Adventures with Good Stories and other "portable" elements (PLEASE HIDE SPOILERS)

[Graf]

One general comment: many people who are planning on playing these adventures aren't going to use straight 3.5. The thesis of this thread is that: as DnD goes through a fragmentation period people will be re-doing a lot of these specific stats.
(Pretentious thing to say but whatever).

So things like "this NPC does a lot of damage" or "that fight is a bit too hard" don't matter as much in this context.
Of course it's good to know, but if you can strip out the mechanics and the comment is still equally valid then you know it's a really good piece of intelligence.

Runelords 2: [SBLOCK] Essentially, this is Hell House with a stalker hook. There's a good serial killer murder investigation preceding the locale too. You'll need to boost the BBEG's survivability though. Skip the coda in the big city, due to a battle that's way lethal if the PCs don't choose the tactic of flight. This works as a sequel to Burnt Offerings, but the stalker hook and the isolated locale means you can port it into virtually any campaign.[/SBLOCK]

Great overview.
How is the linearity? I.e. is it basically strictly linear?
Is the investigation CoC style (red herrings, weird npcs or lots of detail) or more traditional DnD (i.e. it's basically impossible not to solve and if the PCs don't "get it" the monster will come and attack them/a "magical NPC" will show up to explain everything anyway)

Carnival of Tears: [SBLOCK]Wow. Just... wow. Evil fey get their vengeance on the lumber town. You got your living ice sculptures, your ice maze of murder, your blinding strip tease, your cannibalism eating contest run by a pig-chef, and an animated lumber machinery exhibition. And only the PCs can see this instead of the illusion of the carnival. Avoid the temptation to DMPC and you're good to go with a slightly higher level party. You might want to scale the body count to be a bit more responsive to PC actions, as RAW it's pretty much either dozens die or most of the town does, depending on whether the party fools around or rests.[/SBLOCK]

This sounds rather interesting and I appreciated your comments regarding increasing the impact of the PCs actions, that's great advice for a DM to have.

Hangman's Noose: [SBLOCK] Awesome investigation into long-ago injustice by first level characters. They're trapped in a building with "allies" who they grow to suspect of being the cause of the haunting and undead that are just way beyond their level to deal with. Want to send a message to your players that they can't beat everything with combat? This is the 1st level adventure for you. Warning: You'll be playing about 8 different NPC roles simultaneously, so props and accents will be necessary. [/SBLOCK]

This also sounds quite good.
Playing lots of NPCs isn't something I enjoy though.
The natural thing to happen is to have one or two PCs talk to each NPC. I find it tricky to "time budget".

Moral choices=good adventure.

I strongly agree with this statement. I have that adventure already. I'll take a look at it again.

[SBLOCK=Salvage Operation] An unusual dungeon crawl on a derelict relic, which, of course, will start to go down after the BBEG fight, but before the mission is completed. Complete with enormous octopus attacking the ship.[/SBLOCK]

I ran this adventure actually. I was also quite taken with the setting and structure. I put it in Eberron and the cinematic action style worked well I felt.
-Having- said that I felt that it suffered from a big weakness in 3.5 adventure design, the "we need to have lots of random, compartmentalized monsters for people to fight so they can get their level-up".[sblock=Salvage Operation]Like the undead in the bottom of the ship, or some of the random plant things (I think? it's been a while) that just "moved in during the chaos".
And the NPC as I recall, was basically just "crazy guy".

But the "lost ship returns with something infesting it" actually seemed like a great nod to SF.[/sblock]
I guess I have to say that it's a good "filler" adventure. Its better than a normal dungeon crawl, but you'd have to rebuild the NPC into something stronger/more meaningful to have a real story impact.

Runelords 1:Burnt Offerings:[SBLOCK]My player loves, loves, loves the Paizo goblins. Good starter town and a great villain backstory of the impact of superstition on those with celestial heritage.[/SBLOCK]
Runelords 3: [SBLOCK] Ogre hill-billie horror! Skip the stone giants and plop the isolated and debauched farmhouse and recapture the lost fort into your game. Absolutely no need to worry about the path.[/SBLOCK]

Bit of a tangent but Paizo seems to have swung seriously into the horror school. My players haven't, historically, actually gotten scared of something, if you strip out the "isn't this creepy" stuff is there a stolid adventure here?

I think that an adventures appeal has as much to do with the DM running it as it does the material within the adventure.

OK. Fine. Sure.
I agree that a good DM can salvage anything, but I don't think that means that all adventures are equally good.
In fact, I strongly disagree with the statement. The point is that the DM can use that effort to improve/customize, not just struggle and struggle and struggle some more to make the whole thing make sense.

[SBLOCK=Consider Red Hand of Doom]This adventure has a few NPC's that could really work out well. The various Wyrmlords can make some pretty compelling villains. In my game, Koth has had a much greater impact than the adventure has called for. This happened simply because he managed to survive the initial combat encounter, as well as a 2nd fight later on. Both times he did alot of damage. But in some games, he could probably just get killed in the first encounter before there is any real chance to interact with the PC's.

In any case, RHoD works out well because it has a good level of detail for its NPC's, as well as reasonably well spelled out escape conditions. It only falls short in situations where the escape condition calls for retreat at X hit points, and that number is often reached in one round of focused attacks.[/SBLOCK]

I'm actually pretty curious about Red Hand. At one point a lot of people were running it, the snippets I've seen suggest it's got some interesting set pieces, and the general theme (army invades) is unusual in adventures.
I have the impression it's got some interesting story mechanics (escape clauses?).
But, while a lot of people were playing it at one point, I haven't seen a whole lot of people raving about it; like: we played it, it was OK.

