Running the Freeport Trilogy - Advice and Opinions Wanted

[Olaf the Stout]

Hi guys,

I am about to start running the Freeport trilogy of modules for my group and I had a few questions for people that have run/played the adventures before.

Firstly, in what world did you set Freeport in? Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, a homebrew setting? If you did have it set in the Forgotten Realms, in what area did you put Freeport? If you had it set elsewhere (e.g a homebrew), what information did you give your players about the surrounding area and nations.

Secondly, how much or what information did you give your players about Freeport and the surrounding areas? Did you give them a handout before the game started detailing what the average person knows about Freeport or did they just find out information in-character from various NPC's as they went along?

Thirdly, are there any trouble spots that you found that may cause problems? The "rock and a hard place" trap in the second module looks like it could easily be a TPK for example, while the part of the adventure immediately preceding that seems to be a bit railroady for my liking. I have already thought about how to get around those 2 issues but more thoughts and opinions on the subjects are definitely welcome!

Fourthly, what other adventures did you run in between the 3 Freeport modules as, by themselves they do not give the players enough XP to be at the level required to tackle the challenges. I know that "Holiday in the Sun" from the "Focus on Freeport" e-zine is a popular choice to do in between Death and Terror in Freeport but I have not heard about any other options. I do have the Tales of Freeport book so I may use one of the adventures out of that to fill in the gap between the second and third modules. I don't have the book on me at the moment so I don't know if there is an adventure of a suitable level or not.

Any other general thoughts or opinions on Freeport and the adventures are also more than welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Olaf the Stout

 

[hagor]

Sorry Olaf, no answers from me: I have similar questions myself. (So, this post can considered to be a sort of "bump")

I too am planning to start the Freeport modules for my group (in the not so far future) . For nostalgic reasons I would place the city in the Forgotten Realms, but uncertain in which area (current line of thinking Westgate, or on one of the islands in the Sea of Fallen Stars).

So any advice, etc is much appreciated by me as well!!

Hagor

 

[Buttercup]

I ran Freeport for my players. It was a new campaign, and they started as first level characters. I asked them for a background which included where they were from, and then I used what they gave me to create a vaguely described rest-of-the-world. When the time came that they needed to leave Freeport, I cobbled together another part of the world for them to go to. When during the course of play it seemed the story needed to move to yet another location, I made that one up too. And that's where they are now. Will they ever go back to Freeport? Maybe. But they'll have to wait long enough for the Sea Lord's guards to forget them.

 

[talien]

Firstly, in what world did you set Freeport in? Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, a homebrew setting? If you did have it set in the Forgotten Realms, in what area did you put Freeport? If you had it set elsewhere (e.g a homebrew), what information did you give your players about the surrounding area and nations.

In Arcanis (see http://www.onaranonline.org for more info), Freeport is part of the Pirate Isles. Since it's part of the setting, I didn't have to do much in the way of introductions or background.

Secondly, how much or what information did you give your players about Freeport and the surrounding areas? Did you give them a handout before the game started detailing what the average person knows about Freeport or did they just find out information in-character from various NPC's as they went along?

I gave one character, the only native of Freeport, a map of the town. I didn't give him much more information than that. Since everyone else was an outsider visiting Freeport, the players learned the lay of the land as their characters did.

Thirdly, are there any trouble spots that you found that may cause problems?

I touched on a bunch of issues in my review of the first adventure. Here's the major ones that stand out:[/quote]
1) That whole glasses thing with Milo. Ditch the glasses. It's silly.
2) The red herring with the staff on the orc pirate ship. It's WAY too powerful for a party to acquire at that level. But then, they really shouldn't be attempting it in the first place since it has nothing to do with the plot. Of course, my PCs DID get the staff, but thankfully they donated it to a secret society instead of using it.
3) Enzo's entire existence is an obvious "get the PCs to the next part of the adventure." My players snickered at how stupid he is (and how stupid the cult is).
4) All the Call of Cthulhu references, including Hastur the Unspeakable One. Be careful, any PC who knows anything about Hastur and the Yellow Sign is likely to react differently than you might expect.
5) Lucius is possessed, I think, by a Shan. That whole plot point has nothing to do with the series that I can tell. Which means it's another red herring. My PCs wanted to know what the heck was going on with the guy after all those years he was away at sea and you never really get a satisfactory explanation for it.

Fourthly, what other adventures did you run in between the 3 Freeport modules as, by themselves they do not give the players enough XP to be at the level required to tackle the challenges. I know that "Holiday in the Sun" from the "Focus on Freeport" e-zine is a popular choice to do in between Death and Terror in Freeport but I have not heard about any other options.

There are several Freeport adventures that can be downloaded free from the RPGA (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=rpga) for the Arcanis setting. They're a blast.

