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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6683535" data-attributes="member: 12377">Attached (if it works right) is a handout I gave my players at the beginning of the adventure. Noteworthy is how I tried to spruce up the NPCs in Red Larch, who I thought were a bit bland at best, and downright boring at worst. I'm of the opinion that a good town design has like 4-5 interesting NPCs rather than the dozen or so boring NPCs presented in Red Larch.For example, the awesomely-named Mangobarl Lorren, the town baker, is supposed to help Zhentarim characters because "he has distant relatives in the Zhentarim." In my world, no freakin' way is that guy just a "relative!" He is a retired assassin, for sure. The spa owner is a wearbear (although the PCs have not figured that out yet) and Vallivoe is a wizard with an orange cat familiar and is secretly a Harper.This was only partially successful; even the more interesting NPCs were not enough reason for the PCs to return to Red Larch, when they can easily obtain supplies in most other towns. If you want people to return to Red Larch frequently, make it home to the region's only magic shop and only mid-level cleric, as well as a good place to recruit hirelings. Players won't want to go all the way to Waterdeep or Yartar for that stuff.To me, Red Larch is really one of the most disappointing parts of the adventure. A lot of words are spent describing a perfectly mundane and boring place. That may be done on purpose to encourage PCs to get out of town and get into the dungeon, but it could have been done with a lot fewer words.As for complications in with Larrahk and the earth cultists, there were two, but both emerged during play:1. Larrahk knocked out the party in a TPK. I had them regain consciousness bound and naked in the dark. At low levels, lacking weapons and armor and spellcasting foci is actually a pretty serious problem and can turn trash mobs into challenging encounters. Eventually they found their gear and went back on the offensive.2. When they encountered Larrahk for the second time, two town elders were present: Dornan, their leader, and another guy who's name I forget but who was having misgivings about the whole thing. As the PCs fought Larrahk, the two town elders fought each other! Afterwards, Dornan agreed to testify against the OTHER cultists in return for amnesty. His trial is still ongoing and it remains to be seen whether the PCs will honor that bargain.</blockquote>

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