It sounds to me like you're actually saying that RHoD isn't a very good adventure because the DM would have to change things to make it more likely for the interesting NPCs to survive.
Are there roleplaying opportunities for these NPCs or just fights?
(It's fairly difficult to make an NPC interesting if you're only interacting with the during initiative rounds).

Banewarrens by Malhavoc Press had good stuff, Multiple bad guy factions, arcane and divine allies with competing agendas, history that gets explained, good reasons for the dungeon crawls, variety of foes, ancient evils being unleashed, betrayal. I just did not like the [sblock]mecha stuff and sidelining the PCs at the end for a big climax fight[/sblock].

I ran Banewarrens for my group. Actually, to a certain degree, it was both the capstone for that adventure and the reason why the game collapsed.
I agree that it's a good adventure, at the time it came out I think it was one of "THE" adventures everyone was talking about and running. I agree that it had a theme and a compelling background/history.
But it was also very very demanding: you need to know you're running Banewarrens before the game begins (so you can place the tower).
I found that the adventure is extremely linear. The PCs need to pull out of the dungeon at various points, and in each case there is basically a sort of ham-fisted technique for yanking them out. The adventure situation seems very fluid with lots of options and choices available AND there are a few methods that are used to give it some flexibility.
[sblock=Banewarrens Flex]The evil NPC groups can encounter the PCs at several different locations, and there are good hints and tips for how to handle meetings in various rooms.
At the time I really appreciated that, but in retrospect that flexibility didn't really provide help where it was needed (i.e. getting them into, out of then back into the dungeon on the strict schedule required by the module).[/sblock]


And [sblock=Banewarrens]the dungeon design (at least the first 3/4s before the spire is completely illogical

you're supposed to be "entering the banewarrens from below" but the traps and everything point "outward (toward where the PCs approach)". It's not only illogical, but apparent to the PCs (or at least mine) got very confused.
So the key thing that's in front of the PCs as they wander around is "this doesn't make any sense... if we're going in through the back, why are all the traps pointed at us?"
It's not like one or two traps going both ways but the whole place is constructed to be completely open from the entryway (lots of evil basically being held in what would be the lobby).
It's not a huge deal, but it's impossible to fix unless you want to redraw the map.
It would have been better if the umber hulk just tunneled into some sort of entryway and the dungeon was laid out logically from there.
​

Other stuff
Admittedly this is a mechanical point but: the Mindflayer squad should just be astral projecting to the prime. They're immortal that way, they keep all their gear, etc. There is just no reason to for them to be plane shifting. Other than the fact that the PCs would be toast.

It uses a lot of "god magic" and brute force to keep you straight on the railroad.
The DM has to arrange a kidnapping to force the PCs to leave the dungeon and go on a side trek; and the PCs are blocked from using divine divinations to find the person.

The major evil NPC group has huge amounts of resources, but only happens to deploy as level appropriate challenges; it doesn't really make sense. If they've been around for this long they probably have decent resource deployment. I think the group itself could have been toned down a lot and fit into the adventure much more cleanly, as it is it reads like a great idea jammed into the adventure in an unfortunate manner.
Their whole demi-plane didn't make a huge amount of sense to me either. I tweaked it a bit, but it seemed like most groups, not knowing exactly what they were supposed to do would wind up they'd treat it like a dungeon (i.e. clear this level then move on). So they'd wander around and alert the Evil Monster Society (forget the name) and necessarily trigger some sort of counter attack before accomplishing their mission. After all they arrive on the plane with almost no info.
A group of PCs wandering around and smacking random bosses and lieutenants would normally trigger some sort of response, but the adventure doesn't allow for that.
It's a big credulity straining mess if you get to that point, a lot of groups are going to want to take out the villains while they're napping but the adventure basically expects them to slip in, grab something plot essential and then slip out.
If they don't?
No tools really to deal with the situation.
In a fluid situation with a huge number of choices a DM needs more than a plot that's basically a single arrow pointing in one direction.

The mecha thing was... I dunno, we stopped that campaign before we got there, personally I was underwhelmed with 1) mecha in DnD 2) the final fight (or one of them) being the PCs using a giant robot against a monster.
There was a point I think when I felt like MC's gonzo everything-and-the-kitchen-sink method started to overwhelm everything. Admittedly you having too much is better than having too little, but I felt a bit like there was too little of a lot of really necessary stuff and too much "WOW this would be really neat! (however illogical).

It also makes some demands upon the game world:

• You need to have the huge spire in the middle of the city. I snuck it into hollowfaust without anyone noticing; but if you haven't got that you either have to change the dungeon in some sort of fashion (have the spire go "down" into the earth, which has a lot minor but important little repercussions)
• You need to have the monster super-society with it's own Demi-plane; depending on your cosmology that's either easy or very very hard. In fact a "society of monsters" doesn't really fit a lot of worlds (in Scarred Lands I just made it the "titan's last army" -- but that ultimately raises it's own issues
• The whole adventure is like a prequel to an epic level adventure that was never written, there's this great undefined city/lair on top of the spire where the "real evil" is being kept. I could have done without that. I appreciate that it's a neat epic seed for the future, but it gives the whole thing a bit of weird focus.

[/sblock]

The Curse of Xanathon (OD&D module X3)
[SBLOCK]This one has a great plot... the Duke that rules the city of Rhoona has been stricken with madness, and issues a series of really insane edicts, including a ban on dwarves that riles the neighboring dwarf nation of Rockhome to war. The PCs poke around Rhoona gathering clues to solve the mystery of the Duke's sudden and unexplained madness before it's too late. This is one of my favorite OD&D modules, and it's a great urban crawl, although it doesn't seem to get as much love as B2, X1, or X2.[/SBLOCK]

This one sounds like a hidden gem.

