Tell me about "Of Sound Mind" (Spoilers Hopefully)

[Piratecat]

I have 3.5 notes for the first couple of encounters, but got hijacked by life. They're yours if you want 'em.

Staffan's summary is an excellent one. Specifics follow:

[sblock]The adventure is a combination of a tiny bit of wilderness exploration, a fair amount of town interactions and a bunch of dungeoneering. There's a mixture of combat, roleplaying and puzzle-solving. In retrospect, I'd say it's better for 2nd lvl heroes than 1st if the group is inexperienced; it's a hard 1st lvl adventure if the PCs act stupidly in a couple of places.

General outline:

- PCs come into Bellhold. There's any number of things that might bring them there. The town is renowned for its craftsmanship of church bells, for instance.

- The PCs meet a farmer and his spooked horses while on the road.

- The PCs enter town and find people irritable and cranky. There are lots of hooks and people to talk to. Everyone has been suffering from nightmares, and some people have up and left town. The PCs likely talk to the local madman, the mayor, a barkeep, a local wise woman, a few other folks.

- Learning that the farmer they met yesterday has died, the PCs discover his killer.

- Investigation of the nightmares points them towards some shenanigans with the old copper mine and the long-abandoned dragon's lair above it. The PCs may try to climb the mountain; learning that it's deadly, they may decide to go the sneaky back route through the mine. They make their way through the mine, through a secret door, and up the inside of the mountain. They have a tough fight with the inhabitants of the lair, and find the thing that is causing the nightmares.

- Bringing that particular thing into town triggers an exceptionally unfortunate chain reaction. As mind-controlled townfolk come after them, they have to race to destroy it once and for all.[/sblock]

I've left details out, and the details are where all the fun is, but hopefully that'll get you started.

 

[Henry]

Staffan has a very effective synopsis of the mod. If you use OSM, I'd follow Jester's suggestion and run it on the Breland/Droaam border, where it's a more Fantasy-ish place without lightning rails and airship routes. Alternately, I would run a modified Forgotten Forge (the into adventure), or Shadows of the Last War (it's 10 bucks), OR if you wanted to take my demo game I ran last year and modify it, you're welcome to it.

One other suggestion: Are they creating characters on short notice? One suggestion (what I did with my group) is run a pre-gen the first week, to give them the feel of the setting first, then let them spend time creating characters for a more long-term game. In any event, OSM, Shadows of the Last war, etc. will take several sessions to finish, if that is agreeable to you.

 

[Plane Sailing]

There are several interesting possibilities for tying it more closely into Eberron should you choose.

Specifically, it is a psionics oriented adventure and in Eberron you have this wonderful bit of background going on with Quori/Kalashtar etc. The dragon could have been an ordinary dragon (even a member of the chamber) which somehow got possessed by a Quori spirit, and in the dragonstone (big Khyber shard?) we now find that selfsame quori spirit (rather than the imprint of a psionic dragon).

This would fit in beautifully with the dream sequences etc. which are part of the module background (and could be downloaded from fiery dragon at one time, I imagine they are probably still there)

If you have any Kalashtar characters it would be a great potential showcase for them.

Cheers

 

[Stegger]

I have 3.5 notes for the first couple of encounters, but got hijacked by life. They're yours if you want 'em.

I would love to! Can you upload them to the enworld download section or maybe even email them to me if you have the time?
In case of a yes: marcstegger at hotmail dot com

Cheers and thank you very much!
Stegger

 

[Rel]

Thanks for all the info thus far. I'm still not quite settled on what I'm going to lead off with. But the synopses (and they were excellent, Staffan and of course PC) make me wonder if I couldn't actually set this thing in Lower Sharn. Have the residents of a certain ward all having nightmares. These could be traced to somewhere in the Cogs or the Depths. The whole "Dragonstone" thing sounds interchangable with a Dragonshard of some sort and I could use Kobolds or Goblins as the worshipers.

Although this would essentially exclude the "wilderness" parts of the adventure does that basic outline sound like it would work? Also Plane Sailing's suggestions about the Quori sound perfect.

But does that sound like I'm trying to put a square peg in a round hole? I don't have a lot of time and I want to be able to convert the adventure with fairly minimal effort. Since I've already told them that I was starting the campaign in Sharn and some have started to work up character concepts in that direction, I don't want to pull them out of that environment now.

 

[Gez]

and some of us are still waiting for OSM 2...

To say nothing of OSM 3...

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Thanks for all the info thus far. I'm still not quite settled on what I'm going to lead off with. But the synopses (and they were excellent, Staffan and of course PC) make me wonder if I couldn't actually set this thing in Lower Sharn. Have the residents of a certain ward all having nightmares. These could be traced to somewhere in the Cogs or the Depths. The whole "Dragonstone" thing sounds interchangable with a Dragonshard of some sort and I could use Kobolds or Goblins as the worshipers.

Although this would essentially exclude the "wilderness" parts of the adventure does that basic outline sound like it would work? Also Plane Sailing's suggestions about the Quori sound perfect.

But does that sound like I'm trying to put a square peg in a round hole? I don't have a lot of time and I want to be able to convert the adventure with fairly minimal effort. Since I've already told them that I was starting the campaign in Sharn and some have started to work up character concepts in that direction, I don't want to pull them out of that environment now.

I think that sounds like a very do-able change. Change mines under Bellhold to abandonded sewers and factories under Sharn, Make Bellhold a neighborhood of Sharn rather than its own village.

You can change the mountain to one of Sharn's towers, inaccessible from the top and taken over by goblins - the PC's need to go to the old copper factory and sewers to find a way up into the tower from below...

All of that works, in my opinion.

 

[Piratecat]

Thanks for all the info thus far. I'm still not quite settled on what I'm going to lead off with. But the synopses (and they were excellent, Staffan and of course PC) make me wonder if I couldn't actually set this thing in Lower Sharn. Have the residents of a certain ward all having nightmares. These could be traced to somewhere in the Cogs or the Depths. The whole "Dragonstone" thing sounds interchangable with a Dragonshard of some sort and I could use Kobolds or Goblins as the worshipers.

[sblock]You want to make sure you keep a variation of the first encounter, which is Othic and the horses. A lot of folks have said that this is the thing that has really grabbed them. In brief, it's a couple of evil psionic horses (that have been made psionic and insane by the bad guys) that murder their master and then stalk the PCs around the paddock. It's a lot of fun to run, and simple to translate into a city setting.

Goblins are already researching the dragonstone (a piece of crystal containing an imperfect imprint of the dead dragon's mind), so no problem there. Incidentally, one of the fun fights is a battle that takes place inside the mummified dead dragon.

A big chunk of the dungeon is vertical (going up), and the premise is a copper mine; as a result, you'd have trouble setting it in one of Sharn's towers, for instance, unless you change a lot of specific non-essential encounters while leaving the basic premise the same. I see a problem with setting it in a ward of Sharn, because you've got a harder time explaining why more powerful people haven't gotten involved and unravelled the mystery. I'll leave that to your own creativity, though.[/sblock]

 

[Rel]

Thanks for the additional advice, PC. I'll give this some more thought and consider whether the issues of conversion are surmountable in the time I have available.

 

[Piratecat]

I imagine they are, Rel; truth is, I could probably convert this pretty easily on the fly.