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<blockquote data-quote="Burnside" data-source="post: 7373684" data-attributes="member: 6910340"><p><strong>EPISODE 6: DDAL05-12: BAD BUSINESS IN PARNAST</strong></p><p></p><p>After a brief delay of only two-and-a-half months, I'm surprised as anybody to say that we picked up this campaign last night. I had pretty much figured it was dead and had given up trying to organize dates. I figured that if my players in this group really wanted to continue this campaign, they would take the initiative on getting it going again. Well, they actually did so here we are.</p><p></p><p>BAD BUSINESS IN PARNAST is not an ideal adventure to jump back in with on a campaign that's been on hiatus for several weeks. It requires more prep to run than any season 5 adventure I've run so far. It's a mystery/exploration story, pretty sandboxy, but with a timeline of events and activities happening behind the scenes and a large cast of NPCs. I had introduced most of these people (Ragnar Redtooth and his daughter Elspeth, Gundalin Cartwright and his son Wallace, Tove Brandiman, Chandra Stole, Sylas the apothecary, Culver the halfling who runs the trading post, the priestess Chandra Stol) but now after such a long layoff I was dreading an evening of "Wait, who's that again?" from my players. But for the most part a one or two sentence reminder on my part was fine and they got back into the swing of things.</p><p></p><p>The adventure began in the evening as the party returned from the Marsh of Chelimber and turned over the Rune Magic spellbook to HSING. HSING also had a letter for Tordeck and Klegg from their Order of the Gauntlet contact in Phandelver - shrines and symbols of Cyric had been discovered in the countryside around Parnast; such shrines if discovered were to be destroyed.</p><p></p><p>Parnast is now filling with refugees as orc raiders from Bad Fruul's army are hitting the outlying farms. On their way to the Golden Tankard, they pass the stables, now sheltering farmers and livestock. The hunter Tove Brandimen meets them outside and shares info about the orcs. This character is the villain of this adventure and I was glad I had introduced him a few episodes ago, because it made him a far less suspicious character here.</p><p></p><p>At the tavern, Raggnar Redtooth briefs the characters. While they were away, the town had begun to prepare fortifications against a possible assault. But these efforts have been hampered by mysterious accidents. Raggnar suspects sabotage, and that his political rival Gundalin Cartwright may be involved. The romance subplot between young lovers Elspeth Redtooth and Wallace Cartwright was re-introduced. </p><p></p><p>With the town rapidly closing up for the night, the players visited the trading post. After some banter with the halfling proprietor about local happenings, they learned that all of his lamp oil had gone missing. They were immediately alarmed by this and suspected a fire or explosion would be forthcoming. They returned to Raggnar and successfully persuaded him that buckets full of water should be prepared around the town and that all militia members should also have buckets filled and ready. I decided this preparation would give them a mechanical benefit in fighting the fire later.</p><p></p><p>It was now getting late but they investigated the site of a watchtower that had collapsed and via a detect magic spell and interviewing guards, they were able to determine is had been brought down using magic.</p><p></p><p>That was it for the night and they retired to the inn, only to be awoken just after dawn by panic from the stables as some horses had been poisoned. Tordeck was able to both detect and cure the poison; and examination of the feed revealed that yew needles had been mixed into the hay. The players summoned Chandra Stol and asked her to speak with the horses to see if they knew who poisoned them. As she is a priestess of Mielikki, I thought this was a pretty reasonable request but I didn't want to give away the whole plot. So the horses knew that a man they didn't know had visited the stable and put some leaves in their hay, but that's it.</p><p></p><p>A subsequent conversation with Chandra at the Shrine of Axes elicited her thoughts on Gundalin and Raggar (she think they are both fools, but need to work together for the sake of the town). A visit to Sylas the alchemist and investigation of his garden revealed that someone had clipped yew trimmings from there. A successful survival check by Millie discovered foorprints leading from the garden to Gundalin's house.