How many adventures left in Shackled City

MerricB · Apr 21, 2004

Some of the Adventure Path modules have been incredible - I look forward to actually getting a chance to run some of them in the future.

Hopefully it won't take as long as it did for me to finally run the Desert of Desolation series - 20 years!

Cheers!

ph34r · Apr 21, 2004

Emirikol said:
Are the Adventure path scenarios workable as stand-alone without much work?

jh

Having only played through about half of the second adventure I can't help much. But I can say that the first adventure could be used pretty easily as a stand alone.

tmaaas · Apr 21, 2004

I think most of the Shackled City modules (to date) could be run independently of each other with only minor work by the DM. Of course, I think almost any adventure takes at least some effort to fit into an existing campaign, and these will be no different.

Keep up the good work, Erik! My wife and I are co-DMing a new Eberron campaign, and we plan to keep mining the pages of Dungeon...

Erik Mona · Apr 21, 2004

Beretta said:
I hope that this is the case. I'm not a fan of one-night one-shots (or the old Side Treks) - I like adventures that will take multiple sessions for my players to complete. I'm really hoping that the shorter adventures aren't akin to glorified Side Treks.

These will be longer than Side Treks. Essentially, there will be about 35,000-45,000 words worth of adventures every issue.

I don't have time to write adventures myself which is why Dungeon is an invaluable resource for me.

I'd say that's true of 90% of our readers. Understanding this fact, I believe, is essentially to understanding how to create a better Dungeon magazine.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next Adventure Path! I hope the new one will have less dungeon-bashing and more wilderness/outdoors encounters (my players are wondering why there are mounted feats at all as the opportunities to use them are few and far between...)

I'm currently thinking that the second Adventure Path will be more of a traditional D&D quest, with the PCs engaging in some overland travel and visiting several deadly sites. One adventure might be a dungeon crawl, with a clue that leads to a shop in a distant city. One whole adventure might involve the trip from the dungeon to the city, with a couple of roleplay-intensive city adventures coming next, with another wilderness/overland adventure thereafter.

Almost every campaign involves trips from place to place, so I'd like to think that an adventure that occurs wholly "on the trail" is portable to nearly every campaign.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine

Erik Mona · Apr 21, 2004

tmaaas said:
Keep up the good work, Erik! My wife and I are co-DMing a new Eberron campaign, and we plan to keep mining the pages of Dungeon...

Then you'll want to pick up issue #111, which profiles the Lord of Blades, a major Eberron villain. Issue #113 features our first Eberron adventure, by Origins-Award-Winning designer James Wyatt (City of the Spider Queen). Issues #115 and #116 will contain Eberron adventures by Keith Baker. After that, who knows?

Oh, did I forget to mention that issue #113 will have a POSTER MAP OF EBERRON? It's the only place to get one, as the Eberron hardcover will _not_ feature a poster map.

Nothing but love for the Eberron fans.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine

johnsemlak · Apr 21, 2004

MerricB said:
Hopefully it won't take as long as it did for me to finally run the Desert of Desolation series - 20 years!

Any comments on how that one went?

Beretta · Apr 21, 2004

Erik Mona said:
I'm currently thinking that the second Adventure Path will be more of a traditional D&D quest, with the PCs engaging in some overland travel and visiting several deadly sites. One adventure might be a dungeon crawl, with a clue that leads to a shop in a distant city. One whole adventure might involve the trip from the dungeon to the city, with a couple of roleplay-intensive city adventures coming next, with another wilderness/overland adventure thereafter.

Almost every campaign involves trips from place to place, so I'd like to think that an adventure that occurs wholly "on the trail" is portable to nearly every campaign.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine

That sounds excellent!

Thanks Erik for elaborating - I'm looking forward to reading/running it already!

MerricB · Apr 22, 2004

johnsemlak said:
Any comments on how that one went?

It was great fun. I was running it in 3E; converting some of it on the fly.

I'm glad I ran it 20 years on, actually - it requires an experienced DM, and I was able to manipulate the storyline better in that way.

Highlights of the series: (inviso-text ON!)

* I used the series as part of my ongoing Greyhawk/Fhoi Myore campaign. Just after encountering the Priests of Chaos (in Keep of the Borderlands), they found themselves outnumbered. They ran down a tunnel and found themselves at a Rainbow Portal; one of the PCs smashed the gems embedded in the portal and they ended up in the Desert of Desolation
Pharoah:
* The PCs completing the pyramid in record time - they found every secret way to get up faster!
* The leader of the PCs put on a ring of contrariness - he played it wonderfully, through the entire series and beyond!
* The PCs returning to the pyramid to get treasure, and being creamed by the monsters. (They ran away then).
* They met a group of natives talking about a "buried city in the sand", in that way I was able to get them to Pazar to release the Efreeti.
* In the Oasis, they got embroiled in the intrigues.
* One of the PCs got turned into a monkey. He invented a monkey dance and kept us entertained for several sessions before a remove curse spell was found.
* Lost Tomb of Martek was the most disappointing of the three. Too much of it relies on interaction with the three NPCs - the Abyss area is particularly dull.
* I love the time-trapped tower, though. They did very well to figure out the way out of there without help from me at all!
* One player, seeing a wall of lightning moving towards his PC, just stood still and said "It's an illusion!" whilst his friends ran away. Guess what? It was real. He failed his save... and died.
* They eventually succeeded and returned home.

Cheers!

tmaaas · Apr 22, 2004

Erik Mona said:
Oh, did I forget to mention that issue #113 will have a POSTER MAP OF EBERRON? It's the only place to get one, as the Eberron hardcover will _not_ feature a poster map.

Well, I have a subscription but this might be the time to pick up multiple copies