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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5707186" data-attributes="member: 3192">Player fatigue might have been a factor. If this wasn't the end of a one-shot, then stopping after killing her might have staved off some rash actions on their part. Looting and dividing treasure can be tedious too, so that could have at least been one rationale.Besides the clues Umbran mentioned, what other clues did you drop around the final area to tip them off? That might help in simplifying the challenge for future adventure design. For my own experience, I had trouble with an adventure built around illusions. It was centered on a town with a nearby fairy mound. Some drow had stolen a magical, spherical artifact and went to find a safe place to escape pursuit. This ended up as tunneling into the cavity of the fairy mound. There they attempted to crack it open, which only led to a partial opening for the avatar of a demigod of illusions to use her powers through. The entirety of the cavity became a grand illusion inimical to the drow. One did escape however by tunneling out to above ground. Eventually the townspeople found the entrance and slowly were caught in the illusory trap as well.The adventure ran as the mystery of an oddly emptied town and the discovery of the fairy mound. There was quite a bit to both with townsfolk starving while entranced in a massive and varied faux fairy festival. It kept getting more and more implausible with the illusory reality warping to cajole the PCs into finally releasing the demigod. They sealed it instead, but while there were many consequences in the game world from actions taken when in the illusory the overall effect was anticlimactic. The players weren't happy as much of the treasures gained and the monsters fought were illusory, but even more so it was felt they had no reason to suspect an illusion especially one so vast. These was the first sessions of a takeover campaign, so all of my world was understood to be a little different anyways. In effect I 'it was all a dream'd the adventure the moment I began it. The ideas were good and so was the set up, but I needed more clues and an understanding that this was far too complicated and too deceptive to begin with. Not to mention that starting with an illusory world makes beginning sessions irrelevant.</blockquote>

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