DDAL Jasper DMs Princes of the Apocalyse

[jasper]

yes i bought the book back in 2017 and finally getting around to running it. Holy Cow when the top three things that show up in google is a needed flow chart.: this is going to be interesting to run. Suggestions on how to run are welcome. It does look like i may have 8 people starting at the table.

 

[Zardnaar]

8 people are to many for starters.
First 5 levels are great then it kinda becomes a slog. Encounters are also easy we cleared the lvl 9 fire one at 6.

I played up the cultists counter attacks and devastation orbd. Never completed it but have mined the crap out of it.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'm playing in a PoTA game, 6 players, 3 familiars, 3 steeds, one sidekick. We're dealing with the fourth mega-baddie. Pretty sure the dm has upscaled it because we're 19th level. He interspersed Ghosts of Saltmarsh and another one involving the fey. I can't talk about the set up stories because they were blended in with the other adventures and I joined late, but before any of the main temples had been found.


So tips from a player:

I will be honest, figure out a way to not need to slog through a mega-dungeon unless you all love that play style. We took an oddball route and hit the temples one after another, then the Fain, then the mega-bads. It's been essentially 1 in-game day per zone, taking about 15-hours of play for each. (4 temples + 1 Fain + 4 baddies) x 15 hours = 135 hours. At our rate of play, that's taken us well over a year for what's an in-game week. your call if that is awesome or tedious. I find it tedious, YMMV.

Be aware the entire complex is designed to avoid calling reinforcements. Two active forges, multiple waterfalls, multiple lava-falls, "allies" who barely tolerate each other, numerous groups that fight internally, weird "sin" compulsions that make cultists ignore things they shouldn't, etc, etc, etc.

It means PCs can take rests almost at will because absolutely no one is going to notice anything is wrong. It's ludicrous to the extreme.

IMHO, restructure the physical layout, specifically the spaces between the published maps. I would put the 4 temples 1-3 miles apart with the "upper" level locations outside the mountain, with only the Fain and below underground.

Using the outside of the mountain also helps focus each cult in a different direction, possibly into multiple kingdoms. I'd have the water cult actually focus on an ocean reachable by a river from the mountain. That obscure the fact the are essentially neighbors.

Moving it outside the mountain means pillars of smoke, bolts of lightning and screams are more likely to be noticed, cutting down on the weird pacing, I think it should mean you can actually clear the zone with less play time because it becomes one long running fight, which means you don't need the same volume of enemies as a dozen set-piece fights

One advantage to this is that after the second cult, the PCs will likely figure out they can find other cultists if they circle the mountain. Let's you short circuit things. Alternately, the cults can notice their neighbor suffering from a case of "adventurers" and send "help". The kind of help that involves friendly fire.

It may even result in one cult being able to justify using their elemental doom bomb on another cult. A massove two-fer.

 

[Staffan]

I've run almost the whole campaign (the campaign got put on hiatus on account of Covid as the PCs were getting to the final Node, and we didn't start it back up when we started playing in-person again) and, to be frank, I would not want to repeat the process. The early stages with searching for the missing delegation are fun, and take PCs to various places in the region, but once you start hitting the Haunted Keeps things start getting kinda dull. Well OK, the Spire is kinda fun with the air cultists trying to trick the PCs and such, and Rivergard Keep and whatever the Burning Man place is called aren't too much, but the Monastery gets the slog going by being a relatively big dungeon (at least compared to the other Keeps).

I'd probably strip it down for parts and split the main dungeon into several parts that are located in different places. I'd make getting to the dungeon part of the adventure, and cut down on the size of the various Temples. Having more travel also makes it easier to include the various side treks in an organic manner. Plus, if the different Temples are separate places rather than each being a quarter of the ruins of the Mighty Dwarven Outpost of Tyar-Besil, you don't have to concern yourself with Tyar-Besil being physically smaller than Red Larch*.

Another idea I had would be to make each cult deal with two elements, because I think that would make it easier to find thematically appropriate locations. Air/Water could be somewhere in the Sea of Moving Ice, Water/Earth could be in a swamp, Earth/Fire is naturally somewhere volcanic, and Fire/Air sounds pretty deserty so maybe Anauroch? But at that point, you're basically taking some ideas and concepts from the module and building your own.

Going back to the module as-is, one narrative problem I had was that while the cultists have all these nefarious plans, there aren't many opportunities for the PCs to learn what's going on. It's basically just "Oh look, here are some evil elemental cultists, let's murder them. Hey look, this one had a fancy spear, I wonder if that does anything useful... oh, mostly just being able to command air elementals and make Orbs of Devastation, though the latter seems like something where the name is writing checks its stats can't cash."

* OK, that's a little unfair. Tyar-Besil is basically a square filled with lots of stuff, while Red Larch is cross-shaped with all the houses being along the roads, so there's a lot more empty space in Red Larch. But edge-to-edge, Red Larch is bigger than the four maps that make up the four Temples.

 

[aco175]

I ran it and made several PWYW supplements for DMsGuild. They mostly follow the adventure book but have a few side quests and such and give you all the statblocks printed out.

The mid-level adventures in the valley are easy to side track if the PCs miss some clues and do not find the other locations. The end mega dungeon makes less sense with each bad guy cult not liking the others but also all being together. I could have introduced more downtime and made the towns more relevant. Maybe add a longer time between the higher level stuff and introduce some followers and a homebase for the PCs.