Prism
Explorer
Our group has been playing through the Monument of the Ancients during our weekend D&D and drinking sessions which we have 4 times a year, and its been great fun. The DM has made a few changes to the plot line by relating it to the Abyssal Plague. It has also been level adjusted to 19th - 20th level. We haven't quite finished the adventure yet and have just arrived at the final encounter however here the DM has heavily changed things and created a small dungeon and set of home built encounters to replace it. Since we are about to deviate well away from the original adventure I feel its worth talking about the rest of the adventure from a players perspective (since we have effectively finished it).
Spoilers..
We were introduced to the hook while adventuring near the great rift so they had to be pretty strong to get us interested. Various region changing, cataclysmic events were hinted at. Some of the adventure provided snippets of history were given to us. The first part of the adventure was getting to the Moonsea via shadow walk and phantom steed.
I loved exploring Phlan and the skill challenge in the library. It got us much more invested in discovering the plot than by simply providing us with info via an NPC. We felt we had earned the knowledge and due to the age of the information and difficulty in putting the pieces together realised we were probably the only ones with an insight into a new evil which was to arrive.
We headed up to the keep and had a skirmish with the barbarians. It started to become apparent here that one problem with the adventure was that most combat encounters were the only ones in any given day so the DM found it difficult to challenge us. I'm not sure how to correct this though without creating unrealistically hard fights or adding unneeded extra encounters, without disrupting the adventure flow of exploration and discovery.
We created a teleportation circle in the keep for easy return access and headed off to save the human village from barbarians. From there we continued up to the gnoll base in the wastes watching the demise of the gnome city on the way. The gnoll fight was fun but we went a bit overboard and devastated way to many of them too quickly. The leader refused to co-operate after wiping out his tribe and we missed a vital piece of information.
We teleported back to the keep and then headed out to the goliaths to put together the final parts of the puzzle. I think the DM added this section in to account for us failing to get full information from the gnolls. We traveled to an ancient goliath library and found out where the monument was and the completed the last parts of the skill challenge to solve the cube. Again, teleported back home
This is where things start to deviate from the module. We enlisted the help of several thousand humans and goliaths and through a deal with Yeenoghu the aid of many thousands of gnolls. Almost a replay of the ancient events of the module. There are also 3 of us in the adventuring group which is a nice link.
The cross country skill challenge was more about navigating a force of over 10 thousand through the ice than a test of ourselves. To be honest we tend to ritual travel everywhere so even if we had played this at the original level, i don't think the various travel encounters and skill challenges would have worked. Keeping us grounded with an army worked well.
It also helped due to the fact that when we arrived at the forest there was an army of over 15 thousand frost giants and barbarians with a large white dragon awaiting us.
Battle was joined and we used the distraction to move a small mounted force past the battle once the enemy had emptied their camp of reserves. On to the monument but the dragon has followed. Oh, and over 100 shadar-kai are camped at the base.... Thats where we left it.
In summary...great module and it has kept us entertained for a number of sessions, provided great insight into an era of FR history, and allowed us to play out the Abyssal Plague story with only a few modifications. Only problems are that we in no way followed the expected travel routes and timings. I know its very hard for modules to account for travel rituals though. Also the fights have been a bit too easy since we only got one a day
Spoilers..
We were introduced to the hook while adventuring near the great rift so they had to be pretty strong to get us interested. Various region changing, cataclysmic events were hinted at. Some of the adventure provided snippets of history were given to us. The first part of the adventure was getting to the Moonsea via shadow walk and phantom steed.
I loved exploring Phlan and the skill challenge in the library. It got us much more invested in discovering the plot than by simply providing us with info via an NPC. We felt we had earned the knowledge and due to the age of the information and difficulty in putting the pieces together realised we were probably the only ones with an insight into a new evil which was to arrive.
We headed up to the keep and had a skirmish with the barbarians. It started to become apparent here that one problem with the adventure was that most combat encounters were the only ones in any given day so the DM found it difficult to challenge us. I'm not sure how to correct this though without creating unrealistically hard fights or adding unneeded extra encounters, without disrupting the adventure flow of exploration and discovery.
We created a teleportation circle in the keep for easy return access and headed off to save the human village from barbarians. From there we continued up to the gnoll base in the wastes watching the demise of the gnome city on the way. The gnoll fight was fun but we went a bit overboard and devastated way to many of them too quickly. The leader refused to co-operate after wiping out his tribe and we missed a vital piece of information.
We teleported back to the keep and then headed out to the goliaths to put together the final parts of the puzzle. I think the DM added this section in to account for us failing to get full information from the gnolls. We traveled to an ancient goliath library and found out where the monument was and the completed the last parts of the skill challenge to solve the cube. Again, teleported back home
This is where things start to deviate from the module. We enlisted the help of several thousand humans and goliaths and through a deal with Yeenoghu the aid of many thousands of gnolls. Almost a replay of the ancient events of the module. There are also 3 of us in the adventuring group which is a nice link.
The cross country skill challenge was more about navigating a force of over 10 thousand through the ice than a test of ourselves. To be honest we tend to ritual travel everywhere so even if we had played this at the original level, i don't think the various travel encounters and skill challenges would have worked. Keeping us grounded with an army worked well.
It also helped due to the fact that when we arrived at the forest there was an army of over 15 thousand frost giants and barbarians with a large white dragon awaiting us.
Battle was joined and we used the distraction to move a small mounted force past the battle once the enemy had emptied their camp of reserves. On to the monument but the dragon has followed. Oh, and over 100 shadar-kai are camped at the base.... Thats where we left it.
In summary...great module and it has kept us entertained for a number of sessions, provided great insight into an era of FR history, and allowed us to play out the Abyssal Plague story with only a few modifications. Only problems are that we in no way followed the expected travel routes and timings. I know its very hard for modules to account for travel rituals though. Also the fights have been a bit too easy since we only got one a day
