KotS DM Discussion Thread (spoilers)

[Rechan]

I'm not running KotS, but after seeing a lot of threads, I've gathered some opinions myself.

First order of business being the kobolds. Either tear them out completely and tie in Kobold Hall from the back of the DMG, or re-vamp the existing encounters. They seem very repetitive (the only difference in the waterfall encounters is just the number of skirmishers and minions!), drop the second ambush and later just use the wagon ambush from the side-trek. Traps + these kobolds are in order.

Second, I think the encounters in the Keep need a serious overhaul. Not only are there too many (it turns the adventure into a slog), but there are too many repetitive goblin and hobgoblin encounters, with not enough variance. Mixing guard beasts or wandering monsters into the encounters is much more intriguing. For instance, the first encounter - the one in the guard room - I would put some sort of monster in cages, and a goblin with a hand on a release lever stationed in the room. PCs come in, goblin releases monsters, runs for help, and mid-fight, some stealthy sucker comes in from a side tunnel to puncture kidneys.

Then just trim the fat, like the kuthrik den and the rats, putting something more engaging than goblins in the excavation site (that area is too cool for the measly encounter).

Next, to ensure PCs return to town for the "Oh no, zombies in the graveyard!" encounter, I would make sleeping in the Keep a bad idea - they have intense nightmares, to the extent that they lose a healing surge or two from fatigue. Also, a wounded commoner from Winterhaven would be in one of the cells, who needs to be escorted back to town.

Moving to the story, I like the idea of the Bloodreavers showing up with slaves for Karalel. The mirror is an artifact of the Raven Queen; she has looked into it, and thus it still holds her reflection (thus either she could be trapped inside of it, or it could be used to get to her somehow).

 

[pukunui]

First order of business being the kobolds. Either tear them out completely and tie in Kobold Hall from the back of the DMG, or re-vamp the existing encounters. They seem very repetitive (the only difference in the waterfall encounters is just the number of skirmishers and minions!), drop the second ambush and later just use the wagon ambush from the side-trek. Traps + these kobolds are in order.

Too late for me but I see where you're coming from. My group didn't seem to mind.

Second, I think the encounters in the Keep need a serious overhaul. Not only are there too many (it turns the adventure into a slog), but there are too many repetitive goblin and hobgoblin encounters, with not enough variance. Mixing guard beasts or wandering monsters into the encounters is much more intriguing. For instance, the first encounter - the one in the guard room - I would put some sort of monster in cages, and a goblin with a hand on a release lever stationed in the room. PCs come in, goblin releases monsters, runs for help, and mid-fight, some stealthy sucker comes in from a side tunnel to puncture kidneys.

The problem with wandering monsters is that the layout of the keep doesn't really lend itself well to that sort of thing. I don't think the wandering hobgoblin patrol really makes sense with the layout either. There just aren't enough out of the way places for these wandering monsters to wander out of ...

Then just trim the fat, like the kuthrik den and the rats, putting something more engaging than goblins in the excavation site (that area is too cool for the measly encounter).

I am getting rid of the kruthiks already -- I'm replacing them with a cavern choker and some doomspores -- but I think I'll leave the excavation site. It at least has some interesting terrain and some guard drakes for variance.

Next, to ensure PCs return to town for the "Oh no, zombies in the graveyard!" encounter, I would make sleeping in the Keep a bad idea - they have intense nightmares, to the extent that they lose a healing surge or two from fatigue. Also, a wounded commoner from Winterhaven would be in one of the cells, who needs to be escorted back to town.

This is a good idea. I'm actually more concerned about the PCs trying to go down to the second level before sleeping, though. If that happens for my group, I'm going to have Ninaran show up and tell them they need to get back to town.

Moving to the story, I like the idea of the Bloodreavers showing up with slaves for Karalel.

Yes, this is a good idea too. Perhaps I'll morph the wandering hobgoblin patrol into a group of Bloodreavers come to deal with the Warchief. I like the idea of having the hobgoblins be not entirely loyal to Kalarel (although why exactly Kalarel doesn't want to deal with slaves is still eluding me ... perhaps he needs non-slaves for his ritual for whatever reason. All I know is having the hobs dealing with their fellows behind their employer's back makes for some nice intrigue.).

The mirror is an artifact of the Raven Queen; she has looked into it, and thus it still holds her reflection (thus either she could be trapped inside of it, or it could be used to get to her somehow).

This is intriguing, too.

