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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6283100" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 80: VLINDARIAN'S VAULT</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Rale Bodkin, human rogue</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Telgrane, half-fire elemental human conjurer/archmage</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thunderwolf, human fighter</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Desdemona "Dez" Honeytongue, human wizard</p><p></p><p>Binked In: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Feron Dru, half-elf druid</p><p></p><p>Wow, it's been awhile since I ran a published adventure - way back to adventure 51, when I ran "Beyond the Light of Reason." That's a string of 28 adventures written specifically for my gaming group - not a bad record. (And it's certainly a record for me, whose gaming career up until this campaign consisted almost exclusively of published adventures.)</p><p></p><p>But this next adventure is where I broke my own streak, although I did so by running my group through a published adventure that I had written myself: "Vlindarian's Vault," from <em>Dungeon</em> #141. It was written for 4 PCs of 18th level, and I had decided I wanted to dust it off and send the Wing Three PCs through it when they were of appropriate level, because I wasn't going to get a chance to do so again for some time. (I figure in another year or so, this campaign will be finished up and we'll all start up again with 1st-level characters.)</p><p></p><p>I did change a few things from the way this adventure was written, though. Actually, I should say I changed a few things back to the way they were originally written - or at least "originally written under its current title," as the core of the adventure was originally written as "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet." James Jacobs, the editor of <em>Dungeon</em> at the time, liked the core concept but had me rewrite about 75% of it because WotC had "gone to the 'Return to' well a few too many times" and he felt they had used half-dragons too frequently at the time in the adventures published in the magazine. (I had a half-dragon as the daughter of the main villain, an ogre mage with additional spellcaster levels.) So it got a major overhaul, and became "Vlindarian's Vault," an adventure in which the PCs had to infiltrate a secure storage area to rescue an individual held captive there.</p><p></p><p>I sent in my reworked adventure, heard nothing back for about half a year, and then out of the blue received a contract in the mail. When it was published, I was surprised to see the vast number of changes that had been made. Vlindarian originally wore the form of a blind medusa (for reasons that actually made a sort of logical sense); that was done away with in the published version. (They even changed the logo for the business from a blindfolded medusa's head to a sunken treasure chest.) I had a bunch of human fighters providing security; these were turned into a band of monsters from the <em>Monster Manual</em> of the appropriate CR. Likewise, I used a pair of deathstalkers as guards in my original manuscript; these were turned into a pair of fiends from the <em>Monster Manual</em> of the appropriate CR. As a trap/guardian towards the end of the adventure, I used a monster from <em>Monster Manual III</em>; this was replaced by a fiend of the appropriate CR from the pages of the <em>Monster Manual.</em> I know why the changes were made to my monster selection: it saves space on the printed page to delete a full stat block and replace it with "[Monster Name] (2): hp XX, XX; <em>MM</em>/page YY." But I was a little bummed nonetheless.</p><p></p><p>So anyway, when I ran my players through this adventure, I restored a bunch of the monsters back to my original choices. Vlindarian once again wore the form of a blind medusa (and I even planned what she'd say to the PCs if they approached her before they tried assaulting the Vault, but alas, they opted not to try that approach). I got rid of the ultroloth (I never really liked those guys) that had replaced my original monster in the area where the captive had been stored.</p><p></p><p>And, perhaps most importantly of all, I changed who was trying to hire the PCs to rescue the captive spirited away to the Vault, and who had been captured in the first place. My original manuscript called for a man named Glistern to hire the PCs to rescue his mentor Sandilgrover; the published version has Glistern trying to retrieve his mate, Sumerthain; the version I ran for my players had Sandilgrover hiring the PCs to rescue his mentor, none other than Gorgoldand himself, which in a way brought the whole adventure full circle back to the "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet" adventure I had originally planned. And that in itself is rather cool, as circles play a somewhat important part in the adventure as written.