Lost City of Barakus: great setting, great NPC's, some good hooks for getting into the Dungeon in the first place, then BAM [sblock]the PC's find an ancient evil has been imprisoned in the Lost City and have to find a way to ensure he stays there.[/sblock]

DCC #1: The Lost Vault of Tsathar Rho (sp)
Novice PC's investigate a rampant Ogre [sblock]only to find a warren full of kobolds who have been warped by a returning Old One.[/sblock]

Can you tell us more about these?
The PCs investigate X to discover Y is almost the iconic version of "plot" in a DnD module. Is there good foreshadowing of the "true bad guy?".
When the PCs act to stop their foe to they have lots of choices? Or is it just "get the six colored keys to lock the six colored doors?"
If there are "color coded keys" are they interesting and believable?

The Grey Citadel
[sblock]Demons walk the streets, a wizard has gone missing, merchants are behaving oddly, and The Crimson Mantle are about to enter the sewers to save the City. A great mix of role-playing, investigation and dungeon-crawling, with some memorable NPC's above and below ground and a good non-linear set of adventure ideas[/sblock]

So how is the mix of different activities set up? I get the impression from the last line that it's non-linear. I like the idea of memorable NPCs in different locations.

 

[roguerouge]

Great overview.
How is the linearity? I.e. is it basically strictly linear?
Is the investigation CoC style (red herrings, weird npcs or lots of detail) or more traditional DnD (i.e. it's basically impossible not to solve and if the PCs don't "get it" the monster will come and attack them/a "magical NPC" will show up to explain everything anyway)

[SBLOCK]
The major appeal of the adventure is definitely the locale and the surprise reveal of the BBEG. The BBEG coming to the party would basically cut out 1/3 of the adventure, so it's not written that way and I can't really see many DMs doing that. If the players don't figure it out, it's up to the DM. It's certainly available as the module is written for the town mob to blame the party and for hilarity to ensue. To be fair, I can see it taking a while to figure out, but not see having a party failing to figure out. There's a gruesome crime scene, an insane asylum, some eye witness interviews, and some stuff out on some isolated farms. But no real red herrings.
[/SBLOCK]

Hangman's Noose:
[SBLOCK]
Oh yeah, Hangman's Noose definitely requires a lot out of a DM. There's investigation, though, both of the diplomacy and clue finding kind, and monsters show up periodically. So there's stuff to do. But I bet that DMs running this are going to HOPE that the players split up, just to make the RP manageable.
[/SBLOCK]

Salvage Op:
[SBLOCK]

Oh, yeah, that was the one change that I made: that the crazy survivor was an avatar of the god of cannibalism during a time of crisis amongst the gods, as all the lesser gods of narrow portfolios do battle for "faith share." Some of the gods try to spread the good word through their avatars, but the evil ones, well, you know how they are: get rid of the competition. It was the PC's first encounter with the avatars that walked the earth and it recognized her for being an avatar too. I had BBEcrazyG have a great dying line, saying "from beneath you, it devours," and it just sat there as an omen.

[/SBLOCK]

Bit of a tangent but Paizo seems to have swung seriously into the horror school. My players haven't, historically, actually gotten scared of something, if you strip out the "isn't this creepy" stuff is there a stolid adventure here?

They totally have for the first few adventures out of the gate, simply for the reason of staying alive as a company to start out. (Horror sold well with Dungeon, evidently.) They've done real well with the exploration genre too, with one an archaeological find and a lost land for the other. Their new Crimson Throne path looks promising as well, and it's not horror-based.

I'd say yes, they work well as adventures. Burnt Offerings is screamingly funny at times and tactically challenging, while Carnival of Tears and Crown of the Kobold King are more suspense with some horror in the mix. The suspense will work on a meta-game level: resting is really not a good option and the players will realize that they're without that safety net.

 

[Dr Simon]

None of these are D&D, and some might be hard to find except on Ebay, but my choices would be:

Guamata's Vision. For RuneQuest 3rd Ed., from the Shadows on the Borderland anthology.
[sblock]
A kind of 'Children of the Corn' adventure. The setting is a remote village in an fairly rough scrubland area, where society is ruled by a pretty strict and puritanical religion (for those who know RQ we're talking Sun County). The PCs are sent to investigate a premonition by the priest Gaumata about a nest of evil growing somwhere in the land.

The background is thus: The headman of the village, whilst a young man, brutally raped a young woman who drowned herself in remorse. After leaving to train in the militia he has returned to a position of authority, but the psychic residue of the crime has taken the form of a succubus, driven to revenge itself on the village. (RQ succubi are spirit creatures that can take female or male (incubus) form). The succubus, known as The Mistress, now rules the small village. She has brought about the deaths of any who would stop her, such as the old priestess, and any natural children. She visits the menfolk at night in female form, draining Constitution. She visits the women folk in male form and impregnates them. All the children are now little monsters, although indistinguishable from humans except in their sly and viscious play. All the adults are drained and exhausted, the only 'normal' people left are the headman (who has lied about his complicity so much that he almost believes his own story), the 'wise woman' who is a terrified novice, and the young militia who are dumb teenagers kept in line by the sexual favours of the succubus.

So you have a disturbing set-up with a village where nothing is *quite* right. The PCs can't just hack their way to the solution, it requires guile and RPing as well. The adventure is left pretty much open - there are no set paths through it. But it simply ripples with atmosphere.
[/sblock]

Rogue Mistress, for Stormbringer
[sblock]
A fun romp through the multiverse. This one has some dodgy elements, but is good for mining setting ideas.

The premise has the PCs 'hired' by a demonic sorceress to find various keys to assist her rise to power. She implants them with demon hearts - if they disobey she can stop the heart, if they help her she will remove it. This is a seriously heavy-handed way of getting the PCs involved, but does lend a certain urgency and sense of injustice!

