Any tips for Pyramid of Shadows? Any handouts?

[mattcolville]

I've been running this module for several weeks now. Here's what I've learned.

This is a very Gygaxian dungeon, moreso than anything WotC has put out so far. By that I mean, it's a ton of discreet encounters, each with no rhyme or reason and little (but not "no") thought given to how these bad guys in Room 15 deal with these bad guys in Room 16.

The upshot of this is that if your players are used to the encounters having a larger context, they may find themselves lost at sea here. There's almost never any answer to the question "why are we fighting these guys" other than "they're in the way." That's fine, as long as that's what your players are used to.

 

[MrMyth]

Crap. Here I was, going to play a wizard.

Isn't that the ideal wizard environment? Enemies forced to group up, corridors easily blocked by control effects, etc? It isn't so completely claustrophobic your friends will be in the way, but I'd say a dungeon environment is pretty much everything a wizard could ask for.

 

[Daern]

Pyramid of Shadows

I'm running this module for a party of 4th level heroes this weekend. Its dropping into a sort of complicated campaign that has recently made use of the DCC "Legacy of Savage Kings" which features a Witch Queen who has long been a villain behind the scenes. Now she has fled into the "Prison of the Gods" and the party will find her head on the wall!
This is going to be good as the architect of so many schemes in the campaign will now be an ally/guide/magic item in the adventure!
In other conversion notes, I will of course be toning everything down for lower level, and even removing the entire 2nd level for the purpose of timing...
I will be using a lot of Mr Myth's great ideas: the dreams and books and especially the "seasonal" themes for the Shards of the Witch Queen.
Now I just gotta find a weird shrunken head type prop.

 

[Beckett]

Isn't that the ideal wizard environment? Enemies forced to group up, corridors easily blocked by control effects, etc? It isn't so completely claustrophobic your friends will be in the way, but I'd say a dungeon environment is pretty much everything a wizard could ask for.

The wizard in my campaign proved to be a very handy asset. The party was also glad to have had a cleric along.

As Matthew said, it's very Gygaxian. There are blocks of related monsters (where sometimes the relationship is they didn't fit with any other group), but it allows a variety of monsters across the dungeon. There is room (and suggestions) for interacting with the various groups, but if you want to go this route, decide early so you can do the extra work needed. My group just enjoyed the tactical challenge, with each area having some trap or feature to differentiate it from other encounters.

 

[DarkMasterBR]

Well, to be honest, I spent the whole afternoon reading through it, trying to adapt to my tastes, but I just gave up.

This adventure is a mess. It's monsters are completely unconnected, there is not a single small faint trace of logic going on here and the pyramid just screams for boring fight after boring fight.

I just can't bear to have my players to play something like that. I know some people like this kind of adventure, but I like my encounters to have a reason and a logic behind them.


(this is not meant to troll, I'm sorry if I offended someone, but I just spend literally 8 hours trying to make this adventure more to my tastes, and failed completely, giving up and starting a new adventure from scratch)

 

[mattcolville]

This module is exactly what I was talking about when I said that Dungeons might be the problem with 4E.

If I were to do it over again, I'd probably start the campaign with rumors of a buried city and put all sorts of plot seeds down there. So that every couple of encounters, the PCs would find an important artifact or prisoner or whatnot, to give something approaching context to the encounters.

I think we need adventures that more satisfactorily answer the question "why do I, as a player, care about this encounter?" Beyond "they're between me and the Boss."

 

[Unwise]

I too, gave up on making this adventure work. It has all of the logical consistency of an early Fighting Fantasy game. It really is an example of the bad-old-days of adventure design. "This room has dwarves you have to fight...oh, krakens are cool, lets put one of them in the next room...oh, maybe some ents in this one...vampires, everyone likes vampires, but just to be different, these ones have dire-bunny servants".

Remember the old days of "a powerful insane wizards made a dungeon and captured or enticed monsters to come live in it. Then he put treasures all the way through it and charges adventurers admission fees", the writer of this module certainly does.

Similar to the above poster, I have chopped it up seperate encounters that I might sprinkle around much larger geographic area. I don't mind the enounters, I just hate them being right next to each other.

For all that this module got my panties in a bunch, I have to say I would likely run it if not for the fact that H1 and H2 modules were both pretty much dungeon crawls. My group is pretty much burnt out on dungeons and lots of linked fights.