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, without giving away details of the adventure as published (don't worry about me letting on that Vlindarian's "blind medusa" form is a fake - the point never even comes up in the published version, and the PCs only meet up with her in her normal form, if at all), the PCs were hired by Sandilgrover and snuck into the Vault by magic (but did so in a way that left two of them stranded there shortly after <em>gating</em> into where Gorgoldand was kept, forcing the other PCs to try to break into the Vault in a completely different way to try to get them back, while the two "stuck" PCs struggled to find a way back out of the Vault on their own). The whole thing ended up in a massive clash of forces there in the administrative sections of the above-ground "Vlindarian's Vault" office area, where Delphyne was eventually slain by being in the area of effect of one too many spells, and Dez had to activate Delphyne's Guild ring to "bink" her back to HQ, to be replaced almost immediately by Feron Dru, who then finished out the rest of the adventure. Likewise, Thunderwolf was petrified in the final battle, so Joey ended up running Aerik for the rest of the adventure.</p><p></p><p>But the PCs were ultimately successful, Gorgoldand was rescued, and the group earned 50,000 gp from a grateful Sandilgrover. Gorgoldand had a pretty good idea about who had had him kidnapped and why, and said he wanted to check out a few things before getting back to the PCs with an opportunity to go on a quest for a powerful artifact. (As you might expect, that was a future plot hook; adventure 83 is due to be the adventure where they go fetch the artifact that was worth kidnapping Gorgoldand over.)</p><p></p><p>We did learn that Vicki absolutely hates Desdemona "Dez" Honeytongue, referring to her as "that whore" throughout the adventure. The image I used for her initiative card is of a fairly buxom female human spellcaster in a low-cut peasant blouse with a magic staff in one hand. Vicki turned down an offer to run Dez after Delphyne was slain, because she didn't want to be responsible for killing another player's cohort NPC (although she did specify that she'd be perfectly fine if Dez were killed; she just didn't want to be the one running her if she were - which ended up being unintentional foreshadowing on her part, as it turned out).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I don't have any plans to run any more published adventures in this campaign, although you never know. The next four, in any case, are all ones I wrote specifically for this campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6283100, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 80: VLINDARIAN'S VAULT[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Delphyne Babelberi, human witch (wizard) Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian Rale Bodkin, human rogue Telgrane, half-fire elemental human conjurer/archmage Thunderwolf, human fighter[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender Desdemona "Dez" Honeytongue, human wizard[/INDENT] Binked In: [INDENT]Feron Dru, half-elf druid[/INDENT] Wow, it's been awhile since I ran a published adventure - way back to adventure 51, when I ran "Beyond the Light of Reason." That's a string of 28 adventures written specifically for my gaming group - not a bad record. (And it's certainly a record for me, whose gaming career up until this campaign consisted almost exclusively of published adventures.) But this next adventure is where I broke my own streak, although I did so by running my group through a published adventure that I had written myself: "Vlindarian's Vault," from [i]Dungeon[/i] #141. It was written for 4 PCs of 18th level, and I had decided I wanted to dust it off and send the Wing Three PCs through it when they were of appropriate level, because I wasn't going to get a chance to do so again for some time. (I figure in another year or so, this campaign will be finished up and we'll all start up again with 1st-level characters.) I did change a few things from the way this adventure was written, though. Actually, I should say I changed a few things back to the way they were originally written - or at least "originally written under its current title," as the core of the adventure was originally written as "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet." James Jacobs, the editor of [i]Dungeon[/i] at the time, liked the core concept but had me rewrite about 75% of it because WotC had "gone to the 'Return to' well a few too many times" and he felt they had used half-dragons too frequently at the time in the adventures published in the magazine. (I had a half-dragon as the daughter of the main villain, an ogre mage with additional spellcaster levels.) So it got a major overhaul, and became "Vlindarian's Vault," an adventure in which the PCs had to infiltrate a secure storage area to rescue an individual held captive there. I sent in my