 

[Oliviander]

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.


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

Cheers,
Jonathan

The following changes I made on the fly after my players took agrid with them.
I made the elven spy ninaran an actual villain.
Agrid tells the players everything he knows, as he expects to be killed by ninaran the
moment they appear with him in Winterhaven. But my players lied to him and did't let
him go anyway.

As Lord padraig refuses to take the gnome into custody (too hot for him - I made him a
coward) they had to take him into their room in the inn.

As they were aware of a possible nightly onslaught, they asked ninaran to help them at
night (funny isn't it) , he actually did this but kept quiet, as he didn't want to attract publicity in winterhaven.

The next morning Agrid tells the PCs taht he has seen Ninaran once at the keep.
Alarmed by that, they actually took agrid with them to the Kobolds lair but only
tied him up for fake and gave him a short sword to defend himself.

On the way too the lair they are attacked by ninaran who I made a
Solo-monster (Elf skirmisher - made Elite as the DMrules and then applied a
warlock template).

As I have only 4 players in my campaign I wanted to use this encounter to give them
some extra magic items - so I gave Ninaran a dwarven chainmail - a frost longsword
- a pact short sword - and a cloak of resistance.

Last sunday we had to make a break in the middle of the encounter
And I'm afraid it will be a TOPK (As my players hit only once in 5 combat rounds)

But I thought the idea funny enough to share.

 

[Nebulous]

We're partway through this campaign, and while i think it has been a lot of fun as written, i've also been adding my own changes.

Here's a few, and i'll be sure to steal some others from this thread, especially hints about the hobgoblin slavers.

1) PCs were on a mission from from Silverymoon to find an ancient keep and map it out. The guy they're mapping it out for is actually a fence for another guy who sells maps of emptied dungeons to gullible adventurers. Finding Douvan was a lesser, secondary hook (but the PCs never followed it up)

2) In a solo adventure, we statted up Douvan Stahl and a halfling sidekick as 3rd level heroes. They were on a separate mission from the same guy from #1 to find a dragon's tomb. Well, they found it crawling with kobolds, and the kobolds had unearthed a strange mirror seemingly impervious to damage.

Long story short, Douvan managed to get the mirror out and is returning it to Silverymoon.

In my campaign, the mirror was used long ago to help seal the rift. Part of the Shadowfell is locked in the Mirror of Skarvoss. It will be easier for Kalarel to open the rift with the mirror, but not essential. It's just adds time to his plan. But now Douvan has hauled it off, so Kalarel probably won't ever see it.

3) Sir Keegan's dead twin daughters are haunting the keep like the dead twin girls from The Shining. i'm still working out the details of how they'll interact with the PCs. I'm still thinking about adding the dead wife somehow.

 

[Nebulous]

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).

Hmm. I like this too, another layer as to why Orcus and Kalarel would want the mirror. Maybe Douvan Stahl is going to find more opposition in Silverymoon than he expected...someone wants that mirror back, and will kill him to get it.

It's a big mirror, at least six feet high.

 

[crash_beedo]

I made some subtle changes to the adventure hooks (with assists from the PC’s). During character creation, two characters decided to be Tieflings – a Warlord and a Warlock. Next thing I know, they’ve decided they were brothers, abandoned as infants and raised by a foster. With the introduction of the hook (I changed Douvan’s name to Duvall Stone) and voila – Duvall is a retired adventurer/treasure seeker that found the abandoned Tiefling children, and he and his wife (Babs) raised them as their own. Malleus Flint, the party’s hulking fighter, is the son of one of Duvall’s old adventuring buddies, and the Dwarf Fighter and Eladrin Wizard came up with equally suitable backgrounds.

Duvall is an old archaeologist that can’t get exploring out of his blood; even though he’s ‘retired’ to the simple life of a farmer just outside of Fallcrest, he couldn’t resist the urge to pack up Old Cleo, the family mule, with his picks and shovels and head up to Winterhaven when he heard rumors at the Nentir Inn about the dragon burial site. Duvall has a well-worn leather-bound folio where he keeps notes, legends, clues and drawings, and apparently he thought this site near Winterhaven could be important. “The elves, the real elves from the Fey world used to live here in the Vale you know, and no one has found the burial site of the ancient Fey Wizard Derekandor.” (DM’s note: Derekandor was the wizard that helped Nerath erect the original seals over the Shadowfell Rift, and once inhabited the tower of Valthrun the Prescient – the tower itself predates Wintehaven by hundreds of nears, and even Valthrun doesn’t know all the tower’s secrets). The player’s Arcana check also let them realize that if you had a prized possession of a wizard, the item could be used sympathetically in a disenchant type ritual.

