Let’s get this show on the road!
I’m going to be running the first Shrouded Lands adventure sometime in July (I can’t game more than once a month due to babies, hence this wonderful wonderful wonderful thread giving me my gaming fix) with the Adventurer Conqueror King System (B/X D&D hack). Like chutup says it being edition-neutral makes it possible to use the Shrouded Lands with any game, but I think ACKS comes the closest to the perfect D&D to me.
There’s no way in hell that my group is going to read enough background material to make an informed decision about what to do in the Shrouded Lands right off the bat so what I’m going to do is that instead of throwing information at them I’m going to make them work for the information. This means that the adventure starts on rails a bit but the tracks dead-end after introducing the PCs to the setting.
The PCs will start at Olmsted Keep as the entourage of Sir Boros of Steadfast (the elder brother of Lady Steadfast a walrus-mustached blowhard 4th level fighter) being his squire, chaplain, porter or whatever. They’ll have some time to interact socially in Olmsted Keep for a bit and then one evening Sir Boros will set off with the PCs towards the Garden of Amelar. While part of the way there, Sir Boros will get himself by riding his water buffalo off a cliff or something. The PCs will be stuck in the Kingswood with dawn not too far away. In the supplies that Sir Boros has packed in the mule (who was far to smart to follow the buffalo off the cliff) are two pages that have been ripped out of the Weeper’s journal (by who?) and there are two more random pages packed in the saddlebags of the water buffalo (along with a lot of valuable personal belongings). The idea is that the PCs will look over these pages, get some clues about the Kingswood and get some ideas for future adventures.
Most of the actual content of the adventure will be a wilderness crawl across a few hexes of the Kingwood. I'll add in enough hexes to have important landmarks and then roll a bunch of random encounters (maybe make those interesting nested ones that say what the critters encountered are DOING not just what they are). I’m also going to be pillaging the two foresty hexcrawl mini-settings that I bought from John M. Starter’s website (the Land of Nod one). Or at least as much as I have time to do in the next month...
Sounds OK for an adventure to introduce players to this setting? What do you guys think?
OK, for ACKS the game splits the difference between race as race and race as class by having a few race-specific classes for each rare with all of the racial features baked into the racial classes. Here’re the classes that the core book comes with:
-Fighter (all classes are human-only unless noted otherwise)
-Mage (not Vancian in this game strangely enough, I was a bit leery about that but I think I’ll roll with it).
-Cleric (in ACKS clerics can cast spontaneously from their spell list and the game encourages you to make up new spells and lists for clerics of different gods, the default lawful cleric is your standard Templar god of healing and light, so the default lawful cleric will be for clerics of the King in Splendor, there’s also information about how chaotic clerics reverse the default spell list i.e. cast darkness instead of light etc. etc. so those will be the clerics of She Who Waits which sets up a nice duality with her husband)
-Thief (poor 1d4 hit dice of Basic D&D thieves…)
-Assassin (Smiling Men and whatnot)
-Bard (Thringish minstrels and whatnot)
-Bladedancer (human light infantry warrior priestesses put in as an example of how to change up the default cleric with a different sort of cleric for each god, now sure if these can be fit into the Shrouded Lands, they’re not sneaky enough to be the Temple Invisible, squinting at them a bit I think I could use them as Temple Indivisible priests, but what sort of spells should the priests of Alberson cast anyway? For their first level spells they have the basics but faerie fire instead of light, remove fear instead of purify and don't have sanctuary, sleep or ventriloquist. Wait, standard clerics have sleep? Badass...)
-Explorer (basically the B/X Halfling class converted over to a human rangerish class, I’ll just convert this back to being a Halfling)
-Dwarven Vaultguard (basically the B/X dwarf class, dwarf fighter more or less)
-Dwarven Craftpriest (basically the cleric with a few dwarven racial goodies and a few more XP to gain levels)
-Elven Spellsword (basically the B/ elf class, elf mage/fighter more of less)
-Elven Nightblade (elf thief/mages but more thief than mage)
OK so especially considering that ACKS has racial classes, what classes are vital for the Shrouded lands (I can probably find a lot of these on the ACKS boards but haven't looked yet...)?
-ACKS has no monk class, I can convert the Rules Cyclopedia one over easily enough but what are D&D monks in the Shrouded Lands. Most of our monks don't seem Shaolin enough except maybe the Temple Invisible guys, but are they more monks or assassin/priests rule-wise in D&D? This is important since one of the players loves playing monks.
-Because this is a B/X hack first level clerics don't get any spells anyway so this can wait for a bit, but I'd like to write up spell lists for Thringis priests of the Green Lady (magisters?) and Alberon's priests. What kind of magic would be most fitting for them do you think? I'm thinking related to power and command for Alberon and perhaps just a tinge of the druidical for the Thringish priests but would like your ideas.
-Elves aren’t really PC material, so screw them. I’ll have elf stats still be elf stats for elf NPCs (who’ll be higher level than is standard in D&D, you won’t see many elf NPCs below third level, Shrouded Lands elves are scary…) there’s a Proficiency (kind of sort of a feat) that gives humans some “be a half-elf” bennies.
-I’m thinking of putting in a class called a Dwarven Shadow (I love you Fall from Heaven II!) or a Dwarven Enforcer. Basically take the Assassin class, bake in dwarven stuff and change the skills around a bit. They’d be guys like Hoard collection agents and whatnot, nasty bastards who are good at sniping with poisoned crossbow bolts.
-Halflings are OK with just one class unless there’s a second Halfling archetype that we really need.
-Gnomes need a class. Am thinking Illusionist/Thief (perhaps with more illusionist than thief) with some 1ed gnome racial stuff baked in.
-For orcs maybe an orc warrior. Is anything else needed?
-I don’t have enough time for goblins, hobgoblins and kobolds.
-For gnolls we need a gnoll bard. I’ll take the bard class, make them a bit punchier, have their singing be more screwing with the heads of enemies than inspiring allies (hyena sounds are freaky as hell), change the bardic knowledge stuff to knowing landmarks and critter knowledge (can you eat a cantoblepas? what bits of a dead owlbear are useful?) and nix non-gnoll historical knowledge. Not sure what to do with spell-casting. Will either keep it in and just make the gnolls require more XP to level up or nix or slow the spellcasting or keep it at full and replace most of it with curses with perhaps a side order of divination. Thoughts?
-For gnolls I’d love to have a class that captures the guys who eat animal hearts and get the power of the critters they’ve eaten but I have no clue how to do that in a way that makes for playable mechanics. Thoughts?
-Maybe just a vanilla gnollish warrior. Take the fighter class, bake in some gnollish racial stuff, give them a more limited weapon/armor selection and some wilderness skills and they should be good to go. This would, ironically, look the halfling class with the bonus to missile weapons traded in for some more toughness.
Anything else?
For house rules I’m going by the book but making it possible to shoot into combat (you can’t at all by RAW without a special ability WTF?) but have the target chosen randomly. I’m also going to start off with max first level HPs but have you roll all of your HPs each level thereafter. What I mean is that when you hit fourth level you reroll ALL your hit dice and take that or keep what you had at third level if the third level total was higher. The purpose of this houserule will be basically more random rolling because rolling dice is fun without having a low HP roll or two shaft your character forever. We’ll be using the standard roll 3d6 in order 5 times and choose your favorite of those five character, with the spare rolled characters being back-up PCs if one dies or being recycled for hireling stats.
Hmmmm, anything tips for me to give the first adventure a good strong Shrouded Lands feel? I don't want this to be a string of kick down the door combats like the 5ed playtest ended up being