KotS DM Discussion Thread (spoilers)

[pukunui]

DISCLAIMER: This thread contains spoilers and is intended for DMs only! If you are currently a player in a Keep on the Shadowfell campaign, please do not read any further.

Hi all,

I am currently DMing Keep on the Shadowfell. As is the case with all premade adventures, it has plenty of room for improvement.

I intend to use this thread to post any ideas, comments, questions, concerns, and advice I might have that relates to making KotS a more enjoyable experience. My hope is that other DMs running KotS will do the same so that we can all draw on each other for inspiration and advice. I made a similar thread when I was running Red Hand of Doom and it became quite popular. I'm hoping this one will be just as successful.

I'll kick things off with a suggestion on how to expand on the dragon burial site encounter:

[sblock=The Missing Mentor: Douven Staul & the Dragon Burial Site]I used the "missing mentor" as the main hook for the adventure (I had him be the adventuring mentor for all 5 of the PCs). We ran through the burial site encounter during the second session. Afterwards, I felt like the whole thing had been rather anticlimactic. I wish I had thought of the following idea in time to implement it in my campaign, as I feel it takes an encounter that otherwise feels "tacked on" and actually incorporates it into the main plot of the adventure and gives it a bit more depth. That and it would make the quest take a bit longer to resolve.

Rather than having the PCs find Douven Staul under a pile of blankets at the burial site as written in the adventure, put him in one of the holding cells in Area 2 of the keep's dungeons. When the gnome Agrid and his lackeys came upon Douven at the site, they shipped him off to the keep as another victim for Kalarel's sacrifices. Kalarel, however, realized Douven might know something so he kept him alive and tortured him for information (Kalarel wanted to know what Douven knew about the keep and the mirror relic supposedly located with the dragon's bones). By the time the PCs arrive, Douven has told Kalarel everything he knows that might be useful and is just waiting to be sacrificed.

Leave the picture of Douven's wife in the magic amulet as a clue that he was actually there. Also include a diary belonging to Douven in the pile of equipment at the site. Date the last entry - in which Douven talks about how he has nearly finished unburying the dragon's skeleton - several days/weeks prior to the day the PCs arrive so they'll know he's been missing from the site for some time.

If the PCs keep any of the humans or the halfling alive and successfully interrogate them, they can learn that a man going by Douven's description was at the site and that he was taken away by hobgoblins however many days ago. If the PCs take Agrid the gnome alive and successfully interrogate him, he can identify Douven by name and can explain that the hobgoblins work for a guy named Kalarel and that they took Douven away for questioning. If any of the PCs reveal that Douven was their mentor, have Agrid cruelly add that Kalarel has probably had Douven killed by now.

As I said, I didn't come up with this idea until after my PCs rescued Douven, so it's a little too late for me to use it. I'm hoping that it might be of some use to someone else though.[/sblock]

OK. Start posting! Keep the ideas, comments, and questions coming!

Cheers,
Jonathan

p.s. FYI: I am cross-posting this over on the WotC D&D boards in the Campaign & Adventure Workshop forum.
p.p.s. Mods: If this thread would be more appropriate in another forum, please feel free to move it there.

 

[LostSoul]

Bloodreaver Slavers

I had the Hobgoblin Bloodreaver Slavers from the web enhancement show up in the Keep when the PCs took their first extended rest there.

Mostly to point out that resting wasn't always going to be a given, but also because I think that Kalarel must be getting his sacrifices from somewhere. Using the Bloodreavers seems like a good way to stay incognito around Winterhaven while getting the needed resources.

I think it's lame that Kalarel just killed the first slavers that came (as indicated in the water cave note - I'll keep the note, maybe change it a little so the slavers were killed over some trivial fight). Having them work together provides more links to H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Captured Monsters

I had some goblins offer to work with the party, using them as if they were pulled from a bag of tricks. Worked pretty well.

Random Encounters

I think adding some random encounters - and restocking the dungeon after the PCs leave - is a good idea.

Time Limit

In Kalarel's note to Irontooth, he mentions that he's nearly finished the ritual. Only a few more days! Keep that in mind. If the PCs take too long - more than 4 or 5 days in total - I think that he'll have finished at least part of the ritual. I would probably start sending out encounters with an Orcus Underpriest and a gaggle of skeletons, and mixing in skeletons with some of the other encounters.

