Preparation time for RtToEE?

[Decamber]

Hi there, everyone!

Long time, no see, as they say. Being the first post in quite a respectable time, it's going to stay on topic for once. I don't wanna put Piratecat into unnecessary work.

Well, off to the actual meaning. I've bought RtToEE for some time ago, and to keep the book from becoming dusty, I've finally come to playing it through. I'll DM it, is my plan, and taking all those two hundreds of pages into account, I guess you would need to prepare the adventure a tad ahead of time. So, what have you pros to say about preparing - how much would you recommend? Anything else?

Thanks everyone!

 

[andrew]

I'm in the middle of running and I found several things that helped me prepare for it. Here's what I would do if I started fresh.

Read the whole adventure once. Don't worry about anything you don't understand or that needs clarification.

Then read several story hours using the adventure. I'd start with Dr Midnight's (http://www.rigaming.com/kotsq/) and go from there. It would probably be helpful to have the adventure in hand when you read the story hours, but not necessary.

Next I'd make a list of all the things I'd want to change for my campaign and prepare a list of the handouts I'd need beyond those included.

I would also check out the RttoEE message boards at Monte Cook's site: http://pub58.ezboard.com/fokayyourturnfrm17?page=1

There is a very good yahoo group with several good resources, including errata, maps and encounter notes: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rtttoee/

Here's another campaign site with good handouts, logs and ideas: http://web.mountain.net/~csdriver/toee.htm

That should get you started!

 

[Balsamic Dragon]

Here's some general things that I have found useful to do to prepare for RTEE (currently on its 16th session!) in no particular order

1. For the first session, prepare a map of Hommlet. Not the crappy one that comes with the module, or the larger but still crappy one from Dragon. You don't have to be a genius mapmaker, but make it look slightly interesting and have names of stores instead of numbers. With a map on the table, players will be much more likely to explore the town.

2. On your first read through, keep an eye out for the following (they can be elusive): important pieces of information that the party needs to find out, ways in which the party can get from one section of the adventure to the next, things that will happen in one place based on player actions in another place.
Tag those pages (or make a list) because the module does not have an index and they can be a pain to locate mid-game.

3. On your second read through, make a rough timeline of events that would normally take place without player intervention. Modify this timeline as you play, according to what the players do. Also, make a rough "heirarchy" of the bad guys. Who makes the decisions, and who follows orders. Put a star next to any "free agents" or bad guys who have their own agenda.

4. Make sure that your players know that this is, for the most part, a highly lethal dungeon crawl before they make up their characters. Having mounted combat is not going to be too useful here. Having someone who can find traps is Set up rules for what happens when someone's character dies, because it will happen.

5. Take extra care in breathing life into NPCs! The endless run of combat can be a bit wearing, even on hardened hack-n-slashers. Use the opportunities for roleplaying to their fullest and encourage players to make well-developed characters by offering subplots that are fun and useful. Watch out for signs that the party is falling into a rut so far as strategy goes. It usually either means that you aren't making the battles tough enough (or interesting enough), or that the players are about to all die in the next tough fight.

6. Leadership is a fun feat, and there are a bunch of NPCs designed to be potential followers. Think in advance about what good combinations might be and have NPCs be willing to follow the PCs on their quest. It will add to the party's survival chances, as well as adding more opportunities to roleplay.

Hope this helps

Balsamic Dragon

 

[Decamber]

Your tips seems very nive, andrew! I hadn't thought on checking out story hours. It must be very good, since you get an idea on possible re/actions from the players!

Balsamic Dragon, I hadn't seen your post when I was writing this, so thank you very much for nice additions! I am going to use both of your tips - I think they are wonderful!

Here's one for you two:

[Edited ugly-looking transparent image on non-white background]

 

[Urbanmech]

I second the suggestion to read the whole module through, and highlight or mark important/hook sections.

Two things that I have done to help run this monster of a module are:
1. Make note cards for the monsters. This makes flipping between pages of the Monster Manual and the NPC section a thing of the past and also speeds combat up. You can also keep the cards and use them later if similar monsters pop up.

2. Photocopy all the maps and try to cut them out by room number and then tape them to a blank sheet of paper as the party explores the rooms. Trying to make the party map out some of the larger sections would take forever.