Shadows of the Last War

[micromaximum]

Has anyone taken a look at the new adventure for Eberron, Shadows of the Last War? It's nothing more than a string of combat encounters with a dungeon at the end. Where's the intrigue and noir style? Everything interesting about Eberron is glossed over.

The characters are constantly railroaded, almost everything's laid out for them and they even get a care-package to help them along the way. The few opportunities for roleplaying all end as combat encounters. Many of encounters appear deadly for low level characters, especially since many of them are unavoidable. They are seemingly balanced with what seems like a lot of convenient magic items and other gear. The encounter descriptions are so poorly written that they should have just been left out. I want to keep this spoiler free, but I think the final encounter description is one of the worst.

It's just sad, because I think the campaign settings was well done. The Shadows of the Last War adventure wasn't. Not only is it not a good adventure, but other than a few name drops and underutilized locations it doesn't even represent Eberron very well.

 

[Henry]

On the other hand, I liked it because of the following:

**SPOILERS**

Spoiler

-The PC's begin when a message from their secretary is stolen, and the secretary roughed up.
-They receive another mysterious message by courier to meet at a bar.
-The beautful mysterious dame asks you to help her out because she's in trouble.
-Nazis bust into the bar and try to take you out.
-On their way to the next city to find their goal, they are accosted.
-In the Bad Part of Town, they meet a savvy cab driver who takes them into the heart of dangerous territory. On the way there are several running fights.
-In the end, when they have picked up the object of their search, they find more than they bargained for, and the enemy opposition overwhelms them and takes what they sought - but misses the true prize.

**SPOILERS**

It's kinda like the Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, but with Warforged.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Actually, along these lines, I have a question about this module, since my group is in the middle of it (SPOILER):

Spoiler

What is an essence node of mindness? It's ital'd like a magical item, but my DM & I couldn't find any info on it in the module, the ECS, or the Expanded Psionics Handbook (in case it was a psy-item). We've just finished the encounter with the obsidian wolf-golem critter, & that was part of the treasure. Can anyone clue me in as to what this thing is?

 

[Hellcow]

AFGNCAAP, it's something that got left out...(SPOILER):

Spoiler

It's a engaved disk that a warforged can embed in its amulet slot; it allows the chater to use the blinding shield quality twice a day.

As for pulp and noir elements, Henry has pretty much has me pegged. Sorry it didn't work for you, MM.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I didnt feel railroaded at all when playing the adventure.

The PC's are constantly given choices. Some are more obvious then others, or more urged then others, but the PC's can at any point veer off and do something else.


I think your bad experience with the adventure might come from a DM running it pourly or pushing you into events without making you feel you have options.


In the end, nearly all written adventures do the same and "railroad" the PC.s They have a start, middle and end, and a determined path they must follow to succeed. Even if there are multiple paths to the same end, its all pre-determined. How the adventure is ran determines how railroaded you feel.

When Keith ran It I felt no such thing.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

Spoiler

There were many choices, I loved how part of my party actually ATTACKED Garrow, while the others ran to the elemental cart. The part that attacked was like "We can take him, there's only one!" The session ended with them chased into the Mournland mists and losing the pursuers, thinking they're safe.

Wait till they find out how BAD the Mournlands is (and they did not have a chance to rest/heal AND I use the Mournlands as written. )

My piece to add.

 

[Hellcow]

Spoiler

There were many choices, I loved how part of my party actually ATTACKED Garrow...

Let's see how much of the thread can be blacked out!

Spoiler

I've actually had quite a few groups I've run through it attack Garrow - frankly, I'm worred that he's not tough enough to survive a well-planned out assault. Luckily, they usually open up with ineffective attacks, which gives him time to make a getaway. I'm always amused when the rules lawyer starts plotting out lots of careful anti-vampire tactics...

As for railroading, I suppose you coud say that Rose Quarry is completely linear in that you will ultimately need to find and decrypt the map. Yes, there s a goal for you to accomplish. But there are different ways to get there. I've had groups attack the EC camp. Some fight Garrow. I had one where one member of the group surrendered to Garrow in the hopes of finding out what the EC was up to. It may not be the most flexible scenario in the world, but there certainly are choices to be made.

Interesting on the "few opportunities for roleplaying all end as combat encounters", too -- I think it does depend on the group. One of my favorite scenes was between a party and the dire wolf in Whitehearth, where roleplaying is what keeps it from being a combat scene. And the surrender scene I mentioned above was much more interesting than most of the fighting. I agree that it's not heavy on the mystery/RP; it's mainly about travel. For more of a talking game, check out Steel Shadows, my adventure in the next issue of Dungeon. (Or, of course, you could just decide that I suck and never read anything of mine again. )

 

[AFGNCAAP]

AFGNCAAP, it's something that got left out...(SPOILER):

Spoiler

It's a engaved disk that a warforged can embed in its amulet slot; it allows the chater to use the blinding shield quality twice a day.

