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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pseudopsyche" data-source="post: 4638950" data-attributes="member: 54600">I ran the Eberron conversion of H1 to start my first ongoing campaign (in any edition).  My players had voiced an interest in story over hack-and-slash, so I knew from the outset that I wouldn't run it as written.  They managed to stumble upon Splug in their second encounter in the keep, so he directed them straight towards the crypts.  The PCs, two tieflings, a dragonborn, an eladrin in a setting where I said all three races were extraordinarily rare, talked their way past the first encounter of hobgoblins, posing as more of Kalarel's henchmen.  The hobgoblins, of course, directed them straight to the cathedral.  They slogged through the trap room, which ran so poorly I just excised the room of undead immediately afterwards.  The encounter against the underpriest was fun, but after Kalarel teleported into the magic circle in the final encounter, the eladrin wizard promptly thunderwaved him into the portal.  That encounter had begun to grind anyway, so I was happy to see it end. (I had already scaled the encounter back significantly to give four level 2 PCs a chance.)The players also seemed glad to be done with the dungeon crawling.  I'm definitely glad that this group in particular skipped half the encounters in the keep.  In hindsight, I wish I had done more to bring the dungeon to life and for the PCs to find more story inside.  One of the best encounters I ran was almost completely improvised.  The PCs had camped outside the entrance and heard a hobgoblin party (from the barracks room) approaching with a bunch of slaves to be sacrificed.  The PCs got to ambush the hobgoblins and roleplay what to do with the rescued villagers.</blockquote>

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