Part one involves floating islands and sky pirates, as the PCs must infiltrate another sorceress' castle to retrieve the Tenatir, a mystical being with the power of travel between planes. Turns out he is a member of the crew of the Rogue Mistress, a planes-hopping roistering pirate ship that the PCs are kind of expected to join forces with.

I don't recall the rest of the plot offhand. It's sort of a get-the-set adventure, with various relationships between the NPCs played out in the background. Apart from the heavy opening there are several other adventure-writing no-nos. There's an NPC who gets to do the cool stuff (an aspect of the Eternal Champion) and the ending is pretty much determined by a dice roll (DM of the Rings style), but the settings are cool:

After the floating islands plane, there's a plane at the end of its life and a wrecked planar vessel. The surviving crew are locked in a last fight with shapechangers who have taken over, and determining who's who is part of the fun. Oh, and the ship is alive, but also dying.

There's a plane that's a variant 17th Century England, but more could have been made of this - as the adventure stands it's pretty much a journey from one place to another, fighting hired thugs.

There's a wierd demi-plane where the PCs are turned inside-out and have to negotiate a web of energy in order to get a knife (similar to Philip Pullman's Subtle Knife, it can cut through to other worlds). Once they get it, however, the person owning it is possessed by the spirit of the knife.

There's a water-plane, which has some nice NPCs (an underwater ship of undead pirates and a race of intelligent octupi) but is pretty linear, and hack and slash.

Then there's a plane set in a futuristic world in the grip of a nuclear winter that has the feel of many 70s dystopian sci-fi films. Humans live in the last domed city (failing in power, reduced to Soylent Green for nutrition). They have technology but a fairly sinister eugenical attitude. Their enemies, the primitive but socially nicer mutants, have what the PCs need.

The finale is pretty much a set-piece back with the sorceress and the demon lord she wants to control.
[/sblock]

Probably my favourite campaign was the Enemy Within for Warhammer FRP. It's first incarnation faded away towards the end as Games Workshop gave up on its role-playing aspect. When Hogshead publishing revisited it they originally intended to beef the ending upbut sadly they too closed down before finishing it. But:

[sblock]
Probably the best 'you meet in a tavern' opening of all time. The setting reeks of atmosphere and fun NPCs, with the players getting the chance of some fun RPing early on with a flamboyant French (sorry, Bretonnian) card sharp and a snooty noble woman. Early 'encounters' include character moments like hungover coachmen as the PCs try to get on their way. Then the adventure really kicks in.

First true encounter is with some mutants that have attacked a coach. Amongst the victims of the first coach is a person who looks exactly like one of the PCs! Better yet, he's carrying a letter proclaiming him the inheritor of a fortune. Any self-respecting players chase this up, but here's the twist. The letter is a sham. The dead lookalike is a cultist responsible for abducting children for sacrifice. The PCs end up hunted by a bounty hunter who set the trap for the original, plus by cultists who wonder why he is absconding with what they think is their money. This leads into the campaign proper.

Shadows over Bogenhafen, the second part, sees the PCs in a medium town for a festival. Plenty of festival games to watch or partake in (wrestling matches, archery contests, freak shows etc.). It is the escape of a three-legged goblin from a freak show (and the subsequent hiring of the PCs to retrieve it from the sewers) that opens up the adventure. The sewer crawl is very well handled, and leads to the discovery of a secret temple (and possibly a theives guild). The adventure subsequently turns into cat and mouse between scruffy PCs vs. rich burgher cultists.

Death on the Reik, the third installment, is a glorious piece of adventure writing. It begins with the PCs gaining command of a river boat. In the style of all Traveller adventures they can then become traders but in the process uncover a centuries old mystery. Quite non-linear (and the linear aspects are quite subtle, but also not a requirement). Loads of side-quests. A castle full of mad mutants named after philosophers. A doctor who looks like John Cleese. The only downside is that there is no clear climax.

The Power Behind the Throne is good, but not the best installment. Here, the PCs must wheel and deal in one of the highest courts in the land, during another festival, in order to stop a dreadful conspiracy. The NPCs are all well drawn, although it feels a little like a re-tread of Shadows over Bogenhafen.

Something Rotten in Kislev - Hmm. Too railroady, has no relevance to the rest of the campaign.
Empire in Flames - big ideas, but written so as to reduce PC involvement to a fairly bland dungeon crawl.
[/sblock]

 

[Voadam]

I ran Banewarrens for my group. Actually, to a certain degree, it was both the capstone for that adventure and the reason why the game collapsed.
I agree that it's a good adventure, at the time it came out I think it was one of "THE" adventures everyone was talking about and running. I agree that it had a theme and a compelling background/history.
But it was also very very demanding: you need to know you're running Banewarrens before the game begins (so you can place the tower).
I found that the adventure is extremely linear. The PCs need to pull out of the dungeon at various points, and in each case there is basically a sort of ham-fisted technique for yanking them out. The adventure situation seems very fluid with lots of options and choices available AND there are a few methods that are used to give it some flexibility.
[sblock=Banewarrens Flex]The evil NPC groups can encounter the PCs at several different locations, and there are good hints and tips for how to handle meetings in various rooms.
At the time I really appreciated that, but in retrospect that flexibility didn't really provide help where it was needed (i.e. getting them into, out of then back into the dungeon on the strict schedule required by the module).[/sblock]


And [sblock=Banewarrens]the dungeon design (at least the first 3/4s before the spire is completely illogical

you're supposed to be "entering the banewarrens from below" but the traps and everything point "outward (toward where the PCs approach)". It's not only illogical, but apparent to the PCs (or at least mine) got very confused.
So the key thing that's in front of the PCs as they wander around is "this doesn't make any sense... if we're going in through the back, why are all the traps pointed at us?"
It's not like one or two traps going both ways but the whole place is constructed to be completely open from the entryway (lots of evil basically being held in what would be the lobby).
It's not a huge deal, but it's impossible to fix unless you want to redraw the map.
It would have been better if the umber hulk just tunneled into some sort of entryway and the dungeon was laid out logically from there.
​

Other stuff
Admittedly this is a mechanical point but: the Mindflayer squad should just be astral projecting to the prime. They're immortal that way, they keep all their gear, etc. There is just no reason to for them to be plane shifting. Other than the fact that the PCs would be toast.

