Running Sunless Citadel: Advice?

[RangerWickett]

*mild spoilers ahead for The Sunless Citadel*

I decided I was going to be busy this summer with writing projects of my own, so I don't have as much to come up with my own adventures. Thus, I'm gonna use the prepackaged ones, changing the flavor a little to fit my world, but letting WotC do most of the work for me. I'm going to start with The Sunless Citadel in a couple weeks when the last of my players gets back home from college, and I'd like some advice about what RPGing bugbears I should look out for. I mean 'bugbears' as difficulties, not D&D-style bugbears, by the way.

Just as a little side note, I'm changing the flavor a little bit. The party will start off as separate passengers on a ship that gets hit by pirates. A cannonshot will damage the ship, so even if they do manage to fight off the pirates (which shouldn't be hard), they'll have to land at the nearest port before the ship sinks. Fortunately for the plot, they're nearby a fairly large island, which is where the Sunless Citadel will be. The area is a fairly diverse archipelago, so I have an easy explanation for how Goblins and Kobolds and Humans are all on the same island.

While they're waiting for the ship to be fixed, they'll have a good three or four days to explore the various mysteries on the island. The island itself is only about twenty miles across, and I wanted to have more of a Polynesian feel than standard medieval, so there'll be a lot of springs and half-submerged areas. The citadel itself is avoided by the natives because somehow it manages to keep out most of the water that should be flooding it, which proves to them that it is somehow cursed. A few local adventurers went to try to root out the problem a couple weeks earlier, but never came back, which can be one hook to go adventuring.

I'm thinking I might be able to find some way to force the party to want to explore the place, perhaps because they won't be able to get off the island any other way, but I don't have any real ideas for that yet. Maybe the ship's captain gets poisoned in the fight with the pirates, and they need one of the fruits from the Gulthias Tree to cure him, but I'd like something better if possible.

Also, I'm going to have one recurring NPC be on the ship with them: a 6th level sorceress (they're all 1st level) who is looking for magical spots on the world from which she can draw power. She's not yet tied into the main plot, and is more of a tertiary setpiece, but she could get more involved.

So, advice for what to look out for in the game, or suggestions as to how to make the party want to go treasure hunting? My players are notoriously unwilling to go adventuring under their own power unless something is forcing them to take action. *grumble* It's like their characters are all 1st level fighters, sorcerers, or druids who would just prefer to sit around unless something kicks them. I wish I could get it through their heads that it's an adventure game, and they're supposed to _want_ to adventure. Ah well.

Anyway, do you have any advice?

 

[Warchild]

*mild spoilers ahead for The Sunless Citadel*
I'm thinking I might be able to find some way to force the party to want to explore the place, perhaps because they won't be able to get off the island any other way, but I don't have any real ideas for that yet. Maybe the ship's captain gets poisoned in the fight with the pirates, and they need one of the fruits from the Gulthias Tree to cure him, but I'd like something better if possible.

Well, if the ship is damaged, you could have the captain ask them to do some foraging. Especially if some of his crew were killed in the fighting, he'll need them to do the easy stuff so as he and his crew can't get to work repairing the ship. Maybe the ship needs some trees/wood for repairs and they have to go deeper on the island to get the right of timber (the stuff on the shores not being the right type for ship construction). Maybe the ship just needs some restocking of basic items (pure water from streams, fruit to make up for food lost in the battle, etc).

So, advice for what to look out for in the game, or suggestions as to how to make the party want to go treasure hunting? My players are notoriously unwilling to go adventuring under their own power unless something is forcing them to take action. *grumble* It's like their characters are all 1st level fighters, sorcerers, or druids who would just prefer to sit around unless something kicks them. I wish I could get it through their heads that it's an adventure game, and they're supposed to _want_ to adventure. Ah well.

I know the feeling. But all that does is make us DM's that much better for learning to avoid the whole -your all in a bar/your all prisoners in the slave caravan- plots, because our players require real motivation and plot strings. I know its made me much the better for it over the years!

Thats all i can think of for the moment, off to see Star wars! Later.

 

[ThomasBJJ]

The set up I used, and I can't remember if it was in the module or not - I think I had to come up with at least some of it, ...was that the PC's are hired to find two other adventurers who set off to explore the site and never returned. They were either to rescue them or bring back thier signet rings. So basically, they are hired to find the two adventurers, exploring the ruins is really secondary, but it gets them involved.