</p><p></p><p>At this point I was pretty surprised at how much info the players were turning up; it escalated from there when they confronted Gundalin and Wallace at their house. Tordeck tried to talk to him about making peace with Raggnar. The players insisted on searching the place and found a bag of clippers and yew trimmings that Tove had planted in the workshop to frame the Cartwrights. Gundalin and Wallace strenuously denied having seen it before. A high insight check roll by Millie revealed that Wallace seemed nervous and might be hiding something. </p><p></p><p>The players got Wallace alone and Klegg screamed at him to tell them everything he was hiding. Successful intimidation check revealed that Wallace knew nothing about the sabotage but was planning a secret rendezvous with Elspeth in the woods and didn't want Gundalin or Raggnar to find out. He showed them a note he believed to be from Elspeth (it was actually forged by Tove to lure him into the woods). The party suspected some sort of shenanigans and Millie and Wizma trailed him into the woods (Tordeck and Klegg hung back because they are not stealthy).</p><p></p><p>They successfully interrupted Tove assaulting Wallace and Wizma immediately took him down with hold person. They tied him up, but immediately accepted his story that the orcs had his mom prisoner at his cabin and he was acting under duress (he had a severed human finger and a threatening note to back his story). They didn't even insight check him. </p><p></p><p>Feeling low on spell slots, they took Tove back to the inn to rest, but did say they made sure he stayed with them. When a fire broke out at a watchtower, they also explicitly took him along to fight it so he was not able to execute his plan of burning the tavern. Since the party had insisted on buckets of water all over the place, they were even able to partially salvage the watchtower.</p><p></p><p>So there are tons of "if x then y" eventualities and plot developments in this adventure, which try to anticipate different actions and lines of inquiry the party might or might not take and what Tove and his SECRET TWIN BROTHER will do in such-and-such an eventuality. It's laid out reasonably well but even a DM who has done prep is probably going to be flipping around to try to track references and developments spread throughout several pages. I don't object in principle but I'm not sure the pay off - a fight with orcs and ogres at a cabin - is really interesting or rewarding enough to justify the extra work involved. </p><p></p><p>Anyway, Tove leads them to the cabin and gives them a general description of the area. A reconnaissance fly-over by Snarf the Tressym yields detailed info and enemy positions. That's about where the good strategy stops as the players spend about twenty minutes devising what turns out to be a pretty rubbish covert assault plan. I went with "Very Strong" difficulty on the enemies, but the players did get the drop on them. This included Klegg taking off his armor to sneak up on a goblin, Wizma casting invisibility on herself to sneak up on another goblin and only realizing after the fact that she had no idea how to take him out quietly, Tordeck casting silence on a cluster of enemies in the middle of the camp. </p><p></p><p>A knock-down drag-out fight ensued that included Klegg getting KO'd twice, but our heroes prevailed. They completely disregarded Tove once the fight started, and had not restrained him, so he and his brother simply left (in fact they never found out there was a brother). They did figure out Tove had hosed them when he vanished and there was no mom held prisoner in the cabin. </p><p></p><p>A search of the cabin revealed a shrine to Cyric in the basement; the party looted the place and then Tordeck and Klegg torched the entire cabin and shrine.</p><p></p><p>The party returned to Parnast and got a hero's welcome, but in the coming days the countryside south of town became dotted with the campfires of a massing orc army. </p><p></p><p><strong>PLAYING TIME:</strong> Almost 3.5 hours. Enjoyable, but I defy anybody to run this in 2 hours as advertised.</p><p></p><p><strong>Rating:</strong> B. After the layoff and considering the complexity, I was just happy this wasn't a mess. Hard to evaluate given the circumstance of this start-and-stop campaign, but my sense is this is a perfectly good, but not great, adventure that calls for more work from the DM than most AL mods. </p><p></p><p>Everybody gets 1 rep point; Tordeck and Klegg get an extra point for destroying the shrine. No storyline rewards in this one. Klegg recovered Gauntlets of Ogre power from Kagrota Three-Teeth, the orc leader. Side note: there are too many magic items in AL. I would never award a magic item basically every two hours of play in a homebrew, nor is that the case in the hardcovers. There is definite power creep with everybody at level 5 having 3 really good attuned items.