If These Stones Could Scream: Khajra Map Draft

Now that I am done with the Dungeon World version of Something Stirs in the Blackscale Brakes (13th Age will be coming once there is a SRD that allows use of the default icons), I have started working on another adventure titled If These Stones Could Scream.

After finishing 20 pages I thought I would switch gears and work on one of three maps that will be included in the adventure, starting with Khajra:

Victor is gonna have a field day with this one.

Khajra is located in the middle of an expansive desert, serving as a key stopping point for caravans passing through. Well, it used to until its inhabitants stopped opening the gates or even responding at all.

The Heirs of Ruin: Broken Bonds Adventure

The compiled and organized notes for the first adventure from my home campaign, The Heirs of Ruin, can be found here.

The belgoi commands it.

Temple of the Weeping Goddess Review

Temple of the Weeping Goddess is a short, 0-level adventure intended to give you both an example and opportunity to use the 0-level character optional rules from this month’s Unearthed Arcana article. The characters play orphaned teenagers that are sent into the Elemental Chaos to free a trapped aspect of Avandra.

Yes, that is right, kids are being send into the Elemental Chaos. At first I was both surprised and excited to see that most of this adventure takes place in the traditional extraplanar paragon-to-epic tier stomping ground, not only in the heroic tier, but without a level (or class) to your name, but both feelings quickly faded as I continued to read the adventure.

SPOILERS

Basically, the adventure opens up with the characters stealing some loot from actual adventurers off camera, utilizing a skill challenge to ideally escape without getting the hit points beat out of you (keeping the treasure even if you do). Once that gets wrapped up everyone heads back to the orphanage, where your caretaker does a big reveal in which he explains the true purpose of founding the orphanage in the first place; round up a bunch of kids to toss into the Elemental Chaos to do a job for him because he is “too physically weak”. In the very likely instance that the players ask why the hell wouldn’t he hire people with encounter and/or daily powers, he dismisses this with the idea that kids might have a better chance of talking to Avandra’s aspect.

Okay…so the hook is pretty damned weak but hey, Elemental Chaos bitches, let’s do this!


Weeell…the temple is a partially collapsed structure on a perfectly serviceable chunk of earth. So…the caretaker cannot travel here on his own because he is too old, despite the fact that it is all level terrain? If he can get up stairs, then he can walk around whatever puddles or collapsed statues that amount to difficult terrain, here. The lack of an Elemental Chaos feel could be covered up by the use of native fauna, but the only monsters to be found here are goblin pirates that got sucked into a vortex and survived, a handful of elementals, and some undead that are for some reason hanging out with Avandra’s aspect. Basically a 1st-level, stock-standard bestiary that can be found in most adventures (and a mid-level cleric could potentially solo given a few days).

Really, this entire thing could take place in the natural world and you would not have to change much except for how the characters get there. Hell, drop it on an earthmote in Forgotten Realms and see if anyone notices. The actual dungeon has a lot of little things for the characters to find that can help them out later, such as an alternative exit when they have to flee, and inscriptions that give them bonuses when dealing with the aspect. I also liked that the NPCs had their own sections for their goals, motivations, fears, weaknesses, and more. These will go a long way to giving DMs a solid foundation for how to work with the NPC.

This adventure reminds me of Keep on the Shadowfell in that while you could run it as written, it both lacks the feel that I was expecting and there is just enough there to make it work if you are willing to put in the time and effort to re-work almost all of it.

For example, why not have the characters figure out that Denek is seeking the goddess themselves? Instead of running from a bunch of adventurers that they somehow conned out of a lot of money (yet do not retrieve it if they get caught), have them discover a secret room or underground archive and stumble upon the ritual necessary to open the portal to the Elemental Chaos themselves. There could have been some extensive social roleplaying going on here, and the players could have taken their own initiative to help out someone who for years had been like a father to them. Hell, have him go into the portal and have the rest of the characters follow him to see what he is up to.

