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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 5746317" data-attributes="member: 40522">I made several changes to Keep on the Shadowfell as presented--I actually didn't run it until last year, so many of the people in my group had already played it. I wanted to give the old hands a few surprises, and there's also a good bit of DM fiat in wanting to change up some things to suit my style and tastes.First off, I actually started the campaign off with "the Twisted Halls," the mini-dungeon presented in the D&D Essentials red box. I did this so that I could cut some of the less interesting encounters later on, and also to give the players the sense that something big was going on--multiple necromancers just seemed more interesting to me than a lone madman in the ruined Keep.I had it set up so that Malareth was an associate of Kalarel, and they were both in the region looking for magic of necromantic significance. When the characters dealt with Malareth, they had strong leads (maps, old books, correspondence with Kalarel's group) that something was afoot in Winterhaven and off they went.I cut the encounters on the King's Road map. Kobolds laying in wait were not only sort of boring, but I just couldn't imagine it within the nature of kobolds--it didn't fit my notions of kobold psychology or society. They build carefully trapped warrens, they don't organize into bands of raiders. They did defend their warren when the characters invaded it, but there were fewer kobolds and more booby traps--several snares in the undergrowth and grass that immobilize charging invaders and even some punji sticks in the bushes.In the Keep itself, I "moved" area 3 of the first level into a lower cavern with a waterfall leading outside. Area 3 on the map became some catacombs, and I used the map of the Toadwallow Caverns from the Dungeon Master's Kit to represent an entrance at the base of the hill that lead into the catacombs. I've always hated the idea of dungeons having only one entrance and one exit, so I put four additional means of entrance and egress at various points in the complex.That's just the mechanical considerations... I made several changes to the narrative.Kalarel was given a bit more "meat" in the story. The characters knew of Kalarel as a kindly, sage cleric of Pelor that was semi-retired in Fallcrest. About a decade ago, the Nentir Vale was stricken by the White Plague, an illness that caused the eyes to puff out and leak blood and pus before killing the victim. As a cleric of Pelor, Kalarel worked tirelessly to fight the plague and help the suffering. The White Plague was eventually halted, but not before many Vale folk died--Kalarel's young daughter, Minarra, among them. In despair, Kalarel moved to a cottage outside of Fallcrest to live out the rest of his days.What the public didn't know was that the White Plague was halted when Kalarel betrayed his vows and turned to Orcus for aid. Orcus' agents agreed to halt the plague if Kalarel fudged the burial rites on the extant victim's bodies, allowing them to be raised as undead at a later time. Feeling that Pelor had abandoned him, Kalarel agreed. The White Plague ended, but Kalarel did not escape unscathed. His daughter died, and he interpreted the event as an act of retribution from Pelor. He took his daughter's body into the wilderness, where he used rituals to prevent it from decaying while searching for a ritual powerful enough to restore her life.Kalarel's ultimate goal wasn't to "take over the world" or anything of the sort. All he wanted was to return his daughter to life, and over time, he stopped caring about the implications of dealing further with Orcus' followers. He got to the point where he didn't care about unleashing a horde of undead from beneath Shadowfell Keep, he believed that Orcus would be so pleased that he would raise Minarra from the dead.I gradually revealed this information to the players through a set of "flashbacks" based on trained skills. For example, when they players asked about the White Plague, I did a flashback where the characters trained in Heal had actually worked with Kalarel to fight it, whereas the characters trained in Endurance were actually survivors of the plague. It was a short, ten-minute thing where we sketched out a scene of tending the stricken when Kalarel got word that his daughter died, then retreated to the chapel to perform last rites over the body. In another flashback, everyone trained in Religion had attended Kalarel's retirement ceremony, where the people of Fallcrest had gathered to honor his contributions and the temple gave him a formal send-off. In yet another, the characters trained in Arcana and History went through a day in their formal schooling where they heard the legends about Shadowfell Keep before they became adventurers.I feel that it was a great way to communicate information, the players got into it and it was more interesting than boxed text.</blockquote>

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