An assault on Winterhaven in a while could be cool, too.

Using the hobgoblin slavers (see above), I figured that if the PCs saved the slaves, they could push the ritual a day away from completion.

The Mirror

Kalarel has been digging around the dragon excavation site - obviously there's something there. Look at all those magic runes! What is it? I think it's the mirror that was found there.

In my game, I ad-libbed some stuff about the mirror. It was an artifact from Ancient Nerath, used for trapping beings from outside of this world. Its magic had been drained, but a ritual might reactivate it.

What did Kalarel do with the mirror? Why did he want it? Why did he leave it behind?

 

[pukunui]

Hey, thanks for the quick (yet very well thought out) response! Hopefully we'll get more of the same. I really want this thread to be a good resource for DMs running KotS. I want it to be a place where DMs can come and ask questions or post ideas they've come up with and want to share. Keep it up!

Bloodreaver Slavers
I had the Hobgoblin Bloodreaver Slavers from the web enhancement show up in the Keep when the PCs took their first extended rest there.

Mostly to point out that resting wasn't always going to be a given, but also because I think that Kalarel must be getting his sacrifices from somewhere. Using the Bloodreavers seems like a good way to stay incognito around Winterhaven while getting the needed resources.

I think it's lame that Kalarel just killed the first slavers that came (as indicated in the water cave note - I'll keep the note, maybe change it a little so the slavers were killed over some trivial fight). Having them work together provides more links to H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth.

I personally don't like the web enhancement encounter that much but I definitely intend to make the slavers more involved so as to beef up the hook to H2 more.

I like your suggestion of having them come into the dungeon. I actually think that would make more sense than having the random 9-person hobgoblin patrol that is actually suggested in the adventure (it just seems too big a patrol for the size of the dungeon if you ask me. Also, there just doesn't seem to be the need for a patrol in the dungeon either).

I think I'll leave the relationships between the slavers, Kalarel, and his hobgoblin guards the same. I don't mind that Kalarel didn't want to work with them but that his hobs did, so the presence of the slavers in the dungeon can be simply because they've come to deal with the Warchief and his men behind Kalarel's back. Having the slaver's provide Kalarel with bodies for his sacrifices makes sense, but I kind of like having this extra layer of intrigue in there -- it also allows for the possibility, however slim, that really lucky/clever/persistent PCs might be able to turn the hobgoblins against Kalarel (the hobs obviously aren't part of the cult nor are they fanatically loyal to Kalarel).

Captured Monsters

I had some goblins offer to work with the party, using them as if they were pulled from a bag of tricks. Worked pretty well.

This is a good idea. I'll use it if the opportunity arises.

Time Limit

In Kalarel's note to Irontooth, he mentions that he's nearly finished the ritual. Only a few more days! Keep that in mind. If the PCs take too long - more than 4 or 5 days in total - I think that he'll have finished at least part of the ritual. I would probably start sending out encounters with an Orcus Underpriest and a gaggle of skeletons, and mixing in skeletons with some of the other encounters.

I agree, although I'd be inclined to replace some monsters with skeletons rather than add them in so as to keep encounter levels more or less on track.

An assault on Winterhaven in a while could be cool, too.

If the PCs take too long, Kalarel could assault Winterhaven and then you could run the initial encounters from the 3.5 Expedition to Ravenloft module (with modification of course). I really want to run a zombie-fest type thing at some point, though. Having Winterhaven get overrun by undead could be fun.

The Mirror

Kalarel has been digging around the dragon excavation site - obviously there's something there. Look at all those magic runes! What is it? I think it's the mirror that was found there.

In my game, I ad-libbed some stuff about the mirror. It was an artifact from Ancient Nerath, used for trapping beings from outside of this world. Its magic had been drained, but a ritual might reactivate it.

What did Kalarel do with the mirror? Why did he want it? Why did he leave it behind?

I've decided that the mirror is an ancient relic sacred to the Raven Queen (although the PCs haven't figured that out yet). I haven't decided yet if it's an actual magical artifact or not, though, but when the PCs were examining it the first time, I told the cleric's player that his character could see a swirling mist forming in the mirror and out of it arose the face of the cultist he had seen in his dream (something I threw into the adventure earlier).

