gideonpepys
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
DM's Notes - Knutpara
This section of the adventure played out very differently to how I expected. When Matunaaga's player told us that he couldn't make the next two sessions (and Rumdoom's the first) I worried that the players would struggle against the giants without their main combat characters - to the extent that I allowed (almost for the first time in our campaign) for another player to run an absent PC. (Partly out of concern for a TPK; partly because Rumdoom needed to be there to join in with the next session.) I thought this would be a tough slog and would take three, maybe four sessions (with a plan to give Matunaaga's player Kvarti Gorbatiy on his return).
While this dungeon was very nicely 'Jaquayed', I was reasonably confident of the players' initial approach, and that they would encounter the rangers and their deathbears first. Then the deathbears would be likely to alert the rest of the giants to their presence when they regenerated and followed them into the rift.
But the party aced their stealth checks against the rangers and came up with a clever way of diverting them, then did that classic high-level player thing of finding an impossible solution you couldn't have predicted: burning a hole in the wall of the dragon tower and using a whole bunch of other powers to get themselves inside. They were extremely successful in dealing with lone guards, kept acing all their checks to find traps, overcome the lanterns, spot hidden runes, etc
All the while it was very tempting to use DM fiat (or GM Intrusion) to fudge things and throw them a curveball - decide that dead giants were discovered, or that the rangers were suspicious enough to come looking for them - but in the end I opted to reward them for their success rather than nerf it.
So by the time they reached the prison/mine and faced off against Odan Chuval they were in much better shape than could have anticipated. Add to this the fact that they released Kvarti and then got the drop on the giants, and what could have been a TPK turned into a cakewalk.
Suddenly I find myself in the position of having to run the convocation in just a few days' time. I didn't know for sure if we would get that far. My wife is due on 4th July, so it looks possible we might even finish the adventure. Either that, or end on a fabulous cliffhanger before our loooooong break. Fingers crossed.
I am sending the players an account of what happens in the 'Fitting Room' (which I will post here shortly) rather than play through a section of the adventure in which their actions won't (or can't be allowed to) count for too much. So we will begin next week with their conversation with Nicodemus. Exciting, but a little daunting: the climax of the campaign thus far; all those Ob officers; all those rooms!
There are also a couple of ideas I'd like to work in to the convocation that I haven't finalized in my mind:
First of all I don't need Erskine Haffkruger. I'd like to keep him maybe as a red herring, or an unlikely ally, but I'm toying with the idea of removing him completely. Unless anyone out there has any better ideas.
Secondly, and rather madly, I'd like to have Lavanya attend the convocation. For anyone who has been reading my journal long-term, she is the figure from Leon's past - an eladrin woman who rescued him on Axis Island during Yerasol IV. She built Conquo, returned Leon's Ob ring to him during adventure 5, and turned out to be working in the Cauldron Hill facility as an attempted substitute for Kasvarina. (Or was she? More recent events have suggested to Leon that she may be nothing more than a figment of his imagination.) So my question is: should I have her in attendance as an Ob officer? Visible only to Leon? Or - and this only just occurred to me while typing this - lurking inside Erskine Haffkruger, having used the Mortal Possession ritual herself?
Wow. Okay. I'm tempted not to post this now, and save this twist for later. But sod it! This is one of the reasons I keep this campaign journal, because it helps my ideas to come together. That one is too good to pass up. So now you know!
Heh. So there's me complaining about the complexity of the convocation, and now I'm going to ramp it up a notch!
This section of the adventure played out very differently to how I expected. When Matunaaga's player told us that he couldn't make the next two sessions (and Rumdoom's the first) I worried that the players would struggle against the giants without their main combat characters - to the extent that I allowed (almost for the first time in our campaign) for another player to run an absent PC. (Partly out of concern for a TPK; partly because Rumdoom needed to be there to join in with the next session.) I thought this would be a tough slog and would take three, maybe four sessions (with a plan to give Matunaaga's player Kvarti Gorbatiy on his return).
While this dungeon was very nicely 'Jaquayed', I was reasonably confident of the players' initial approach, and that they would encounter the rangers and their deathbears first. Then the deathbears would be likely to alert the rest of the giants to their presence when they regenerated and followed them into the rift.
But the party aced their stealth checks against the rangers and came up with a clever way of diverting them, then did that classic high-level player thing of finding an impossible solution you couldn't have predicted: burning a hole in the wall of the dragon tower and using a whole bunch of other powers to get themselves inside. They were extremely successful in dealing with lone guards, kept acing all their checks to find traps, overcome the lanterns, spot hidden runes, etc
All the while it was very tempting to use DM fiat (or GM Intrusion) to fudge things and throw them a curveball - decide that dead giants were discovered, or that the rangers were suspicious enough to come looking for them - but in the end I opted to reward them for their success rather than nerf it.
So by the time they reached the prison/mine and faced off against Odan Chuval they were in much better shape than could have anticipated. Add to this the fact that they released Kvarti and then got the drop on the giants, and what could have been a TPK turned into a cakewalk.
Suddenly I find myself in the position of having to run the convocation in just a few days' time. I didn't know for sure if we would get that far. My wife is due on 4th July, so it looks possible we might even finish the adventure. Either that, or end on a fabulous cliffhanger before our loooooong break. Fingers crossed.
I am sending the players an account of what happens in the 'Fitting Room' (which I will post here shortly) rather than play through a section of the adventure in which their actions won't (or can't be allowed to) count for too much. So we will begin next week with their conversation with Nicodemus. Exciting, but a little daunting: the climax of the campaign thus far; all those Ob officers; all those rooms!
There are also a couple of ideas I'd like to work in to the convocation that I haven't finalized in my mind:
First of all I don't need Erskine Haffkruger. I'd like to keep him maybe as a red herring, or an unlikely ally, but I'm toying with the idea of removing him completely. Unless anyone out there has any better ideas.
Secondly, and rather madly, I'd like to have Lavanya attend the convocation. For anyone who has been reading my journal long-term, she is the figure from Leon's past - an eladrin woman who rescued him on Axis Island during Yerasol IV. She built Conquo, returned Leon's Ob ring to him during adventure 5, and turned out to be working in the Cauldron Hill facility as an attempted substitute for Kasvarina. (Or was she? More recent events have suggested to Leon that she may be nothing more than a figment of his imagination.) So my question is: should I have her in attendance as an Ob officer? Visible only to Leon? Or - and this only just occurred to me while typing this - lurking inside Erskine Haffkruger, having used the Mortal Possession ritual herself?
Wow. Okay. I'm tempted not to post this now, and save this twist for later. But sod it! This is one of the reasons I keep this campaign journal, because it helps my ideas to come together. That one is too good to pass up. So now you know!
Heh. So there's me complaining about the complexity of the convocation, and now I'm going to ramp it up a notch!
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