help running Madness at Gardmore Abbey

[thegrumpyyoungman]

i've been dm'ing now for about 2-3 years and up until now, everything that i've run is custom. for Christmas i received Madness at Gardmore Abbey, and so i'm wanting to run this for my players. i'm reading over the materials, but i feel a little lost.

*SPOILERS*



i know i need to lead the players to Winterhaven, but once they are there, how am i supposed to work the deck of many things into the storyline? i plan on giving them their first card before traveling to Winterhaven, and i picked one at random to give them (Vizier), but where do i go from there?

i guess what i'm feeling confused about is that i don't feel like i have a 100% grasp on the town of Winterhaven as i've always created my towns kind of on the fly. there are lots of other quests in Winterhaven that talk about Gardmore Abbey that don't involve the 3 patrons....so do i introduce the players to one of the 3 patrons FIRST and then have the other quests weaved in there?

any thoughts or tips would be appreciated. i'm trying to go by the book as much as possible...if nothing else, just to see which method i like better.

 

[buddhafrog]

I've always run my own campaigns and over the past year have tried to run a few adventures. The first failed; the second is going well; the third will be Madness. I think it takes some time to learn how to run modules. I think, however, that I will try to run them in the future when possible - but will be very picky on choosing which adventure.

I recommend you consider a pre-adventure like Siege of Gardmore Abbey which was run at Gen Con, I believe, but not available anywhere else. I will do something very similar and started a thread asking for advice how to do so. The write of Siege chimed in with a lot of very helpful info.

The reason I'm doing this is b/c Siege got great reviews, and I like the idea of showing the birth of this Madness and giving more motivation for players to pursue path set forth in Madness.

 

[Locutus Zero]

I'm halfway through this adventure now, and my two biggest problems have been figuring out WHY the characters would want to do most of the various quests and side quests, and predicting where they will go next. For instance, my party entered the Abbey near the Fey Grove. As a result, they have not seen a single orc. They fought the final battle (and lost) in their 4th encounter. They went to the top of the hill to scout the whole Abbey, saw some ruined buildings, did a little investigating, fought some monsters, found a staircase and BAM, final boss fight.

The encounters are leveled as if the players will do them in the order they are in the book, but the whole Abbey is just a giant map full of encounters. In hindsight I would have removed a lot of the side stuff and many of the encounters.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'm running this adventure and blogging as I go:

- Session one
- Session two
- Session three

In my game, I had the party be called to Winterhaven by Lord Padraig because he wanted to hire some adventurers to take care of the orc raids coming from Gardmore Abbey. They ended up running into Berrian Velfarren because they infiltrated the Abbey via the Feygrove. He asked for their help in rescuing his sister, which they provided.

They got a glimpse of the orc village and the lay of the land and reported back to Padraig. He thanked them, asked them to be on the lookout for potential allies against the orcs (they wouldn't tell Padraig about the eladrin). Padraig also mentioned that Valthrun the Prescient would probably be interested in the wizard's tower they saw. They talked to Valthrun, and he asked them to get the Winterbole Codex if they found themselves in the tower.

After their conversation with Padraig, Sir Oakley approached them. He was in the inn, too, and he had heard that adventurers had recently gone to the Abbey (small town and all). He approached them to ask for their help in cleansing the temple, which is what they're currently working on.

As for the Deck, I've slow-played it so far. They found a card in their first fight, against the spiders in the Feygrove (I gave the body of the paladin in the webs the first card). They'll soon be finding another card in the Temple. They haven't expressed much interest in the Deck yet, but I think that will change when they start getting multiple cards and when they run into the rival adventurers.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'm slowly starting to get this module organized in my head, but I do have another question. When the players enter Winterhaven, do you give them a copy of the map as shown in the book? Or do you draw one yourself and take out the numbers? In the past I've described the town I create and let the players draw the map...however I don't want them to miss any of the crucial npcs or quests. Thoughts?

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

anyone? do you give out maps to your players or just let them discover using your description?

 

[JohnnyO]

I'm currently running this adventure, and its been a huge success so far at my table. Here is how I set it up, and what I'm doing with it.

We rotate DMs in our group, so I had my character (who was a Paladin of Bahamut no less) introduce the party members to Sir Oakley and ask them to assist him on his quest to clean the temple before bowing out. The party mage had the initial card, and is researching its potential. Some time in the local library gave him the early backstory of the Deck and its last known location, giving him his own reason to head in that direction.

The road from their current location to Gardmore ran directly through Winterhaven, giving them as good a spot as any to stop for the night. I didn't try to load them up with every quest in town, I simply gave them a meeting with Padraig and asked them to providing scouting since they were headed in that direction anyway. I'll give them more quests when they return with the scouting report.

The nice thing about Winterhaven is that the players should return back there several times throughout the adventure (to give the scouting report, if a player dies, etc etc) so you don't have to give them everything all at once. You can add more later on to avoid overwhelming them.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

I'm currently running this adventure, and its been a huge success so far at my table. Here is how I set it up, and what I'm doing with it.

We rotate DMs in our group, so I had my character (who was a Paladin of Bahamut no less) introduce the party members to Sir Oakley and ask them to assist him on his quest to clean the temple before bowing out. The party mage had the initial card, and is researching its potential. Some time in the local library gave him the early backstory of the Deck and its last known location, giving him his own reason to head in that direction.

The road from their current location to Gardmore ran directly through Winterhaven, giving them as good a spot as any to stop for the night. I didn't try to load them up with every quest in town, I simply gave them a meeting with Padraig and asked them to providing scouting since they were headed in that direction anyway. I'll give them more quests when they return with the scouting report.

The nice thing about Winterhaven is that the players should return back there several times throughout the adventure (to give the scouting report, if a player dies, etc etc) so you don't have to give them everything all at once. You can add more later on to avoid overwhelming them.

thanks for the advice...i was planning something similar in my head but hadn't fleshed it all out yet. i think the hard thing for me with this is remembering all of the potential outcomes and npc's to have them talk to, or not talk to. the deck, plus the rivals, npcs and their secret plots, details about each location, etc etc. most of that stuff i make up in chunks before each session, but with this, i feel like i need to know EVERYTHING before going into the very first encounter.

 

[OnlineDM]

anyone? do you give out maps to your players or just let them discover using your description?

Well, I run the game online using MapTool, so I did plop the map images of Winterhaven and Gardmore Abbey right onto the game table, numbers and all. I hid some of the Abbey grounds until they explored those areas, but it didn't take long for them to at least see all of the interesting above-ground areas.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

i have another question....how am i supposed to allow the players to "play" the cards from the Deck of Many Things? like, if they find one card (the Idiot card), do they get to play it during the encounter? i read in the rules that you are supposed to shuffle the cards and then play them as environmental effects or something. i'm confused...