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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 4146661" data-attributes="member: 2209">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.</blockquote>

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