D&D 5E Running Murder in Baldur's Gate in Dark Sun

[FitzTheRuke]

Remind me, what intermediate stages are uninspiring? I usually can't remember when there's bad bits to written adventures I run because I will just move along or throw something else in. Maybe I will remember what I did there. Everyone loved it both times I ran it.

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[darkbard]

Remind me, what intermediate stages are uninspiring?

Stage Two consists of a series of menial tasks involving the enforcement of sumptuary laws, vandals scrawling graffiti (not particularly appropriate for the largely illiterate world of Dark Sun), and overenthusiastic Flaming Fist thugs roughing up innocents.

Stage Four consists of a sanitation strike and blackmailing a politician to keep him from opposing one of the major players in his attempt to become a Duke.

Stage Five consists of a lockout between districts of the city (the PCs either enforcing the laws or dealing with their consequences) and an increase of harbor tariffs, followed by an interlude in which the PCs are urged to engage in the exciting activity of ... wait for it ... examine harbor manifests!

Stage Six involves either enabling or putting out an arsonist's fire, intervening in reinstituted dueling laws, and turning Parliament against the Flaming Fist's illegal kangaroo courts.

Stage Seven is pretty good, with two engaging events, attempting to save a kidnapped youth from murder and the massacre of innocent protestors, but closing the operation of a broadsheet is less exciting and not appropriate for Dark Sun.

Stages Eight, Nine, and Ten are pretty solid.

This is, of course, IMHO.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

First of all, don't expect the stages to require anywhere near the same amount of game time. Some can cover multiple sessions while others can be done in minutes or hours. I generally used them as long as the players found it interesting.

I expanded on the stuff the players latched onto and left off-screen the stuff they avoided. Generally I had everything happen (or not happen, as appropriate) if the players didn't inteteact with it.

The overeager Fist should work well in DS. The sanitation strike happened as ambiance to general unrest, IIRC. I think I glossed over the harbour manifests in a few sentences and dealt more with the results than the act, if you get what I mean.

Broadsheets can be replaced with criers. Someone still organises the news, no?





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[Voort]

Broadsheets can be replaced with criers. Someone still organises the news, no?

I added a recurring town crier who did each session's 'Previously...' recap & could be hired to spy or spread rumors. Doing the recaps in character let me show how the party's actions were (mis)interpreted by the populace.

Having a character they knew & trusted also helped put the adventure back on track after the group accidentally framed themselves for the smokepowder plot...

 

[CapnZapp]

I found that my players wanted to actually investigate things (not just the initial scene, but other leads too), and that the adventure was woefully unprepared for that to happen.

This is precisely why I recommend y'all to drop the initial scenario - it inevitably makes the players focus on things that the adventure simply is not about (like not even a little; no seriously, the adventure does not write a single word about the by far most expected development - that the heroes drop everything else and try to find out whodunnit!)

Far better would be to introduce the players as low-level enforcers in the city, making them motivated to carry out the actual scenarios that the adventure is about.

The events of that initial encounter should probably be something the players only hear about in passing. Preferably with comments such as "he had it coming", playing up how the rabble is only suffering under the noblemen's rule, downplaying the "good and just" BS.

The more rpg players hear about a murder mystery, the more they will assume that's the adventure. And that is completely not the case here.

This adventure should have started with an introduction to local PCs that are motivated to rise in the ranks of the various organiations of the adventure, with appropriate personalities for the scheming, doublecrossing backstabbing nature of the city.

Having bog-standard do-gooder outsider PCs come to the city and witnessing the initial encounter is the absolutely completely and utterly wrong way to start this adventure. Unless you want it to go off the rails immediately. Unless you force the players to keep to the story, that is. Until they quit in frustration, of course.

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In fact, to be honest I would probably even switch game systems. Everything about this adventure screams Warhammer Fantasy Role-play; where low-life dregs of society is dragged into an apocalyptic conspiracy far above their heads and (probably) against their will.

Also, the expected flow of the adventure, where the heroes are often made to do stuff against their best interests, and where open violence often is the wrong solution is a poor match for "standard D&D" where players are accustomed to doing things their own way. But it is a perfect match for WFRP

I know at least my players would rather kill off any troublesome nobleman than follow his increasingly absurd commands, and that's just wrong for this adventure.

Murderhobo your way through this module, and you completely miss the entire point of it by a mile.

 

[darkbard]

Aye, [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], I've seen your thoughts about the adventure in other threads, like this one http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?364254-Murder-in-Baldur-s-Gate-(spoilers!), as I was researching the issue.

And I agree with a lot of what you say, especially your last statement above about missing the point via murderhobo-ing. That said, for me, at least, the structure of the adventure, which includes the opening set up (a popular figure is assassinated) and concluding stages (chaos explodes in the city as tension and retaliation escalate, culminating in several city-shaking events) do tie together well if one sees the motivation for the former (unleashing a fell power to spread its destruction on the city) as intimately tied to the latter (the fallout of that fell power as it leads to chaos, murder, mayhem).

I think one of the primary issues for me is one of pacing. The adventure, despite its claims to be relatively system neutral, is so clearly geared towards 5E's resource management that it is easy for a DM (especially one running 4E) to fall into the trap of presenting each stage as its own discrete days' event, which neither taxes the party's resources nor engenders a sense of mounting tension steamrolling ahead (to mix my metaphors) beyond the PCs' ability to control.

Now, some of that is exactly what I'm looking for in an adventure framework, i.e., the world is beyond the characters' ability to influence everything at once. But since so many of the intermediary stages are only loosely tied together, let alone tied to the bookended framing device I discuss above, the adventure does run the risk of seeming disjointed without DM intrusion.

I guess I'm looking for ways to salvage the framing device and improve upon the middle stages of the adventure to make for a more breakneck-things-are-spiraling-quickly-out-of-control feel.