reworked adventure, heard nothing back for about half a year, and then out of the blue received a contract in the mail. When it was published, I was surprised to see the vast number of changes that had been made. Vlindarian originally wore the form of a blind medusa (for reasons that actually made a sort of logical sense); that was done away with in the published version. (They even changed the logo for the business from a blindfolded medusa's head to a sunken treasure chest.) I had a bunch of human fighters providing security; these were turned into a band of monsters from the [i]Monster Manual[/i] of the appropriate CR. Likewise, I used a pair of deathstalkers as guards in my original manuscript; these were turned into a pair of fiends from the [i]Monster Manual[/i] of the appropriate CR. As a trap/guardian towards the end of the adventure, I used a monster from [i]Monster Manual III[/i]; this was replaced by a fiend of the appropriate CR from the pages of the [i]Monster Manual.[/i] I know why the changes were made to my monster selection: it saves space on the printed page to delete a full stat block and replace it with "[Monster Name] (2): hp XX, XX; [i]MM[/i]/page YY." But I was a little bummed nonetheless. So anyway, when I ran my players through this adventure, I restored a bunch of the monsters back to my original choices. Vlindarian once again wore the form of a blind medusa (and I even planned what she'd say to the PCs if they approached her before they tried assaulting the Vault, but alas, they opted not to try that approach). I got rid of the ultroloth (I never really liked those guys) that had replaced my original monster in the area where the captive had been stored. And, perhaps most importantly of all, I changed who was trying to hire the PCs to rescue the captive spirited away to the Vault, and who had been captured in the first place. My original manuscript called for a man named Glistern to hire the PCs to rescue his mentor Sandilgrover; the published version has Glistern trying to retrieve his mate, Sumerthain; the version I ran for my players had Sandilgrover hiring the PCs to rescue his mentor, none other than Gorgoldand himself, which in a way brought the whole adventure full circle back to the "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet" adventure I had originally planned. And that in itself is rather cool, as circles play a somewhat important part in the adventure as written. Anyway, without giving away details of the adventure as published (don't worry about me letting on that Vlindarian's "blind medusa" form is a fake - the point never even comes up in the published version, and the PCs only meet up with her in her normal form, if at all), the PCs were hired by Sandilgrover and snuck into the Vault by magic (but did so in a way that left two of them stranded there shortly after [i]gating[/i] into where Gorgoldand was kept, forcing the other PCs to try to break into the Vault in a completely different way to try to get them back, while the two "stuck" PCs struggled to find a way back out of the Vault on their own). The whole thing ended up in a massive clash of forces there in the administrative sections of the above-ground "Vlindarian's Vault" office area, where Delphyne was eventually slain by being in the area of effect of one too many spells, and Dez had to activate Delphyne's Guild ring to "bink" her back to HQ, to be replaced almost immediately by Feron Dru, who then finished out the rest of the adventure. Likewise, Thunderwolf was petrified in the final battle, so Joey ended up running Aerik for the rest of the adventure. But the PCs were ultimately successful, Gorgoldand was rescued, and the group earned 50,000 gp from a grateful Sandilgrover. Gorgoldand had a pretty good idea about who had had him kidnapped and why, and said he wanted to check out a few things before getting back to the PCs with an opportunity to go on a quest for a powerful artifact. (As you might expect, that was a future plot hook; adventure 83 is due to be the adventure where they go fetch the artifact that was worth kidnapping Gorgoldand over.) We did learn that Vicki absolutely hates Desdemona "Dez" Honeytongue, referring to her as "that whore" throughout the adventure. The image I used for her initiative card is of a fairly buxom female human spellcaster in a low-cut peasant blouse with a magic staff in one hand. Vicki turned down an offer to run Dez after Delphyne was slain, because she didn't want to be responsible for killing another player's cohort NPC (although she did specify that she'd be perfectly fine if Dez were killed; she just didn't want to be the one running her if she were - which ended up being unintentional foreshadowing on her part, as it turned out). Anyway, I don't have any plans to run any more published adventures in this campaign, although you never know. The next four, in any case, are all ones I wrote specifically for this campaign. [/QUOTE]
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