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Raiders of the Serpent Sea - Third Party 5E Review
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<blockquote data-quote="Sparky McDibben" data-source="post: 9207078" data-attributes="member: 7041430"><p>I think this is a Thermian argument. Regardless of whether it "doesn't seem out of place in a Viking campaign," it's still something that is going to make players uncomfortable, and will definitely prompt arguments at some tables. Hence, it really should have been signalled better to the DM. </p><p> </p><p>I'm very glad you decided to buy the book! That money helps the developers create new products (hopefully better ones), and I wish you all the luck in the world should you decide to run it. Catch you on the next one, Sword!</p><p></p><p>At this point, the PCs are turned loose onto another lake. They have three quests to accomplish, all called "Sagas." There's one where they go beat up the ironwood witches for a bit, another where they go try to talk to the giants to get them to stop killing people, and one where they go to the Underworld to find Siddhe's ghost and find out what's causing the dead to rise.</p><p></p><p>Alright - moving on to Chapter 4: Across the Serpent Sea. This chapter is chock full of side-quests, random locations to be explored, etc. It's sort of a mini-gazetteer to the Serpent Sea locations the PCs might explore as they go through the next three "Sagas."</p><p></p><p>This is all great. Seriously, 8 / 10, my only complaints being that formatting and layout make it difficult to use at the table, and I would have liked to see more of it (though 21 pages is fairly chonky). Several of these locations are tied into the PCs epic goals from their backstories, so you can seed those how you like.</p><p></p><p>Notable examples include:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Help calm down a bunch of sentient, eight-legged horses who think the locals are butchering horses</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Break up an arranged marriage by finding the person the bride really loves and dragging him back from a horrible delirium</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hunt down a wooly rhino in the frozen North</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Stop a massive infection of "Iceblight."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Blackmail an adult black dragon who faked his own death at the hands of himself (magic ring) and then convinced the local peasants that he should be their ruler.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If any of the players have the Royal Heir background, they have a whole arc about finding their parents, which leads to a Red Wedding-style backstab.</li> </ul><p>There are actually a bunch of locations where the book gives you kind of a basic location. I've taken to thinking about these as plug-ins for other adventures. You can put the Market Games from <em>Journeys to the Radiant Citadel</em> in as the PCs have to prove their worth to a community, for example. Or drop in any of the dungeons from <em>Into the Yawning Portal.</em></p><p></p><p>Good job, developers!</p><p></p><p>Next up, we get to the Curse of the Ironwood Witches, which is chapter 5. The material here is set up for PCs of 7th to 10th level. This saga deals with the PCs exploring the witches' home in the Ironwood forest, and dealing with their crap. We learn several things:</p><p></p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The ironwood trees eat people, and spawn beetle swarms to affect the heroes.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The witches are serving Yoten (the evil chaos-folk who destroyed the Lost Lands pre-Grimnir)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The Witchking has been bringing monsters to Grimnir using a Rainbow Spear doomaflotchie</li> </ol><p></p><p>Overall, this chapter is fairly solid. It'll push the PCs to the limit, especially if they try exploring a lot. The adventure tries to get around the 5 minute adventuring day by relying on the carnivorous forest conceit, which ain't bad, but will probably get a little tiring. My complaint here is that there's no times given for navigating from point to point, but the game seems to think you should be rolling random encounters every hour or so.</p><p></p><p>Aside from that, the PCs explore a giant carnivorous forest, fight through the witch shrine, although this time as a proper dungeon, not a weird vision-quest, and then find the heart of the witches' power in the Ironwood Grove. From there, the PCs fight the Witchking, fight some witches, and then (hopefully!) burn down the ironwood grove.</p><p></p><p>From here, the PCs can journey onward, heading to either Drifthall, the giant quest, or anywhere they want to visit on the Serpent Sea.