Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 4421438" data-attributes="member: 54629">DISCLAIMER: This thread contains spoilers and is intended for DMs only! If you are currently a player in a Keep on the Shadowfell campaign, please do not read any further.Hi all,I am currently DMing Keep on the Shadowfell. As is the case with all premade adventures, it has plenty of room for improvement.I intend to use this thread to post any ideas, comments, questions, concerns, and advice I might have that relates to making KotS a more enjoyable experience. My hope is that other DMs running KotS will do the same so that we can all draw on each other for inspiration and advice. I made a similar thread when I was running Red Hand of Doom and it became quite popular. I'm hoping this one will be just as successful.I'll kick things off with a suggestion on how to expand on the dragon burial site encounter:[sblock=The Missing Mentor: Douven Staul & the Dragon Burial Site]I used the "missing mentor" as the main hook for the adventure (I had him be the adventuring mentor for all 5 of the PCs). We ran through the burial site encounter during the second session. Afterwards, I felt like the whole thing had been rather anticlimactic. I wish I had thought of the following idea in time to implement it in my campaign, as I feel it takes an encounter that otherwise feels "tacked on" and actually incorporates it into the main plot of the adventure and gives it a bit more depth. That and it would make the quest take a bit longer to resolve. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Rather than having the PCs find Douven Staul under a pile of blankets at the burial site as written in the adventure, put him in one of the holding cells in Area 2 of the keep's dungeons. When the gnome Agrid and his lackeys came upon Douven at the site, they shipped him off to the keep as another victim for Kalarel's sacrifices. Kalarel, however, realized Douven might know something so he kept him alive and tortured him for information (Kalarel wanted to know what Douven knew about the keep and the mirror relic supposedly located with the dragon's bones). By the time the PCs arrive, Douven has told Kalarel everything he knows that might be useful and is just waiting to be sacrificed.Leave the picture of Douven's wife in the magic amulet as a clue that he was actually there. Also include a diary belonging to Douven in the pile of equipment at the site. Date the last entry - in which Douven talks about how he has nearly finished unburying the dragon's skeleton - several days/weeks prior to the day the PCs arrive so they'll know he's been missing from the site for some time.If the PCs keep any of the humans or the halfling alive and successfully interrogate them, they can learn that a man going by Douven's description was at the site and that he was taken away by hobgoblins however many days ago. If the PCs take Agrid the gnome alive and successfully interrogate him, he can identify Douven by name and can explain that the hobgoblins work for a guy named Kalarel and that they took Douven away for questioning. If any of the PCs reveal that Douven was their mentor, have Agrid cruelly add that Kalarel has probably had Douven killed by now.As I said, I didn't come up with this idea until after my PCs rescued Douven, so it's a little too late for me to use it. I'm hoping that it might be of some use to someone else though.[/sblock]OK. Start posting! Keep the ideas, comments, and questions coming!Cheers,Jonathanp.s. FYI: I am cross-posting this over on the WotC D&D boards in the Campaign & Adventure Workshop forum.p.p.s. Mods: If this thread would be more appropriate in another forum, please feel free to move it there.</blockquote>

Verification