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Author
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Comment
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Elijah
Ebon Hand Cultist
(1/11/04 11:38 am)
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Well Met
Hello all, I finally got dead tired of hearing my friends reminisce about their past glories and how great a time they had playing D&D, but no one wanted to step up and DM so I finally said fine, then lets do it, I'll DM. The thing is, if I'm DM'ing its gotta be a memorable epic, which involves alot of work for me. I settled on this module and thankfully there's a wealth of information and advice out there for it, as its been awhile since I DM'd, and certainly not a 3e campaign. Expect to hear more from me, I see already theres some really shrewd DM's lurking around here, hopefully you won't mind a bunch of questions 
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ieri
Tolling Bell Cultist
(1/11/04 12:36 pm)
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Welcome aboard
Welcome aboard. Always glad to expand the hive mind.
Are you going to be starting with this module, or running something else to get level 1 characters ready for it?
I just started last friday with the Sunless Citadel, and we had a blast (which relieved me a lot... after how my last attempt at a campaign went, I was a bit worried).
-Ieri
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Elijah
Ebon Hand Cultist
(1/11/04 12:47 pm)
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leanings
Leaning towards going with 4th level guys atm. If I had good material that went seamlessly with the module Id use it but as it is I question the value of a dungeon crawl just to raise levels when Im already looking at a year long epic.
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Mr Kaze
Tolling Bell Cultist
(1/11/04 5:24 pm)
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Re: leanings
If you're going for a bit of epic-quality storytelling, here's the advice I wish I'd been able to give myself the first time I ran RttToEE:
You should be prepared to cross-reference your monster manual and swap out a lot of the creatures for things more environmentally appropriate or consistent. This is especially true in the Crater Ridge Mines (CRM), but also applies to the Blue Dragon in the moathouse -- blue dragons tend to be desert creatures. (Four DMs in my area have all deemed the CRM like going to the zoo with intent to kill...)
This, of course, ties directly into the defining feature of GM-ing. You may be reading from the module/campaign book, but your players aren't -- it is therefore your responsibility to adjust, modify, nullify, or append to the book such that the playing experience is fun and involving for all of your players, as well as your epic-quality seeking self.
To this end, I would advise you thus: Beware of concept characters who need "Just a Couple More Levels to Start Being Really Good!" -- then they will be mostly useless save as pincushions until then and most of the party will likely resent them as experience leeches for it.
And if one of the characters is a misbegotten fighter who wants to sit back and sulk behind the bard while being chased by an air elemental that she couldn't kill in a single swing, then... I can sympathize.
Offhand, the other thing that I might advise -- one of the early rave-points about City of the Spider Queen -- is that you set a timeline of cultist activity before you even start. Important points on this timeline would include point X where the lower temple re-opens and point Z where the world ends. The timeline should have tangible signs of cult progress increasing as point Z approaches. Consider how, in the book version of Return of the King, the darkness of Sauron manifested across the sky until every day was as dark as night... and there was no putting the darkness on hold while Aragorn upgraded his sword to a +6 Holy Keen Vorpal  ) But if the characters are seeing progressively bad omens, it should (hopefully) help keep them from getting distracted too much by nasty things like doppelgangers for game-time months on end.
Good Luck!
::Kaze ('s current players know that he's a timeline kind of guy -- so even without the omens they've spent two entire sessions on day 18 in the CRM alone and are easily on-track to finish the campaign in less than 90 days.)
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Cordo Crowfoot
Deathmantle Cultist
(1/11/04 11:13 pm)
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Re: leanings
Personally, I've never agreed with over pressuring the players to advance. There is little enough down time in the adventure as is, and built in consequences if they leave the enemies alone for a few days.
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JRedGiant
Tolling Bell Cultist
(1/12/04 6:43 am)
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Monster's ball
The CRM makes logical, consistent sense within it's own framework. It's a chaotic warzone mess with enough monster variety to keep the denizens constantly battling each other. Also, from a mechanical sense, it's a long boring dungeon crawl. The variety of encounters alleviates this to some degree.