It uses a lot of "god magic" and brute force to keep you straight on the railroad.
The DM has to arrange a kidnapping to force the PCs to leave the dungeon and go on a side trek; and the PCs are blocked from using divine divinations to find the person.

The major evil NPC group has huge amounts of resources, but only happens to deploy as level appropriate challenges; it doesn't really make sense. If they've been around for this long they probably have decent resource deployment. I think the group itself could have been toned down a lot and fit into the adventure much more cleanly, as it is it reads like a great idea jammed into the adventure in an unfortunate manner.
Their whole demi-plane didn't make a huge amount of sense to me either. I tweaked it a bit, but it seemed like most groups, not knowing exactly what they were supposed to do would wind up they'd treat it like a dungeon (i.e. clear this level then move on). So they'd wander around and alert the Evil Monster Society (forget the name) and necessarily trigger some sort of counter attack before accomplishing their mission. After all they arrive on the plane with almost no info.
A group of PCs wandering around and smacking random bosses and lieutenants would normally trigger some sort of response, but the adventure doesn't allow for that.
It's a big credulity straining mess if you get to that point, a lot of groups are going to want to take out the villains while they're napping but the adventure basically expects them to slip in, grab something plot essential and then slip out.
If they don't?
No tools really to deal with the situation.
In a fluid situation with a huge number of choices a DM needs more than a plot that's basically a single arrow pointing in one direction.

The mecha thing was... I dunno, we stopped that campaign before we got there, personally I was underwhelmed with 1) mecha in DnD 2) the final fight (or one of them) being the PCs using a giant robot against a monster.
There was a point I think when I felt like MC's gonzo everything-and-the-kitchen-sink method started to overwhelm everything. Admittedly you having too much is better than having too little, but I felt a bit like there was too little of a lot of really necessary stuff and too much "WOW this would be really neat! (however illogical).

It also makes some demands upon the game world:

• You need to have the huge spire in the middle of the city. I snuck it into hollowfaust without anyone noticing; but if you haven't got that you either have to change the dungeon in some sort of fashion (have the spire go "down" into the earth, which has a lot minor but important little repercussions)
• You need to have the monster super-society with it's own Demi-plane; depending on your cosmology that's either easy or very very hard. In fact a "society of monsters" doesn't really fit a lot of worlds (in Scarred Lands I just made it the "titan's last army" -- but that ultimately raises it's own issues
• The whole adventure is like a prequel to an epic level adventure that was never written, there's this great undefined city/lair on top of the spire where the "real evil" is being kept. I could have done without that. I appreciate that it's a neat epic seed for the future, but it gives the whole thing a bit of weird focus.

[/sblock]

I was a player, not DMing this but we went in and out at what felt natural points
[sblock] exploring and killing things, making allies, having allied lothians guard entry points, following up on leads on the surface, responding to bad guy assaults on the lothians we had left below, being betrayed, following up on the betrayals, gathering the needed stuff, using allies to get more PCs to go with us as an entry point for new players, responding to the Lothian's betraying us to go without us after a prize due to a prophecy, etc. None of it felt ham-handed to me.

I never noticed the "back in" layout mapping aspect you are talking about, even in looking back on the experience in retrospect.

Mind flayer squad, I'm not familiar with 3.0 MF AP abilities off the top of my head, I thought the BW was proof against APing inside with a link (silver cord) to outside so they had to physically enter.

Kidnapping, was that the kidnapped assitant of the loremaster woman who was replaced by a phasm spy? My memory was that we found out about the situation from one of the Pactlord agents and we rushed off to deal with the phasm to protect the loremistress then the corrupt temple holding the kidnappee. From our perspectives it was neat active plot stuff the bad guys were doing that took us in different directions. Worked well for us. The party was just two PCs, my ranger1/mnk1/wizX and a paladin, so no divine divinations used. I think we knew from the note that he was held at the temple so we went to the temple to rescue him.

We were very aware the big Vladaams were away on other major but secretive business, dealing with hungerswords, imperial politics, and fiendish things. I thought this set up opportunities for bigger foes and more plots later as we advanced in level which as we shared DMing the same campaign after finishing BW was developed to good effect.

The pactlords was a little trite for me, a society of random diverse monsters who hate humanity.

In the Quaan we were very aware of the dangers and sense of getting in over our heads. We stayed focused and avoided stuff not in the bad guy druid hut or afterwards in the exit tower. Invisibility sphere and flying, plus careful avoidance of those big tough patrols that were sent out after us. We even managed to save a ton of slaves at the end. Maybe it is just our past experiences coloring how we play, but we picked up quickly how easy it would be to get in over our heads if we tried to take on everything and the two huge fights in the hut and the tower were very climactic.

If we had chosen to do it otherwise? It would have been tough. Maybe the coatl would have led them to an escape refuge after they started getting grinded. I don't know as we did what we did.

The mecha thing was a poor idea thematically IMO, I don't want to be piloting something that fights the climactic fight in a D&D game, I want my PC to fight it himself.

The spike in the city does need to be there, hard to retrofit into existing stuff the players are familiar with. We came into Ptolus which was Greyhawk 10K years later so no problems for our game.

