D&D 5E Princes of the Apocalypse First session

[Brian Michaluk]

http://5eddnd.blogspot.ca/

On reading through the intro 1st level encounters and side quests in chapter 6 I decided to have my established 3rd level party start right from that point and not from the 3rd level point.

I purchased and printed out the players copies of red larch and the valley region. Being PDF's I printed them using the poster method at 150% and 160% so after a bit of cutting and taping some decent mini poster maps provided excellent reference.

Traveling to Red Larch while trying to follow the trail of some brigands the party explored and learned a bit about the town and ran through most of the 1st level encounters which I found VERY well setup and actually drove the party to needed extended rests a few times. Good intro the troubles of the reason and a good amount of coin in their purses for the first time made them quite interested in exploring the troubles of the region. Lot of play time with lower XP and higher gold was different from our normal sessions but actually quite fun.

The offerings of Red Larch as a town were quite an interesting balance. Party was thrown off by needing to deal in used weapons mainly as there is no real weapon / armor smithy in town and the provided npc who deals in used merchandise was very fun to play out.

I am avoiding talking about encounter specifics for now so there is no spoilers out there too early.

in the end a 7 hour play session had them go through 3 of the 1st level areas plus explore town and meet a lot of npc plus start some investigations into the nature of the area and the first few hexes out from red larch.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sounds awesome. I might actually check this adventure out.

 

[Rhenny]

Cool. I may put my Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle on hold to run this even though we'll be done with 3/4 of the Dragonspear campaign.

 

[Nebulous]

Cool. I may put my Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle on hold to run this even though we'll be done with 3/4 of the Dragonspear campaign.

You could have it on hold for a long, long, long time.

 

[Rhenny]

You could have it on hold for a long, long, long time.

I know, but this may give me a chance to get 2 more regular players into our group. I've already breached the subject with my current players. They seem game for it.

 

[Brian Michaluk]

From what I have seen of the adventure location setups for 1st level be sure to run zombies as dumb as possible and dont run the first few enemy npc with much brainpower or you can so totally overwhelm starting characters with even a bit of tactics lol

 

[HobbitFan]

I started a new campaign with this on Monday. We started at 1st and I'm running the Tomb of Moving Stones section with the Sinkhole variant. A little bit of town stuff after character gen and then we were off!

One word of advice I would have for other DMs running this, try to set up the Believer cult faction in town with small RP encounters before doing the Sinkhole scene. Having the elders run up as unknowns and try and keep people from saving the kids (and entering the tomb and exposing their going on) doesn't have as much impact or make as much sense if they aren't introduced before then acting strange.

A funny note: I accientially dumped my players via the sinkhole in the wrong end of the tomb and had to reverse everything. My players picked up after what I was saying and canned descriptions were a little off.
Oh Well! You guys can laugh at HobbitFan

 

[pukunui]

One word of advice I would have for other DMs running this, try to set up the Believer cult faction in town with small RP encounters before doing the Sinkhole scene. Having the elders run up as unknowns and try and keep people from saving the kids (and entering the tomb and exposing their going on) doesn't have as much impact or make as much sense if they aren't introduced before then acting strange.

Does the full scenario include any sort of reaction from the town elders to the PCs going down into the sinkhole and investigating the tomb? That was one omission I noticed on reading through the AL version. The elders don't want people to go down and rescue the kids, but they don't appear to do anything to stop the PCs from doing so, nor is there any attempt to stop them from investigating what's down there once everyone's safe.

 

[Brian Michaluk]

Does the full scenario include any sort of reaction from the town elders to the PCs going down into the sinkhole and investigating the tomb? That was one omission I noticed on reading through the AL version. The elders don't want people to go down and rescue the kids, but they don't appear to do anything to stop the PCs from doing so, nor is there any attempt to stop them from investigating what's down there once everyone's safe.

there is a section at the end of that sinkhole event that talks about changes to make to the town based on the discovery

 

[pukunui]

there is a section at the end of that sinkhole event that talks about changes to make to the town based on the discovery

So the elders don't actively try to stop the PCs from investigating the tomb? That seems a bit odd to me. I would think they'd do something to try and stop their little secret from coming to light.