At the start of the first game, the characters returned to Fallcrest after some adventures in the east vale, to discover that ‘Dad’, Duvall Stone, is a few weeks overdue from his trip to Winterhaven. “It’s almost harvest time, and your father promised to be back in time…” Thus was the first adventure launched.

Duvall has provided some useful additional ties to the story as well. After he was rescued, he was able to explain why he believed the bandits wanted Derekandor’s Mirror; his leather book of secrets was stolen and sent north to someone named ‘Karalel’; Duvall left Winterhaven a few days later accompanying a merchant’s wagon leaving Winterhaven. Galston Wildarson (son of Bairston the merchant) and Morthos Azaer, from the Fallcrest House Azaer, had bought the mirror from the PC’s, and were taking it back to Fallcrest with their ordinary bi-weekly trip. Naturally, this is the wagon that gets attacked in the KotS side-trek adventure from Dungeon Mag, and when the PC’s defeat the kobolds and realize the merchants are gone, it launched them into the wilderness tracking the Hobgoblins to rescue Dad again. Introducing Galston and Morthos also let me foreshadow the Seven Pillared Hall in Thunderspire and tie it into H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Eventually when the PC’s finish the Keep (they just started the dungeon) they’ll find Dad’s journal amongst Karalel’s stuff; I figure Duvall’s notebook can provide lots of interesting future plot hooks, including foreshadowing the Pyramid of Shadows.

One thing that stood out after reading H2 and H3 is that the god Vecna appears to be a major player in this campaign; for that reason I’m going to have Duvall (and maybe Valthrun, too) reinforce the idea that as scholars and keepers of lore, they always feel like they must ward against ‘Foul Vecna and his agents that seek to consume and hide all knowledge…’ Maybe Duvall has wards on his book, or Valthrun always mumbles prayers to Ioun to keep him far from Vecna’s sight – regardless, I think it’s good to start developing this tension now so it means something in Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Anway, these changes so far are typical things I think any DM does to make an adventure work in his game world, with his players, and give the story some verisimilitude. I think my next set of suggestions are a little more groundbreaking.

For years I DM’d various White Wolf games, and they tend to focus more on ‘the high art of roleplaying™’, haha, so while I’ve left the emo angst behind, one thing that’s been useful has been integrating what I call “cut scenes”. A cut scene is where the DM narrates something the player’s can’t see, action that is happening ‘off-screen’ – it provides metagame knowledge, player knowledge, but not character knowledge. In adventures like H1 Keep on the Shadowfell, where there are tough villains like Irontooth or Karalel but the only interaction with them is when you roll initiative for the first time, it helps build them up as villains.

So for instance, after the players defeated the second kobold ambush, but before they found the burial site, I presented a cut scene where a kobold messenger presents news to ‘Lord Irontooth’ about the failure of the ambushers to secure the road. The furious Irontooth lops off the messenger’s head, summons his ‘assassins’ (the expert kobolds – the Pikeman, Slyblade, and Hurler - from the H1 Sidetrek) and he orders them to find and kill the Tieflings. What does the scene accomplish? The PC’s know they have a personal enemy who is out to get them – this ferocious goblin barbarian, Irontooth. They know there are some kobold assassins after them. It increased the tension in the game. When they finally assaulted the kobold lair, a) they were afraid of Irontooth, which meant they gave him the proper attention b) the fight was personal and meaningful.

Likewise, there was a cut scene where Karalel and some of his minions decide that since the Mirror of Derekandor has been lost, the ritual to open up the Rift will require buckets and buckets of blood. “Begin raiding the outlying farms, Lord Maw; let no one escape and warn the town. Before Lord Patrick can summon help from Fallcrest, the portal will be open and Winterhaven will be overrun.” Lord Maw is a special undead also introduced in the Dungeon Sidetrek – third encounter. So the characters vaguely knew there was a threat beneath the castle, from Irontooth’s note and Duvall’s description of the burial site bandits; but now the players clearly know who is there enemy, and what the enemy is doing. (And yes, they’re mature enough to realize they can’t shout out – my character warns the outlying farmers! – but it did help push along their decision to get in the dungeon!) Plus, when they fight Lord Maw outside the graveyard, they'll know he's a boss bad guy.

