Using "Mysteries of the Moonsea"

[DM_Jeff]

Hi All,

NOTE: I am, like MerricB, an official WotC optimist. I like my purchase of this book and think that discussion might help, but portions of it, from a design point, truly baffle me. I will discuss some of the dungeons and story here and so there will be spoilers. If you’re playing in this, please go elsewhere. If you’re a DM who wants to join in, welcome!

During this discussion with other owners (and those curious) of the Forgotten Realms regional book ‘Mysteries of the Moonsea’, I hope to tackle some of the following questions. Did the design memo actually go out to all four of the writers? Why don’t wizards have familiars <UPDATE: Question answered, thanks!> What’s with the tattooed slaves? Were the developers too intimidated to take a more active hand in the final text?

Overview: Mysteries of the Moonsea is 160 page FR sourcebook/”adventure toolkit”. It introduces the Moonsea region and sets the tone. Four authors were given the four main compass points to tackle in their assignment. Each section gives a good overview but little meat & potatoes on the area. It introduces a city in each region which characters can visit and explore. Each region also has a number of very well developed, fully stated NPCs and their roles in the region. Each section then hosts about a half-dozen adventures, half in the city described and half in the immediate wilderness.

This book is best used by DMs who are good and comfortable at improvisation; react creatively to simple seeds and big blank spots, and who enjoy the toolbox effect. It is not a good book for someone looking for a complete adventure path or who wants loads of nuances and detail on the region and its background with new rules.

I really like how they covered the areas and the cities. Sure, they could have flooded me with info, but this gives me most of what I need to run the area and leaves me plenty of room to throw in my own stuff too. The NPCs in each section are great and useful. With that in mind, however, I came across some truly peculiar trends. The adventures are a really mixed bag, however. Some show real time and thought put behind them and others remind me of dungeons I’d draw when I was 13, stocking them with things from the Monster Manual with no rhyme or reason for them to be there except for characters to kill them. I grade the adventures thus:

Melvaunt and the North, A-. Good adventures, combat and role-playing intensive, good ties to overarching thread.
Hillsfar and the South, D. Adventure sites with monsters. Kill everything. No ties to the overarching thread.
Mulmaster and the East, C+ Mediocre adventures, basic ties to the overarching thread.
Zhentil Keep and the West, B+ Creative locations, fine adventures, basic ties to the overarching thread.

So, onto the things I’d like someone to roll 10 or higher and assist me with a +2 bonus…

• How are you going to use the adventures? Are you planning on nixing any or writing others? Which ones and how? I do NOT like the “I just watched Raiders of the Lost Arc” adventure set in Mulmaster and the East (and, aren’t Yaun-Ti cold blooded? What are they even doing up here?). I also am not fond of the “attack of the plants” of Hillsfar and the South, or its “old portal elf tower” with a basic alphabetized listing of devils guarding a bunch of rooms.

• How are you using the tattooed slaves? There are hints that Thay is trying to take over Zhentil Keep, and strong hints that the tattoos are robot-controlling magic turning slaves into Regdar the Mighty. How are you using them? How are you threading them through Hillsfar and the South, which makes no mention of them? (I’m not sure having the PCs go to Hillsfar just to track down the ship’s home port from adventure #1 and then get sidetracked by a bunch of unrelated quests is conductive to a good campaign). My wife is convinced Sean Reynolds was brought in as a writer at the last minute and didn’t get the tattooed slaves memo!

More as I get feedback. Anyone have any thoughts or impressions of the content of this book?

-DM Jeff

 

[gribble]

I tend to agree with your ratings. By far any away the best sections are the first and the last, and I didn't like the theme and apparent randomness of the adventures in Hillsfar.
As I was reading the first section, I was getting very excited about the book, and then when I hit the Hillsfar section I was kind of left thinking "huh? Where did all the plot hooks/tie-ins go?".