</p><p></p><p>I am pretty OK with this section 7 / 10 - the balance, formatting, and layout all need work, but it's miles ahead of the last few sections on narrative cohesion and appropriate material.</p><p></p><p>Next up is some palace-intrigue type nonsense with the giants! The basic setup here is that the frost giant jarl's wife has been replaced by an ironwood witch. She's trying to get the giants to go to war with the Vikings. The giants first attacked a tallfolk (goliath) clan near the water, and this is where the PCs enter the story.</p><p></p><p>The PCs initial motivation is to figure out a) what happened to this clan of tallfolk that lives up here and b) where that frost giant at the Well of Wisdom came from. Various hooks from Drifthall point here.</p><p></p><p>When they show up, the PCs find a village of tallfolk under siege from hill giants!</p><p></p><p>Dealing with the giants who've attacked the tallfolk village is actually pretty good! Interesting characterization sets the tallfolk apart from some of the other clans, including a potential companion for the PCs (Odur, whom they met in Drifthall) getting more respect if the heroes use their glory to talk up Odur.</p><p></p><p>The one thing I find baffling is that one of the things the tallfolk insist on is that the heroes drink this holy water to "bind their fates to that of the clan." The water is totally inert and doesn't do anything. However, I can definitely see heroes categorically refusing to drink...and if they don't drink, the scenario doesn't progress.</p><p></p><p>Other than that, it's compelling stuff.</p><p></p><p>Next there's an overland trek in the frozen north (mostly some narration broken up by random encounters), followed by the Glacier Fortress of the Frost Giant Jarl. I figure this is an intentional callback to Against the Giants, and good on them. Anyway, as said, the PCs are here to basically figure out what the hell is driving the giants to war.</p><p></p><p>Turns out the frost giant jarl's wife has been replaced by an ironwood witch and she's trying to get the giants on the war path. The PCs have to stop her. The tricky part here is proving that the jarl's wife is actually an imposter. While the jarl and the jarl's wife (now a witch) are estranged, the jarl loves her very much, and is not willing to let things escalate to combat. Yet.</p><p></p><p>There is exactly one path the heroes might choose to use here, but it relies upon a) asking the right questions at an eating game, b) lucky rolls to convince a frost giant to divulge his nightmares, c) finding that frost giant's journals in his closet, and then d) realizing that this proves anything at all. So, not the cleanest path imaginable.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="How I Would Do It"]</p><p>The Three Clue Rule is your friend, kids. For each conclusion you want the PCs to reach, include three clues to it.</p><p></p><p>1) The jarl's wife is an Ironwood Witch.</p><p>a) The PCs see her eyes flash iron-color during the banquet - no roll required</p><p>b) The jarl's son complains of terrible nightmares; he's concerned for his dad, and additional interaction by the PCs may coax additional information out of him</p><p>c) PCs can use detect magic, truesight, etc., to see past the witch's disguise</p><p>d) Have the witch make a slight slip up that no one else could pick up on, but someone who'd fought the witches before would recognize - like a somatic gesture, etc.</p><p></p><p>Repeat this kind of model for each conclusion you want the PCs to draw in the adventure.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>If the PCs figure this out, the best they can hope for is keeping the giants neutral in the coming Ragnarok. Otherwise, the giants will side with the witches.</p><p></p><p>For the most part, this is a decent palace intrigue scenario. Because of the multiple options to engage with the content, it's keyed like a dungeoncrawl, but all the palace-intrigue stuff is presented as a series of scenes. This results in the layout becoming muddled, but hardly unusable.</p><p></p><p>On the way back, the PCs fight the Witchking, plus one other witch and two wolventrolls. My only grip with this is that the Witchking has to escape unless it's the third time the PCs are fighting him. I hate that kind of railroady crap, but there you go, I guess.</p><p></p><p>By the way, if you're picturing the Witch King like this:</p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://media3.giphy.com/media/P4bLhbzfxDaM0/200.gif" alt="lord of the rings film GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><em>Come at me, Gandalf!