Demi planes are easy insertions in standard D&D, a problem in specific campaigns.

The top of the spire thing is detailed out somewhat in the big Ptolus book for campaign capstone level characters. Also we had to go there for the BW climax scene destroying the hand with the shardstaff.
[/sblock]

In any event, the module also left great material to work with for later campaign events, high level evil noble antagonists, unleashed evils, relations with the church and arcane society.

 

[Graf]

roguerouge, thanks for the extra info! Much obliged.

Yeah, how you handled Salvage Op would be the way that I'd like to if I run it again. Something with a tighter connection to ongoing events.

Bit of a tangent but Paizo seems to have swung seriously into the horror school. My players haven't, historically, actually gotten scared of something, if you strip out the "isn't this creepy" stuff is there a stolid adventure here?

They totally have for the first few adventures out of the gate, simply for the reason of staying alive as a company to start out. (Horror sold well with Dungeon, evidently.)

I had not heard this. Interesting.

They've done real well with the exploration genre too, with one an archaeological find and a lost land for the other. Their new Crimson Throne path looks promising as well, and it's not horror-based.

That might be a lot of fun; especially if they get fan conversions going.

The suspense will work on a meta-game level: resting is really not a good option and the players will realize that they're without that safety net.

It may just be me, but I've found that "adventures with deadlines and running clocks" get irritating for people quickly.
I know it was a factor in Age of Worms that wound up being "unfun" as opposed to "suspenseful".
It -may- just have been an artifact of the item creation rules in 3.5 but people were always unhappy with being rushed through stuff.
Maybe that won't be a problem with 4e.

None of these are D&D, ...

Even better!

Guamata's Vision. For RuneQuest 3rd Ed., from the Shadows on the Borderland anthology.
[sblock]
A kind of 'Children of the Corn' adventure. The setting is a remote village in an fairly rough scrubland area, where society is ruled by a pretty strict and puritanical religion (for those who know RQ we're talking Sun County). The PCs are sent to investigate a premonition by the priest Gaumata about a nest of evil growing somwhere in the land.

The background is thus: The headman of the village, whilst a young man, brutally raped a young woman who drowned herself in remorse. After leaving to train in the militia he has returned to a position of authority, but the psychic residue of the crime has taken the form of a succubus, driven to revenge itself on the village. (RQ succubi are spirit creatures that can take female or male (incubus) form). The succubus, known as The Mistress, now rules the small village. She has brought about the deaths of any who would stop her, such as the old priestess, and any natural children. She visits the menfolk at night in female form, draining Constitution. She visits the women folk in male form and impregnates them. All the children are now little monsters, although indistinguishable from humans except in their sly and viscious play. All the adults are drained and exhausted, the only 'normal' people left are the headman (who has lied about his complicity so much that he almost believes his own story), the 'wise woman' who is a terrified novice, and the young militia who are dumb teenagers kept in line by the sexual favours of the succubus.

So you have a disturbing set-up with a village where nothing is *quite* right. The PCs can't just hack their way to the solution, it requires guile and RPing as well. The adventure is left pretty much open - there are no set paths through it. But it simply ripples with atmosphere.
[/sblock]

This sounds excellent, if a little bit adult in theme.
You've given so much detail I almost feel like I could run a game just from your summary.
Thanks!

Rogue Mistress, for Stormbringer
[sblock]
A fun romp through the multiverse. This one has some dodgy elements, but is good for mining setting ideas.

The premise has the PCs 'hired' by a demonic sorceress to find various keys to assist her rise to power. She implants them with demon hearts - if they disobey she can stop the heart, if they help her she will remove it. This is a seriously heavy-handed way of getting the PCs involved, but does lend a certain urgency and sense of injustice!

Part one involves floating islands and sky pirates, as the PCs must infiltrate another sorceress' castle to retrieve the Tenatir, a mystical being with the power of travel between planes. Turns out he is a member of the crew of the Rogue Mistress, a planes-hopping roistering pirate ship that the PCs are kind of expected to join forces with.

I don't recall the rest of the plot offhand. It's sort of a get-the-set adventure, with various relationships between the NPCs played out in the background. Apart from the heavy opening there are several other adventure-writing no-nos. There's an NPC who gets to do the cool stuff (an aspect of the Eternal Champion) and the ending is pretty much determined by a dice roll (DM of the Rings style), but the settings are cool:

After the floating islands plane, there's a plane at the end of its life and a wrecked planar vessel. The surviving crew are locked in a last fight with shapechangers who have taken over, and determining who's who is part of the fun. Oh, and the ship is alive, but also dying.

There's a plane that's a variant 17th Century England, but more could have been made of this - as the adventure stands it's pretty much a journey from one place to another, fighting hired thugs.

There's a wierd demi-plane where the PCs are turned inside-out and have to negotiate a web of energy in order to get a knife (similar to Philip Pullman's Subtle Knife, it can cut through to other worlds). Once they get it, however, the person owning it is possessed by the spirit of the knife.

There's a water-plane, which has some nice NPCs (an underwater ship of undead pirates and a race of intelligent octupi) but is pretty linear, and hack and slash.

Then there's a plane set in a futuristic world in the grip of a nuclear winter that has the feel of many 70s dystopian sci-fi films. Humans live in the last domed city (failing in power, reduced to Soylent Green for nutrition). They have technology but a fairly sinister eugenical attitude. Their enemies, the primitive but socially nicer mutants, have what the PCs need.

The finale is pretty much a set-piece back with the sorceress and the demon lord she wants to control.
[/sblock]

This sounds like it might be good for Planescape (or Everway).

