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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 4150199" data-attributes="member: 3087">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.I had not heard this. Interesting.That might be a lot of fun; especially if they get fan conversions going.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.Even better!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!This sounds like it might be good for Planescape (or Everway).I think this adventure is famous.[sblock=My only concern would be that... ]Critical Miss has <a href="http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jameswallisruined3.html" target="_blank">ruined the impact of the barge scene completely</a>.Wallis' response? <a href="http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jameswallisreplies1.html" target="_blank">Classic.</a>[/sblock]Thanks for reminding me to try to pick up a copy!Re:BanewarrensI 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.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]Fair enough.I may be just a bit sensitive about it. [/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]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]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]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]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]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]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]</blockquote>

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