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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2981223" data-attributes="member: 22779">Of course, they have interesting hooks if the party rolls that 10% chance to ever meet them in the one location that they can in the Keep when they don't really ever have to go to that location.  Yeah, that's a good way to hook a purpose.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" />It's interesting to me that Quas has done four very similar modules of late - Saltmarsh, Keep on the Borderlands, Cult of the Reptile God and now Temple of EE.  All four have similar starts - small community threatened by a larger evil that lairs some distance away with a faction within the community bent of aiding the evil.Yet, in three of the four, the faction is active within the community and guidance is given within the module on how that faction should interact with the party.  In Keep on the Borderlands, the Evil Priest is stuck in his apartment and can only meet the party if they go to the tavern and then, only on a 10% chance.  In Cult, the faction actively tries to do the party in, in Hommlet, they actively spy on the party and search them out to try and join, I'm not actually familiar with Saltmarsh, so I'm only going by what I read here, but, apparently, the faction will try to trick the party in to going certain ways and are placed in such a way that it is almost guaranteed that they will meet the PC's.To me, KotB is the best way NOT to use NPC's.  If I'm going to put an evil faction in the town in a module, it would be a case of good design to actually give some guidance to the DM's as to what the evil faction does and how it will react to the PC's.  Just stuffing them into a one line bit in a place the party has no reason to visit is poor design IMO.</blockquote>

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