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Raiders of the Serpent Sea - Third Party 5E Review
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<blockquote data-quote="Sparky McDibben" data-source="post: 9205312" data-attributes="member: 7041430"><p>It is quite limited, but that sort of encourages sea travel, which is what this is all about. That being the case, though, you can get into serious chokepoint territory very quickly, which is in and of itself interesting since it gives you some fun complications. </p><p></p><p>Alright, moving on and still in Chapter 2, let's visit Rockpike Fortress. I don't know how they came up with these names - either Rockpike is a kind of polearm (in which case the name doesn't make that much sense), or it's referring to a breed of carnivorous fish (presumably, the rock pike) that does not appear in this adventure.</p><p></p><p>Anyways, tangent aside, the PCs arrive in the High North! They're here to...</p><p></p><p>Well, actually, that's a bit of a mystery. There's a couple different ways the PCs can get up here:</p><p></p><p>1) Gulli the Scummy Druid surrenders to the PCs to save his outpost. He leads them here to talk with his sister (the goal here is to find out why the Goddess of Death is having the Whar raiders target the PCs)</p><p></p><p>2) The PCs hear from the Orn (we'll get to it) that the Baendur (non-raiders) in Rockpike Fortress have a captive Valkyrie (the goal here is unspecific)</p><p></p><p>The hook they're following impacts the PCs decision set massively, as we'll see. The situation at Rockpike is thus:</p><p></p><p>a) The Baendur of Rockpike (led by a complete douchenozzle named Cenric) built a fleet to challenge the raiders' control of the sea</p><p>b) Hel found out, and asked the Whar clan to intervene, creating a helmaw (Underworld gate-thingy) to get an entire Whar raiding party to Rockpike</p><p>c) The raiders destroyed the fleet, chased the Baendur back to their fortress and are now besieging the fortress</p><p></p><p>As we arrive, the PCs get a warning from their crew that this area is the land of one King Cenric, notable for having challenged the raider clans several times in the recent past. Cenric himself is a worthy and rare prize. By the way, does it count as human trafficking when a character is the treasure? Asking for a friend.</p><p></p><p>The PCs journey through a decent little pointcrawl, including some ravaged farms with dead farmers that rise as zombies unless the PCs burn them. There's a bit with faeries that goes nowhere, and then they get to the village of Frostwarren, where they can see a bunch of burnt-up longships (the remains of Cenric's fleet). (See, some magical jerks named the Ironwood Witches gave Cenric a bunch of ironwood - this legendary magic wood - to create a fleet to challenge the raiders, and were going to use magic to "jump" the fleet to the Serpent Sea).</p><p></p><p>So right now, the PCs have seen a couple examples of the Whar's depredations, which are violent and reckless. So when they reach the village and see the whole thing burnt to the ground, well, this is a great time to drive home the horrors of war and the culture of violence that permeates the raider clans. Especially since there are no bodies at the village - there are tracks leading west, into the mountains.</p><p></p><p>The PCs find a survivor of the Whar raid, a Baendur elite guard named Lan. And if you're wondering how a Diademed Battle Lord of Malkier wound up in Grimnir, well, not to worry.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/efd018d3-2d1f-4596-997d-3200f9bf6616/smart/width/386/height/259" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><em>Pictured: Not the <a href="https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Lan_Mandragoran" target="_blank">Lan</a> we're talking about</em></p><p></p><p>This Lan is a woman, and a captain of Cenric's guard. She insists that the Baendur just want better farmland and more resources. #NotallBaendur, guys. She can journey with the party to Rockpike, where the tracks from the burnt-up village lead.</p><p></p><p>And at this point we zoom in on Rockpike itself. It's a pretty sturdy-looking keep, with a gatehouse and a couple layers of town to get through before you hit the main keep. Right now, it's besieged by the Whar, who are also keeping a watch on the trail leading from Frostwarren.</p><p></p><p>There are two encounters with automatically hostile Whar archers on the trail (not even a challenge? C'mon, guys) who just shoot the PCs and try to cut the various rope bridges that let the PCs come up. The actual encounter design here is solid, but I take issue with automatically-hostile enemies, especially since these guys haven't ever seen the PCs. They might know their names if that message from Gulli the Scummy Druid arrived, but otherwise, the only person they might recognize is Hrolf D. Viking, Esquire. And they're more likely to think that this legendary hero is bringing some tagalongs to help them crack open Rockpike once and for all!</p><p></p><p>So...yeah. Not a huge fan of the "straight to combat" style here.</p><p></p><p>After the heroes get through that, they meet Athils Vestemb, the jarl of clan Whar.</p><p></p><p>And right here, the PCs have a choice.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"]</p><p>Mutually Exclusive Ally Options! See also, the Templars vs the Mages in <em>Dragon Ages 2 - 4</em> The adventure lets you choose exactly one faction to support, and has exactly zero expectation that the PCs will intervene (after seeing how horrific combat is on the people here) to try to put a stop to the conflict.