D&D 5E Enhancing "Candlekeep Mysteries"

[Demetrios1453]

Now that I have my physical copy and am re-reading it, one idea that has struck me for tying everything together is to take an idea presented in the very first adventure - what happened to Fistandia, the creator of the mansion, and her colleague Freyot? Fistandia was obviously a summoner, so perhaps she made a mistake while summoning a particularly powerful entity and is now trapped somewhere. The subsequent books and adventures might hold clues to her whereabouts, or might have been placed as tests to ensure only a properly powerful party will attempt to rescue her (or them). This also sets up a suitably epic final adventure whem the party finally goes to rescue her (and will she be grateful, or have just used the party as her tools?)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

ZZT also doesn't list a DC for lockpicking the book, so presumably the intent is that you cannot do that either. I'll have to ponder a little more how best to handle getting that book.

The intent is to provide an explanation for why no one before the PCs discovered the imprisoned genie. It's just not very well thought out. The lock has DC 25. Because the DM says so. The place is full of wizards and scholars, they have no idea how to pick locks.

 

[Reynard]

I decided to pick it up so I could use the higher level adventures for my post Avernus player group. I am going to have to flesh them out a little,I think, and adjust hooks but since the PCs are the Heroes of Elturel who brought back that city from actual Hell, I figure folks will have no problem coming to them for aid.

I still wish we had a 12th to 20th adventure to use as a follow up to most of the others. In the meantime I will probably repurpose a couple levels of DotMM as separate dungeons too.

 

[jayoungr]

Link to another thread someone started on running Candlekeep Mysteries as a campaign:

D&D 5E - Mysteries of Candlekeep as a Campaign

I've been slowly making my way through the book when I have a spare moment, but I wanted to know if anybody has considered (or has already started) converting the book into a full campaign with a common through-line. From the little of the book and reviews I've read, it seems that fey seem to...

www.enworld.org

 

[Azuresun]

Yeah, I was anticipating it would be a "problem-of-the-week" episodic plot with the characters working for the library (I even thought about what the library would call them... I'm currently thinking "the Invoked").

There was a supplement for the Palladium Fantasy RPG called Library of Bletherad, which was centered around, well, a great library. Apart from being an amazing book in general (seriously, check it out, there's so much good stuff that could be imported into any RPG), it did have some ideas for characters being agents of the library, travelling the world and retreiving rare and priceless books by diplomacy, theft or even force (it's easy that in a low-tech society, even nonmagical books are rare and precious).

 

[jayoungr]

One thing I have noticed in both this thread and others is that a lot of people are talking about adding one or two adventures to existing campaigns as side quests. Does anyone have thoughts on which adventures would fit best with which campaigns--particularly Descent into Avernus, which I'm likely to be running one of these days?

I can already see an easy hook for Princes of the Apocalypse, since that adventure already has a subplot about some rare dwarven books being sold. Just have one of them turn out to be exceptionally rare. And maybe make sure the PCs have a chance to recover them, if it's not already in the adventure (my group is still playing through it, so I don't know whether that's a possibility or not).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The ones that involve disappearing inside a book like Lure of Lurue and Wisteria Vale can go anywhere there might be a book amongst the treasure. Most of the others more directly involve Candlekeep, so any adventure set near Candlekeep would apply, such as Descent.

I think most people are talking about dropping them into homebrew campaigns though.

 

[Eltab]

Fitting into Rise of Tiamat:
The PCs are contacted by the War Council and asked to quickly / quietly escort a courier from Candlekeep to Waterdeep thence to a classified location - or vice versa. The courier is supposed to compile research notes / lore to aid a component of the war effort (think WWII's Manhattan Project). The Candlekeep staff insist on offering generous hospitality to the PCs, such as a feast in their honor and an overnight stay, and by coincidence somebody just then messes with a book they should not have.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Currently running Lore of Lurue, have made the following changes:
(major spoilers)

Spoiler

Start: The party found the book wrapped in oilskin in one of the shipwrecks off Solstice. It's a completely optional sidequest.

Structure: This adventure is very much a railroad. Rather than change it, I'm lampshading it. The book is the magical equivalent of a holonovel. Moving through the story linearly is a limitation of the magic.

Death and time: This adventure suggests players are kicked out on zero hp. Since i don't want this happening too often I changed this so they are only booted if they actually die (death is impossible, nothing is real in this adventure). The suggestion that a character can take a long rest then jump back in for the next encounter implies time travels more slowly, roughly 8 hours outside for each hour inside. I decided to reverse this, so if a character gets booted and takes a long rest the will miss the rest of the adventure.

Difficulty: for a level 8 adventure the difficulty level is set a bit low. Especially the random encounters, which are barely trivial. I decided that since I am playing online I would skip most of them, and just run the least easy - the wereboars, increasing the number to three. I also added an extra ettercap and gave the hag full coven spells.

Art: for use online I colorized the Hag's Hovel map. I may use a different map entirely for the final encounter if I can find a better one.

Reward: I swapped the Ring of Shooting Stars for an Amulet of the Devout +1 (Tasha's).

Final thoughts: I didn't use this idea, but one thing this book could be used for is as a hiding place for a treasure. It could even be one of the other books, such as ZZT. Since where better to hide a book than inside another book? Alternatively, it could be the party who has something they need to hide.

Query: how do you pronounce Lurue?

 

[Eltab]

Query: how do you pronounce Lurue?

Loo-roo
But if your PCs (and NPCs) come up with different pronunciations, use them as 'regional acents' to increase the Forgotten Realms' "not everybody is from around here" presumption.

See also to-may-toe / to-mah-to and Henri (French) / Henry (English)