</p><p></p><p><strong>Next: DDAL-05-16:</strong> Parnast Under Siege. I hesitate to even speculate as to when.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Burnside, post: 7373684, member: 6910340"] [B]EPISODE 6: DDAL05-12: BAD BUSINESS IN PARNAST[/B] After a brief delay of only two-and-a-half months, I'm surprised as anybody to say that we picked up this campaign last night. I had pretty much figured it was dead and had given up trying to organize dates. I figured that if my players in this group really wanted to continue this campaign, they would take the initiative on getting it going again. Well, they actually did so here we are. BAD BUSINESS IN PARNAST is not an ideal adventure to jump back in with on a campaign that's been on hiatus for several weeks. It requires more prep to run than any season 5 adventure I've run so far. It's a mystery/exploration story, pretty sandboxy, but with a timeline of events and activities happening behind the scenes and a large cast of NPCs. I had introduced most of these people (Ragnar Redtooth and his daughter Elspeth, Gundalin Cartwright and his son Wallace, Tove Brandiman, Chandra Stole, Sylas the apothecary, Culver the halfling who runs the trading post, the priestess Chandra Stol) but now after such a long layoff I was dreading an evening of "Wait, who's that again?" from my players. But for the most part a one or two sentence reminder on my part was fine and they got back into the swing of things. The adventure began in the evening as the party returned from the Marsh of Chelimber and turned over the Rune Magic spellbook to HSING. HSING also had a letter for Tordeck and Klegg from their Order of the Gauntlet contact in Phandelver - shrines and symbols of Cyric had been discovered in the countryside around Parnast; such shrines if discovered were to be destroyed. Parnast is now filling with refugees as orc raiders from Bad Fruul's army are hitting the outlying farms. On their way to the Golden Tankard, they pass the stables, now sheltering farmers and livestock. The hunter Tove Brandimen meets them outside and shares info about the orcs. This character is the villain of this adventure and I was glad I had introduced him a few episodes ago, because it made him a far less suspicious character here. At the tavern, Raggnar Redtooth briefs the characters. While they were away, the town had begun to prepare fortifications against a possible assault. But these efforts have been hampered by mysterious accidents. Raggnar suspects sabotage, and that his political rival Gundalin Cartwright may be involved. The romance subplot between young lovers Elspeth Redtooth and Wallace Cartwright was re-introduced. With the town rapidly closing up for the night, the players visited the trading post. After some banter with the halfling proprietor about local happenings, they learned that all of his lamp oil had gone missing. They were immediately alarmed by this and suspected a fire or explosion would be forthcoming. They returned to Raggnar and successfully persuaded him that buckets full of water should be prepared around the town and that all militia members should also have buckets filled and ready. I decided this preparation would give them a mechanical benefit in fighting the fire later. It was now getting late but they investigated the site of a watchtower that had collapsed and via a detect magic spell and interviewing guards, they were able to determine is had been brought down using magic. That was it for the night and they retired to the inn, only to be awoken just after dawn by panic from the stables as some horses had been poisoned. Tordeck was able to both detect and cure the poison; and examination of the feed revealed that yew needles had been mixed into the hay. The players summoned Chandra Stol and asked her to speak with the horses to see if they knew who poisoned them. As she is a priestess of Mielikki, I thought this was a pretty reasonable request but I didn't want to give away the whole plot. So the horses knew that a man they didn't know had visited the stable and put some leaves in their hay, but that's it. A subsequent conversation with Chandra at the Shrine of Axes elicited her thoughts on Gundalin and Raggar (she think they are both fools, but need to work together for the sake of the town). A visit to Sylas the alchemist and investigation of his garden revealed that someone had clipped yew trimmings from there. A successful survival check by Millie discovered foorprints leading from the garden to Gundalin's house. At this point I was pretty surprised at how much info the players were turning up; it escalated from there when they confronted Gundalin and Wallace at their