Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 4145496" data-attributes="member: 3087">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.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) 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.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". I strongly agree with this statement. I have that adventure already. I'll take a look at it again.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. 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?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.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).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 stuffAdmittedly 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: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>[/sblock]This one sounds like a hidden gem.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?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.</blockquote>

Verification