Probably my favourite campaign was the Enemy Within for Warhammer FRP. It's first incarnation faded away towards the end as Games Workshop gave up on its role-playing aspect. When Hogshead publishing revisited it they originally intended to beef the ending upbut sadly they too closed down before finishing it. But:

[sblock]
Probably the best 'you meet in a tavern' opening of all time. The setting reeks of atmosphere and fun NPCs, with the players getting the chance of some fun RPing early on with a flamboyant French (sorry, Bretonnian) card sharp and a snooty noble woman. Early 'encounters' include character moments like hungover coachmen as the PCs try to get on their way. Then the adventure really kicks in.

First true encounter is with some mutants that have attacked a coach. Amongst the victims of the first coach is a person who looks exactly like one of the PCs! Better yet, he's carrying a letter proclaiming him the inheritor of a fortune. Any self-respecting players chase this up, but here's the twist. The letter is a sham. The dead lookalike is a cultist responsible for abducting children for sacrifice. The PCs end up hunted by a bounty hunter who set the trap for the original, plus by cultists who wonder why he is absconding with what they think is their money. This leads into the campaign proper.

Shadows over Bogenhafen, the second part, sees the PCs in a medium town for a festival. Plenty of festival games to watch or partake in (wrestling matches, archery contests, freak shows etc.). It is the escape of a three-legged goblin from a freak show (and the subsequent hiring of the PCs to retrieve it from the sewers) that opens up the adventure. The sewer crawl is very well handled, and leads to the discovery of a secret temple (and possibly a theives guild). The adventure subsequently turns into cat and mouse between scruffy PCs vs. rich burgher cultists.

Death on the Reik, the third installment, is a glorious piece of adventure writing. It begins with the PCs gaining command of a river boat. In the style of all Traveller adventures they can then become traders but in the process uncover a centuries old mystery. Quite non-linear (and the linear aspects are quite subtle, but also not a requirement). Loads of side-quests. A castle full of mad mutants named after philosophers. A doctor who looks like John Cleese. The only downside is that there is no clear climax.

The Power Behind the Throne is good, but not the best installment. Here, the PCs must wheel and deal in one of the highest courts in the land, during another festival, in order to stop a dreadful conspiracy. The NPCs are all well drawn, although it feels a little like a re-tread of Shadows over Bogenhafen.

Something Rotten in Kislev - Hmm. Too railroady, has no relevance to the rest of the campaign.
Empire in Flames - big ideas, but written so as to reduce PC involvement to a fairly bland dungeon crawl.
[/sblock]

I think this adventure is famous.
[sblock=My only concern would be that... ]Critical Miss has ruined the impact of the barge scene completely.
Wallis' response? Classic.[/sblock]
Thanks for reminding me to try to pick up a copy!

Re:Banewarrens
I should admit that, due to some side quests, my Players' Characters' were a few levels higher than they should have been by the time they started to get seriously into the Banewarrens. Which made chucks of it painfully clunky.
And I'm not saying it's not got the potential for massive awesomeness. I think it's just very fiddly. A lot of the places where it shines: like a ridged progression of reasonably well calibrated encounters to get you from level 5 to level 12 (or 14, I forget) would be lost if you had to convert. And a lot of points where the DM could use assistance broadly speaking, in terms of plot and story and pacing and helping to motivate the PCs, aren't really well covered.

I was a player, not DMing this but we went in and out at what felt natural points
[sblock] exploring and killing things, making allies, having allied lothians guard entry points, following up on leads on the surface, responding to bad guy assaults on the lothians we had left below, being betrayed, following up on the betrayals, gathering the needed stuff, using allies to get more PCs to go with us as an entry point for new players, responding to the Lothian's betraying us to go without us after a prize due to a prophecy, etc. None of it felt ham-handed to me.

Your DM's Kung-Fu is mightier than mine.
No idea what lothians are... Maybe that's an added feature if you run Banewarrens in Plotus. I actually toyed with setting up something similar with the NPC group of TN necromancers who ruled the city the Banewarrens was set in.

[sblock]I never noticed the "back in" layout mapping aspect you are talking about, even in looking back on the experience in retrospect.[/sblock]

[sblock]Fair enough.
I may be just a bit sensitive about it. [/sblock]

[sblock]Mind flayer squad, I'm not familiar with 3.0 MF AP abilities off the top of my head, I thought the BW was proof against APing inside with a link (silver cord) to outside so they had to physically enter.[/sblock]

[sblock]That would be a good justification. But the adventure, as I recall, didn't mention it. I could be wrong though. At the time I remember going over it a few times.
To be honest, as I mentioned above, the pcs were a few levels higher that they were supposed to be, and they'd picked up some pretty weird, semi-powerful items. And a few of them were "deft" optimizers. So the MF squad was barely a speed bump.
Having them pop up as hazy figures with silver cords, get smooshed in half a round and disappear the second they went negative, was my solution.
They weren't a "real" threat (at one point I think they ambushed the wizard and he took out half of them and then flew off) but they added tension.
The players? Not thrilled with my choice. Especially after I started lowering the XP for subsequent encounters.[/sblock]

[sblock]Kidnapping, was that the kidnapped assitant of the loremaster woman who was replaced by a phasm spy? My memory was that we found out about the situation from one of the Pactlord agents and we rushed off to deal with the phasm to protect the loremistress then the corrupt temple holding the kidnappee. From our perspectives it was neat active plot stuff the bad guys were doing that took us in different directions. Worked well for us. The party was just two PCs, my ranger1/mnk1/wizX and a paladin, so no divine divinations used. I think we knew from the note that he was held at the temple so we went to the temple to rescue him.[/sblock]