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Basically, the adventure assumes that the PCs will either a) help the Baendur take Rockpike, or b) help the Baendur lift the siege.</p><p></p><p>Before anyone asks, Hrolf is apparently conflicted, because he's still salty about the Whar raid, but also doesn't like Cenric and the Baendur. He can be persuaded one way or the other.</p><p></p><p>The payoffs here are either that a) the PCs get to loot Rockpike and fight their way through a pretty intense battle sequence, thus earning accolades from the Whar and convincing Athils to guide them to the helmaw for an audience with the Goddess of Death herself or b) the PCs will ally with Cenric, who <em>sells them the Valkyrie he has enslaved in his keep</em> if the PCs hunt down and exterminate the Whar.</p><p></p><p>This is apparently supposed to manifest as a moral dilemma. Unfortunately, this fails for me. In a moral dilemma that is actually fun, there is a choice to do the right thing at a significant cost, or to do the easy thing with a significant reward. It forces the characters to define what they care about. How far are they willing to go?</p><p></p><p>In this version, you can link up with a bunch of human-trafficking war criminals, or ... link up with a bunch of angel*-trafficking war criminals.</p><p></p><p>It's a choice between schmucks, with no real "dilemma" in question.</p><p></p><p>The actual fights are pretty interesting, but neither option helps move the plot along, so it feel like empty calories. However, this choice will have consequences later on, so they get some props there for sticking to the consequences.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="How I Would Do This"]</p><p>First, we need to make this an actual moral dilemma. No more slavery - the raiders aren't taking thralls, mostly because I can absolutely see that one player getting a little too gross with "Are any of them...female?" Ew. No. At this point, I'd like to call out that the GM's Reference material gives you some options if you want to take slavery out of your game. This gets them some points!</p><p></p><p>I'm headcanoning that the raiders simply take some percentage from their raiding targets ("The fifth, I give you**"), and will absolutely burn and steal, but don't take people. Not because they're inherently good, of course, but because people are hard to move, hard to convert into cash, and will tend to fight you.</p><p></p><p>The sentries on the approach to the Whar camp aren't hostile, and will tentatively parlay with the PCs as they approach. Athils is now grimly set on keeping her word to Hel, but knows she'll lose a bunch of people on the attack. She sees the PCs as a great solution to the problem of "get us in the fortress." She mentions that Cenric is holding a valkyrie captive, and keeps her caged day and night. She's willing to fight on whatever terms the PCs will grant, and will enforce them on her clan, if they can get her inside Rockpike. Meanwhile, the Baendur issue a challenge - they've taken several of the Whar captive during their campaign, and will execute them at sunrise unless the Whar depart. So now there's a time limit and a secondary objective.</p><p></p><p>If the PCs can get inside and free the prisoners, and then fight their way to the tower, the next morning, Cenric presents the captive valkyrie. In return for leaving him and his subjects alone, he'll give them the valkyrie. The PCs now have an interesting choice to make, and can now vouch for Cenric as a ruthless war leader, but one who also knows when to make peace. They have the option of either finishing the job, negotiating an end to the conflict, or walking away.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>As to those rewards, there are two payoffs. If they get to talk to Hel, they find out...nothing. She asks them some questions, and if Siddhe is present (because the PCs are the worst adoptive parents in the history of ever - who takes a kid for a brief chat with the Goddess of Death?), Hel gets agitated. That's it. No information on why they were targeted. Why the hell did you even include this as an option if you weren't going to give them any information?</p><p></p><p>The other payoff is that they walk away with Skuld, the captive valkyrie. Skuld is basically an empty trenchcoat. She "knows a lot about the nature of true death in Grimnir, but keeps that information to herself." There's just <em>nothing here.</em></p><p></p><p>I hate to be a jerk, but this whole section feels like the devs were so proud of this moral dilemma they invented that they didn't bother with rewarding the PCs for doing it. I'm all for having the PCs make hard choices without a right answer, because those are often the most revealing choices to make. But this? This ain't it chief.</p><p></p><p>4 / 10 for "Gathering of Wolves" and "Rockpike" together. Excellent action and not much else. This section is plagued by weak links to the rest of the scenario, a terribly done moral dilemma, and payoffs that are functionally nil.</p><p></p><p>See you next time for "Under the Ash" where things... go...