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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6730151" data-attributes="member: 3586">Originally posted by Ralif_Redhammer:I just played Shackles of Blood this weekend, and I have to say, I didn’t feel railroaded at all, and had a good bit of fun. There were multiple points where the group spent a fair bit of time trying to decide what to do next, in fact. And we did defeat the Red Plume slavers (admittedly, it was a tough fight, especially because the poor paladin continually rolled badly to escape the net that had ensnared him – we joked that it must be a masterwork net). The arena battle was fun, but I think we all agreed it could’ve been better-planned. After the adventure, the DM and the players sat around and talked over the final arena battle. What happened was, but for two of the PCs, we spent the battle on one platform and sniped while letting the Halfling gladiators come to us. In retrospect, once the bell is rung, instead of the central platform sinking, I thought that the platforms that the PC and enemies start on should sink into the water, forcing an engagement and adding uncertainty to the encounter.Originally posted by SilverStorm3:Honestly, I liked it. Yeah, it was kind of linear...but if you are a hero then the linear nature is implicit and if you aren't a hero then you'll probably be captured anyway. The humans in the halfling farm meant we were suspicious, and so the random elf watching us (which we saw) was also suspicious. We expected to be ambushed, but also knew that being ambushed would take us to where the halflings would be (because there were humans trying to claim they lived on the halfling's farm! Obviously they shouldn't belong there, unless they are with the Red Plumes). During the trip, we realized that the elf led us to an ambush to save her boyfriend (who the other characters recognized because it was actually they who got him captured!). So it brought forth a little bit of karma that "we are in this situation because of what we did". And that was a nice little touch. Also during the trip, we coordinated our Warlock's telepathy and Druid's wild-shaping to free the prisoners so perfectly that the guards didn't even realize it was us masterminding the entire plan. We were rewarded for being quiet little prisoners, even though we actually caused the most chaos.Now, I know that most people who think in terms of "Me hero, me fight bad guys" won't understand why we did this. Why not escape? Because we knew that the prison caravan was going exactly where we wanted to go to free the rest of the halflings. If we had no other option, then we could have gone "guns ablazing"...but then we would have probably failed and died. Instead, our plans went better than we had expected. After that, we were brought to the dungeon before the fight. Well, across from us were the other prisoners. Wouldn't you know it, the Druid wild-shaped again and both our Warlock and Barbarian I distracted the guards. Thus chaos was wrought above and chaos was wrought below while our Cleric easily freed the other prisoners. Literally, we freed the last of the kidnapped halflings by actively breaking them out and keeping the guards off their tails. ----- I mean, it's absurd to think that anyone could complain about not actually freeing the prisoners since there are prisoners to be freed at multiple points. It's absurd to thing that you can't do anything, when a moderately-creative group has so many choices to make that they give up on choosing any and just combine every option that they can.Originally posted by Ralif_Redhammer:That was pretty much our thoughts as well. With a bunch of demihumans in the party, the only way we were getting into Hillsfar was probably going to be as prisoners. I had plans on how to escape, but put my trust in the DM to not say "and you're imprisoned forever until you die in the arena." </blockquote>

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