between the two options. I winged it. The party went West.
I narrated the events that happened along the way, with a little opportunity for interaction where appropriate, but I mostly just took five or ten minutes to do some storytelling. The PCs were able to ask questions of some of the travelers on the road and decide whether to pay the toll or not, but that was about it.
Ultimately the party arrived at Vidor and started discussing how they wanted to approach the swamp. I described the price gouging and the plight of the refugees who had gotten this far but had no money to go farther. At this point, the party decided to head awesomely off the rails.
The good-aligned warlock in the group couldn't just stand idly by while the poor refugees were gouged by greedy merchants, so she hatched a plan to break into Grimfran's Goods at night and play Robin Hood, stealing from Grimfran to give the money to the refugees. Okay, time to build a new encounter!
I whipped up a quick map of Grimfran's shop and stocked it with appropriate guards. I put two thugs on the front porch, one thug sleeping behind the counter, Grimfran sleeping in his bedroom and two guard panthers - one with Grimfran, one under the shop counter. I gave the place a back door and a few windows, and we were off.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6875434/GrimfransGoodsNoGrid.jpg
The warlock (who is multiclassed to rogue) picked the lock on the back door and snuck in. After making some good stealth checks, she ended up coming across Grimfran and his guard panther, both asleep. She tried to communicate to the party druid, waiting just outside the back door, that there was a panther here and she wanted the druid to tame it, but couldn't figure out how to do that silently, so she went for the trap door, opened it silently and snuck down to the little chamber beneath Grimfran's room. The druid (a 350-pound minotaur, by the way, with no Stealth training) followed into the building, waiting outside Grimfran's room (yay lucky dice on that stealth check!).
In the chamber beneath the bedroom, the warlock found some casks of high-end liquor, a desk with papers and ledgers, and a treasure chest with a big lock. She tried and failed to pick the lock, in part because it was so dark down there (some moonlight from the window in Grimfran's room filtering down the open trap door was the only light). I offered to let her try again if she could get a light source down there. She closed the trap door and lit a torch using magic (succeeding in doing so silently and without burning herself). She tried the lock again... and failed again.
Meanwhile, her druid ally who was upstairs trying not to move made a perception check... and smelled the smoke from the torch starting to waft up between the floorboards into the bedroom. The warlock was oblivious to this, naturally, and decided to (quietly) blast the hinges off the chest using magic. Four attacks later, she had succeeded and emptied the contents of the chest into her Bag of Holding. Feeling good, she snuffed the torch and started climbing the ladder back to the bedroom...
At which point I called for initiative rolls. The panther won, smelled the smoke from the snuffing of the torch, woke up and growled (it hadn't seen anyone yet, just smelled the smoke). Grimfran had the second-highest initiative, so he woke up from the growling and looked around, confused. At this point, the warlock, oblivious to the fact that Grimfran and the panther were awake (Perception check: 11), snuck out of the basement and quietly crept through Grimfran's room, heading toward the back door. While Grimfran and the panther stared, incredulous.
The bad guys went next. The panther knocked the warlock to the ground, and Grimfran armed himself and called for his guards. The rest of the PCs hurried to come help, and the warlock ultimately stood up and teleported onto the bed next to Grimfran. Thanks to the Burning Sky effect, she arrived in flames and gave a horrifying speech about being the angel of justice or something along those lines, calling on him to repent from his money-grubbing ways. That was a heck of a situational bonus to a Bluff check, let me tell you!
Between the warlock's speech and the other PCs rushing in, Grimfran surrendered and promised to change his ways (though the PCs have their doubts). The party rushed out to give the gold to the poor and then beat it out of Vidor.
This ended up being a ton of fun. The tension in the game when the warlock was making her stealth rolls to blast open the chest without making noise was palpable, and the awesomeness of the ultimate victory was complete. So, if anyone wants a side quest to liven things up in Vidor, I highly recommend the Robin Hood adventure. Now I just have to make sure Grimfran gets his revenge...
