So.....Shackled City.
....
See, here's the thing. We need to talk, you and I. You should sit down. You've been with us for what, 9 months? A year? Hmmm. Let me look at your file, here.
I see.
When we first hired you for the 'Adventure Path' position, we had high hopes. We'd contracted with you before through the Dungeon organization, as you'll recall. Based on your performance there, we'd offered you a full-time position. We put your map on the wall and put together a project team. Things were going well. But then...well, let's review.
First off, let me say that I feel you excelled in some areas. Your graphics were good, if not always accurate. Your maps were attractive...again, if sometimes incorrect. Your voluminous if sometimes poorly organized stat-blocks met our needs. Your dungeons...well, here's where we noted our first problems, Shackled City.
Your first assignment, "Life's Bazaar", was a solid effort, extremely irritating pun notwithstanding. A creative and interesting dungeon using something other than the standard goblins and kobolds, with some fun (although sometimes very dangerous) challenges. A good ending and some fun twists, with plenty of room for growth. A fine sign of the work we expected from you. The beholder at the end was a nice touch, if a tad deus ex machina.
Now, at this point we weren't expecting much in the way of a grand story-arc, but some underpinnings...which we saw. The real problems started with your sophmore effort, really. You remember it, I'm sure..."Drakthar's Way"? This was an all-new work and we had high hopes for it. Hopes that were quickly dashed, I'm afraid. In many ways, it felt like a quick re-hash of the previous module. Oh, there was a vampire Bugbear in it, which was interesting....but it came down to another exploration of an abandoned dungeon under the city, with more clues that would prove meaningless to the heroes. We made some alterations to accomadate upcoming events and hoped that this would be a slight case. After all, there were some interesting encounters and some potentially interesting developments here. There were developments related to future modules, even if they seems a little ham-fisted. We continued to hope.
The third module introduced the first of many problems that would occur. "Flood Season" did some things so well and others so poorly that it was surprising they were in the same module. You provided a very solid motivation to get the players involved in the story...we liked that. You built on existing story elements and introduced a set of NPC rivals for the party. That was good work, there. Forgetting some timing issues for a minute, we were pretty happy with this module. Things that didn't work very well, of course, were the 'tough' encounters and the fact that, once again, the players didn't get a lot of the story, except through NPC exposition.
But in the sense of a missed opportunity, we found the best remembered moments of the module came from a supplement someone else wrote for the module...not in your work. The whole Flood Festival was underused, frankly, and looking back, we realize a LOT of the personality of the city came from the DM's innovation, not your foundations. We forgave this since, as we mentioned, the module was overall quite good. We assumed the adventure path was on the right track and moved forward.
Our first clue that you weren't checking your own work was your next effort: "Zenith Trajectory". Again, we had a good motivation for the heroes. But now we had some problems. Getting the heroes out of the city to rescue someone immediately following "Flood Season" felt like you were repeating yourself. The party noticed, even though we jazzed it up some. Then we had the problem of Crazy Jared. Your module hinged on a couple of points: you included an encounter with a dragon that felt somewhat hollow, to rescue an insane character who was needed for information...without actually establishing that the party really needed him. Never mind that he wasn't really all that amusing, but just sort of annoying.
Oh, and let me sidetrack for a moment. We wanted to make note of the whole 'crazy prophet' notions. You were extremely inconsistent with this concept throughout the path. Why isn't Crazy Jared spouting about your BBEG back in the beginning? Why do all the crazy characters spout incomprehensible nonsense? Why bother giving the players a prophecy at all if it's nonsensical and of no use to them? You did this with the Star of Justice so often, it became a source of player mockery. Worse, it meant that when you did give clear information later, it was ignored as assumed gibberish and not given any critical thought.
Now we come to our first real problems...one that would occur with more and more frequency. The 'Challenging' encounter. Not every group looks forward to a near-TPK several times a module, Shackled City. The cryo-hydra encounter was somewhere near player-assassination in some aspects. There was little to no way for the players to anticipate the full force they were to be hit with. It was not the first such encounter in this dungeon. It was a dangerous but survivable encounter, so we went with it. But that doesn't excuse what came next: the erinyes, sir. This created an untenable situation; a killer monster with high mobility, tons of powers and an environment that made her even more lethal than normal. Teleport at Will battles do not become us, sir. I won't bother discussing the mummy. The Control Water encounter was acceptable.
Never mind that we again had a littany of 'the players will never really understand the significance' events scattered throughout the module. Finding out about Zenith Splintershield might have happened in module TEN. Maybe. Do you really think that's suitable? We did like the side touches with the black dragon, mind you. That was fun, if underplayed...but the maps were a NIGHTMARE. I saw what you were trying to do, but it was too confusing for everyone involved.
So then we came to what we had hoped would be the feather in our crown, "The Demonskar Legacy". Here, at last, was the core story...at least in parts. We'd laid down the foundation for this at length, previously....but using our own content, not yours. Core NPCs would have been just names, if we hadn't made them significant earlier on. Again, motivation for the PCs was....well, let's be honest, now. How many times can you have the same NPC beg for the heroes help, just on happenstance? You were repeating yourself again, here.