I understand that there could be a time crunch on this whole thing, but he could still have divulged his desires to a character trained in Arcana or Religion under the assumption that such a skill character (or characters) could help him out from time to time. If none of that panned out, then I guess you could still stick with the original hook of an orphan caretaker looking for “exceptional people” to send into the Elemental-fucking-Chaos for a stroll. Even if you have to stick with the original hook, that still does not excuse…

Goblins.

Why did it have to be goblins? If I sent my players to the Elemental Chaos or Astral Sea and threw goblins, orcs, gnolls, hobgoblins, or really anything short of elementals, angels, or demons they would paddle my ass with all of my Monster Manuals while forcing me to walk on four-siders. It would be like the nerdiest pledge initiation in history. The author could have de-leveled some elementals or demons and thrown those at the zeroes, but since these are supposed to be teenagers it is not like you would have to have them fight and kill a threat in one encounter; it could be a recurring thing like Nemesis from Resident Evil or handled with an ongoing skill challenge. Of course sticking to critters that you would expect to find in the Elemental Chaos is a good start, but having everything take place on level terrain seems like half-assing it. This is why…

The “dungeon” should not be a two-story temple on a level island that has weathered the Elemental Chaos for decades. 

When I think of a ruined template drifting through the Elemental Chaos, I think of a weathered chunk of rock with a shattered ruin that barely perches on it. Chunks of the building and debris orbit around the whole thing, and perhaps a geyser of flame constantly shoots a spiral of slowly flowing lava out into the plane (could be a terrain feature during a fight, could be just for looks). Rocks could collide with the temple during an encounter or during a skill challenge, or be part of the terrain during a fight (like mobile, floating platforms). It is the Elemental Chaos; fuck physics and go wild with the scenery. At this level it should be the dungeon equivalent of being able to witnessing a supernova, except that you get to explore it.

And when the players finally got to Avandra? Instead of undead, why not have a bunch of angels guarding her, weakened from years of being disconnected from the Astral Sea (explaining their level 1-ness)? There could also be a demon in the mix somewhere, perhaps trying to destroy Avandra’s aspect or trapped, and something the characters do frees it or allows it to get to her (and they get a chance to help defeat it).

The adventure I was hoping for is nowhere close to the one I got, and the one I got both feels like that the Elemental Chaos was tacked on for an entirely unnecessary reason (ie, because), and does almost nothing to showcase it. I really cannot recommend this adventure except as a training exercise to give the 0-level character rules a routine try.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey Review

It has been a long time since Wizards of the Coast actually published a dead-tree adventure (the last one that I could find came out just over a year ago, Marauders of the Dune Sea). Unlike past adventures, Madness at Gardmore Abbey comes in a box. A box that is kind of a pain in the ass to open, and contains four paper-back books similar to what we saw in the original line of adventures, a sheet of monster tokens and dungeon tiles, two double-sided poster maps, and an actual deck of many things that you did not have to print out from a Dragon article or proxy with a normal, non-magical/sentient deck of cards.

If you have been keeping up with the previews then you already know that the plot concerns some madness happening at Gardmore Abbey.

That place. You can’t see it, but there’s madness going on.

The other spoiler free revelation is that the whole mess was caused by misuse use of the deck of many things–with good intentions, of course–which caused undead to attack and gave a bunch of orcs the opportunity to take over. The cards ended up getting scattered, and the adventure begins with the party possessing one of them and presumably seeking the rest. I do not want to go into spoiler territory (well, too far at least), and will instead try to talk about things I liked from a cursory reading without revealing too many specifics.

Flexible Duration
If you ever ran Expedition to Castle Ravenloft in 3rd Edition, then you probably recall how the adventure’s duration depending on how quickly you wanted the group to face off against Strahd: it could last you a few months, or you could wrap it up in one night (skipping most of the content, however). The same thing goes here. If you just want to speed through the adventure, you can do just that, though there are quite a few optional side quests to keep the players occupied if you are running this as a continuation of an existing campaign, and/or intend to keep going once you are done with it.

