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DDAL - Thoughts and questions
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<blockquote data-quote="jayoungr" data-source="post: 8026994" data-attributes="member: 6702445"><p>I ran the whole Ravenloft season (4) of DDAL for my group last year, so I feel like I can answer your questions with some authority.</p><p></p><p>So I guess your group is somewhere between levels 5 and 10, if you're looking at the second half of the adventures?</p><p></p><p>There are a couple of things about season 4 that would make running just the second half kind of hard. First, it is a somewhat unified storyline, which means that starting with adventure #7 would indeed likely have the feel of jumping into the middle of someone else's campaign. There are two main plot threads: one is about the witch Esmae Amarantha, who is in love with Strahd and is trying to collect several items that once belonged to Tatyana so that she can transform herself into Tatyana's likeness. The second storyline is about how a chunk of Faerûn is sucked into Barovia as part of Esmae's quest for power, and how its inhabitants are attempting to get home. This latter storyline takes up a very large part of the second half of season 4, with two whole adventures being a detour to deal with the internal politics of some Faerûn orcs and rescue a Cult of the Dragon member(!) who somehow knows all about Esmae's plan. It's all kind of a mess and would be even weirder if you just drop your players into it from a completely different world.</p><p></p><p></p><p>A different season of AL might work better for the kind of synergy you're looking for. Season 4 doesn't revisit the same locations very often, and all the adventures use the same small town as the base of operations. If you had two separate adventuring groups hanging out there, they'd be guaranteed to bump into each other regularly.</p><p></p><p>Also, if you had two separate groups playing the adventures, they'd each get only half the story--the lower-level group would uncover information, but it wouldn't lead anywhere, while the higher-level group would encounter story elements that would be much cooler if they had experienced the earlier adventures and could say "Oh yeah, that's like that thing we saw in that other place."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Having one group play through <em>Curse of Strahd</em> the hardback while the other does (all of) the DDAL season 4 adventures could work, as they do visit some of the same places and might give you some of that synergy. But either they'd both have to start at low level, or you'd have to beef up the early DDAL adventures--which is actually easier than it might sound, as they have suggestions for adjusting encounters for parties up to level 4.</p><p></p><p>All of this may sound very negative, but I actually really like season 4. I feel like it is kind of a flawed gem--there's some really, really good stuff in there, but you have to do a lot of polishing to get it to shine. And I think that chopping it up, running half the season or half each with two groups of characters, is not going to present it at its best.</p><p></p><p>Finally, I have a thread on my experiences running the Ravenloft DDAL adventures as a home campaign, which I've finally gotten back to updating lately. You may find it helpful. (Especially <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/running-ddal04-adventures-as-a-campaign.657625/page-2#post-7609141" target="_blank">post #27,</a> where I do an overview of my approach to adventures 7-14.)</p><p></p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/running-ddal04-adventures-as-a-campaign.657625/[/URL]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="jayoungr, post: 8026994, member: 6702445"] I ran the whole Ravenloft season (4) of DDAL for my group last year, so I feel like I can answer your questions with some authority. So I guess your group is somewhere between levels 5 and 10, if you're looking at the second half of the adventures? There are a couple of things about season 4 that would make running just the second half kind of hard. First, it is a somewhat unified storyline, which means that starting with adventure #7 would indeed likely have the feel of jumping into the middle of someone else's campaign. There are two main plot threads: one is about the witch Esmae Amarantha, who is in love with Strahd and is trying to collect several items that once belonged to Tatyana so that she can transform herself into Tatyana's likeness. The second storyline is about how a chunk of Faerûn is sucked into Barovia as part of Esmae's quest for power, and how its inhabitants are attempting to get home. This latter storyline takes up a very large part of the second half of season 4, with two whole adventures being a detour to deal with the internal politics of some Faerûn orcs and rescue a Cult of the Dragon member(!) who somehow knows all about Esmae's plan. It's all kind of a mess and would be even weirder if you just drop your players into it from a completely different world. A different season of AL might work better for the kind of synergy you're looking for. Season 4 doesn't revisit the same locations very often, and all the adventures use the same small town as the base of operations. If you had two separate adventuring groups hanging out there, they'd be guaranteed to bump into each other regularly. Also, if you had two separate groups playing the adventures, they'd each get only half the story--the lower-level group would uncover information, but it wouldn't lead anywhere, while the higher-level group would encounter story elements that would be much cooler if they had experienced the earlier adventures and could say "Oh yeah, that's like that thing we saw in that other place." Having one group play through [I]Curse of Strahd[/I] the hardback while the other does (all of) the DDAL season 4 adventures could work, as they do visit some of the same places and might give you some of that synergy. But either they'd both have to start at low level, or you'd have to beef up the early DDAL adventures--which is actually easier than it might sound, as they have suggestions for adjusting encounters for parties up to level 4. All of this may sound very negative, but I actually really like season 4. I feel like it is kind of a flawed gem--there's some really, really good stuff in there, but you have to do a lot of polishing to get it to shine. And I think that chopping it up, running half the season or half each with two groups of characters, is not going to present it at its best. Finally, I have a thread on my experiences running the Ravenloft DDAL adventures as a home campaign, which I've finally gotten back to updating lately. You may find it helpful. (Especially [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/running-ddal04-adventures-as-a-campaign.657625/page-2#post-7609141']post #27,[/URL] where I do an overview of my approach to adventures 7-14.) [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.enworld.org/threads/running-ddal04-adventures-as-a-campaign.657625/[/URL] [/QUOTE]
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