As for pulp and noir elements, Henry has pretty much has me pegged. Sorry it didn't work for you, MM.

Cool! Thanks! I just e-mailed that info to the DM for that game.

On a side note, our group is having a bit fo a rough time with the module, but mainly due to choices/actions (during fights & whatnot;

Spoiler

for example, my character, a human bard, called the elf Vampire a phony and took a shot at him as soon as a I saw him

); also, to a certain degree, we're having a rough time of things due to the makeup of our group:

• A gnome artificer
• A Dex-oriented shifter barbarian
• A Dex-oriented half-elf ranger
• A low Str (7) warforged cleric w/ the adamantine armor feat
• A Dex-oriented human bard (me)

The artificer can sorta work as a trap disarmer, but we really don't have a dedicated rogue for that sorta stuff, nor do we have a arcane-focused spellcaster like a wizard/sorcerer. Both of our fighters are Dex-reliant, which works OK for AC & initiative (and for 1 of them, attacks via Weapon Finesse), but no one can really dish out the damage & do the heavy lifting all the time, any time (the shifter barbarian feasibly can raged &/or shifted, but that's for a limited amount of time for a limited # of times a day).

Then again, this sorta stuff is the norm for our group, so it'd be interesting to see when/if the DM will have a TPK on his hands with our current roster. Many an action point has been spent to stabilize PCs who went into negative HPs.

 

[RogueRonin]

The group I DM just finished this adventure. I, as a DM, thought it was okay. The party however, had a lot of fun. I liked the "feel" of it, and I will probably buy the next one in the series, but I thought the combat was a little unbalanced. I thought some of the encounters were too easy. I put extra enemies in every encounter

Spoiler

except the carcass crab and the living flaming sphere,

and the group still owned everything. The group had a lot of fun though, which I guess should be the measurement of a good adventure, rather than if I thought it was challenging enough.

Spoiler

I think their favorite part was when the party's rogue snuck around the Emerald Claw camp an set the tents on fire. Oh boy...

So all in all, I think that while the adventure was a little linear and easy, it was still pretty good. And by pretty good I mean worth the money, but nothing legendary. So there you have my two cents.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Let's see how much of the thread can be blacked out!

Spoiler

I've actually had quite a few groups I've run through it attack Garrow - frankly, I'm worred that he's not tough enough to survive a well-planned out assault. Luckily, they usually open up with ineffective attacks, which gives him time to make a getaway. I'm always amused when the rules lawyer starts plotting out lots of careful anti-vampire tactics...

As for railroading, I suppose you coud say that Rose Quarry is completely linear in that you will ultimately need to find and decrypt the map. Yes, there s a goal for you to accomplish. But there are different ways to get there. I've had groups attack the EC camp. Some fight Garrow. I had one where one member of the group surrendered to Garrow in the hopes of finding out what the EC was up to. It may not be the most flexible scenario in the world, but there certainly are choices to be made.

Interesting on the "few opportunities for roleplaying all end as combat encounters", too -- I think it does depend on the group. One of my favorite scenes was between a party and the dire wolf in Whitehearth, where roleplaying is what keeps it from being a combat scene. And the surrender scene I mentioned above was much more interesting than most of the fighting. I agree that it's not heavy on the mystery/RP; it's mainly about travel. For more of a talking game, check out Steel Shadows, my adventure in the next issue of Dungeon. (Or, of course, you could just decide that I suck and never read anything of mine again. )

Interesting to read. (And continuing the trend of blacking out the thread - maybe we should just add a Spoiler warning to the thread title?)

Spoiler

The encounter with the Dire Wolf was definitely no combat encounter for our group - our Druid had this Animal Dragonmark - whatever it is - and was quite good at calming the wolfes. When he came to the Dire Wolf, it was quite a friendly meeting . We helped her freeing her pack, and in turn, she accomponied us on the way out of the mournlands.

We didn`t fight the final encounter, since it was late that evening and our DM decided it would be to many NPCs - it was definitely clear that we would win.

The most dangerous encounter for our group was the crab, the most fun (at least from my point of view) was that against the bugbear thugs that wanted to attack the "taxi driver" - one of them fell in the first round due to my raging orc barbarian and his trusty greataxe... The other one didn`t hesitate to run away