This time we had some problems from the module that weren't your doing, but ours. We had campaign specifc rules that made things complicated, but we found some outs. But your basic plot structure was abominable. The players were rapidly reaching a 'why would we do that?' phase. The maps were truly messed up this time, and there were whole sequences that just didn't make sense. We spent, on your advice Shackled City, several modules building up the demon-general and the Demon Skar in general. Then we pissed away the whole narrative as a series of caves and some stupid wind-pipes? That's it? And you even wasted two ideas at once, wasting the spell-weaver city AND the demon-enclave. WEAK. By now covering your short-comings was becoming something akin to actual work...which was why we HIRED you, Shackled City. You were supposed to be saving us time and effort, not shifting what we were working on. We were, to say the least, disappointed.
Once again, the most memorable and enjoyable parts of the module were our own work. Here, we began to suspect you were staying out late and drinking. How could you write a module featuring an invasion and then have it resolve OFF-CAMERA WITHOUT THE PLAYERS? What were you thinking, man? Never mind that you also began dropping major NPCs from the arc without any real explanation of where they went. For shame, Shackled City, for shame. Of course, the hideously lopsided final battle of the module was another situation like the Erinyes from "Zenith Trajectory". No one likes being obviously soft-balled, Shackled City...and here you were at your most patronizing. With a no-win/no-win scenario, no less.
But now we come the worst offender, Shackled City. The game-breaker, in fact. Not the last module we used, you understand...but this is the one that cracked the sky first. This is the work where we began thinking about terminating your employment. Remember how we talked about player motivation? This time you provided us with the worst, most pathetic and flimsy motivation we'd seen. If we had been wise, we would have avoided the whole idea...but we liked the IDEA of the plane of Occipitus, and the players shrugged and played along for our sake. But we all knew it was a ruse. We'd been thrown out of the story in an obvious way...and for little actual reward, as it worked out.
Did you just throw darts at a board for the monsters for this one? And....A MAZE puzzle? Really? Were you just throwing whatever you could think of on the page? Some of these encounters felt tacked on...like you were just filling an XP requirement quota. (Seriously, the lich and the dragon encounters...what were you thinking, there?) It was obvious to us and to the players. And the worst part was that at the end of the module, it felt like a totally pointless side-track. And a predictable one, at that.
You see, Shackled City, we felt you were 'phoning it in' by this point. We know that higher level modules are tougher...in fact, we believe we know it BETTER THAN YOU. Your work was getting sloppy, now. Mismatched artwork and maps became more common, and statblock mistakes started appearing. It was becoming more work to cover for your mistakes than we wanted, and you were delivering over-glorified dungeon crawls.
We skipped "Secret of the Soul Pillars" when it became obvious that it was just a rehash of the same non-adventure we'd already seen THREE TIMES by this point. The players weren't going to just go march off to ANOTHER dungeon to find another item that would again provide them NO REAL ANSWERS. And by this point, the non-presence of the Cagewrights, the proposed evil organization who motivates most of the adventure path, was beginning to rankle. The actions of the beholder, Orbius, were completely unknown to the party, making them effectively meaningless.
So we advanced to "Lords of Oblivion"....and it killed the game. Because we were following the EXACT same plot as "Secret of the Soul Pillars" and "Flood Season", and it was wearing thin. Did you think we didn't notice the meta-structure you kept overusing? Because we did, Shackled City, we did. Event happens and players stop it, but then discover that wizard Foozle did it, and they chase him to location A and fight him. That leads them to location B, where they fight Foozle's pal and then location C to fight Foozle and get Item/Installation X, that gives them a teensy clue about the metaplot.
For that matter, you have an NPC spouting exposition about the meta-plot...and if the PCs put their boot to the door or can't sneak in to hear it, they may never really know what's going on. EVER.
Now, we didn't even bother with the rest of the campaign. It was simply too much. Let's summarize your grand plan: the beholder becomes a Tarterian Beholder in his dungeon. The players are exepcted to hunt him down. Then the cagewrights trigger the volcano and earthquakes to activate their artifact and the red dragon Hookface attacks. Oh, and some demodands attack. So the players find the Cagewrights lair and kill most of them, then hunt the others to ANOTHER dungeon and kill them there. Then the BBEG suddenly appears and the players just rush off to fight him.....and then, ROLL CREDITS?
You do realize that, with what you gave us, half the most important NPCs and villains only show up about five minutes before they become important or in the case of the villains, DEAD? You spend eight modules building up the cagewrights and then kill them off in a matter of minutes after meeting them.
Really, Shackled City...I think you knew you weren't really trying. Especially as you were so inconsistent with some elements. NPCs appear and disappear without much explanation. Story arcs are inconsistently applied. Whole chunks of story are inaccessible to the players without major intervention from the DM. And worst of all, Shackled City...you became DULL. Pedestrian. Predictable.
I think we all agree this just isn't working out of any of us, Shackled City. I've informed the heroes that Vhalantru is defeated, the Cagewrights thwarted and that life goes on. Cauldron will live to be used another day...but please pick up your severance check and clear out your desk. We appreciate some of the work you did, but you just weren't a good fit for us.
Good Day, Sir.
