"Speaker in Dreams" is one of the twinkiest adventures ever written

[King_Stannis]

I was looking for a good adventure to take my group through, when, perusing my library of adventures, I came upon "Speaker in Dreams". I remembered getting it when it first came out, but assumed that the reason I couldn't use it back then was because my players were not the right level.

Wrong. Reading through it jarred repressed memories of being dumfounded by the absolute twinkishness of it. In a city the characters go to, there is:

(spoilers for those unlucky enough to actually be playing in this adventure)
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A megalomaniacal Mind Flayer(!)

A pack of WereRats

A Group of Grimlocks

Gargoyles

Wystes (huge wormlike things)

Evil Sorcerer Cabalists (of course!)

A Gibbering Mouther

An Ogre Mage



And now, for the knockout flurry ........................




An Osyluth

A Hellcat/Hellhounds

Barghests

A Fiendish Megaraptor (WTF?)

A Fiendish Elasmosaurus( )

An Imp

And a few odd assassins and infernal clerics.



All of this in a CITY adventure.

Good God, no unicorns ferrying the good citizens of Brindinford? What about all of those Pixies that should have been delivering drinks at the town inn? No polymorphed Dragons selling shoes?

I know 3e is about "No Limits" and all, but this early effort by WotC took it to the Nth degree in my opinion. Maybe it plays better than it reads, but my group will never know - Unless I gut it and do some major overhauling.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

I don't know of the rule keeping there from being monsters in a city. Why would they not have as much incentive to operate in a city as the thousands of people who live there? Certainly not all of these seem inappropriate to me. Let's see:

Wererats: No problem.

Evil cultists: Where else?

Gargoyles: Not a big issue. During the day they could pretend to be, well, actual gargoyles. No common schmoe more than 10 or 20 feet away could possibly notice.

Ogre mage: Easy. He can spend 9 hours a day polymorphed into any form he wants.

The "knockout flurry" is mostly lower planar creatures, the sort of thing you might expect a group of evil cultists to have imported. I don't know how much logical sense it makes, but it makes loads of narrative sense.

I'm not really seeing the problem here, myself. It's a challenge to come up with interesting encounters for a city-based adventure, and these largely strike me as good ideas.

 

[Zappo]

As long as the gibbering mouther isn't the dishwasher, I'm fine with pixies serving drinks.

 

[Crothian]

I ran this module with only a few minoir changes and that was with the mayors relationship toward the PCs. It works really well, and my group had a lot of fun with it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Mmmm, Twinkies....

I ran this adventure as a one shot with my group and they loved it. Loved it so much they switched it to the main chronicle.

The monsters in the city actually worked very well in that chronicle. Lots of my role-playing the police response and the paranoia of the citizens.

At the climax, the party led a revolt against the monster 'invaders.' This was all the players mind you, not part of any plan of mine, cause let me tell you a fight between some sort of extra-planar monstrosity and an angry medieval mob... Well pitchforks and torches are a lot scarier now than they used to be.

 

[Zappo]

Re: Mmmm, Twinkies....

At the climax, the party led a revolt against the monster 'invaders.' This was all the players mind you, not part of any plan of mine, cause let me tell you a fight between some sort of extra-planar monstrosity and an angry medieval mob... Well pitchforks and torches are a lot scarier now than they used to be.

I dunno, how did pitchforks and torches work against DR and Fire Resistance?

 

[King_Stannis]

...I'm not really seeing the problem here, myself. It's a challenge to come up with interesting encounters for a city-based adventure, and these largely strike me as good ideas.

Well, IMHO, it doesn't take a good deal of creativity to throw a bunch of outlandish monsters at the PC's. Fiendish Dinosaurs? Come on! I guess I am biased in that my campaigns are always very humanocentric, where creatures are something to be wondered and dreaded. In modules like this, everyone that comes around the corner has wings, fangs, tentacles, etc. "Ho hum, a gargoyle...yawn"


To each their own, I suppose. It probably depends on the style of game you run. The module just seemed way too goofy to me, that's all.

 

[coyote6]

The mind flayer is responsible for most of the rest of those; the wererats & the grimlocks work for him, the cultists are his pawns, the fiends get to town when the infernal clerics open a gate to Hell, the gargoyles are the guardians of the wererats' lair, the ogre mage is the mind flayer's bodyguard, the wystes are summoned by the insane cultists, and the gibbering mouthers are the insane cultists' pets. It's not like they all *live* in the city, normally. Almost all of them are "imports", if you will.

It's an extraplanar evil, conquering a city. What did you expect the tools to be, a nefarious cabal of beggars and bakers?

 

[S'mon]

Goofiness is the default setting for D&D 3e, Monte in the DMG specifically slags off 'medieval-style cities full of peasants who never see any magic' (or words to that effect) as 'unbelievable'(!). Personally I don't much like this either, I like my game a bit grittier and humanocentric, and IMO dinosaurs are best kept to 'lost world' milieus not Main Street! But, like it or not, Speaker in Dreams' monster-zoo approach is the standard, not an aberration.

 

[S'mon]

It's an extraplanar evil, conquering a city. What did you expect the tools to be, a nefarious cabal of beggars and bakers?

Sounds good - beggars are a recurring 'monster' in fiction - eg in Moorcock's Elric saga the beggar-horde of Narjan was definitely a force to fear! Give them a few Commoner levels plus a Rogue level or two and they could get quite nasty... think of the Disease rolls...