</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://media4.giphy.com/media/r5gHt2TCIiHK0/200.gif" alt="volcano GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>*They treat the valkyrie as angels in this and it drives me nuts. Valkyries were never depicted as winged, and they were servants of Odin, not liable to be bound on earth, even if you chopped their (nonexistent) wings off. This is just me being pedantic, though, not a knock on the campaign.</p><p></p><p>**If you get this reference, you're a wonderful human being. If you don't, you're still a wonderful human being.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sparky McDibben, post: 9205312, member: 7041430"] It is quite limited, but that sort of encourages sea travel, which is what this is all about. That being the case, though, you can get into serious chokepoint territory very quickly, which is in and of itself interesting since it gives you some fun complications. Alright, moving on and still in Chapter 2, let's visit Rockpike Fortress. I don't know how they came up with these names - either Rockpike is a kind of polearm (in which case the name doesn't make that much sense), or it's referring to a breed of carnivorous fish (presumably, the rock pike) that does not appear in this adventure. Anyways, tangent aside, the PCs arrive in the High North! They're here to... Well, actually, that's a bit of a mystery. There's a couple different ways the PCs can get up here: 1) Gulli the Scummy Druid surrenders to the PCs to save his outpost. He leads them here to talk with his sister (the goal here is to find out why the Goddess of Death is having the Whar raiders target the PCs) 2) The PCs hear from the Orn (we'll get to it) that the Baendur (non-raiders) in Rockpike Fortress have a captive Valkyrie (the goal here is unspecific) The hook they're following impacts the PCs decision set massively, as we'll see. The situation at Rockpike is thus: a) The Baendur of Rockpike (led by a complete douchenozzle named Cenric) built a fleet to challenge the raiders' control of the sea b) Hel found out, and asked the Whar clan to intervene, creating a helmaw (Underworld gate-thingy) to get an entire Whar raiding party to Rockpike c) The raiders destroyed the fleet, chased the Baendur back to their fortress and are now besieging the fortress As we arrive, the PCs get a warning from their crew that this area is the land of one King Cenric, notable for having challenged the raider clans several times in the recent past. Cenric himself is a worthy and rare prize. By the way, does it count as human trafficking when a character is the treasure? Asking for a friend. The PCs journey through a decent little pointcrawl, including some ravaged farms with dead farmers that rise as zombies unless the PCs burn them. There's a bit with faeries that goes nowhere, and then they get to the village of Frostwarren, where they can see a bunch of burnt-up longships (the remains of Cenric's fleet). (See, some magical jerks named the Ironwood Witches gave Cenric a bunch of ironwood - this legendary magic wood - to create a fleet to challenge the raiders, and were going to use magic to "jump" the fleet to the Serpent Sea). So right now, the PCs have seen a couple examples of the Whar's depredations, which are violent and reckless. So when they reach the village and see the whole thing burnt to the ground, well, this is a great time to drive home the horrors of war and the culture of violence that permeates the raider clans. Especially since there are no bodies at the village - there are tracks leading west, into the mountains. The PCs find a survivor of the Whar raid, a Baendur elite guard named Lan. And if you're wondering how a Diademed Battle Lord of Malkier wound up in Grimnir, well, not to worry. [CENTER][IMG]https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/efd018d3-2d1f-4596-997d-3200f9bf6616/smart/width/386/height/259[/IMG] [I]Pictured: Not the [URL='https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Lan_Mandragoran']Lan[/URL] we're talking about[/I][/CENTER] This Lan is a woman, and a captain of Cenric's guard. She insists that the Baendur just want better farmland and more resources. #NotallBaendur, guys. She can journey with the party to Rockpike, where the tracks from the burnt-up village lead. And at this point we zoom in on Rockpike itself. It's a pretty sturdy-looking keep, with a gatehouse and a couple layers of town to get through before you hit the main keep. Right now, it's besieged by the Whar, who are also keeping a watch on the trail leading from Frostwarren. There are two encounters with automatically hostile Whar archers on the trail (not even a challenge? C'mon, guys) who just shoot the PCs and try to cut the various rope bridges that let the PCs come up. The actual encounter design here is solid, but I take issue with automatically-hostile enemies, especially since these guys haven't ever seen the PCs. They might know their names if that message from Gulli the Scummy Druid arrived, but otherwise, the only person they might recognize is Hrolf D. Viking, Esquire. And they're more likely to think that this legendary hero is bringing some tagalongs to help them crack open Rockpike once and for all! So...yeah. Not a huge fan of the "straight to combat" style here. After the heroes get through that, they meet Athils Vestemb, the jarl of clan Whar. And right here, the PCs have a choice. [SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"] Mutually Exclusive Ally Options! See also, the Templars vs the Mages in [I]Dragon Ages 2 - 4[/I] The adventure lets you choose exactly one faction to support, and has exactly zero expectation that the PCs will