[sblock]I remember the kidnapping, and the phantasm. I remember them as separate events but I may be confused. The kidnapping was supposed to be obvious.
There was no loremaster, or assistant in the adveture. They were supposed to kidnap someone; ideally someone important enough to the group that the group would feel compelled to leave the dungeon. I think the person I kidnapped probably wasn't important enough, at least one pc was like "good, he was annoying, lets keep going".
Yeah. Depending on the group not having divine divinations would either be a huge deal or not even a bit relevant. Which I don't love really as a design mechanic. In his own articles MC's stated that you shouldn't unilaterally take away PC toys to make the adventure plot work. [/sblock]

[sblock]The pactlords was a little trite for me, a society of random diverse monsters who hate humanity.[/sblock]

[sblock]It's kinda like the Legion of Evil Super Monsters. It'd work for a few games, but as written it's a touch 4-color.[/sblock]

[sblock]In the Quaan we were very aware of the dangers and sense of getting in over our heads. We stayed focused and avoided stuff not in the bad guy druid hut or afterwards in the exit tower. Invisibility sphere and flying, plus careful avoidance of those big tough patrols that were sent out after us. We even managed to save a ton of slaves at the end. Maybe it is just our past experiences coloring how we play, but we picked up quickly how easy it would be to get in over our heads if we tried to take on everything and the two huge fights in the hut and the tower were very climactic.[/sblock]
If we had chosen to do it otherwise? It would have been tough. Maybe the coatl would have led them to an escape refuge after they started getting grinded. I don't know as we did what we did.

[sblock]All of the Scarred Lands, the world I was running, is very "you're over head, roll for initiative"; so that probably had the impact of completely dulling my player's sense of "run away/don't run away".
But in their defense, since they were a few levels higher, the PCs (after one encounter when they were literally asleep) really did systematically romp through a lot of it.
Like I said, I pumped the beholder up a bit; he was taking maybe 2-3 actions a round, and two PCs still stomped him.

Other than being fairly dangerous there really wasn't a whole lot of ways to "push them around Quaan". I.e. You didn't know much/anything about it before you got there. The various sights aren't particularly informative, (do you go to the tower? the big house? there's nothing really informative to tell you which is important); no NPCs to interact with.
Scouting using magic is really your best option, but my party didn't have a lot of invisibly related scouting magic.

Obviously your group handled it well.
My flubbing it was probably related to a lack of DMing skills. But, generally speaking, I think that I'm not terrible. This section of the adventure could have been constructed in such a way as to be easier for the inept DM.

I remember not a Coatl.
[/sblock]

[sblock]The spike in the city does need to be there, hard to retrofit into existing stuff the players are familiar with. We came into Ptolus which was Greyhawk 10K years later so no problems for our game.[/sblock]

[sblock]That's an eligant solution.
I think that the adventure goes for "oh, wow" with good foreshadowing of the pillar and that's cool. It's just that it would be a little bit better if there was an "out" for people whose campaign that didn't work for.
Even something like, the pillar is actually pushed "out of the plane" so the top half is sitting in the ethereal (or the astral, or whatever). Same map, slightly different side effects.[/sblock]

[sblock]The top of the spire thing is detailed out somewhat in the big Ptolus book for campaign capstone level characters. Also we had to go there for the BW climax scene destroying the hand with the shardstaff.
[/sblock]

Good to know.
[sblock]Isn't that spot where you destroy the hand still the "basement" or something? There's some sort of epic level top of the spire thing above (that you can't get to from the Banewarrens itself).
A DM can handwave that away of course.[/sblock]

In any event, the module also left great material to work with for later campaign events, high level evil noble antagonists, unleashed evils, relations with the church and arcane society.

Very true.
And it's "nicely placed" for the high heroic, mid-paragon tier (to use the currently in vogue 4e terminology). You get a simple encounter that leads to an interesting dungeon, and scale up into some good mid-level stuff.
[sblock=Of course in 4e]Plane hopping in 4e is apparently going to start at lower levels though, so "Quaan as a first planar experience" may be less impressive.[/sblock]

 

[eric mcloins]

There's a question I've been wondering about for a while that is basically a more specific version of the core question of this thread. I was thinking about starting a new thread for it but there's already multiple "Rate these adventures!" threads and I this question seems to work well in this thread.

Specifically, I'm wondering if Green Ronin's Bleeding Edge series lives up to its explicit goals of having complex plots and more dynamic NPC interactions (and looking for more general feedback on them as well). Basically, what do people think of this series, especially as it relates to the larger goals of this thread?

I have #4 but didn't realize at the time I bought it that the series was a connected plot, not just a series of unrelated adventures with similar design goals. So I'm reluctant to read through it. And anyway, I'd ideally like to hear from folks who've played in or run them.

Actually, not really. The adventures are definitely not spectacular in that sense, IMO. Each has some cool idea, but in some of the "coolness" is summed in: "You know how zombies are always weak and slow? Hey, let's make them stronger and faster".

The adventures are not bad, they just don't deliver what they promise. I think #1 and #4 are the best of the lot. #3 is ok. Don't bother with #2 and #5.

There is no storyline to the whole series. The adventures are more like scenarios that can be connected, i.e. you start the next adventure in the same location you finished this one.

 

[meomwt]

For a flavour of how The Grey Citadel plays, check out my Session Reports for the adventure when I DM'ed it for my group back in 2005 (I hadn't realised it was that long ago!).

Also worth checking out is the (slightly longer) Sparky's Grey Citadel Campaign Log which shows how a different DM can approach the same module. IIRC, there's more RP in Sparky's game than there was in mine, but the two groups ended up having a great time.

I was part-way through Lost City of Barakus (and my session logs are a week or so behind ) when we swapped systems (and DM's) to have a run with RuneQuest for a while.

The game had a couple of additional scenarios added in to the city section, these are partly thematic and partly for foreshadowing purposes (I was hoping to follow up LCoB with Banewarrens, hence The Spire located about a mile out of town). Logs, such as they are, found here .