Red Hand of Doom--my players stay out!!

[Klaus]

I will have to read up on Rhestilor. I didn't know / remember that the Lions of Brindol were descendants of the Rhestilorian army. (It might be in the mod, but there's a lot of info. in there and I am too old to retain all of it. ) Thank Pelor for Google! Now, I'm off to read up on Rhestilor.

Not descendants per se (in the son way), but the Lions, as an organization, are reminiscent of that army. And the Lord of Brindol has inherited his title from those days.

I started cooking up a campaign idea where I'd replace the frost greatsword in Vraath Keep with a Weapon of Legacy inspired by Barrow of the Forgotten King, and the PC would, by the end of RHoDOOOOOOOM, be acclaimed as the resotred King of Rhestilor.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Not descendants per se (in the son way), but the Lions, as an organization, are reminiscent of that army. And the Lord of Brindol has inherited his title from those days.

I started cooking up a campaign idea where I'd replace the frost greatsword in Vraath Keep with a Weapon of Legacy inspired by Barrow of the Forgotten King, and the PC would, by the end of RHoDOOOOOOOM, be acclaimed as the resotred King of Rhestilor.

thats a really good idea.

Lets all add our neet little story twists that we have added to the red hand of doom to make it ours.

oh oh me first ;p

I made lions into wolves becuse I like wolves.

one of the pcs is a LA 0 devil race from some book or another. They have to redeem bad acts they have done (they have no memory of their bad life though). so i had him be a traitor to rhest when it fell to the hord (not sure if it does in the book or not) and becomes the general who led the hord. Now the hord Is after him and wants him dead by going to the other side after his "rebirth"

The replacement for the dead pc last session turns out to be Jeremiahs daughter.

Jeremiahs name was changed to Christoph.

We played a evil game and in the evil game the pcs would make a cameo appearance in the red hand game.

so Saarvith changed to a evil warlock named Cordoba who believes that bunny rabbits are conspiring to kill him. Believed he was helping the resistance against the evil bunnies. grade A crazy.

When the pcs went to the different towns, They found a bard who was one step ahead of them and taking credit for all of their deads. He slowly became more involved with the plot and eventually found out to be a spy for the red hand. It was his note that talks about the Phylactery. He might be the sniper, and he will take the place of wyrmlord Hravek Kharn and at the Final battle grow wings and be a fallen angel who wants to destroy his father who is Palor who has gotten a name change to Thor (basically his motive is to destroy the temple). He is kindof like a sephiroth or Griffith character.

The fallen angel is based off another evil character from the evil game who used deception among all other things.

In his bard form he was also a lover to Miha Serani and Wyrmlord Ulwai Stormcaller was his apprentice and lover.

He hit on the party sorcerer but told the party cleric she was fuggly because she had a cha of 10. That pissed off everyone. it was great. He is so the swashbuckler you love to hate.

The party hates him with a passion so I'm going to use that hate to keep the game exciting if I can.

The elves don't ride owls but Dragon like creatures who were the first experiments of tiamet in the previous war but they have redeemed themselves after rhest and have made a pact with the elves because of the evil they have done. The harrow blades are the improved model.

*edit* wow i messed up that second sentence lol

 

[Lord Zardoz]

My own modifications

My adventure is set within a world based mostly on the Birthright setting in the Rhormarch. The changes in geography are managable, but do create some problems with the timeline. I also use most of the Dragonlance pantheon, and other elements from Dragonlance, though modified. As an example, the city of Brindol is now the city of Oden.

The kingdom that the game happens in was just getting out of a civil war. The losing side of Prince Oden, the rightful but evil heir to the throne no longer held any cities, and was working as a guerrilla warfare force. Red Hand early on was manipulating him into drawing off defenses from Drellins Ferry.

Dragons can exist in multiple bodies at the same time in my game. Therefore, each dragon in RHoD is actually the same dragon.

I replaced the Elf tribe with an Orc tribe. In my game, Orcs are Chaotic Neutral, but very, very violent. They simply enjoy combat, violence and conflict. Think of a cross between a College Frat and a Biker Gang. The only reason they do not fight for the Red Hand forces is because the Red Hand did not invite them too. Rather than riding Owls, they ride Giant Wasps. They had been living in Rhest before the Red Hand drove them out. Getting the Orcs to help against the Red Hand is easy. Getting them to not also go after the human forces, and convincing the human forces to trust the Orcs will be very tricky.

I replaced the Dragon Spawn with Draconians (from Dragonlance).

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Peni Griffin]

Wow, I thought I'd changed a lot, but compared to Moon-Lancer I'm about average.

