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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 8874094" data-attributes="member: 20741">I have run DL10 in another form for another campaign. It is one of the best, yes. Its key feature benefits from players who are ENTIRELY attached to their characters and are deeply involved in the story of the campaign. The strength of the adventure depends very much on this emotional engagement, so it's not something DMs can just pluck off of the shelf and unleash it and expect great things. The key to running a classic DragonLance campaign is to get the idea of playing the novel characters out of your head and the heads of the players and just throw it on a super-hot fire. You need to be playing a game, not re-enacting the novels. That way leads your group to want to play some other campaign that is anything but Classic DragonLance - fast. So change things up, move story bits around if your players know the story. Keep it new and keep em guessing.For most of us, the memories of Dragons of Autumn Twilight are always too clear and too well defined. The rest of the series is fuzzy, but the details of that one remain. The novel covers DL1 and DL2 in a blow by blow manner. Once you get past DL2 -- and the end of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, it's smooth sailing. But you have to get there - and that's not not easy.  In order to move the story to a place the players won't know, but still keeping the tale focused on the Classic DragonLance tale, I plan to do the following:In DL1 - Add an entire section to Haven. Homebrew away. The PCs need to leave Solace and head to Haven. Along the way, they will encounter Draconians at Twin Flat and then hundreds of refugees making their way to Haven. That scene on the road looks like Exodus. I will focus on the refugees -- THAT is the heart of the story. DragonLance is a fantasy war story about heroes making a difference during a time of Epic warfare. The war is about people - dislocation - and the deaths (and worse) of thousands of innocents. The refugees are the main evidence of the cost of that war and why the PCs have a stake in it.  What the Seekers opposed to the PCs in Haven are focused upon is not power, riches, or glory or some idiotic theocracy. They are not there twirling moustaches to be evil. The Seeker Locar is instead worried about Haven and those refugees. How will Haven house them? How will it feed them? How can Haven get those people back to their farms and their lives? What if they are attacked? The people of Haven will be killed, raped, robbed and enslaved - and the refugees, too.The foes of the PCs have their reasons for trying to sell them out and fork over the Staff to Verminaard's forces. Those opponents are motivated to do those things that they think will help in order to spare the people from the worst costs of war. It's just another path to the same goal - and it looks like a more certain path to safety, too. By the time you sort all of that out in Haven, DL1- Dragons of Despair will feel like a brand new adventure (for the good reason that nearly all of what you homebrew for them to do in Haven will be new). I will ultimately send them out of Haven chased on boats down the river and they will get back on track to Xak Tsaroth. Skip the Wicker Dragon Statue entirely, but definitely do the battle in the "kettle" elevators if the PCs choose that route.  Then just run the damned module. Xak Tsaroth's design holds up quite well.In DL2 - Dragons of Flame, the PCs should be able to do whatever it is they want to do once in Pax Tharkas. Just run the module. The problem in DL2 isn't in the Sla-Mori or Pax Tharkas -- the problem there comes at the beginning. It's NEVER a good idea to capture PCs and take their stuff.  Even when you START a campaign with this trope, the outcome is uncertain. Doing it in a campaign that is well underway? Don't rely on PCs surrendering, they rarely do. That's just foolhardy adventure design. Maybe in 1983, those authors didn't know based on decades of experience how bad an adventure idea that is in practice. But I've been DMing for 43 years now -- I know that's an inherently bad idea. We all do. So we need another plan to be Plan "A". The PCs getting captured is, at best, Plan "B".If they PCs choose to intercede and surrender, then they do. But your main plan should be the Elven scouts and the sons of Solostaran who lead them to attack the slave caravan on the road from Solace to Pax Tharkas.  The PCs should be focused on destroying the Hobgoblins and Draconians and freeing those prisoners (their neighbours, many of whom are about to be refugees. Refugees again? Yes. It's all about the refugees. It never really stops being about them at any time. Just as we will be throughout the beginning and well into the middle of the campaign, we'll keep coming back to them. DL3 and DL4 are all about saving the people, too. Keep your focus there. That's the theme of the first third of the campaign.Once you get out of DL2 - it's smooth sailing.  Easier said than done. </blockquote>

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