Also, my experiance was that the kobolds were way to easy for the party of 1st levelers. They made lots of noise and all the kobolds came out in waves from the surrounding rooms, but to no avail, they were easily slaughtered. Better work on some good tactic for them or it will be a short fight.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Depending on how light hearted your game is, you might not want to use this adventure hook; you could have Belak send waves of goblin kidnappers getting more "recruits for the Gulthias tree to "absorb", like it did to that adventuring party mentioned in the Sunless Citadel module. The captain and crew could have been abducted by the goblins, and the characters must save the crew if they ever hope to leave the island.

When I ran this adventure, I turned the Gulthias tree into a Death's Head Tree (a monster from the Ravenloft monster compendium for 2E whose fruit were the heads of its victims whose blood it had drunk). The heads (and the tree itself) were semi-intelligent and had a special pact with Belak. The heads always had wracked expressions on their faces and called out for help, and this served to seriously disturb the players. When Belak died, the heads detatched from the tree and attacked the PCs in the hopes that they would be implanted with the seeds of the tree in order to find new hosts for more Gulthias trees.

As a side note, the failed dragonpriest-troll thing is somewhat silly for this adventure and could be easily be replaced with something better, like a mummy or some other monster out of Oriental Adventures or another exotic book if you are going for a Polynesian feel. When I ran it, the troll was replaced with a mummified divine spellcaster (sort of like a greater mummy) who was seriously ticked off at the dragon cult that buried it there so long ago. The mummy was so bent on getting revenge on the cult (which I made into the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign of Freeport Trilogy fame) that it just scared off the PCs using a special fear power so it could escape. The PCs later came in conflict with it when I ran the Freeport Trilogy. It might be cool to put some hook for a later adventure in place of the dragonpriest troll.

 

[ThomasBJJ]

The kobold Meepo part was a little too silly for me as well, but lots of people have said it was the best part. Different styles I guess.

 

[rln]

I reply to all of the current replies as well as the original one here

As you may have noticed already, there are at least one spot in the citadel that can be quite interesting for a sorcerer (the Charisma "shrine"). There are several places where you could place other sorcerer tokens if you want to extend that angle.

In our campaign, we needed the fruit of the Gulthias tree to save the mentor of one of the characters (a senile wizard, that was actually being poisoned by his apprentice, but that's another story). We didn't find one, but we extracted the core (heart) of the tree and made a draught of it which we fed him.

Only after that did we learn who and what Gulthias really was. The senile wizard turned into something similar and now roams the lands... OOPS!!

Meepo was good, because it made our party interact with the kobolds rather than slaying them outright (the first time, at least)

 

[Radiating Gnome]

In my campaign, I used a home-grown NPC (who turned into a constant nemesis for the party) who hired the party, as a sideline to their mission into the citadel, to try to recover the White Dragon (Calcryx?) alive, rather than killing it. That did a couple of cool things:

-It warned them that they had a dragon to worry about (always fun to see them sweat)
-It introduced them to the ongoing dragon plot in my campaign.
-It put them in a moral dilemna (the dragon is evil, but the money the guy is offering is pretty attractive to a lower level character, are they willing to let the dragon live, albeit as a prisoner of the parton, just for the money?

There might be some reason the Sorceress needs something from the dragon -- or perhaps she just wants it as a pet/servant. But that might work well for you.

-rg

 

[DethStryke]

I ran the module pretty much as is, just for a "running one-shot" adventure. I had some RPG vets mixed with some newbies too, so it was slightly slow going all around.

When my players ran into the White Dragon, they ended up having it escape and had to retreat to the "safe room" for a night of rest. They kept talking about how the dragon is running loose and probably will attack the kolbolds for being locked up the first time. I hadn't really considered that; I figuring it would just fly off or whatever. Decided to play off their own paranoia

They returned to the Kolbold holdout and found the Queen and a fair amount of the front throne area frozen solid. I made it a point to detail the chilled rolling fog along the floor as they progressed through the hallways and the erie glint of the last bit of oily torchlight over the crystallized Queen and the horrific look of surprise forever sculpted on her face.

For a ship crew, the first thing I thought was the "some of the crew went of to this place and never came back" routine. The captain could offer a reward for their return, and money is always a kick in the pants for adventure. Perhaps among the missing is the captain's child or a long trusted first mate?

 

[RangerWickett]

As a little update, we played last night. The group consists of a half-Minotaur female barbarian, a gnome Druid who appreciates civilized culture because of alcohol, and an Elvish bard who all the ladies love. The ship they are traveling on has three elderly guys who are the navigators. They love a good adventure, so when the ship reached the island to get repaired, the navigators went off to explore the mysterious sinkhole at the north-eastern edge of the island. The next morning, they still weren't around, so the party has to go and find them. End of session one.