Holiday Home Game of IRON DM

[seasong]

Some ways you could have scored better on the ingredients (although not necessarily improving it as a scenario), incidentally:

1. Make it a halfling troupe. This could make all the hysterics, melodramatics and theatrics particularly amusing.. until the gruesome facts come to light.

2. Make the illusions integral to the scene. Put some descriptive backbone into it! Perhaps the troupe is very small, and so the murdered actress actually had to play 2-3 parts, and an illusory disguise was necessary!

3. As I mentioned before, having her communicate entirely through the wine bottles would have made it more interesting and vital. You could even have random wait staff come by the PCs' table and give them the wine bottle, saying, "Compliments of the table over there..." only to have that table empty.

 

[incognito]

Daaaang seasong, for a guy who played the drow card then left them out of the 'meat' of the adventure I see a lot of finger pointing.

1. I think just a little edge/twist to the halfling illusionist and you would've nailed it. You were closer to nailing it, in my estimation

2. see 1.

3. Nah, I like the idea that Althea is a melodramatic pain-in-the-a$$. Finally, she has somethig to really be upset about. Play this up when running the NPC - real cloak and dagger type stuff. With fainting, and screaming, etc.

 

[seasong]

Daaaang seasong, for a guy who played the drow card then left them out of the 'meat' of the adventure I see a lot of finger pointing.

No claims as to my own infallibility! But I can see the splinter in my brother's eye more clearly than the log in my own.

 

[MTR]

Hmm, an all halfing troupe never occured to me. But it feels a little to silly (at least, most people see halfings as silly) in an adventure that relies heavily on a spooky setting.

I thought about only having her communicate through messages but thought the party would just blow them off. At least my current party certainly would.

Incognito, I'm not parsing your point 1. Are you addressing me or seasong?

I can see Althea insisting that she only speak with the party at midnight when there's no moon....

 

[incognito]

MTR: #1 Is to seasong...

 

[Imhotepthewise]

Your critiques were well worth the wait. As to my first language, it is, in fact, English. I am a technical writer by trade. I am, however, a product of the New Jersey public school system. I am not going to square off against MTR without some further practice. I think MTR is ready for the big leagues. Thanks a lot, folks. Happy holidays! Tim.

 

[seasong]

Well, don't forget what I said about MTR: consistency is important, too. Wicht tends to get to the final round not because of occasional flashes of brilliance, but because he manages a high level of quality in every single entry.

Your entry, for example, lacked a central 'oomph'. And in my opinion (incognito and I disagree on this, of course), that's the only real weakness in your scenario. Give it a central theme or reason, or some method of tying everything together into a single scenario instead of a series of encounters, and your scenario would have made mine look shabby and poor.

And despite what incognito said about the relationship between the rogue, sword and horse, I think that with a central 'oomph' making them matter to the core of the scenario, he would not have noticed.

If I were to try to centralize this scenario myself, I would probably make the diary more integral. Perhaps there is something specific to these caves, something the paladin wrote about, something that a good-hearted rogue and former holy mount would even work together to destroy... if it weren't for that pesky beetle.

Instead of banding together to escape the caves, then, they would be wanting to go deeper in, and they desparately need the PCs to help them do it. The PCs, of course, came by because they were running from the beetle, but hey, this is what adventurers do, right?

 

[MTR]

Hey, I've only made one scenario. By definition I'm not consistent