D&D 5E (2014) Enhancing "Candlekeep Mysteries"

[jayoungr]

I don't know whether we'll need a thread for this collection of short adventures, but just in case we do, here it is. Any thoughts, plans, speculation, or tips about running these adventures? Anyone going to try stringing them together as a campaign?

Post away!

 

[pukunui]

I will try stringing them together as a campaign eventually. But to start with, I am going to try sprinkling them into my existing campaigns as side quests.

 

[Demetrios1453]

From what I've read so far, they are all interesting adventures, but it will take a bit of work to string them together for an adventure, other than potentially the potentates of Candlekeep saying "We've found another weird book, investigate it!" But that's first impressions after only reading a few adventures. It will probably be best to read through the whole thing before trying to coming up with some over-arching plot, though...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"We've found another weird book, investigate it!"

Sounds like a job for Conan the Librarian.

 

[jayoungr]

Bumping since more and more people seem to have their copies. I'm hoping to pick mine up in a day or two.

 

[darjr]

I am, in AL. It’s a master campaign so it’ll also unlock the red wizards stuff which is also very cool. I might put a red wizards book in the library to unlock the infiltration mods.

Who wants to sneak into Thay?

 

[Rellott]

I don't think it would be terribly difficult to string them together in a campaign. I haven't read all the way through it yet (I'm reading Zikran's Zephyrean Tome right now, which is what brought me to this thread with a question I'll ask further in the post). So far, the biggest issue is in adjusting the hook for the adventures. Presumably the characters work for the library if you want to run all the adventures together, so you may have to come up with some slightly different hooks - especially for Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme. I was considering making the party a special kind of Avowed, who often do general Avowed duties but also are generally the go-to people for dealing with out-of-the-ordinary stuff, and also as extra hands around the library. So for SBR, maybe the characters are assigned to assist in the renovations, or maybe something happens to their usual lodging and they are temporarily assigned bedrooms in the Firefly Cellar.

The one I'm struggling with figuring out so far, even for a standard adventure, is ZZT. It says the book "snaps open when the book is held by someone who intends to leave Candlekeep with it." But there are strict rules about leaving Candlekeep with books... unless it's merely referring to the library proper, and anyone who would take it out to the Court of Air would count? But I guess someone could be intending to steal the book, which causes the genie to appear and then the person to be taken into custody and the book handed over to the party to deal with.

So with the intent of running the adventures as a sequential campaign, does anyone have any tips for changing the adventure hooks? Any additional ideas for incorporating loose threads from the adventures (NPCs the book suggests might pop up again, mostly) into later adventures in the campaign?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So with the intent of running the adventures as a sequential campaign, does anyone have any tips for changing the adventure hooks? Any additional ideas for incorporating loose threads from the adventures (NPCs the book suggests might pop up again, mostly) into later adventures in the campaign?

Some of them work if you just drop the book into the regular loot. My players have just found The Lure of Lurue in a shipwreck off Solstice.

Having found a rare book, that gives the party a reason to travel to Candlekeep. Where there is a good chance the Avowed will take the opportunity of adventurers turning up on their doorstep to ask for help with a little problem...

Stringing the whole lot as a campaign, you really have to treat it like a problem-of-the-week TV series. Make the PCs the library troubleshooters, and have a boss who brings them the next problem after they have had some downtime from the previous episode.

Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme works fine with PCs who are residents in the library - send them down into the cellar to investigate the annoying humming, then have them infected and quarantined.

ZZT says this: "A large padlock prevents the book from being opened and resists all attempts to open it with magic, but it snaps open when the book is held by someone who intends to leave Candlekeep with it. " Doesn't say the padlock can't be picked manually. The PCs are probably the only people in the library with the skill to pick a lock without using magic. But I would just ignore this sentence if it doesn't suit. Have bossman bring it to the PCs, or it could just fall (jump) off the shelf as they pass.

Watch The Librarians TV series.

 

[TheSword]

Watch The Librarians TV series.

Please don’t. It’s one of the worst programs I’ve ever seen!

Though yes it is thematically appropriate.

 

[Rellott]

Stringing the whole lot as a campaign, you really have to treat it like a problem-of-the-week TV series. Make the PCs the library troubleshooters, and have a boss who brings them the next problem after they have had some downtime from the previous episode.

ZZT says this: "A large padlock prevents the book from being opened and resists all attempts to open it with magic, but it snaps open when the book is held by someone who intends to leave Candlekeep with it. " Doesn't say the padlock can't be picked manually. The PCs are probably the only people in the library with the skill to pick a lock without using magic. But I would just ignore this sentence if it doesn't suit. Have bossman bring it to the PCs, or it could just fall (jump) off the shelf as they pass.

Yeah, I was anticipating it would be a "problem-of-the-week" episodic plot with the characters working for the library (I even thought about what the library would call them... I'm currently thinking "the Invoked").

ZZT also doesn't list a DC for lockpicking the book, so presumably the intent is that you cannot do that either. I'll have to ponder a little more how best to handle getting that book.