What's up with the ending to Vault of the Drow?

[Qualidar]

So my players agreed, and infiltrated the Fane using veil spells (Eclavdra helpfully provided some intelligence on the layout and defenses.) The PCs slew High Priestess Charinidia, assumed her form, and then ordered the Temple and all its allied houses to launch an all-out assault on the rebellious house Eilserv. (My players really enjoyed playing political games with the various drow factions, and I thought this was a most worthy double-cross.)

That's all sorts of awesome. You made my day!

~Qualidar~

 

[Agamon]

It would be nice if there was a branch that allowed the players to go after the EEG instead.

That's called RttToEE.

 

[dcas]

That's called RttToEE.

Which unfortunately confuses the EEG with Tharizdun.

 

[Garnfellow]

waltzing thru an evil races temple while they are home doesn't sound all that pleasant. esp a race no one has seen before. doesn't speak the language. eats humanoid flesh for food or enslaves for menial tasks.

Actually, the text states that visitors pass through the shrine all the time, and half the wandering monsters for the western half of the shrine are drow merchant trains. This, combined with the fact that the shrine is right in the middle of a primary tunnel, far from any water body, strongly implies that the shrine gets a great deal of pass-through traffic. From the "Entrance to the Low Area":

At this point any intelligent creature observing the party will ignore it. This is a place where traffic is not uncommon, and those entering are permitted to approach the shrine and make obeisance to the Sea Monster, obtain the required “passes,” and move on. . . . The shrine community is organized only with respect to its guards and hierarchy, not its pilgrims or passersby.

My players had captured a female drow fighter from the troglodyte warrens, and she told them enough for them to make it through without a fight. (Along with some tongues spells.)

 

[painandgreed]

I treated the D series more as a setting and revamped large parts of it to fit the campaign. Players skipped the entire Shrine part of D2 by going off the map into larger tunnel system I had fleshed out. Eclavdra and her faction were Lolth worshipers at odds with the larger but less powerful faction that worshiped other gods. PCs, through the tunnels and in the city were aided and used by the less powerful factions as a blunt instrument to regain control. Entering the Demonweb pits and attacking Lolth was what they had been sent to do from the very beginning of the G series by their queen and everything was revamped to make it fit that plot.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Yeah; I'd say that D1-3 (and Q1 for that matter) are more setting material than adventure. Really, PCs could have any kind of goal by the time they penetrate to the depths of the earth: Slaying Eclavdra, driving the drow into so much internecine confusion that they abandon their plans to manipulate events in the Lands Above, or possibly defeating Lolth. GDQ1-7 makes the adventure goal explicit: In order to rescue Sterich, the PCs *must* penetrate the Demonweb and defeat Lolth.

I tend to think that the adventure series works best without Q1: That is, that the climax of the adventure should be an epic battle against the Eilserv-Tormtor fashion, or better still a grand manipulation that gets the drow factions to turn on each other and the other houses to exterminate the Eilservs/Tormtors as heretics. Leave Lolth out of it; she's a god, she's not to be messed with, and there's no real reason to throw an extraplanar jaunt into it. I've actually run it two different ways: The first time, as a battle against Eclavdra (including a mission to free two enslaved NPCs), and the second, as a return to the Vault of the Drow and an expedition to the Demonweb Pits in order to halt a Lolth-sponsored invasion of the PCs' realm.

As for D2: I think it (and D3) are designed so that the PCs can walk through them without fighting anything. After all, this isn't 3e; adventure design in those days wasn't built around the idea that PCs would need to face x level-appropriate encounters in order to be ready for the next stage. If the PCs are intending to accomplish a goal that's beyond their means, level-wise, before they get to the Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, then they either need some foes thrown in their path to garner them XP, or the DM just needs to give them XP for successfully bypassing challenges.

 

[Garnfellow]

That's all sorts of awesome. You made my day!

Yeah, I was pretty proud of my players. And this move was actually a triple-cross:

The drow female fighter they captured back in the troglodyte warrens was a member of House Noquar, and as such she was opposed to the Eilservs. Since the PCs had killed Eclavdra back in Snurre's Hall, they were able to show their prisoner Eclavdra's old brooch. The PCs pledged that their mission was only to sack the estate of Eilservs and ensure that worship of the Elder Elemental God was eradicated. The PCs swore they had no quarrels with any other drow and would leave as soon as Eilservs was destroyed.

Being the typical ambitious drow, the prisoner figured the PCs were powerful new players who could possibly shift the entire balance of power in the Vault. The prisoner further figured that if she led the PCs back to her Noquar masters, she would gain considerable prestige, and maybe move a couple of steps closer to becoming the house weapons master. So the prisoner "willingly" acted as a guide through much of the underworld.

Meanwhile Eclavdra got herself raised, and after dispatching a couple of trusted minions to deter the PCs (and after having those minions fail), she decided that she had died enough already and instead moved ahead with an offer of a truce. So the PCs double-crossed their prisoner, betrayed their alliance with House Noquar, and joined up with the Eilservs.

 

[Vocenoctum]

GDQ1-7 makes the adventure goal explicit: In order to rescue Sterich, the PCs *must* penetrate the Demonweb and defeat Lolth.

I think this is the part that gets glossed over. The giant raids are an "additional" problem.

Sure, there's some giants attacking the fringes of the country. Meanwhile a large black sphere is swallowing the capitol.

The players are sent off after the giants to preserve glory for the guy trying to figure out the Sphere. I'd say the fault of the adventure is in not spelling out that the drow/Lloth are behind the sphere at an earlier juncture.

As for bypassing the Kuo Toa, that has never been a problem with my players. Tithing to an evil goddess in order to avoid the wrath of her followers is pretty much anathema to any party cleric I've ever seen.


And, it was 1st edition, killing Lloth was part of the fun. Heck, the first group through killed Blibdoolpoop too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think this is the part that gets glossed over. The giant raids are an "additional" problem.

In the revision. In the version I and many other people first played (the first version and then the colorized lightly revised version), the giant raids were the only problem.

And stop saying "Lloth," before I feed you to a retriever.

 

[grodog]

The article "Upon the True History of the Drow/Giant Incursion" by MerricB may be of interest: http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=165