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Advice for Caves of Chaos/B2
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7277194" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Don't?</p><p></p><p>I've ran B2 twice, once at about age 11 and once at about age 15, and I'd never do it again - or at least not in anything remotely like its written form. Your assessment of the adventure is perfectly correct. It's fairly boring and redundant, and it tends to devolve into a series of mass combats involving entire tribes versus the party. And those combats tend to devolve into the fact that plate armor wearing PC's can be nigh impossible for most foes to hit, resulting in lots of tedious rolling and very little cinematic combat. </p><p></p><p>The real irony of B2 is it that it is an adventure that only can come to life in the hands of a very experienced and competent DM who is capable and willing to add a ton to the text that doesn't really appear in it. It's an absolutely lousy module for a beginning DM. I've heard of mini-campaigns around B2 that sounded like they might have worked, that involved inventing massive backstories for the castle, surrounding towns and wilderness lairs, an evil warlord, an insidious cult of chaos, spies, assassins, fleshing out the interior of the keeps and the NPCs there in, and the merchants that visit it, and adding additional dungeons and so on and so forth. But at that point, B2 itself is only a tiny and partially irrelevant launching point for the DM's imagination. </p><p></p><p>And at that point that the scenario has become logical depends on nothing actually in the text of the adventure. Examining the text alone, you have to ask why in the world any of these tribes are even there. They've got no apparent loyalty to the cult, and the cult has no apparent means of imposing control on the tribes. The tribes hate each other and their are no resources that would tie the tribes to the caves. Nothing in the text suggests what they are vying over in the first place, and only the goblins seem to have any sort of economic activity (and that not very much). There are no workshops, no mines, no really anything, to suggest what this is all about. Moreover, the supposed threat represented by the tribes is ridiculous, since the keep is quite capable of repelling any attack that the tiny poorly equipped tribes could mount even if they did work together. And, the keeps soldiers and officers are vastly better equipped to assault the caves than the PC's are, so if it really came to that, why is it the PC's job to deal with the caves? And if the cult actually had a goal, why do they passively allow the PC's to disrupt it. Like, the second time the PC's show up, why doesn't every tribe and all the undead and the cultists attack the PC's together? If they can't manage to do that, why does the cult imagine it can arrange an assault on the keep?</p><p></p><p>(The DM who trained me told me that his PC party had concluded that the real goal of the module was to rob the keep, and his group had treated the module like a heist game. That's a good example of making lemonade out of lemons, but not evidence of the module not being boring as written.)</p><p></p><p>Briefly, I considered rewriting B2 to suit my current standards of play, and to me that involves mostly dealing with its problematic but iconic map and its lack of compelling hooks or obvious purpose of play beyond kicking down the doors and taking their stuff. But it's too much work for too little reward.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7277194, member: 4937"] Don't? I've ran B2 twice, once at about age 11 and once at about age 15, and I'd never do it again - or at least not in anything remotely like its written form. Your assessment of the adventure is perfectly correct. It's fairly boring and redundant, and it tends to devolve into a series of mass combats involving entire tribes versus the party. And those combats tend to devolve into the fact that plate armor wearing PC's can be nigh impossible for most foes to hit, resulting in lots of tedious rolling and very little cinematic combat. The real irony of B2 is it that it is an adventure that only can come to life in the hands of a very experienced and competent DM who is capable and willing to add a ton to the text that doesn't really appear in it. It's an absolutely lousy module for a beginning DM. I've heard of mini-campaigns around B2 that sounded like they might have worked, that involved inventing massive backstories for the castle, surrounding towns and wilderness lairs, an evil warlord, an insidious cult of chaos, spies, assassins, fleshing out the interior of the keeps and the NPCs there in, and the merchants that visit it, and adding additional dungeons and so on and so forth. But at that point, B2 itself is only a tiny and partially irrelevant launching point for the DM's imagination. And at that point that the scenario has become logical depends on nothing actually in the text of the adventure. Examining the text alone, you have to ask why in the world any of these tribes are even there. They've got no apparent loyalty to the cult, and the cult has no apparent means of imposing control on the tribes. The tribes hate each other and their are no resources that would tie the tribes to the caves. Nothing in the text suggests what they are vying over in the first place, and only the goblins seem to have any sort of economic activity (and that not very much). There are no workshops, no mines, no really anything, to suggest what this is all about. Moreover, the supposed threat represented by the tribes is ridiculous, since the keep is quite capable of repelling any attack that the tiny poorly equipped tribes could mount even if they did work together. And, the keeps soldiers and officers are vastly better equipped to assault the caves than the PC's are, so if it really came to that, why is it the PC's job to deal with the caves? And if the cult actually had a goal, why do they passively allow the PC's to disrupt it. Like, the second time the PC's show up, why doesn't every tribe and all the undead and the cultists attack the PC's together? If they can't manage to do that, why does the cult imagine it can arrange an assault on the keep? (The DM who trained me told me that his PC party had concluded that the real goal of the module was to rob the keep, and his group had treated the module like a heist game. That's a good example of making lemonade out of lemons, but not evidence of the module not being boring as written.) Briefly, I considered rewriting B2 to suit my current standards of play, and to me that involves mostly dealing with its problematic but iconic map and its lack of compelling hooks or obvious purpose of play beyond kicking down the doors and taking their stuff. But it's too much work for too little reward. [/QUOTE]
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