Castle Maure - Not All That

[ThirdWizard]

As a GM, the module is as cool as you want it. If most of the encounters are boring, then skip those or handwave them off and focus the party's attention where you want to focus their attention.

I cannot understand this mentality. That isn't a complement toward the module. If most of the encounters are boring, then it isn't up to the DM to make them fun. It's up to the DM to not run the module and find a module that isn't boring. Just because a good DM can turn a poor module into a good one doesn't mean that a poor module is actually good.

I think a lot of the older-style, hack-n-slash modules don't "work" anymore in part because of the aspects of the new rules that tend to slow combat a bit. Back in the days of 1st and 2nd editions, combat was often a bit more free-flowing. Those 4 rooms with the standard gnolls that you had to go through to get to the "cool encounter" took about 2 minutes each. There was no worrying about AoOs, threatened squares, etc. You rushed in, rolled the dice, and chopped things up. That's why you could have dungeons full of critters and it didn't necessarily slow the game down.

I can agree with that, even if I don't have a desire to go back to the old days. The last dungeon I ran (I always write my own adventures) was around 8 rooms total and took practically the entire session. This was around 6 months ago.

 

[Erik Mona]

Let me state it again: my players became bored with the adventure, they didn't get their asses handed to them because they were "videogamers" (which they are not).

I didn't mean to suggest that they did. I agree that keeping the players interested is one of the greatest challenges of running a big adventure. This is true of "Maure Castle" just as it is true of Night Below, Dragon Mountain, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Sometimes, the players get bored. From my perspective, as it relates to "Maure Castle," that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you start to see yawns from the players, it's time to move the campaign somewhere else.

--Erik

 

[Numion]

I can keep you updated if you want to know more.

Please do! From your brief description our players have similar qualities

My players and I called it quits after the grande melee in the chapel in upper left corner. I used the available NPCs and some refugees from upper levels to good efficiency and my PCs had to flee. One was left behind though - the vampiric demon had dominated his character earlier, and the player who was protecting him from control with circle of protection from evil (no domination within the circle) forgot what he was supposed to be doing and fled, at which point the domination kicked back in, and the remaining character decided to stay and hang out with his new master

 

[Krypter]

I think the problem is that most adventures are written, and read by the DM, from an "omniscient" point-of-view. They're fun for the DM but boring for the players because the players never see the cool machinery behind the set unless they're exceptionally clever and investigative. Some might say that this is as it should be; only the smart are rewarded, but in practice this means 75% of people (just pulling a number out of my behind) are disappointed because they didn't figure out that "Lord Banff is actually Ziggi the were-squirrel" and that the real treasure was hidden behind the third-left column in pantry #5B. Even if they discover all the hidden clues and pointers, many players will never connect all the intricate plot points together, and some don't even enjoy doing that. The grand story of Eli Tomorast may be compelling as a novel or when read in its entirety as an adventure, but not so fun when you're actually killing the 452nd gnoll in his sub-ante-aqua-chamber.

There were many adventures I enjoyed reading but which I found mind-numbingly boring when I actually played them. RttToEE springs to mind.

 

[Bagpuss]

I seriously wondered if I got a different version of Dungeon when I read Manure Castle (someone had to do the obvious pun). Everyone was raving about it put it struck me as completely dreadful from the first door onwards.

Spoilers follow

The Unopenable Doors..

The following is the player information...

These massive doors are each 4 feet wide and made of 2-foot thick iron and wood. The doors and floor in front of them are scraped and scratched, as if someone had unsuccessfully tried to force them open. It seems that they open inward, but even that it debatable.

I'm a little curious as to how the players know how thick closed doors are by looking at only the outside, but lets, let that one slide.

The doors are described as scraped and scratched, yet in the DM's info he's told, spells or items that cause damage merely rebound off and do no harm to the doors.

Opening spells like passwall fail on the door (no mention if they would work okay on the wall just to the side). So unless you give them them a MINOR ARTIFACT (Silver Key of Portals) or they use a wish/miracle or go astral they are stuck.