It's the fact that there are so few food and water sources for the wide variety of different lairs that bugs me.
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Andorax
Brother of Venom
(1/12/04 7:05 am)
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Re: Monster's ball
I've another important question for you...are you running the adventure by 3.0 or 3.5 rules? It makes a significant difference, but once again you've come to the right place for resources in either case.
As to the other point...I would recommend you do otherwise...run it from 1st. The important thing here about running from 1st is that it lets the players (and you) get some of 3.0/3.5 under your belt before you hit the 'meat' of the module, valuable experience.
Here is a package of short adventures I used to that aim, along with notes for how I tied them together. Rather than one long dungeon crawl beforehand (such as Sunless Citadel), it seems like a fairly "natural" evolution from 1st level characters to semi-experienced characters ready to take on the storyline. Run well, there won't even be a moment of "hey, you've started the module guys".
www.firedragon.com/~andor...20Pack.zip
"Whadda ya mean, Orcs get levels too?!?" |
Cordo Crowfoot
Deathmantle Cultist
(1/12/04 9:20 am)
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Re: Monster's ball
I agree that starting at 1st has its merits, and is particularly good if you have many new players. But on the other hand it sure is nice to jump into the meat of the module when its going to take such a long time to finish... My group had a couple of abortive low level campaign starts (not just me as DM), so I wasn't about to make them go back to 1st again... and it was absolutely the right decision.
"They were immediately and absolutely recognizable as adventurers. They were hardy and dangerous, lawless, stripped of allegiance or morality, living off their wits, stealing and killing, hiring themselves out to whoever and whatever came... They were scum who died violent deaths, hanging on to a certain cachet among the impressionable through their undeniable bravery and their occasionally impressive exploits" China Mieville, Perdido Street Station |
Mr Kaze
Tolling Bell Cultist
(1/12/04 12:09 pm)
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Re: It's all about Balancing with Style
Elijah said he insists on a memorable epic; I can identify with that being on my 2nd running of the campaign (this time not going entirely by the book), and to that end my advice is provided.
Quote:
"Personally, I've never agreed with over pressuring the players to advance. There is little enough down time in the adventure as is, and built in consequences if they leave the enemies alone for a few days. "
Clearly you've never watched in dismay as your PCs wandered off for a month of game time trying to pursue somebody on an important clue from the Jaroo doppelganger. On the one hand, it was funny. On the other, it was really really sad because there was nothing in the world (lacking visible ill omens) to let them know that they were being distracted from their real purpose.
The other issue is that there aren't signficant consequences (that I've noticed) built in -- you leave the bad guys alone for a year and... more orcs, hobgoblins, and assorted popcorn warriors are recruited into the CRM? So what? 6th level adventurers (Cleave, Fireball, et all) won't even notice the extra fodder. Not saying that you should send Hunter/Killer teams after the PCs on a weekly basis, but it can't be an epic storyline if the end of the world that they're racing to stop is "on hold" until they show up. I mean "You kick down the door and the arch villians who've been expecting you for the past year and heard you talking strategy and casting buff spells in the hall for the past hour are genuinely shocked and surprised to see you! They thought you'd never show up! 'Well, the heroes are here -- time to detonate the world,' one of them says, as bored to tears as your DM is..." doesn't a great epic make. So if you've got players like that, be careful -- I had (past tense) those players and it was often pretty miserable.
My current game is much more RP-involved because the PCs know that I want to give them a full and fleshed-out (epic) story to play around in. And the current set of players are having more fun because the results of and responses to their actions are much more tangible than "Roll Initiative."
If you've got PCs that like hunting in zoos, using Detect Evil every 5 feet, and only want to save the world after they've got their +6 Holy Keen Vorpal longsword, my advice may not work for you. But I hope, in my opinionated little way, that you don't.