So far, the legends they’ve heard about Keegan’s Keep have been the ‘false story’ – that the Keep was overrun and abandoned, and that Keegan died a hero. I think the next cut scene will be when/if they take an extended rest in the dungeon, and one of the PC’s has a dream where they see what really happened the night Sir Keegan went mad – it’s a scene right out of The Shining or some similar horror movie, really dark stuff.

Hope these ideas help! The WOTC modules provide a great framework, it just takes a little creativity and customization for your specific game to push them over the top.

 

[Nebulous]

Hope these ideas help! The WOTC modules provide a great framework, it just takes a little creativity and customization for your specific game to push them over the top.

I like the idea about the cut scenes. Too late for Irontooth in my campaign, but what i've been struggling with more is HOW the hell to make Kalarel an interesting villain? The adventure really drops the ball in that regard, and having some cutscenes introducing him earlier might fix that. It's probably my job anyway to make Kalarel cool, so that's no problem. Actually, some of the vagueness in KotS really allows for individual elaboration, which i'm been having a ball with.

The mirror was also taken away in my campaign, so Kalarel will likewise need the buckets and buckets of blood, and the Bloodreaver hobbers will help acquire that.

I don't think the PCs will want to spend the night in the keep, but we'll see. Regardless, it won't be a restful night, and they'll likely suffer some vivid dreams about the past.

 

[vagabundo]

One thing that stood out after reading H2 and H3 is that the god Vecna appears to be a major player in this campaign; for that reason I’m going to have Duvall (and maybe Valthrun, too) reinforce the idea that as scholars and keepers of lore, they always feel like they must ward against ‘Foul Vecna and his agents that seek to consume and hide all knowledge…’ Maybe Duvall has wards on his book, or Valthrun always mumbles prayers to Ioun to keep him far from Vecna’s sight – regardless, I think it’s good to start developing this tension now so it means something in Thunderspire Labyrinth.

hmm nice, I like introducing Vecna in a bigger way, his body parts could start making appearances.

For years I DM’d various White Wolf games, and they tend to focus more on ‘the high art of roleplaying™’, haha, so while I’ve left the emo angst behind, one thing that’s been useful has been integrating what I call “cut scenes”. A cut scene is where the DM narrates something the player’s can’t see, action that is happening ‘off-screen’ – it provides metagame knowledge, player knowledge, but not character knowledge. In adventures like H1 Keep on the Shadowfell, where there are tough villains like Irontooth or Karalel but the only interaction with them is when you roll initiative for the first time, it helps build them up as villains.

So for instance, after the players defeated the second kobold ambush, but before they found the burial site, I presented a cut scene where a kobold messenger presents news to ‘Lord Irontooth’ about the failure of the ambushers to secure the road. The furious Irontooth lops off the messenger’s head, summons his ‘assassins’ (the expert kobolds – the Pikeman, Slyblade, and Hurler - from the H1 Sidetrek) and he orders them to find and kill the Tieflings. What does the scene accomplish? The PC’s know they have a personal enemy who is out to get them – this ferocious goblin barbarian, Irontooth. They know there are some kobold assassins after them. It increased the tension in the game. When they finally assaulted the kobold lair, a) they were afraid of Irontooth, which meant they gave him the proper attention b) the fight was personal and meaningful.

Likewise, there was a cut scene where Karalel and some of his minions decide that since the Mirror of Derekandor has been lost, the ritual to open up the Rift will require buckets and buckets of blood. “Begin raiding the outlying farms, Lord Maw; let no one escape and warn the town. Before Lord Patrick can summon help from Fallcrest, the portal will be open and Winterhaven will be overrun.” Lord Maw is a special undead also introduced in the Dungeon Sidetrek – third encounter. So the characters vaguely knew there was a threat beneath the castle, from Irontooth’s note and Duvall’s description of the burial site bandits; but now the players clearly know who is there enemy, and what the enemy is doing. (And yes, they’re mature enough to realize they can’t shout out – my character warns the outlying farmers! – but it did help push along their decision to get in the dungeon!) Plus, when they fight Lord Maw outside the graveyard, they'll know he's a boss bad guy..

I like this a lot. Never used these Meta-game scenes and I've always tried to expose interesting plot stuff in-game, but sometimes I have resorted to just telling players after the game the plot stuff they missed out on. These "cut-scenes" are much better, more Stoytelling FTW...

