Awesome Free Adventure for PCs of level 12-14

[Quickleaf]

I've once again got something to share with ENWorlders. Before, I've put out a DM Cheat Sheet and a conversion of Dragon Mountain. This time it's something entirely of my own creation...

BEAST OF BECHAEUX is a ~50-page mystery adventure designed for 4-6 characters of 12th-14th level, inspired by legends of the Beast of Gévaudan. It revolves around the PCs' hunt for a type of lycanthrope amidst political scheming to control a borderland territory. The premise is that the PCs are sent at the behest of the King to secure the fealty of Duke Vandahar of Bechaeux; in turn, the Duke agrees only if the PCs stop the Beast.

Over the lifespan of 4e there's been (rightful) criticism of the adventure offerings. Thankfully the War of the Burning Sky and Zeitgeist from ENWorld, along with Wolfgang Baur's patronage projects, the Fourthcore adventures, and several hidden but excellent Dungeon adventures have provided some good adventure options. I hope BEAST OF BECHAEUX can add to those.

I wanted to take something very story-driven, a real meaty mystery, and provide the players with multiple strategies toward multiple endings, to make it really open-ended...using character questions, a timeline of events, multiple end scenarios, and an event-based flowchart. I also wanted to provide a 4e adventure where combat wasn't the default solution, and roleplaying, exploration, and skill challenge encounters see heavy use. It's the ways I've adopted the skill challenge system to handle things like scaling a waterfall, negotiating with a jerkass noble, or breaking a hag's curse that really make me happy with how my first draft has turned out.

I'm putting the last touches on my first draft and really struggling with a puzzle design, but I will upload it in less than 24 hours.

Feel free to ask any questions in the meantime

 

[Hussar]

Very cool. Can't wait to see it.

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks. It's almost ready!

Just working on a tricky (optional) encounter that involves the classic "early meeting with the monster."
What makes it tricky is if the conclusion is forgone that the monster gets away, what are the stakes in having the encounter at all? My best idea so far is to make the measure of success how much the PCs can learn about the monster during the brief encounter, rather than catching the monster.

 

[Sadras]

What makes it tricky is if the conclusion is forgone that the monster gets away, what are the stakes in having the encounter at all? My best idea so far is to make the measure of success how much the PCs can learn about the monster during the brief encounter, rather than catching the monster.

Yup, great idea. I'm quite interested for two reasons:

1. I have a 4e adventure, also for paragon which I quietly, slowly work on and I'd be keen to see how you put it all together; and
2. Even though my group currently plays Next, I like mixing and melding classical adventures with new, since we have not played many of the old school modules and I feel like we have missed out somewhat. I recently blended Elwyn's Sanctuary with The Temple of Elemental Evil and my own take on things, and as for yours, I'm already seeing a blend with The Beast of Radlebb Woods (which I know very little of for now).

I've already gone over some of your investigative skill challenges you have posted which I quite liked, which assisted me in modelling a skill challenge for two of the lower levels of The Temple of Elemental Evil (as I didn't want them to dungeon crawl the whole thing). So I used a skill challenge which made Time as a focus, so even if they failed on a roll, it would cost them more time units which they could use Surges (Hit Dice), Damage and Spell Usage to mitigate to a degree, reflecting their urgency and perhaps recklessness in the combat and exploration. Essentially we never rolled out the combat allowing us to cover more ground while the PCs decided how to expend their energies...

I then only kept the most interesting rooms as point of interest to inspect which also cost time units of course I rolled for wandering encounters and again - this would cost time units, mitigated by Surge costs, Spells...etc (sort of a fail forward mechanic)
Reason for the urgency being that the BBEG was performing a ritual (activating the nodes and summoning elementals from the various planes) which the PCs were aware of.
Hope my rambling is making some sense.

Anyways, just wanted to say thank you and keep up the great work

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] Thanks! As far as I know, the Beast of Radlebb was never an official adventure, though I did find a nice homebrew adventure for BD&D: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B63TLs3TewqyMWJmYmI5MGEtNTljYy00MTc3LTgyZDctMjcxOTY5MmRhYjIx/preview

Just putting the finishing touches on my first draft. Think I'll just leave the encounter I was mentioning as "design-in-progress" so I can get feedback (and you can get the adventure!).

This is also for my home game, so needless to say my players shouldn't peek