"Clever players may hit upon the idea of setting up camp near the Doors and waiting for someone to come out."

Clever? Or if they get bored of banging their heads against a dead end.

Anyway assuming the PC's wait and don't give in and find a better adventure to do, some Gnolls leave the dungeon in 1d6 hours.

Now you have to hope one of these gnolls is kind enough to hold the door open for the PC's as the doors cannot be jammed, held or barred open by anyone other than the opener. The again maybe these gnolls have some way of getting back in with them, no mention of it in there description, but since they are carrying an letter and are off to bring someone back I guess they must have a copy of the minor artifact (Silver Key of Portals) on them as well, for the return trip.

The rest of the first floor seems just a collection of encounters where the DM gets to rub in the fact Mordenkainen's been and knicked all the good stuff already. That or the DM gets to read about what the room was used for 1000 years ago, but now its empty, or has X random monster living in it. This carries on until the party get killed by a bunch of Bordak's.

Seemed an entire waste of the issue for me.

I'm glad some folks enjoyed it however.

 

[MerricB]

I've noted before that adventure background that the PCs can't find out is basically just dribble. There is the occasional bit of background that helps the DM in running an adventure... but that's pretty rare.

Another aspect that is worth considering is how much boxed text the players can take... I tend to agree with David Noonan - you only get a couple of sentences. D&D works best as a dialogue.

One of my all-time favourite encounters is the magic mirror in the 3.5e Basic Game. It's not a perceived threat, and the PCs can keep coming back to it to have chats.

Arley the Weaver from Maure Castle is another of those wonderful inventions. It is presented as a shop encounter, so a dialogue begins.

Prisoners tend to be a good way of getting information as well. I'll note both Obmi in G3, and the prisoners in The Sunless Citadel as examples of this.

Cheers!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Please do! From your brief description our players have similar qualities

Well, to summarize a bit more:
(There are a lot of spoilers in this message. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading.)










Due to a suggestion in a previous thread, I implimented an organization in my game called Barracade. Basically, they are a semi-secret organization of like minded adventurers. They were originally formed (in my version of Greyhawk history) as a support mechanism for Mordenkainen and the Citadel of Eight. They have a somewhat tenuous backing of Mord himself, so they have a lot of money and resources.

Basically, they were created as an OOC reason why the party was able to readily get their hands on and sell powerful magic items as well as get new party members when their old ones died. They take a monthly fee from the PCs and they will teleport bodies out of dungeons, raise them for free and teleport them back. They will as well replace party members, teleporting their replacements directly into the dungeon to help the party.

As a side note, they were created because the PCs average 1 death every 2 sessions, so each time we spent half of the sessions role playing their looking for a new party member and the adventure was going nowhere.

At any rate, the guild dropped them the hint that there may be some notes written by a powerful wizard deep under Maure Castle and suggested that the guild would pay handsomely if someone was to acquire them. The PCs, having nothing better to do, decided to go.

They were given the key (provided to the guild, of course, by Mord), and the PCs went into the Castle, managed to almost completely skip the first level, bypassing almost every monster (including the golem, as they never even entered the room) and found the stairs going down. After complaining that whoever designed the dungeon was stupid as there were too many empty rooms with no enemies.

They are currently 1 level down, they found the stairs going deeper, but are a bit wary of them, they are exploring here first.

So far, they've basically killed something like 60% of the enemies on the floor without really blinking, they open the doors, fireball 3 times then move onward.

They let the Ranger go, as they had reduced her to exactly 0 hit points after 2 rounds and she surrendered. She made an appeal to their good natures to let her go. They don't have good natures, so after a bit of our of character discussion about whether or not she HAD to be evil since she attacked them first (after they kicked down her door unexpectedly). They finally decided to let her go, as long as she handed all of her possessions over to them. After all, they couldn't be deprived of their loot. If she has refused, they would have killed her, so she relented.

