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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2447239" data-attributes="member: 30001">That's a funny story of DnD, but on the topic of "old school": So PCs from another universe walk through a magical gate and find a sea-side resort on earth. "Why is there a big body of water there sloshing around for no reason?" "Why are those people just sitting there on the sand wacking an air-filled ball back and forth while listening to music coming out of a box.  And those people - over there - they're not even talking to them." "Why is everyone staring at us and our weapons?" Seriously - I think one of the basic points here is that the author didn't believe in the setting and I really think he telegraphed that to the players and so they became skeptical.  Even from the start - the mist did not "deserve" the title of "mysterious mule-eating mist" - there was an undertone of derision there.  So had Castle Amber existed in a bubble within the Negative Material Plane - would the players reactions had been any different?   "um...flesh golems...sort of" - I can't figure out what the authors problem is.  It seems reasonable to me that a family of wizards would have created it's own construct/android servant.  "why are the servants hobgoblins?"  Why are all servants supposed to be humans?  Really - between this and the other thread it sometimes seems like I'm trying to explain DnD to some random people down at the corner. I don't take exception with everything that the author says, clearly some parts of the module were a bit thin.  But it's just too much to wade through all of the criticism of elements that really do not deserve it in order to get to common ground.  I think the players are not taking the setting seriously mainly because the DM does not.  Why would two wraiths attack some mortal adventurers?  Why not?  Why do people eat hamburgers?  Contributing to the DMs lack of belief is the rather heavy-handed intro to the module - players predictable turn pranksters when they're forced into a situation not of their choosing.  IMO the DM is uncomfortable in situations that are not heavily scripted.  While the PCs were blinded by the trap the DM could have at least taunted them with some spooky sounds in the castle - perhaps a clue or two about upcoming encounters.  But again, the DM really didn't believe that the castle was real and made no attempt to bring it to life so the PCs just sat there.  It's bad DMing IMO (or poor preparation). It's a one-shot adventure - so from the perspective of a group that's used to plot heavy adventures that are tightly woven into the campaign world, it's bound to disappoint.  The NPCs in the castle could have used some scripting so that they were doing more than just standing around, but it's 28 pages and it isn't back by a bunch of RA Salvatore trilogies and video games so I don't think it does a bad job in 28 pages of describing an adventure.</blockquote>

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