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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1299894" data-attributes="member: 259">That's probably my biggest strength and biggest failing as a DM:  I go crazy on the plotting <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.  Unless I understand everyone's motives and think everyone is behaving plausibly, I'm not happy. In the adventure as written, you've got the mind flayer as the boss of about five completely disparate groups of monsters, with no relationships between the groups he runs.  As I ran it, he controlled two groups directly (the gray men and the cultists), he was in conflict with another group (the wererats), and he had made bargains with two more groups (the monkey-demons and the evil priests).  I actually had notes on how the monkey-demons and the evil priests felt toward one another, and how the priests were planning on betraying the illithid at some point to take all the sacrifices for themselves, etc., but I ended up dumping all that as way too complicated. In the end, it was still too complicated:  the PCs almost gave up and left town in disgust at some point, given the various betrayals and twists that were happening all around them.  A fair amount of the plot as described was communicated through journals (which are, along with letters, one of the lamer but more reliable methods of communicating information -- bad guys sure keep meticulous notes!), and some of it came out through conversations (e.g., with the wererats), but a big chunk of stuff never came to the forefront at all.  Why were the evil priests cooperating with the illithid?  Why did the monkey-demons create a tower of scorpions?  What was going on with the freaky, inside-out-turning elasmosaurus?  The players never found out. But at least it made sense in my head <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />. Daniel</blockquote>

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