The reason the mirror is important to Kalarel is because he knows it was a relic of the Raven Queen, and because Orcus wants to take her place as the ruler of the Shadowfell, Kalarel knows that if he can destroy the relic as part of the ritual, he can use its residual magic (residuum) to enhance the ritual's magic (and also weaken the Raven Queen, however insignificantly, in the process).

 

[Terwox]

The differences in mine are fairly exaggerated due to the nature of the campaign, but perhaps they'll be useful to someone.

In my game, Winterhaven and 100 of its inhabitants sprang into existence spontaneously one week ago. Inside the palace awoke Lord Padraig and his wife, along with a cavorting "human" known as the Countess (vampire,) and a pompous and over dramatic Warforged Warlord/Bard known as the Invincible Duke. Each are convinced that they are the rightful ruler of the city.

Eilian the Old appears to be around 140 years old, and he is, well, a pervy old man. He favors the Countess.

My party, upon meeting the Duke, who assisted in the first encounter with the kobold ambush, was told that he was the most popular in town, and he would lead in time. At this point, my party declared that their ranger was actually the prince of the town, along with his Seneschal and Grand Vizier... they claimed a small house outside town as their own, while the Duke stood outside singing about how he was the greater ruler and they would be his rightful citizens in time.

Upon reaching the city gates, as the Duke was giving them the royal escort, the guards laughed at him as they usually did. The Duke introduced the party as his retainers, the party threatened his death, and after a timely mage hand, he was face down in the middle of the gate as the entire party walked over him.

To make a long story... well, middling sized, the Duke's name is going to become "Irontooth" very shortly. > Should prove interesting.

Susanna Wrafton is also a staff-style fighter who fiercely backs Padraig.

The Countess herself pretends to be an alcoholic, although I'm using the old Vampire the Masquerade fluff to where vampires can't digest alcohol unless they drink the blood of someone who is drunk... she pretends to be more of an airhead than she actually is. In general likelihood, she will grow tired with the notion of ruling soon, unless more of a competition is offered -- she is more interesting in simply cavorting. In the end she is likely good for the town simply as a source of entertainment, as well as battle prowess -- should she choose to display it.

Anyway, the town's walls will also erupt into a gargantuan assassin vine, and a well will sprout in the middle of town that dominates people into throwing themselves to their deaths down it, but this is due to the party's previous actions.

The Duke was a lot of fun to add, as both comic relief, and as a new foil.

 

[pukunui]

Sounds like your campaign is pretty zany, terwox. Thanks for sharing!

 

[vagabundo]

I've set this in Magnamund so I've changed a number of things, beyond just name changes.

Kar-Larel is trying to resurrect a dead Demon (called a Dark lord in Magnamund), Lord Vashna. His shade waits in the shadowfell for the rift to be opened. He drove the Captain in the Keep demented with his constant whispering. And has called to a Nercomancer from a city called Ragdorn to open a rift. This is the second time in around 50 years that this has been attempted.

I'm going to give the PC's four/five days to enter the keep and stop the ritual, otherwise Lord Vashna's shade will be released and he will summon his army. (Orc-like's that were slaughtered and thrown into a chasm not far from the keep).

If anyone is interested it is located in Makkengorge.

In last nights game, they have uncovered the ritual and are descending into the ruins.

They slaughtered some goblin minions, I'm running them use Piazo's Goblins from the races revisited book. It was fun, they were lured to thier deaths using ghost sound chicken noises as they were very hungry..

 

[pukunui]

I've got a number of my ideas from Justin Alexander's "KotS Kitbashing" thread over on the D&D forums. Here is the link to Justin's thread if anyone's interested: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1037342. Unfortunately he hasn't updated it in a while.



