I will echo other reviewers in that the given hook is a little contrived, but if you are a DM, just tweak it to fit your campaign. The Rebels were already known to the Duke Orsino of Daggerford (Daggerford is called Riverport colloquially in my campaigns) and his steward, Regus. In fact, they live in apartments in his manor and do special assignments for the Dukedom (sort of a Rat Queens premise). So it was simple enough for Regus to approach them with the news that the "Duke is acting weirder than usual and I'm worried." (my nephew was actually pretty surprised to learn that all I really did was change some names in the module to make it fit our setting. It fit absolutely seamlessly into our campaign. )
When the Class of '81 ran it, it was a little trickier, but it is in their best interest to make sure the town is safe, for several reasons, so with the help of Captain Mercutio of the town's militia, they were able to infiltrate various posts within the Duke's household. We made it work. It helped that three of the party members are in a band (Tifinin, Sorrow, and Ivar).
There are several black and white maps, wonderful black and white drawings, and a color map of a copper mine.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The players have to negotiate an attempted hit on the Duke's sister via a jewelry box mimic, political intrigue, and a series of clues suggesting that a criminal faction is involved. The string of clues take the players to a criminal headquarters in a foundry, a copper mine, and a manor house containing a doppelganger and gang members, and a later attempted hit on the party by a gang of thugs.
The Rebels killed the thugs at the foundry and set them up to look like they'd gotten into a fight over a card game and killed each other. They also wrote "Devos is coming" on the wall in blood. There is no Devos. But now the criminal factions in Daggerford are more than a little on edge because they don't know who Devos is. These kids are savages.
This module gets extra points for scaring the bejeebus out of any player that realizes 1. what a mind flayer is and 2. The fact that low level characters don't stand a snowball's chance in hell against one. But what they don't know is that the thing is so out of its mind high when they encounter it that it's not nearly as dangerous. Still, that is a hard boss fight. The thing has allies. And the Class almost lost their rogue, Boz, in that fight.
The punchline of all this is that it was all an elaborate and dangerous drug cartel running deals out of Daggerford. The "brain gorger" (it's a mind flayer, lets be real) had gone nuts with addiction.
 |
| Grinda today |
At the copper mine, there is a kobold guard that is being bullied by the other kobolds for not being tough enough. Macterah, a member of the Class, could not abide this and was very, very kind to the kobold. In fact, she couldn't stop thinking about him, and the next morning, announced that she would return to the mine to retrieve him from his situation. What she didn't know was that the kobold had followed the party back to their ship and stowed away on board. So he was in the hold when they returned after not being able to find him. And that's how Grinda the Crying Kobold became a permanent part of the Class of '81 campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment