Gundan Shadeslinger
First Post
One problem I see is there are so many "Realms shaking events" going on in such a short time, you wonder why they haven't attracted the attention of Mystra's Chosen and/or other NPC's of that caliber.
D&D 5E Convince me to keep reading Princes of the Apocalypse (*significant* spoilers. Also my players keep out)
- Thread starter brehobit
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Jester David
Hero
You mean like how Frodo went to Rivendell, dumped the ring with Elrond and Gandalf (the nearest authority figures) turned to Sam, Pippin, and Merry and said "Okay, adventure over, let's bounce. Back to the Shire, hommies!"?
Heroes don't usually do that. If the party does that, even if it's "in character" as the DM I'd say "Okay, that PC retires to Red Larch. Roll up a new PC that wants to be an adventurer, and he's being hired by <authority figure X> to do the job of the retired PC.
Cadriel
First Post
It's worth going back and re-reading the adventure setup in the introductory chapters again. The gist of the adventure is straightforward, as are its stakes; I don't mean to be offensive here, but I think if you miss that section some big ideas can get lost.
First, note that the Dessarin Valley was originally in the supplement "The Savage Frontier." It's meant to be barely tamed wilderness, and with the Uthgardt there are active barbarian tribes still here. This is the logic of the monsters: they are in a barely civilized area. The higher incidence of monsters is noticed; read the whole introduction to the Red Larch chapter, the people there are all but panicking over how unsafe the town has gotten.
Second, the goal of the cults is to summon the Elemental Princes and unleash them. That's a really nice, coherent goal, that the PCs can foil or not. If they fail, the PCs are probably dead, and that's the end of that unless you want to go run another campaign of "rebuild the shattered North." If they succeed, the cult is defeated and the Elder Elemental Eye's plan is undermined. Knowing its grand metaphysical plan isn't in the scope of the adventure.
Third, I do think it can benefit from some tweaking so not quite everything is related to the main plot. The material in Red Larch is a shade on the nose, and the side quests don't go off topic enough. I have FR5 The Savage Frontier and may do some not-so-related side material of my own for keeping things lively.
I'm planning to start running it next week with the Trouble in Red Larch material, which I think is a solid tribute to Hommlet.
First, note that the Dessarin Valley was originally in the supplement "The Savage Frontier." It's meant to be barely tamed wilderness, and with the Uthgardt there are active barbarian tribes still here. This is the logic of the monsters: they are in a barely civilized area. The higher incidence of monsters is noticed; read the whole introduction to the Red Larch chapter, the people there are all but panicking over how unsafe the town has gotten.
Second, the goal of the cults is to summon the Elemental Princes and unleash them. That's a really nice, coherent goal, that the PCs can foil or not. If they fail, the PCs are probably dead, and that's the end of that unless you want to go run another campaign of "rebuild the shattered North." If they succeed, the cult is defeated and the Elder Elemental Eye's plan is undermined. Knowing its grand metaphysical plan isn't in the scope of the adventure.
Third, I do think it can benefit from some tweaking so not quite everything is related to the main plot. The material in Red Larch is a shade on the nose, and the side quests don't go off topic enough. I have FR5 The Savage Frontier and may do some not-so-related side material of my own for keeping things lively.
I'm planning to start running it next week with the Trouble in Red Larch material, which I think is a solid tribute to Hommlet.
Your assertion falls well outside of conventional wisdom here, so could you elaborate?
On the Sword Coast I always felt it was a rather good environment for the limited government to not care enough about things to act on the PCs calling for help. I am rather ignorant about the official lore on the place admittedly, but the area as I imagine it works well.
- Complete strangers turning up in Waterdeep and demanding a significant military investment is going to be dismissed. How do they even meet a Lord of Waterdeep? Nobody knows who they are. How do they go to the front of the queue to talk to the Open Lord? How do they convince them of the imminence of the problem. Even if they do, it waits until the next Lords Council and it could get rejected for any reason without the party ever knowing why, or by who.
- Don't most places use mercenaries to protect the city states? It is not in their brief to protect the rest of the countryside. There is no standing army to ride out and save the day. Do the PCs have the money to hire the mercs? Do the mercs even have the lords permission to leave their posts and go and do some moonlighting?
- It is not a kingdom, nobody claims this land. Outside of the immediate farmland around each city state, nobody cares. It is not like running to the local king and asking for help. It is like running out of the wilds to the neighboring kingdoms king (or merchant guild) and asking for help. I get the impression that the zone-of-control of each city is very limited.
- Is there a standing army, like you would expect in most settings? I get the impression that there just are not that many troops, with a rather limited zone of control for each city, mercenaries are used for work further afield.
Don't get me wrong, the OPs concerns are not well addressed. There is a very MMO-style approach to monster placement going on here and there is not much explicitly stopping the PCs for running for help. From what I recall the adventure does not supply an immediate sense of imminent doom, so the fact that it might take a few weeks is not of immediate concern.
- Complete strangers turning up in Waterdeep and demanding a significant military investment is going to be dismissed. How do they even meet a Lord of Waterdeep? Nobody knows who they are. How do they go to the front of the queue to talk to the Open Lord? How do they convince them of the imminence of the problem. Even if they do, it waits until the next Lords Council and it could get rejected for any reason without the party ever knowing why, or by who.
- Don't most places use mercenaries to protect the city states? It is not in their brief to protect the rest of the countryside. There is no standing army to ride out and save the day. Do the PCs have the money to hire the mercs? Do the mercs even have the lords permission to leave their posts and go and do some moonlighting?
- It is not a kingdom, nobody claims this land. Outside of the immediate farmland around each city state, nobody cares. It is not like running to the local king and asking for help. It is like running out of the wilds to the neighboring kingdoms king (or merchant guild) and asking for help. I get the impression that the zone-of-control of each city is very limited.
- Is there a standing army, like you would expect in most settings? I get the impression that there just are not that many troops, with a rather limited zone of control for each city, mercenaries are used for work further afield.
Don't get me wrong, the OPs concerns are not well addressed. There is a very MMO-style approach to monster placement going on here and there is not much explicitly stopping the PCs for running for help. From what I recall the adventure does not supply an immediate sense of imminent doom, so the fact that it might take a few weeks is not of immediate concern.
Did you read or play Rise of the Runelords? Sandpoint featured in the first module. The problem it had was very well worked into the story. The second module started in Sandpoint and was once again very well integrated into the story, then moved to Magnimar and threatened that entire city. The third module moved into areas where only small settlements existed plagued by humanoid raiders and the ruins of an ancient civilization that were all over the entire area where Sandpoint, Magnimar, and the small settlements were set. The fourth module was dealt with the ongoing plot and the reason Sandpoint was a target due to the same reason from the first module. Once again all very well tied together. The fifth module was a venture into an alternate pocket plane created by a powerful wizard from an ancient civilization to further deal with the problem from the very first module. The last one was a confrontation with the BBEG.
Rise of the Runelords was an amazing series of modules that did not have any problems stated by the original poster. It was well conceived. All the parts were tied together into a well integrated story. The reasons it occurred in Sandpoint were excellent. The weakest module was perhaps the 5th module, but even that was pretty well tied into the overall story. Rise of the Runelords was one of Paizo's best APs with everything from the story, locations, challenges, and the like tied together in a beautifully wrapped package.
I skimmed Princes of the Apocalypse and read the reviews on here. It didn't sound very interesting. I decided to convert older modules for use. 5E is so classic that you can run classic modules with almost no additional work. I'm running Keep on the Borderlands and the only changes I made were to the high priest in the Temple of Chaos. I made the temple into an active entity with lair actions to support the priests and undead. Other than that, the I'm running everything out of the Monster Manual. I tied everything together with the simple story hook that the chaos priest was recruiting humanoid tribes to launch raids on civilization.
I'm going to wait for the next module. PotA isn't doing much for me. I hope some of the 3rd party companies start to produce modules I can enjoy. I know Necromancer Games put out some fun stuff like Rappan Athuk in the early days of 3E. Maybe they will put out some modules in 5E once the licensing agreement is worked out.
I'm going to wait for the next module. PotA isn't doing much for me. I hope some of the 3rd party companies start to produce modules I can enjoy. I know Necromancer Games put out some fun stuff like Rappan Athuk in the early days of 3E. Maybe they will put out some modules in 5E once the licensing agreement is worked out.
Necromancer Games has Quests of Doom 1 & 2 out in pdf - 12 + 6 short(ish) adventures; I think they're at the printers this month for the hardcopy versions. I'm pretty sure Bill and Matt have plans for more 5E stuff.
As for other 5E stuff, here's my list of every 5E-compatible adventure that has been released so far: http://merricb.com/2014/08/03/the-great-list-of-dungeons-dragons-5e-adventures/
Cheers!
Cadriel
First Post
I'm not sure what you mean by MMO-style; I actually like how a lot of the enemies in the dungeon areas could be in different places depending on other circumstances, and there are several that are set up for a really good narrative "bang" like the ghouls in Rivergard Keep. Which encounters are problems for you?
As far as sense of doom, I really disagree. The setup of Red Larch is such that, if the PCs don't act rather efficiently, the cults will be after them in significant ways. There are multiple spies and ways for them to get mixed into the intrigue. There is explicitly a sense of immediate danger throughout that chapter.
I wonder if people are skipping the first couple of chapters and just reading the dungeon sections? Because I think there's a good deal of logical setup in PotA that I am not seeing reflected in a lot of the comments about it.
SilverfireSage
Explorer
Might I ask why it doesn't seem very interesting? It seems to have a bit of everything in it, and having run Rise of the Runelords, I'm much more impressed with how tightly written PotA is.
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