Flexible Encounters
I recall Wizards of the Coast stating in one of the previews that the adventure would contain encounters that could have explicit methods to resolve them without resorting to attack rolls, and they did not disappoint: there are encounters that the players can talk their way by, sneak past, and even one where the characters can simply trade character background information for hints. Some meet you halfway, giving you both social and sword interaction.

OKAY SPOILER! (highlight to read) 
There is an ettin early on that is supposed to guard a door. At the start of the encounter the DM rolls to see which one–or both–heads are awake. It prompts for the answer to a riddle, but if only one head is awake it instead is willing to make a deal for something that varies by head. If they cannot answer the riddle and do not want to make a bargain, they can instead just attack it to get it over with.

The cards can manifest in the encounters, providing at-will and encounter powers that both the good and bad guys can use. There are also sections on what happens if the players kill certain monsters, which can create a power void or just upset the overall balance between different factions. This helps reinforce a living dungeon that is more than just a series of disconnected encounters of monsters waiting to be killed.

Flexible Story
Also like Expedition, a couple parts of the adventure are randomly determined by a draw of the cards. The randomization is not as pervasive (and a fortune teller does not provide you with hints), and mostly serves to identify the hidden villain and a few story elements. The ending is also open, allowing the characters to ultimately decide what to do with the deck if they manage to reconstruct it. Also, if you have your own campaign it would be a simple process of simply dropping a ruined abbey somewhere around a village or town.

Conclusion
There is a nice mix of encounter types that will cater to a variety of players, especially those that purport to like an “even mix”. Despite a focused goal of finding a super-powered artifact, there are plenty of NPCs that the characters might have interacted with before (well, if you ran Keep on the Shadowfell at least) that have their own agendas. This is the first printed adventure from WotC since Orcs of Stonefang Pass that I would like to run without having to modify it extensively., and I am hoping this is due to WotC hitting their stride as opposed to a George Lucas-ian random fluke.

As numerical ratings go I would probably go with an 8 out of 10, but my general opinion is to just pick it up, especially if your group is approaching the appropriate level range (6-10) and/or you don’t have any definitive
plans for their immediate future.

Product Images

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I for some reason just forgot to interject these in with the actual review.

The cards are basically of decent card-stuff, with printed images that you would expect on an authentic fantasy card deck. Think of the Three Dragon Ante decks and you have the right of it.

Shards of Selune Review

Fetch quests are not new to Dungeons & Dragons (or games in general). In many cases they require you to go to point A to get something that lets you go to point B, and so on and so forth until the writer gets bored or runs out of points. Other models adopt a more free-form “sandbox” approach, giving you all the points and leaving it up to you to tackle them in whichever order you prefer. Shards of Selune opts for the latter, and requires that the characters go about the dark places of Neverwinter on a treasure hunt to locate three of Selune’s tears ’cause the bitch couldn’t cry in one spot.

Eh, could have been worse.

The adventure hook is basically this: the players see some falling stars one night–or don’t–and are petitioned by an eladrin priest named Lady Jasmine to go get them. She gives you the vague locations of all three, but it is up to the party to determine which ones to after in what order. Things get complicated because other factions saw them and want them for various reasons, but character themes can also further complicate things, which is fucking awesome. This part of the adventure design is what draws my interest to what would have otherwise been another ho-hum “go get that thing I want ’cause I want it and oh here is some magic shit”.

Though it seems to work for 99% of World of Warcraft…

Almost every event either requires one or more themes to trigger, or has additional stuff that can occur if a character has one of the indicated themes. None of the events with required themes are mandatory, and either provide extra background information, potential hooks into other adventures, and/or give you a benefit to help you out. It is really nice to see player decisions like this integrated into the overall larger picture, and hopefully it is something we will see in future adventures.


Another thing that sets this adventure apart from others is the almost even mix of skill, social role-playing, and combat challenges (though most of the role-playing ones have required themes). Of the seven combat encounters, only three have tactical maps; the rest give you guidelines of the layout, such as “any city map featuring an alley/road”. While I expect people to complain about cutting costs or whatever, there are plenty of stock city maps, and if nothing else it would give me an excuse to actually use my Dungeon Tiles.