Personally, if I was going to use this as a campaign, I'd focus on the slaves introduced in the first section, using it pretty much as wirtten, completely re-write the second (Hillsfar) section - perhaps salvaging something from there but nothing immediately springs to mind, mostly re-write the third section, and then use the fourth section with minimal changes.

 

[BobROE]

I'm not at all happy with this book. I liked the sections on each city, would have liked more but I can live with what I was given. I don't like NPC write ups unless they are tied to an adventure I'm running, otherwise they just take up space.

Now my biggest problem is that the adventures just aren't very good. I think a vast improvement could have been made if they'd doubled the length of each adventure and haved the number of adventures.

If you go here :Candlekeep Thread on MotM and look by posts by BobROE you can find my more indepth reviews of the adventures and the errors I found in them (common problem being map and text not matching, which is a huge bother of mine).

 

[Thomas Percy]

DM Jeff, some of us are from the Europe and we (especially me) don't understand B+, C- scale. Can you use other scale such as *** on ***** possible.

 

[Nyaricus]

DM Jeff, some of us are from the Europe and we (especially me) don't understand B+, C- scale. Can you use other scale such as *** on ***** possible.

When in doubt, look it up on Wikipedia - here we are: USA Grading System

For ease:

Here is a common example of an American quality index, showing letter grade, qualitative definition and correlative quantitative value.

• A = Excellent or Exceptionally Good; or top 10% (90 to 100, of 100) = 4.00
• B = Above Average or Above Average Expectation; or second 10% (80-89) = 3.00
• C = Average or Average Expectation; or third 10% (70-79) = 2.00
• D = Poor% (60-69) = 1.00
• E or F: Failure or Exceptionally Poor; or bottom 60% (0-59) = 0.00

The + or minus denotes if it's worse or better than the standard grade. You can be a really good student and get an 'A', a GREAT student and get a 'A+' or a good student with a few flaws and get a 'A-'. Just scale up or down, as needed.

 

[Swordsage]

I have no problems with the designer listing what type of gems are found in a treasure hoard - especially in the Realms where there are bucket loads of new and unique gems. There's nothing more lazy than this exchange:

DM: You also find a bunch of gems.
Player: How many are there and what type?
DM: (counting) Umm, 7 and they are ... umm ... all diamonds.

The Swordsage

 

[Faraer]

I don't have Mysteries of the Moonsea (which is not intended as a regional book), but in Faerûn, wizards with familiars are in the minority, as attested throughout Realmslore. I don't get your point about gems.

 

[DM_Jeff]

I don't have Mysteries of the Moonsea (which is not intended as a regional book), but in Faerûn, wizards with familiars are in the minority, as attested throughout Realmslore. I don't get your point about gems.

I should have made myself clearer. I like the detailed gems (it makes for more descriptive encounters), I was just pondering why the lack of familiars. Now, I hear wizards with familiars are rare in Faerun (I've never paid attention to that somehow, having DM'd the Realms since 1987), and so I'm OK with that too, with the exception I still think there should be some substitute for their not taking one. I was simply using the gem anology to show they weren't afraid of using space, so why no familiars? I'm not hung up about it, just though it odd, that's all.

-DM Jeff

 

[Faraer]

I expect the root reason is that familiars break the dramatic focus on the single character of the mage; it's a burden on prose or RPG storytelling to keep track of the familiar. I quote Ed Greenwood:

Re. the lack of familiars for the big Realms wizards: I recall Jeff Grubb asking me this very same thing in 1986. My reply (then and now): "It's all too easy to fatally lose a familiar in your first century or so of magely adventuring!"

Selfish, suspicious neutral and evil wizards drawn to the Art in search of power and dominance may be especially unwilling to risk the trust of a familiar relationship.

 

[DM_Jeff]

No Familiars!

Super, a quote from Ed! This is why I wanted the discussion, to help me get these questions taken care of. One down, thank you!

-DM Jeff