intervene (after seeing how horrific combat is on the people here) to try to put a stop to the conflict. [/SPOILER] Basically, the adventure assumes that the PCs will either a) help the Baendur take Rockpike, or b) help the Baendur lift the siege. Before anyone asks, Hrolf is apparently conflicted, because he's still salty about the Whar raid, but also doesn't like Cenric and the Baendur. He can be persuaded one way or the other. The payoffs here are either that a) the PCs get to loot Rockpike and fight their way through a pretty intense battle sequence, thus earning accolades from the Whar and convincing Athils to guide them to the helmaw for an audience with the Goddess of Death herself or b) the PCs will ally with Cenric, who [I]sells them the Valkyrie he has enslaved in his keep[/I] if the PCs hunt down and exterminate the Whar. This is apparently supposed to manifest as a moral dilemma. Unfortunately, this fails for me. In a moral dilemma that is actually fun, there is a choice to do the right thing at a significant cost, or to do the easy thing with a significant reward. It forces the characters to define what they care about. How far are they willing to go? In this version, you can link up with a bunch of human-trafficking war criminals, or ... link up with a bunch of angel*-trafficking war criminals. It's a choice between schmucks, with no real "dilemma" in question. The actual fights are pretty interesting, but neither option helps move the plot along, so it feel like empty calories. However, this choice will have consequences later on, so they get some props there for sticking to the consequences. [SPOILER="How I Would Do This"] First, we need to make this an actual moral dilemma. No more slavery - the raiders aren't taking thralls, mostly because I can absolutely see that one player getting a little too gross with "Are any of them...female?" Ew. No. At this point, I'd like to call out that the GM's Reference material gives you some options if you want to take slavery out of your game. This gets them some points! I'm headcanoning that the raiders simply take some percentage from their raiding targets ("The fifth, I give you**"), and will absolutely burn and steal, but don't take people. Not because they're inherently good, of course, but because people are hard to move, hard to convert into cash, and will tend to fight you. The sentries on the approach to the Whar camp aren't hostile, and will tentatively parlay with the PCs as they approach. Athils is now grimly set on keeping her word to Hel, but knows she'll lose a bunch of people on the attack. She sees the PCs as a great solution to the problem of "get us in the fortress." She mentions that Cenric is holding a valkyrie captive, and keeps her caged day and night. She's willing to fight on whatever terms the PCs will grant, and will enforce them on her clan, if they can get her inside Rockpike. Meanwhile, the Baendur issue a challenge - they've taken several of the Whar captive during their campaign, and will execute them at sunrise unless the Whar depart. So now there's a time limit and a secondary objective. If the PCs can get inside and free the prisoners, and then fight their way to the tower, the next morning, Cenric presents the captive valkyrie. In return for leaving him and his subjects alone, he'll give them the valkyrie. The PCs now have an interesting choice to make, and can now vouch for Cenric as a ruthless war leader, but one who also knows when to make peace. They have the option of either finishing the job, negotiating an end to the conflict, or walking away. [/SPOILER] As to those rewards, there are two payoffs. If they get to talk to Hel, they find out...nothing. She asks them some questions, and if Siddhe is present (because the PCs are the worst adoptive parents in the history of ever - who takes a kid for a brief chat with the Goddess of Death?), Hel gets agitated. That's it. No information on why they were targeted. Why the hell did you even include this as an option if you weren't going to give them any information? The other payoff is that they walk away with Skuld, the captive valkyrie. Skuld is basically an empty trenchcoat. She "knows a lot about the nature of true death in Grimnir, but keeps that information to herself." There's just [I]nothing here.[/I] I hate to be a jerk, but this whole section feels like the devs were so proud of this moral dilemma they invented that they didn't bother with rewarding the PCs for doing it. I'm all for having the PCs make hard choices without a right answer, because those are often the most revealing choices to make. But this? This ain't it chief. 4 / 10 for "Gathering of Wolves" and "Rockpike" together. Excellent action and not much else. This section is plagued by weak links to the rest of the scenario, a terribly done moral dilemma, and payoffs that are functionally nil. See you next time for "Under the Ash" where things... go... [CENTER][IMG alt="volcano GIF"]https://media4.giphy.com/media/r5gHt2TCIiHK0/200.gif[/IMG][/CENTER] *They treat the valkyrie as angels in this and it drives me nuts. Valkyries were never depicted as winged, and they were servants of Odin, not liable to be bound on earth, even if you chopped their (nonexistent) wings off. This is just me being pedantic, though, not a knock on the campaign. **If you get this reference, you're a wonderful human being. If you don't, you're still a wonderful human being. [/QUOTE]
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