The encounters with maps are well done, with interesting terrain features and potentially dynamic monster rosters depending on the party’s previous actions. For example one encounter involves dealing with a gang that found one of the shards on their flooded-building pissing ground. If you dealt with other factions previously, then the DM swaps out some of the gang members for imps, zombies, dwarves, etc. It is a small thing that helps reinforce that the actions of the players can have consequences, and I fully endorse this move.

Yet another good adventure for the Neverwinter crowd. I am liking a lot of the adventures coming out of Dungeon, and I would like to see WotC round up some of the more talented authors and get a nice adventure path rolled out. Hell, I would settle for an adventure arc that at least runs through the heroic tier. I had heard that they were wrapping up Chaos Scar (yay), so here’s hoping.

Monster Updates And Evard’s Shadow

Aside from monster updates for the chuul, grell, and gibbering beast the only other interesting thing this week was the follow up adventure for Dark Legacy of Evard, Evard’s Shadow. Yeah, they did an update for the warlock but most of that was to include the new zone rules and make some of the star pact spells affected by either Charisma or Constitution, something that players have been bitching about for years (even after the warlock article that included a bunch of new spells for Charisma or Constitution, I forget which).


Monster Updates
Starting with the monsters–because I do like monsters so, especially aberrants–I am going to do a side-by-side comparison for mechanics to see what has changed, aside from the stat block layout.

• Chuul: AC gets dropped by one point, Fort by 3. Attack bonus on claw is dropped by two points, but damage goes up by a d6. Double attack gets a one-point attack reduction. Basic damage boosting.
• Chuul Juggernaut: Reflex and Will are increased by two points. Claw has its attack bonus knocked down a few pegs, but gains a d8 damage boost (or +7 bonus damage boost against immobilized targets). This is not nearly as brutal as psychic lure, which in exchange for a reduced attack bonus has its damage bonus increased by 17 points. Seventeen. Holy shit. Oh, and it can now affect one or two creatures. Oh, and the secondary attack on double attack gets a three point attack reduction, but oh well.
• Gibbering Mouther: Defenses have gone up by 1-4 points, attack bonus on gibbering  was improved by one, damage all around was increased by a d6, but the ongoing damage was halved. So it is harder to hit and hits harder initially. The ongoing damage reduction makes me think that the overall damage is reduced (average of a d6 is 3.5 and the ongoing damage was dropped by 5), but since I am not sure how many powers allow immediate saves or saves out of turn, this could actually be in the gibbering mouther’s favor.
• Gibbering Abomination: The aura is subtly altered to impose an attack penalty while you are in it, as opposed to if you start in it. Otherwise attack bonuses and damage dice are increased by one across the board, though attacks also benefit by an increase in bonus damage from 5-6 points (so, kind of like having another 1-2 dice lumped on).
• Gibbering Orb: Hit points see a major reduction of around the 250 mark, though Fort gains a hefty boost of 5 points. Bite is increased by 2d6, and while each eye ray loses one point of bonus damage, they all either get an extra d8 lumped on or (in the case of souleating ray) deal damage in addition to the previous effect. Oh, and gibbering gains an extra point on its attack bonus. Definitely keeping with the theme of reducing hit points while ramping up the damage. 
• Grell: The grell’s tentacle rake loses a d8, but gains a +2 bonus. On top of that it now has double attack, allowing it to grab and slap someone using one action (a staple for Elites and Solos alike). Tentacle grab’s attack bonus loses two points (putting it where it should be) and also gains a +2 damage bonus.
• Grell Philosopher: AC gets dropped a few points, and tentacle rake and venomous mind lose a point of attack bonus. The damage on lightning lance is reduced, and thank fucking god that psychic storm now only dazes for a turn instead of requiring a save to end. I have dealt with an encounter using a few of these fuckers, and the never-ending field of auto-dazing was the bane of fun.