house. Tordeck tried to talk to him about making peace with Raggnar. The players insisted on searching the place and found a bag of clippers and yew trimmings that Tove had planted in the workshop to frame the Cartwrights. Gundalin and Wallace strenuously denied having seen it before. A high insight check roll by Millie revealed that Wallace seemed nervous and might be hiding something. The players got Wallace alone and Klegg screamed at him to tell them everything he was hiding. Successful intimidation check revealed that Wallace knew nothing about the sabotage but was planning a secret rendezvous with Elspeth in the woods and didn't want Gundalin or Raggnar to find out. He showed them a note he believed to be from Elspeth (it was actually forged by Tove to lure him into the woods). The party suspected some sort of shenanigans and Millie and Wizma trailed him into the woods (Tordeck and Klegg hung back because they are not stealthy). They successfully interrupted Tove assaulting Wallace and Wizma immediately took him down with hold person. They tied him up, but immediately accepted his story that the orcs had his mom prisoner at his cabin and he was acting under duress (he had a severed human finger and a threatening note to back his story). They didn't even insight check him. Feeling low on spell slots, they took Tove back to the inn to rest, but did say they made sure he stayed with them. When a fire broke out at a watchtower, they also explicitly took him along to fight it so he was not able to execute his plan of burning the tavern. Since the party had insisted on buckets of water all over the place, they were even able to partially salvage the watchtower. So there are tons of "if x then y" eventualities and plot developments in this adventure, which try to anticipate different actions and lines of inquiry the party might or might not take and what Tove and his SECRET TWIN BROTHER will do in such-and-such an eventuality. It's laid out reasonably well but even a DM who has done prep is probably going to be flipping around to try to track references and developments spread throughout several pages. I don't object in principle but I'm not sure the pay off - a fight with orcs and ogres at a cabin - is really interesting or rewarding enough to justify the extra work involved. Anyway, Tove leads them to the cabin and gives them a general description of the area. A reconnaissance fly-over by Snarf the Tressym yields detailed info and enemy positions. That's about where the good strategy stops as the players spend about twenty minutes devising what turns out to be a pretty rubbish covert assault plan. I went with "Very Strong" difficulty on the enemies, but the players did get the drop on them. This included Klegg taking off his armor to sneak up on a goblin, Wizma casting invisibility on herself to sneak up on another goblin and only realizing after the fact that she had no idea how to take him out quietly, Tordeck casting silence on a cluster of enemies in the middle of the camp. A knock-down drag-out fight ensued that included Klegg getting KO'd twice, but our heroes prevailed. They completely disregarded Tove once the fight started, and had not restrained him, so he and his brother simply left (in fact they never found out there was a brother). They did figure out Tove had hosed them when he vanished and there was no mom held prisoner in the cabin. A search of the cabin revealed a shrine to Cyric in the basement; the party looted the place and then Tordeck and Klegg torched the entire cabin and shrine. The party returned to Parnast and got a hero's welcome, but in the coming days the countryside south of town became dotted with the campfires of a massing orc army. [B]PLAYING TIME:[/B] Almost 3.5 hours. Enjoyable, but I defy anybody to run this in 2 hours as advertised. [B]Rating:[/B] B. After the layoff and considering the complexity, I was just happy this wasn't a mess. Hard to evaluate given the circumstance of this start-and-stop campaign, but my sense is this is a perfectly good, but not great, adventure that calls for more work from the DM than most AL mods. Everybody gets 1 rep point; Tordeck and Klegg get an extra point for destroying the shrine. No storyline rewards in this one. Klegg recovered Gauntlets of Ogre power from Kagrota Three-Teeth, the orc leader. Side note: there are too many magic items in AL. I would never award a magic item basically every two hours of play in a homebrew, nor is that the case in the hardcovers. There is definite power creep with everybody at level 5 having 3 really good attuned items. [B]Next: DDAL-05-16:[/B] Parnast Under Siege. I hesitate to even speculate as to when. [/QUOTE]
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