Old module advice - In the phantom's wake

[cbwjm]

Back in the Covid era, I ran some modules set in Thunder Rift, kind of turned it into a mini campaign for my friends. We haven't played in a while and they want to get back together for another run.

I'm think of running In the Phantom's Wake, my problem is the starting location. It describes it as a cabin but it points to a location on the main deck of the ship. There's meant to be a single door out, it looks like the map has all the other rooms covered. I might just switch the start location to one of the least dangerous rooms, but in wondering if others have run this and what they did for the start location.

 

[Voadam]

I own this but have not run it or gone through it in depth.

Do you know what the letters on the below deck level are for?

Since room 1 is supposed to be a crew cabin and rooms 2 through 9 are on the below deck and include other crew cabins I would start them off at what is marked "A" which leads into the below deck open space room 2.

I am not sure what A-D are supposed to be though.

Room #2 says it has stern doors leading to the other rooms 1-7 and bow doors leading to 8 and 9. So room 2 in the stern end explicitly includes a connection to room #1 from the room 2 reference.

 

[cbwjm]

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll pick the least impactful room below deck and make that the starting crew quarters.

The letters are traps and hazards scattered throughout the ship.

My players have managed to survive the other Thunder Rift modules, but this one has some crazy nasty stuff, I've pre-warned my players and luckily this is just a throwaway campaign with joke characters that people are fine with losing.

 

[Voadam]

Found the letter references, page 13.

A is just a note that the door to room 3 is locked, there is no door from the room containing A to room 3, I think that should be the starting room 1.

Another oddity, the description of the ambush for B sounds like it is referencing being just on the inside of 7 but on the map it is just on the inside of 4. Room 7 is an empty cabin, Room 4 has its own ambush monsters different from the ones described in B.

 

[cbwjm]

Sounds like this module has more issues than I realised to iron out.

I think you're right about A being the starting location, there's no description for the room otherwise. I'll start the players there when we run it. I'll stick B into room 7, keeps each room with a danger. I'll eventually have a small list of my own notes, especially since I'll be grabbing 5e stats for the monsters.

This conversation is really helpful, I don't think I'd have picked up that A was an empty room with no number.

 

[Voadam]

It seems to be a neat Ravenloftesque haunted mini plane type situation with a few gotcha jump scares/ambushes and some potential instant death situations, though not entirely random ones. I was expecting a little more haunted ship ghost story situation when I bought it but this is a neat thing of its own.

There is a minimal amount of telegraphing of the end state calculation, but I am not sure it will be picked up on to be other than a possible gotcha.

 

[cbwjm]

There is a minimal amount of telegraphing of the end state calculation, but I am not sure it will be picked up on to be other than a possible gotcha.

Yeah, unless log books are read then players might kill too many undead requiring some to stay on board at the end, but even with the knowledge of the log books, I'm not sure anyone would figure that out to the point where they try to figure out how many theyve killed.

While i know I shouldn't, I'm actually kind of hoping someone will die just so that I can show them later as part of the undead crew. That should freak out the players.