Standing Stone advice

[Psion]

I just finished running this module. It wasn't very well liked by the party, mostly because the amount of misleading and misdirection was annoying to them. Here is what I would suggest.

This module wasn't well received when I ran it, either.

Hmmm... and some people say I am so off for panning this adventure in my review.

I think SS is really not a good adventure in and of itself. If the DM fixes it up, it could fly, but that's on the DM then.

 

[Bauglir]

When I ran it I had a druid in the party, so I had to change things about a bit to stop the whole thing being given away the moment they looked at one of the stones.

I also had one guy who was intent on messing with the stones, despite them falling on him on a couple of occasions..

Oh yes and in the map of the Barrow the lines are the corridors and not in fact the spaces between them.

 

[Garboshnik]

I ran this one a while back and it sounds like things are going better for the original poster then for us. Basically my party never found any solid leads to lead them back to the adventurers and spent a great deal of time wandering the woods. Still, I like that there's an adventure that tricky. If the players fail to solve it and kill off the elves that would lead to a really interested follow-up adventure at a later time.

 

[Bleys]

My group had a load of fun with this adventure, and I have to admit that I had a load of fun tweaking it and breathing a little more life, and deviousness, into the characters and locations.

Dyson used outright lies to keep the characters going from one "local attraction" to another, with them getting to the barrow (because they were intrigued by the Horseman, and Dyson told them the story of the Paladin and got them headed to the barrow to hunt down the evil being they felt the Paladin had become) and working their way all the way down to it, only to find that the wight was an extremely interesting and gregarious "monster". After the duel they sat and chatted for quite some time (all the while the female ftr/rog of Dyson's group was with them) and then decided to head back and confront Dyson.

Well, at this point the woman managed to slip away and lead them on a bit of a chase, allowing her to get back to warn Dyson... the end fight wasn't pretty if you were a "bad guy"

Yes, the adventure, as written, is lacking in focus and a couple of other things, IMO (though I've found that just about every one of these is lacking in nice little extras... like a description of an NPC or little things like that) but it had a lot of material that made it so you could really extend things and make it enjoyable for a party... especially if they've been through some of the other ones and showed any interest in some of the "plots" that are present. For example, my party is keenly interested in anything they can find of Durgeddin's work, and the fact that one of his swords was found in the hands of a barrow guardian only added to their desire to explore it...

Now that I've rambled on and on and on, I think I'll get back to my regularly scheduled work

 

[Hammerhead]

I wasn't a big fan of this adventure when I played it. (Read: I hated it) First, it was too short, and the barrow dungeon was very repetitive and boring. One relatively interesting thing my DM did was to change the adventure so it wasn't just the elves are good, Dyson is bad. My group actually sympathized with the transformed townsfolk who were attacked by the wood elves because they were unnatural. We also had a duel with the barrow wight guy, one on one, and hoobyahs were actually pretty humorous, since they made our elf run around screaming the entire fight. The fight was still a little tedious and easy, even though we never figured out they had DR/wood either.

(Of course, seeing the way my DM plays paladins, I'm not he intentionally changed it. His definition of LG is pretty scary.)

EDIT: We called Dyson, Tully, and Cuckoo as the bad guys pretty much right off. "With a name like the Cuckoo, can he be anything but evil?"

 

[Dr. Zoom]

My group fell for Dyson's story and even believed that the horseman was conjured up by the "evil" wild elves. They ended up killing the rest of the fey except for the treant before figuring out that they had been duped. This made the final battle fairly exciting. They nearly got wiped out the first time, but came back for a second assault more prepared. The Cuckoo teleported away during the battle and Dyson escaped with his wand.

They wanted to chase down Dyson immediately, but decided to stay at Ossington to help get things back to normal with the help a nearby druid. After a few months of downtime, they picked up Dyson's trail in a town called Drylake. He had taken the name of the group's monk who fell in battle in Ossington, but was raised. The player was not too happy to hear this. He was part of a group of adventurers that were last seen heading off toward the ancient ruins of Nightfang Spire...

 

[Shadowdancer]

What is it with rangers? The ranger in my game did the same thing.

In our party, it was the elf fighter/rogue (i.e., my character) who had the fling with the "farmer's daughter." What? She had red hair. I have a thing for redheads. You do the math.

Plus, we wanted to try out some of the preview material from the BoEF.

 

[Dr. Zoom]

Unfortunately for the ranger in my game, the farmer's daughter was not a faux human but a succubus spy. He blew his save and did not realize he lost a level for quite some time.

 

[Kershek]

How can you not realize you've lost a level? That must have been a lot of bookkeeping for the DM.