</em></p><p></p><p>That's not quite what they're going for. The Witch-King in this adventure looks like this:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/hPVj5Ap.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>If you're wondering why his shield has teeth, it's because it can literally bite you, dealing 4d6 + 5 necrotic damage as one of his three attacks. He's no slouch!</p><p></p><p>Alright, friends, I'm going to come back next time to the Saga of the Dead! (By the way, for those of you playing the home game, we're on page 212 / 498, which puts us not even halfway through this thing!).</p><p></p><p>Stay frosty!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sparky McDibben, post: 9207078, member: 7041430"] I think this is a Thermian argument. Regardless of whether it "doesn't seem out of place in a Viking campaign," it's still something that is going to make players uncomfortable, and will definitely prompt arguments at some tables. Hence, it really should have been signalled better to the DM. I'm very glad you decided to buy the book! That money helps the developers create new products (hopefully better ones), and I wish you all the luck in the world should you decide to run it. Catch you on the next one, Sword! At this point, the PCs are turned loose onto another lake. They have three quests to accomplish, all called "Sagas." There's one where they go beat up the ironwood witches for a bit, another where they go try to talk to the giants to get them to stop killing people, and one where they go to the Underworld to find Siddhe's ghost and find out what's causing the dead to rise. Alright - moving on to Chapter 4: Across the Serpent Sea. This chapter is chock full of side-quests, random locations to be explored, etc. It's sort of a mini-gazetteer to the Serpent Sea locations the PCs might explore as they go through the next three "Sagas." This is all great. Seriously, 8 / 10, my only complaints being that formatting and layout make it difficult to use at the table, and I would have liked to see more of it (though 21 pages is fairly chonky). Several of these locations are tied into the PCs epic goals from their backstories, so you can seed those how you like. Notable examples include: [LIST] [*]Help calm down a bunch of sentient, eight-legged horses who think the locals are butchering horses [*]Break up an arranged marriage by finding the person the bride really loves and dragging him back from a horrible delirium [*]Hunt down a wooly rhino in the frozen North [*]Stop a massive infection of "Iceblight." [*]Blackmail an adult black dragon who faked his own death at the hands of himself (magic ring) and then convinced the local peasants that he should be their ruler. [*]If any of the players have the Royal Heir background, they have a whole arc about finding their parents, which leads to a Red Wedding-style backstab. [/LIST] There are actually a bunch of locations where the book gives you kind of a basic location. I've taken to thinking about these as plug-ins for other adventures. You can put the Market Games from [I]Journeys to the Radiant Citadel[/I] in as the PCs have to prove their worth to a community, for example. Or drop in any of the dungeons from [I]Into the Yawning Portal.[/I] Good job, developers! Next up, we get to the Curse of the Ironwood Witches, which is chapter 5. The material here is set up for PCs of 7th to 10th level. This saga deals with the PCs exploring the witches' home in the Ironwood forest, and dealing with their crap. We learn several things: [LIST=1] [*]The ironwood trees eat people, and spawn beetle swarms to affect the heroes. [*]The witches are serving Yoten (the evil chaos-folk who destroyed the Lost Lands pre-Grimnir) [*]The Witchking has been bringing monsters to Grimnir using a Rainbow Spear doomaflotchie [/LIST] Overall, this chapter is fairly solid. It'll push the PCs to the limit, especially if they try exploring a lot. The adventure tries to get around the 5 minute adventuring day by relying on the carnivorous forest conceit, which ain't bad, but will probably get a little tiring. My complaint here is that there's no times given for navigating from point to point, but the game seems to think you should be rolling random encounters every hour or so. Aside from that, the PCs explore a giant carnivorous forest, fight through the witch shrine, although this time as a proper dungeon, not a weird vision-quest, and then find the heart of the witches' power in the Ironwood Grove. From there, the PCs fight the Witchking, fight some witches, and then (hopefully!) burn down the ironwood grove. From here, the PCs can journey onward, heading to either Drifthall, the giant quest, or anywhere they want to visit on the Serpent Sea. I am pretty OK with this section 7 / 10 - the balance, formatting, and layout all need work, but it's