 

[pukunui]

I love some of the ideas you guys have posted. The cut-scenes are cool. I prefer somewhat more subtle techniques (such as portentious dreams and visions), but I might start making them a little more "cut-scene-esque", to coin a phrase.

crash_beedo: I love all the character background stuff your guys came up with! I wish my players were that creative and that devoted to the game! The best I could get from them (and it was something I had thought of myself) was that they all knew each other through Staul, who had been their mentor. One of them decided that Staul was an old family friend but that was about it. None of my players ever seem interested in taking the plunge and going with something like "our characters are brothers" sort of thing. I suppose that's all right--every person and every group are different (plus, my guys always seem to end up with two PCs of the same class or race - dunno if that's deliberate or not)--but I enjoy that level of detail.

 

[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.

So none of my players bit into any of these hooks. They talked to Lord Padraig and the subject of missing persons came up but they didn't press him very hard when he said that people went missing on a regular basis and that most of them probably just got lost in the wilderness and/or got killed by monsters. So they didn't find out about his kidnapped son.

I also had Bairwin approach the minotaur and offer him a proposition to join his little group, but the minotaur's player thought Bairwin was involved in some sort of "gay orgy" thing and didn't want to have anything to do with it. Shortly after that, the PCs all trudged off to the keep (they seemed to be in a hurry to go there and didn't want to wait around in the town any longer than needed).

Now that I've actually got a copy of H2, though, I'm liking some of the hooks it presents. I think I'll leave Bairwin as a cultist of the Shadow, but if they don't ever pursue that line of thought any further and end up fighting him, then I'll go with the H2 hook where he hires them to take something to the Seven-Pillared Hall for him (there's no reason he can't be an evil cultist and an opportunistic merchant -- plus it fits with the goings-on in the Seven-Pillared Hall anyway).

Depending on whether or not the PCs return to Fallcrest after they complete H1 (I've given them the "map the keep" quest, but I don't know if they'll bother going back for their reward right away), I'm thinking of having Parle Cranewing ask them to explore Thunderspire instead of Valthrun (who will most likely be dead anyway, since I'm making him a Blood of Vol cultist who will attack the PCs at some point). I'm actually going to try to get them to go back to Fallcrest anyway so I can get them to talk to the tiefling merchant there (of House Azaer) in order to find out how to get into Thunderspire (the Seven-Pillared Hall is supposed to be fairly secret, and the minotaur PC's backstory involves his father having gone to Thunderspire to try and find the lost city ... so I'm thinking the entrance will be more like the secret entrance to the Mines of Moria in LOTR -- hard to find ... which would help explain why the minotaur's father never found it and why more people in Nentir Valley don't know about it).


Some things I threw in while improvising on the night:

1) I gave them the dream I mentioned before but I told the player of the dragonborn paladin that he didn't dream the same thing. Instead, he woke up well-rested with only a vague and rapidly-fading memory of a large winged dragonborn watching over him (because of his devotion to Dol Arrah, her dragonborn exarch [of which there will be a mini in the Demonweb set but I don't remember her name] protected him from the dream).

2) In the morning, the minotaur ordered some milk with his breakfast and I told him that it was curdled. There was a halfling (the PC of a guest player) in the inn whose milk wasn't curdled, and Salvana was just as confused as the rest of them. That was fun.

3) Lord Padraig informed them that Salvana's husband, Kem Wrafton, had gone missing (I might make him be one of the slaves the PCs can rescue from the duergar in H2) but that they shouldn't talk to her about it as it was still a sensitive subject.

4) When they approached the keep, I told the eladrin wizard PC's player that his character saw the landscape shift briefly, with everything becoming cold and grey and dreary. Shortly after that, he saw a raven land amongst the rubble, caw at him, then fly off. He decided to attack it with a magic missile ... and of course because the others couldn't see it, they all thought he was crazy.

5) They reluctantly gave the mirror to Valthrun when he asked if he could borrow it and study it and then overnight it reappeared in their possession. When they met with Valthrun, they attempted to accuse him of losing their valuable possession but he pointed out that they didn't seem very surprised that it was missing, so they admitted that it had reappeared in their possession. Immediately, they got the idea that they could make money by duping people into buying it only to have it reappear in their possession overnight. Originally, I was just going to make it so that the money they got went back to the buyer but I might just let them get away with it and, after letting it happen once or twice, I'll have a disgruntled merchant send some enforcers after the PCs.