Dungeon #114 - Mad God's Key (spoilers likely)

[Wraith Form]

That reminds me. I saw a story hour a while back that adapted Mad God's Key for a Victorian England setting that included elements of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and a few other fantasy books. Anyone know where I can find it?

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?threadid=140875

Enjoy. I sure did. Then I cursed Kid Charlemagne for being a better writer than I by a long stretch. Then I shrugged and kept reading and enjoying.

 

[jhallum]

Well, yes and no. I'm hedging my bets, since I'd prefer none of the PCs to die from a bad Jump check. Some bridges in Sharn have permanent feather fall wards built-in, so anything/anyone falling onto one gets slowed to a softer landing - and by sheer coincidence, the chase will happen above such a bridge.

Not that any of the PCs - or the players - know that.

Also, don't forget the wizards get a reward for Feather Falling any people who happen to fall near them. 50 GP I think?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

That reminds me. I saw a story hour a while back that adapted Mad God's Key for a Victorian England setting that included elements of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell and a few other fantasy books. Anyone know where I can find it?

That would be my story hour!

The Mystery of the Origami Golem: From the Casebook of Nigel Spenser

We for one foolishly refused to chase the half-orc on the piers, and instead got involved in a rooftop chase. I'm not sure how much of the adventure was changed from the Dungeon version, but I really enjoyed it!

We've moved on from the Mad God's Key (which I called "The Golden Key" as I had no idea which adventure we were really playing through), but the first large chunk of the story hour deals with Mad God's Key.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

I found it very easy to fit into Freeport with a few adjustments.

The players' and my favorite parts of the adventure was the chase scene with the orcish barbarian towards the beginning of the module. The fighter in heavy armor had some trouble with the armor check penalty with all the jumping and stuff. She almost drowned once or twice. Good thing we had a rogue and some other high mobility characters to keep up with the fleeing barbarian. The other part that was particularly deadly was the encounter with the two twin rogues in the thief's headquaters.

Everything went pretty smoothly (with only one or two deaths) up to the encounter with the zombie rat swarm. Unfortunately we got a TPK at that encounter. Otherwise we enjoyed the module a lot up to that point.

 

[Erik Mona]

Great to see this adventure getting so much play. It was the highest-rated adventure of the year, and a great way to kick off the magazine's new format.

--Erik Mona

 

[Kolvin]

I ran it in Sharn but I still put the barge chase in the docks. I figured low level PCs would never actually give chase if they thought they might fall 50 feet.

Also the random list of stuff is more suited to barges on the water than skiffs in the sky.

My players liked the adventure but they did feel it was a bit of a railroad at times.

 

[GwydapLlew]

I love this adventure. My advice is to prep the boat chase ahead of time - I created a cheat sheet for the various encounters, and labelled each boat in a different color to coordinate the scene - because part of the fun of that encounter is the sense of timing.

Don't be afraid to let the players come up with neat ways around to the half-orc. I adapted it to my SCAP game, and the guild became part of an overall plot as to why the Alleybashers were such a pathetic gang of ruffians.

The cairn encounter can be dangerous - if you are feeling frisky, a bull rushing zombie or skeleton can heighten the tension quite a bit!

 

[jaults]

Yeah, I ran this adventure, also set in Sharn.

If I am remembering it all correctly, the players really liked the chase, and ended up allying themselves with the gang. The PCs cured the gang members of the disease, and when one of the PCs took the Leadership feat, the gang became their followers. They also took over the house as their base of operations. In the crypt, it was nearly a TPK, but one of the PCs managed to Hide until she could get the drop on the cleric, and hit him with a Sleep Arrow -- the cleric rolled a natural 1 for the save! It was awesome.

Jason

 

[mkb152]

Awesome

I really enjoyed running this adventure. We were able to get through it in one long session. We also had two brand new characters go down to swarms (one to the spider swarm in the gang's house, and one to the crypt rat swarm in the cave). The chase scene was a nice change of pace, and the players really enjoyed it.


It is the best Dungeon adventure I have run. I have wanted to run some that may be better, but there are so many good ones out there I could only squeeze in some!

 

[Wraith Form]

Lots of great responses here--thanks!

My players--all 2nd level, a thief, a dragon shaman, and a bard/beguiler multi--are "part of" (read: "being blackmailed by") their local thieves' guild, which provides "assignments" (red: "heists") to them.

Their next assignment is to travel to a southern city (Greyhawk in the adventure, although I'll change it's name to fit my campaign) and discover how close the gang in that city is to finding a cure to their malady, and prevent them from finding it, if possible. (Darn rivals!)

Their contact will be in a tavern which, co-incidentally, will be across from the locksmith's shop as the two sneaks are leaving, and thus the adventure begins...

I hope three 2nd level PCs will be able to handle the challenge...they have a scroll tube, magically enchanted to send messages and potions from the guild to the PCs and back. The guild "emails" them healing potions as requested.

One of their heists will be to steal the "journal" (read: "alchemy book") of a witch, so that the guild can create healing én mass.