miles ahead of the last few sections on narrative cohesion and appropriate material. Next up is some palace-intrigue type nonsense with the giants! The basic setup here is that the frost giant jarl's wife has been replaced by an ironwood witch. She's trying to get the giants to go to war with the Vikings. The giants first attacked a tallfolk (goliath) clan near the water, and this is where the PCs enter the story. The PCs initial motivation is to figure out a) what happened to this clan of tallfolk that lives up here and b) where that frost giant at the Well of Wisdom came from. Various hooks from Drifthall point here. When they show up, the PCs find a village of tallfolk under siege from hill giants! Dealing with the giants who've attacked the tallfolk village is actually pretty good! Interesting characterization sets the tallfolk apart from some of the other clans, including a potential companion for the PCs (Odur, whom they met in Drifthall) getting more respect if the heroes use their glory to talk up Odur. The one thing I find baffling is that one of the things the tallfolk insist on is that the heroes drink this holy water to "bind their fates to that of the clan." The water is totally inert and doesn't do anything. However, I can definitely see heroes categorically refusing to drink...and if they don't drink, the scenario doesn't progress. Other than that, it's compelling stuff. Next there's an overland trek in the frozen north (mostly some narration broken up by random encounters), followed by the Glacier Fortress of the Frost Giant Jarl. I figure this is an intentional callback to Against the Giants, and good on them. Anyway, as said, the PCs are here to basically figure out what the hell is driving the giants to war. Turns out the frost giant jarl's wife has been replaced by an ironwood witch and she's trying to get the giants on the war path. The PCs have to stop her. The tricky part here is proving that the jarl's wife is actually an imposter. While the jarl and the jarl's wife (now a witch) are estranged, the jarl loves her very much, and is not willing to let things escalate to combat. Yet. There is exactly one path the heroes might choose to use here, but it relies upon a) asking the right questions at an eating game, b) lucky rolls to convince a frost giant to divulge his nightmares, c) finding that frost giant's journals in his closet, and then d) realizing that this proves anything at all. So, not the cleanest path imaginable. [SPOILER="How I Would Do It"] The Three Clue Rule is your friend, kids. For each conclusion you want the PCs to reach, include three clues to it. 1) The jarl's wife is an Ironwood Witch. a) The PCs see her eyes flash iron-color during the banquet - no roll required b) The jarl's son complains of terrible nightmares; he's concerned for his dad, and additional interaction by the PCs may coax additional information out of him c) PCs can use detect magic, truesight, etc., to see past the witch's disguise d) Have the witch make a slight slip up that no one else could pick up on, but someone who'd fought the witches before would recognize - like a somatic gesture, etc. Repeat this kind of model for each conclusion you want the PCs to draw in the adventure. [/SPOILER] If the PCs figure this out, the best they can hope for is keeping the giants neutral in the coming Ragnarok. Otherwise, the giants will side with the witches. For the most part, this is a decent palace intrigue scenario. Because of the multiple options to engage with the content, it's keyed like a dungeoncrawl, but all the palace-intrigue stuff is presented as a series of scenes. This results in the layout becoming muddled, but hardly unusable. On the way back, the PCs fight the Witchking, plus one other witch and two wolventrolls. My only grip with this is that the Witchking has to escape unless it's the third time the PCs are fighting him. I hate that kind of railroady crap, but there you go, I guess. By the way, if you're picturing the Witch King like this: [CENTER][IMG alt="lord of the rings film GIF"]https://media3.giphy.com/media/P4bLhbzfxDaM0/200.gif[/IMG] [I]Come at me, Gandalf![/I][/CENTER] That's not quite what they're going for. The Witch-King in this adventure looks like this: [CENTER][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/hPVj5Ap.png[/IMG][/CENTER] If you're wondering why his shield has teeth, it's because it can literally bite you, dealing 4d6 + 5 necrotic damage as one of his three attacks. He's no slouch! Alright, friends, I'm going to come back next time to the Saga of the Dead! (By the way, for those of you playing the home game, we're on page 212 / 498, which puts us not even halfway through this thing!). Stay frosty! [/QUOTE]
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