To read how my players fared in the Freeport adventures, check out my Story Hour: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=103252&page=3&pp=40

We've played Death in Freeport and Holiday in the Sun, along with two other RPGA Freeport adventures (Cast Upon Tides of Weal and Woe and All That Glitters).

 

[Morrow]

3) Enzo's entire existence is an obvious "get the PCs to the next part of the adventure." My players snickered at how stupid he is (and how stupid the cult is).
4) All the Call of Cthulhu references, including Hastur the Unspeakable One. Be careful, any PC who knows anything about Hastur and the Yellow Sign is likely to react differently than you might expect.
5) Lucius is possessed, I think, by a Shan. That whole plot point has nothing to do with the series that I can tell. Which means it's another red herring. My PCs wanted to know what the heck was going on with the guy after all those years he was away at sea and you never really get a satisfactory explanation for it.

My experience was a little different from talien's:

3) My group loved Enzo. I played him up as a sniveling idiot in way over his head. The players enjoyed intimidating him for information. They subsequently browbeat him into scouting the abandoned house for them, and Milos caught on to what was happening and killed him. Poor Enzo, my players still speak fondly of him and his ill-fated quest for "magic secrets."
4) When my players picked up on the Lovecraft and Ashton Smith references, they really enjoyed them. I was a little afraid that they'd start treating the adventure like a Call of Cthulhu one, rather than D&D, but that didn't happen.
5) The description of Lucius' condition precisely parallels posession by a member of the Great Race of Yith. However, what happened to Lucius doesn't make any difference at all to the rest of the campaign. In a world threatened by the Unspeakable One and other mythos oddities, sometimes the answers aren't available to mortal man.

Morrow

 

[Arnwyn]

Firstly, in what world did you set Freeport in? Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, a homebrew setting? If you did have it set in the Forgotten Realms, in what area did you put Freeport?

I put Freeport in my FR campaign, and placed it on the Whamite Isles (just east, off the coast of Turmish).

The Whamite Isles haven't really been detailed in any FR product (nor will it likely be - with just a brief mention in the "Threat From the Sea" trilogy of novels and then a little, easily ignorable couple of sentences in the Sea of Fallen Stars 2e accessory), and the Whamite Isles look a lot like the islands that Freeport is located, so I found that to be an ideal location.

Even mentions of the mainland in the Freeport city hardcover make some sense when placing Freeport on the Whamite Isles.

 

[luke_twigger]

I played in (not DM'd) a Freeport campaign.

To answer Olaf's questions:

1. We didn't bother about where Freeport was located in a wider world, our whole campaign stayed in and around the city.

2. Both as players and as characters we began the campaign knowing zero about the city, other than it was called Freeport. Our PCs literally stepped off a boat and the campaign ran from there. Everything we learned about the city we found out in character (and mainly we found things out the hard way).

3. I don't remember any particular problems, though we played the campaign 3 years ago.

4. I'd suggest waiting and seeing what aspects of the city the players are interested in and customise some character-driven side quests that don't directly relate to the story arc from the official modules.

Our campaign notes are posted on the website below. The campaign lasted 33 sessions and took us from 1st level to something like 13th or 14th. Hopefully they'll give you some inspiration? As you might expect, spoilers abound so players should keep out.
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/lodgelands/Freeport/story.html

Luke

 

[HellHound]

I'm running it right now in Arcanis (as Talien did). I run with a 1/2 XP rule in-house, so we are mixing them in with the other RPGA Living Arcanis adventures (we are running through all the old first-year story-arc adventures).

The adventures are written so they lock into Arcanis perfectly - from serpent people of an ancient empire, to Yig, their god that abandonned them as the races of elves and men became dominant.

We're having a blast with them.

I should also add that the modules are very well written overall, easy to read through and then run. Which is especially nice with the more social environments included, because I've read modules where the social interaction material was so poorly done that it took me a dozen reads to figure out how to run it well.

 

[Arnwyn]

There are several Freeport adventures that can be downloaded free from the RPGA (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=rpga) for the Arcanis setting. They're a blast.

I suspect one has to be an RPGA member, correct?

 

[Desdichado]

My first suggestion is get all four of the adventures of the story arc, if you haven't already. Freeport isn't a trilogy, it has four original modules: Death in Freeport, Terror in Freeport, Madness in Freeport and Hell in Freeport. There are also other Freeport modules, including Black Sails Over Freeport and Tales of Freeport. For that matter, we also adopted some of the IK Witchfire trilogy into it; not a lot, just a few interesting tidbits. The tones are fairly similar, IMO, and they're a pretty good fit.

I found it worked best if Freeport itself is just the setting, using Core rules. I didn't worry about trying to set it somewhere in any setting, although that could be done easily enough. Freeport has enough atmosphere of it's own, and I actually built more on that Piratey theme rather than trying to make it conform to the theme and tones of any other setting, i.e., I used the Freeport firearms rules, and gave them to several NPCs, as well as making them rare and expensive, but still fairly readily available to the PCs too.