They fell easily for the room with the hand that communicated with Eli, he told them to go into the boarded up room because there was treasure in there. They tried to get in, but using a tried and true method they "discovered" a while back, they took an hour to remove the boards on purpose making as much noise as possible. The idea behind this tactic is that if there are enemies on the other side of the door, they will start casting spells to buff them up when they hear the noise of the first board being wrenched off. An hour later, all the buffs will have worn off and the enemy will be easy again.

Instead they managed to summon all the guards and the guard captain in the other room. They managed to kill all the guards and the guard captain (as a side note, she is listed as CR 12 and as a 12th level fighter, but she has 10th level hit points and BAB) with a couple of fireballs.

They fought the slow shadows in the "smoke filled room", who managed to kill the party cleric who was being played as an NPC for the session. When the player was told about it afterwards, he was not happy about it. He had to get a True Res because of coming back as undead and not having a body left. The guild gave him a discount on it, but the player still wants the party to pay for it since he died saving their butts(and he died mostly due to the 3 fireballs the party threw blindly into the room while he was in it).

That was the end of it so far.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

snipped very well-reasoned, interesting post

Great points, but to go on a tangent...since you've brought one WG module into the land of 3.5, howzabout Isle of the Ape...? King Kong is coming soon to a theater near you, after all...

 

[tassander]

I've noted before that adventure background that the PCs can't find out is basically just dribble. There is the occasional bit of background that helps the DM in running an adventure... but that's pretty rare.

my sentiment exactly. when I work a secret into my campaigns I do so in order to have the players find out about it! The later the better, as that's what keeps suspension high, but a constant flow of information, the sense of exploration are what make an adventure great.

Just to give another example: We just stopped playing RttToEE. The players worked with the temples, they found out most of the secrets, they researched the major artifacts, the history of the place, they spent a whole session discussing with the oracle, they traded with a durergar-merchant in the dungeon... Yet we stopped playing. That just was not enough. Very soon in the adventure it becomes very clear, what the cult is all about: freeing Tharizdun. Basically the master plan is all over the moathouse. The players even suspected that sooner or later the cult would return to the original temple.

The key to a good adventure is NOT just an interesting background, the key is finding a good way to CONVEY this background. To convey way it so that the players are rewarded for good RP and investigation, diplomacy and clever play - and that such behaviour makes the adventure MORE interesting!!! at the same time I expect a good adventure to give this info out "by itself" to a certain degree - frex, it is possible to play RttToEE without ever talking to anybody, just drawing your sword on page 1 and putting it away on the last page.
That is bad design.
A ready made adventure should NOT force the DM to do all the work I had to do in order to change RttToEE into something vaguely similar to a RPexperience. the reason I turn to ready made adventures is that I do not have the time to do all this work.

Compare the Whispering Cairn: the players are more or less FORCED to RP, to investigate. Even the second adventure in the new adventure path, three faces of evil (?), has a plot element that forces players to think: it is absolutely clear that they cannot kill the mine workers, that they have to plan. The iron golem in maure castel... well, there really is only the option of sneaking by... not very intersting. A good module, imho, should force players to make difficult decisions. It should encourage them by unveiling its secrets piece by piece. and it should do that even if the DM is inexperienced. A good DM can turn every module into sth playable.

well. i guess I'm just unbelievably disappointed with RttToEE and wanted to strongly agree with Merric.
sorry for my rant

 

[Steel_Wind]

Oh give it a rest people. I enjoyed Maure Castle.

I am in the midst of running it as part of a Fantasy Grounds "test game" online.

It's an old school big-ass dungeon crawl. It does not purport to be anything other than that. It's a beer and pretzels mega dungeon. It has its moments. It has a high "fun factor".

Is it better than the Whispering Cairn? Not even close. Compared to the utility of the Age of Worms (which I love) or the Shackled City (which I didn't like much) it may well be not as useful to most DMs.

But compare it to most of the other "non Adv Path" modules - Maure Castle was a cut above the norm. It's a fun read - a fun module to run, and a very collectible issue of Dungeon to own.

So Erik - next time you are thinking of running a full length module in a magazine issue - please remember the subscribers who like them for what they are. I'd be one of those.