I'm going to use some of the ideas from both the Eberron and FR conversion articles, although I am going to modify them to fit into my campaign world. These are some of my plans:

1) I am going to use the changes to Valthrun from the Eberron conversion, although I'm going to have to change his motivations as I am not making Kalarel a Blood of Vol cultist pretending to be an Orcus cultist. As in the conversion article, I'm going to make Valthrun an old man afraid of death who hopes to find some way of attaining immortality, if not divinity, through undeath as per the supposed tenets of the Blood of Vol faith. The mirror will play a part in his plans and he will attempt to get the PCs to give it to him (although if they do, it will mysteriously reappear in their possession overnight -- causing Valthrun to insist that he accompany them). Perhaps he hopes that if he can give the mirror to Kalarel as an offering to help with his ritual, the grateful cultist will help him become an intelligent undead creature (although Kalarel would most likely just turn him into a blazing skeleton or some such thing).

2) I want to use the changes to Bairwin from the FR conversion, but I can't decide what kind of cultist to make him. I have two options: I can make him an Orcus cultist and have him be the one who sent supplies and equipment to Kalarel as per the article, or I can have him act as a red herring by having him be a member of some unrelated cult. No matter which option I choose, I'm thinking of making it so that villagers have been mysteriously disappearing for some time now -- some as victims of the cult(s), some to be sold as slaves by the Bloodreavers. If any of my players ask, the reason they're only just finding out about this now is because no one in the village wanted to mention it to a bunch of strangers. Now that they've earned the town's trust by dealing with "the kobold problem", the villagers feel comfortable enough to mention "the other problem" to the PCs.

If I decide to make Bairwin an Orcus cultist, then he will have kidnapped some of the villagers to send to Kalarel as human sacrifices to aid his ritual. If I make him a "red herring" cultist (I'm thinking of maybe making him a follower of the Shadow, so that I won't have to change anything in the encounter stats other than references to Shar - since she's now all about shadows and stuff, all the "shadow" fluff in the encounter will work with the Shadow as well), he could simply have kidnapped the villagers either for his own ritual sacrifices or to sell to the Bloodreavers for the slave trade. Either way, some of the villagers will have been kidnapped by the Bloodreavers directly, and I'm thinking of including the child of one of the more prominent villagers, perhaps even Lord Padraig himself, as one of them (although I haven't decided yet whether this child has already been kidnapped or doesn't get kidnapped until near the end of the adventure, so as to add a little more urgency to the hook leading the PCs to H2).

3) On a slightly unrelated note, I am changing the fluff in the Skeletal Legion encounter. As mentioned in the Eberron conversion article, I am making it so the skeletons all display Dol Dorn's holy symbol on their shields. However, I am dedicating the altars to Dol Arrah. The domed ceiling will look like a starry night sky, with the stars being the source of the dim light. If any of the PCs pray to Dol Arrah at the altars, the "sun" will rise from below the floor, go up one of the walls, and stop at the apex of the dome, transforming the ceiling into a blue sky that sheds daylight. I thought this would be a cool magical effect that my players might appreciate. The reason the altars belong to Dol Arrah and the skeletal warriors to Dol Dorn is because I wanted to highlight the relationship between the two deities in my campaign world (they're twins rather than just siblings) by emphasizing the idea that they can either overcome the encounter through sheer strength and endurance (by defeating all the skeletal warriors) as per Dol Dorn's doctrine or by turning to Dol Arrah for light and protection and having her "fight" for them.


On a totally unrelated note, I am doing away with the entire Kruthik Lair encounter. I don't like the kruthiks (partly because I feel like they're one of WotC's "cool" pet monsters--along with the kobolds and the shadar-kai--but also because the encounter seems unnecessarily stacked against the PCs. Also, kruthiks don't appeal to me.). Instead I'm going to have a cavern choker and some doomspores. I'm not entirely sure of the layout but I'm thinking that if one of the PCs goes down fighting the ochre jelly and the rats (and I'm going to swap out some of the giant rats for two dire rats, mainly to reduce the sheer number of creatures on the map), the cavern choker will come creeping out and attempt to drag the downed PC back into its lair. If it makes it, the other PCs will have to get through the doomspores in order to rescue their comrade. [Note: I'm not sure I understand how you're supposed to go about awarding XP for hazards. You obviously don't give it out if the PCs "trigger" the hazard. Do you only give it out if they successfully bypass the hazard? If I have a room full of doomspores, do I give the PCs XP only if they manage to get from one side of the room to the other without any of the spores attacking them (or at least only give them XP for the spores they managed to avoid, if they set off some but not all of them)?]