Hope it helps,
::Kaze (also notes in his same opinionated way that if the CRM is a "long boring dungeon crawl," then the DM needs to do something about it in a way that advances the epic quality of the storyline -- not simply throw more mostly-random combats in to slow the PC's progress down even further.)
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Elijah
(1/12/04 4:48 pm)
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New Campaign
Hmm Ill be running 3.5 At the moment I'm still without a definite go from my most important player, a veteran role player and GM himself many times, without whom the adventure will lessened both in quality and in its chances of reaching ultimate success. With him as party leader, I have confidence the quest will stay on course given a little gentle prodding if needed. Hes also very familiar with the original, so can provide the 2 players without such background with a sense of continuity. I won't actually start this for about a month Im guessing, but regardless I need to consider beforehand the nature of this all veteran RP group, which even without the aformentioned individual, is a quality group.
Edited by: Elijah at: 1/12/04 4:52 pm
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Elijah
(1/12/04 4:51 pm)
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Lead in adventure
Not sure on the 1st vs 4th start issue, I feel there's arguments for both which is why I havent decided yet.
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Cordo Crowfoot
Deathmantle Cultist
(1/13/04 1:57 am)
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Re: Lead in adventure
No I haven't watched my players go on a wild goosechase... And I didn't add a whole lot of random encounters in, just restocked the main gate (which they never fought again) and made sure the players knew that it was a living dungeon, and that there would be consequences for leaving things alone. (Well also I had the fire temple wipe out the water temple outpost near the south gate after they waited two weeks after their original fire temple attack.)
I seem to have indoctrinated them well, as they refuse to take a day off, even to wait for magic items to be enchanted. In fact I feel a bit sorry for them, but it would be wrong for me to speak up and say "It's only three more days for the Belt of Health +2 and Boots of Striding and Springing! Just wait!" (This is an actual situation.)
So I guess what I would say is that you shouldn't leap to make the players feel time is breathing down their necks before you know their proclivities. Your own experience is not necessarily the norm... And if it becomes a problem for Elijah later he can address it.
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msherman
Crimson Coil Cultist
(1/13/04 4:10 am)
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Re: Lead in adventure
I've been OOC encouraging the party cleric to cast a Divination whenever he's concerned about taking time off; since I'm using the Binder scenario, there's much less time pressure in my game than most, but there are occasional short-term bursts of it. For example, Imix was just released from the Fire Binder into the Node, and while they would have been under time pressure last week to try to prevent that from happening, now things are easy-going again.
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Andorax
Brother of Venom
(1/13/04 8:28 am)
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Re: Lead in adventure
Elijah, take a look at the 3.5 conversion document that we've put together. I think you'll find it to be a VERY valuable resource. All of the conversion from 3.0 (The module's original format) to 3.5 has been done for you, and on top of that, the statbloks will thus be in a separate booklet for you, which does make things easier in the long run.
If your download speed is good, please do download the package of starting adventures and look them over. I'd genuinely like to know your opinion of what I've put together there, and if you think they'd serve you well getting everyone up to speed on 3.5.
"Whadda ya mean, Orcs get levels too?!?" |
Elijah
(1/14/04 10:51 am)
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Materials
Hah I had already downloaded the 3.5 conversion materials, the adventure pack mentioned, a bundle of maps, handouts, etc, last week. I have a nice high end printer to use for the materials...I really am not sure about the 4th level issue, I'm going to see how the players feel about it. As i said I think theres arguments to go both ways.
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Elijah
(1/14/04 11:00 am)
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Adventure Pack
I very quickly perused those adventures, They are decent but nothing compelling...some I might use if I go that route. I had a good idea for a tie-in and possible adventure when watching "from hell" last night on cable, maybe an insane Jack the Ripper type character is in Verbobanc and the players have to try to track him down and actually hes an insane T worshipper who has a letter that will lead the players to Hommlet...we'll see I have a long time left before I really have to run the first session, we haven't even rolled up characters yet.
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