by Black Wyvern » Tue Jul 02, 2013 3:44 am
I have put quite a bit of time into this module during the last few months; remapped the caves and split them up all over the map, added several more lairs, made the wilderness map into a hex map to make it easier to run with wilderness rules and expanded it to 2 pages by 2 pages. Also added a village and expanded several of the lairs and hinted at plots, begged, borrowed, stole and made up hooks galore. Basically made it to run as a series of mostly short adventures. I also mapped the Cave of the Unknown and hidden passage under the Guildhouse, connected them to the Shrine of Evil Chaos and made a dungeon prison under the fortress part of the keep and connected it to the hermit who is now a watchman for a chaotic thieves guild. After months of prep... I am finally running it.
Been fun but even with spreading dungeons out to reduce the chance of bumbling into places of extreme danger, we have still lost: Three thieves, two in back to back rooms, five dwarves, three halflings, four magic-users, three elves, and two clerics (strangely, the players don't believe fighters are worth doing so not one has been rolled up). They have wiped out; the Chaotic Fighters, who managed to spot the hiding halfling that was spying on them and ambush the party resulting in all but two of eight killed, one of two goblin clans, an additional ogre in an expanded lair with several traps and a few pets, and are almost done with an evil tomb that I added to the "Mound" hill just south of the road. The "Mound" is based off the Moche mud brick pyramids, and has proved to be pretty exciting.
We have one original character an elf who is about half way to 2nd level, and a halfling and magic-user that have been around since the second excursion that are less that 200xp and 700xp from leveling. It has been a lot of fun but wow do characters die. Characters are 3d6 in order, gold has been either rolled as per the book or inherited from character to character, everyone is pretty well equipped now, HP are half a max plus roll half dice. So a fighter (or dwarf) is 4+1d4 hp to start.
Current party Elf, 2 halflings, cleric, and a magic-user that has godlike luck with thrown daggers. Three players lost characters in the last session and haven't replaced them yet.
With the huge number of melee combats, front line warriors don't have much of a chance.
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