EDIT: On the way home from work, I had the idea that maybe I would make Kalarel only a pretend Orcus cultist. In reality, he's a follower of the Shadow, and he is attempting to steal power from Orcus by reopening the rift in the Shadowfell. Bairwin can be an agent of the Shadow as well. This way I can make the BBEG in H2 a follower of the Shadow, and I can make Vecna an exarch of the Shadow, so that I can still have him appear before the PCs in that adventure without violating my "the gods don't appear in physical form" rule.

 

[pukunui]

Another idea I've just had over lunch:

Lord Padraig is aware of Kalarel and Bairwin's cult activities in his town. He knows/suspects that the townsfolk who have disappeared since they arrived have been taken by the cult. However, he has not acted because he has been led to believe that Kalarel kidnapped his son in order to keep him quiet.

However, his son was actually sold into slavery by the Bloodreavers and Kalarel was not involved -- so if the PCs go looking for the son in order to free up Lord Padraig and allow him to act, they won't find the boy. If I'm feeling nice, I might let them find him in Thunderspire Labyrinth. It would certainly make for a more compelling hook for H2.

If the PCs can at least establish that Kalarel does not actually have his son (and that he was not simply sacrificed to fuel Kalarel's dark ritual), then Padraig will feel free to act on what he knows and go after Bairwin (if the PCs haven't already dealt with him). Minor quest maybe?

EDIT: I meant to add that should the subject of missing persons be raised with Padraig but not in direct relation to queries about cults, then Padraig will dismiss it by saying that Winterhaven is a frontier town, so people go missing all the time. It's just a fact of life. Make nothing of it.

 

[Vayden]

Hmm - wish I'd seen this thread earlier (or that it was around earlier). I'm going to be wrapping up KotS for my group this week. Anyway, here's a list of some of the changes I made as I went:

1) Had to re-arrange about half the goblin encounters on the first level as the party left and came back after the first room and the excavation room.

2) Since they never bothered to go looking for Douven ("this cult thing is a much more pressing time-line!"), I stuck him in the cells in place of that goblin version of Meepo.

3) Eliminated a few of the hobgoblins and the zombie room from the 2nd level (just impatience)

4) Made Keegan the great-uncle of the Dragonborn PC - the PC is now carrying Aecris and dedicated to redeeming his great-uncle's name.

5) And the real change - since my long-term goal for this campaign is zombie apocalypse, I've made a couple significant changes to Kalarel/Keegan. Keegan has not recovered from the influence of Orcus - in fact, he is a home-brewed lower-level version of a Death Knight. He can't leave the catacombs due to the power of Bahamut holding him there, but he can teleport to his soul weapon (Aecris), so he's looking for some pansies to carry it out. Kalarel I've switched to be a cultist of Vecna, instead of Orcus, so Keegan also wants the party to take Kalarel out. When they defeat Kalarel and the thing in the portal snags him, I plan to make Kalarel into a nice juicy undead monster for later (eye of fear and flame maybe?).

Long term, the party will wander away from Winterhaven, exploring the vale a bit and working on some side-quests - Keegan, freed, will go pick up McGuffin style artifact from somewhere and come back and enact a ritual that, instead of opening the rift, uses the rift as a fulcrum to merge the Middle World and the Shadowfell, causing chaos to erupt everywhere. While the party spends the rest of heroic tier running around trying to survive and save people from the hordes of undead, the Raven Queen will come to the Keep to fix things, only to be ambushed by Orcus. Paragon and Epic tiers will deal with the party attempting to fix the world and put a stop to Orcus' attempt at divinity.

 

[pukunui]

Awesome stuff, Vayden! I want to do a zombiegeddon style thing too (I'd love to drop the zombie-filled town at the beginning of Expedition to Castle Ravenloft into my campaign somewhere). I'm holding out for the Epic tier series of adventures, though. They're shaping up to be Orcus-themed (I forget what E1 is called but it has "Death" in its title, I think; E2 is entitled "Kingdom of the Ghouls", which suggests an excursion into Doresain's realm; so hopefully E3 will culminate in a battle with Orcus ...).