Thanks for the great review--I'm glad you and your PCs had so much fun playing it! I love seeing DMs who take generic published adventures and make it feel like they were custom-written for the party.
"I didn't care for the reasoning for the existence of the maze so I treated that particular episode differently while using the maze map and encounters. What I did was have the PCs affected by a drug gas (I had it thrown in vials by the Goblins instead of the shape stone hook. They wandered through the maze seeing the walls curving and bending and when they encountered creatures I used miniatures that didn't represent what the PCs were actually fighting so that they were not sure what was actually happening. Additionally, I used a Hex Map instead of a grid map to add to the weirdness of the experience. Furthermore, I would periodically hand random players notes saying things like you see the walls bleeding, or the walls give way to a row of tightly grown trees. When the PCs stumbled into the goblin King's chamber they slowly came out of their drug induces stupor to find that they had navigated the goblin tunnels and possibly (they weren't sure what had been real) killed off the goblin hoards in the process. This only took me 5 minutes and provided another interesting experience for the players. They are still debating what was actually going on."
You know, I have to say, I actually like that *better* than the way I originally wrote the maze! Maybe I'll change it for "Race to the Yellow Lotus: Special Edition."
"I'd like to thank The author Travis Stout for writing a module which not only inspired my creativity and excitement as a DM, but also brought out the resourcefulness and innovativeness of my players, and possibly sent my mage down a path of the darkest evil ;-)"
You're most welcome--always glad to help send PCs down a path of darkest evil.
"I didn't care for the reasoning for the existence of the maze so I treated that particular episode differently while using the maze map and encounters. What I did was have the PCs affected by a drug gas (I had it thrown in vials by the Goblins instead of the shape stone hook. They wandered through the maze seeing the walls curving and bending and when they encountered creatures I used miniatures that didn't represent what the PCs were actually fighting so that they were not sure what was actually happening. Additionally, I used a Hex Map instead of a grid map to add to the weirdness of the experience. Furthermore, I would periodically hand random players notes saying things like you see the walls bleeding, or the walls give way to a row of tightly grown trees. When the PCs stumbled into the goblin King's chamber they slowly came out of their drug induces stupor to find that they had navigated the goblin tunnels and possibly (they weren't sure what had been real) killed off the goblin hoards in the process. This only took me 5 minutes and provided another interesting experience for the players. They are still debating what was actually going on."
You know, I have to say, I actually like that *better* than the way I originally wrote the maze! Maybe I'll change it for "Race to the Yellow Lotus: Special Edition."
"I'd like to thank The author Travis Stout for writing a module which not only inspired my creativity and excitement as a DM, but also brought out the resourcefulness and innovativeness of my players, and possibly sent my mage down a path of the darkest evil ;-)"
You're most welcome--always glad to help send PCs down a path of darkest evil.