I already had duergar bad guys in the campaign and I hated (and more to the point, knew my players would hate) a lot of the dragon-theme stuff, so the bad guys are the Duergarian Empire. Their ruler has Full Employment as a goal and operates on the assumption that War is Good for the Economy. Their tactic has been: Conquer a going concern, kill the powerful, enslave the weak, raise them to swell your army, conquer another growing concern...Like many corporations addicted to the "if you're not growing your shrinking" rule, they don't see any reason why they can't do this forever, or at least until everybody alive at the inception of the policy is dead and doesn't have to deal with the fallout. They've conquered a bunch of goblin and hobgoblin tribes and now they're looking to diversify their base. They recruit young dragons who can't compete with full-grown ones with promises of gold and prestige - after the Vale falls, the Horde will help Ozzyrandion, Abithriax, and Tyrgarun to take the Hammerfist Holds and set up shop there and will protect Regiarix's lair. They have raised the hobgoblins and goblins to worship Luduergar - a blasphemy that bothers our PC dwarven priest a lot. The elite forces are durzagon and all the warlords but Saarvith are duergar.

Because my PCs were higher than fifth level and because of the change in bad guy, I removed the second chapter, giving Koth the phylactery and letting them go straight from Drellin's Ferry to the Ghostlord, and I have no intention of using the last chapter, which frees up Tyrgarun and anybody else from that section I see fit to use. Unfortunately, taking out a chapter requires that you screw with the timeline or lose that time pressure element. I've made up for this some by introducing lots of political elements. Will Baron Trask ally with the Red Hand? What does Lady Kaal really want? Why does the map specifically designate Prosser for burning? Can the bards gathered at the Eisteddfodd in Dennovar be persuaded to join the defense of Brindol?

My players are full of ideas and I believe in letting them do what they want to do and dealing with the consequences, which means there's going to be a lot more of the Siege of Brindol played out than the module assumes, alas. This thing's going to take me six months to run, I swear. We've been at this module for over a year now. But they're having a good time and that's the main thing.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

How are everyone's RHoD games going? My players are not quite done with Rhest, so we will be getting to the Ghostlord very soon. We stopped mid-battle after they made a lot of noise defeating the low-level minions. Time for the fun!

I am thinking of re-arranging the last two chapters (like Eric Noah did in page 2 of this thread). I have time, we only play once or twice a month, and each chapter is taking 2+ sessions.

 

[Peni Griffin]

Tomorrow, the Siege of Brindol begins! I have a basket full of minis (including chocolate bunnies for the Huge creatures) and detailed breakdowns of the War of Nerves and the first two programmed encounters. As long as it takes us to play even a simple combat, we can't possibly cover more than that in one afternoon. Then I'll have a week or two to adjust the notes on the rest of the battle for the off-the-wall things the PCs are going to do which will change the way the battle runs.

When you go through the preprogrammed encounters comparing it to the map and knowing that your players are going to want updates (and have the means of getting them) about what's going on where they aren't, it's often hard to see exactly how the designers thought the battle would go. I'm going to rely on "it's dark and confusing and you're getting conflicting information" a lot...

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Have fun running the seige! It looks like a lot of fun. I assume the players get to eat the bunnies if the kill they Huge creatures?

 

[Peni Griffin]

I'd have hit the Easter sales a lot harder had I realized how many Huge creatures I'd potentially need. At the end of the day, yes, they can eat the bunnies. Next weekend I'll stock up more (I hope there'll be some left!) and they can eat them as they die, which is far more satisfactory for everybody.

Hmmm...maybe I should run out now. Nobody'll be showing up for at least ten minutes.

M&Ms, gummi bears, and nuts make good minifigs, too, btw, but you'll want to wash the battlemat before and after.

 

[Peni Griffin]

No matter how often I tell myself the players are going to knock my plans into a cocked hat, I never am prepared for the precise way they do it.

It's three in the afternoon. The Horde has set up their seige. The party got the two giant eagle allies they made ages ago, cast Haste and Invisibility, gave them two Quaal's Feather Tokens (tree), and sent them out at noon. Tyrgarun is a little easy to spot. They drop one feather token on him and one on the manticores. Tyrgarun's touch AC is 10. A dropped 60-foot oak tree does 90d6 worth of damage.

Damn, why didn't I think of camoflage netting?

I laughed so hard I have a headache. But now what I do do for a dragon rampage during the attack? That's a rhetorical question. I can't wait around for an answer.

 

[Jhaelen]

The party got the two giant eagle allies they made ages ago, cast Haste and Invisibility, gave them two Quaal's Feather Tokens (tree), and sent them out at noon. Tyrgarun is a little easy to spot. They drop one feather token on him and one on the manticores. Tyrgarun's touch AC is 10. A dropped 60-foot oak tree does 90d6 worth of damage.

Umm. I cannot think of any situation where a feather token (tree) could possibly deal any damage at all. But obviously, YMMV.

I laughed so hard I have a headache. But now what I do do for a dragon rampage during the attack? That's a rhetorical question. I can't wait around for an answer.

As long as you're all having fun