Other than that, each monster also gets about a page of much-desired flavor content in line with what we got in Monster Manual III and Monster Vault. Also, a fucking awesome Wayne Reynolds pick for the chuul.

Evard’s Legacy Review
Evard’s Legacy involves a band of characters delving into Evard’s bi-planar, monster-infested mansion for…whatever reason they want. Though intended as a sequel to Dark Legacy of Evard, the only thing that is really used in this adventure is the town Duponde in name (which gets a small paragraph glossing over it), and one of the NPCs, but just as part of one adventure hook. Really, if you played through Dark Legacy then it should be easy to segue characters into it, but otherwise you can get away without the module.

The start of the adventure has the characters plowing through a skill challenge and horde of zombies in order to reach the material version of the mansion, which looks like it would be a lot of fun. There is the usual undead, corrupt fey in the undead-infested garden, and some bandits obviously waiting to betray you, but the parts that excite me is the wraith–which could easily be a recurring element of every fight, given that it can phase through walls–but the social role-playing opportunities that the human element provides.

Once you shift into the Shadowfell version of the mansion, you get to draw a card from the Despair Deck (which you really should have), in addition to having to deal with dark ones (one of which is a butler), shadow traps, more undead, and denizens of shadow (which are separate from undead in that they lack the keyword) that include Evard’s own shade. He is a level 9 artillery. Good luck, and hopefully you have overcome your Despair card by then.

There are not a lot of maps in this adventure, as most of the encounters are encapsulated on the two that detail Evard’s mansion in both worlds. Yeah there will be some flipping around, but it saves a lot of space in the end. Some of the encounters look like they could be insanely hard depending on the level of your party. It is intended for a party in the 3-5 range, but the last encounter looks like it would be overkill. Definitely consider removing monsters unless the party is 5th.

In the end it could have used better art to help emphasize the theme and tone, but otherwise looks very well done. I would also recommend checking out the related Design & Development article, as it explains a few things about the new format.

The Heirs of Ruin: Method Mapping

I really dislike drawing maps, so often I try to play out the events of the adventure in my head to get a feel for what might happen (as opposed to what I would like to happen), usually resigning myself to the task of mapping a day or two before game night.

The campaign started out with the players going through a few arena battles before having an ideal chance of escape when a silk wyrm starts wreaking havoc on the place. The intent is that after escaping that they go through a door leading to the mess hall, beat up the guards in there, head into the kitchen, and then use a waste disposal pit to get to the sewers.

When I was writing up the adventure, I figured that not all the guards would get eaten by the silk wyrm, instead fleeing and locking the door behind them, giving the characters extra incentive into taking the other door. The problem is that that whole thing is contingent on the characters not interfering with the guards, and not being slaughtered by a level 3 solo.

When I ran it, the wyrm eventually ran away on its own and the guards followed it, making sure to lock up the prison from the outside. The players armed themselves with loot from the dead guards, and then proceeded as planned when I had a squad of guards show up in the mess hall looking for escapees.

Ultimately it felt like that there was too much that could go wrong, and in the interest of helping things run more smoothly the next time I run (or put it online) I decided to make some hefty cuts to the previous map, making it a bit more straightforward in its purpose. I put the waste disposal in the same room, figuring that it made sense because those cells are not going to clean themselves and it gives the guards a place to go. I also put the whole structure underground, making a lift necessary to access the place. Makes sense, as slaves–as well as dangerous monsters–will now have a very hard time getting out this way.

Updated At the Mines of Madness Adventure

For some reason, blogger kept timing out after my last post, so I had to delete it. Again, you can download the pdf and associated stat blocks for At the Mines of Madness here. It’s been reformatted and updated from the original. I couldn’t get it to properly format with the monster stat blocks and maps in the document file, so just put them in folders to make them a bit easier to manage. Lemme know what you like about it, what you hate about it, and if the idea of an aberrant-centric adventure path holds any appeal.

The Wayward Wyrmling Review

Warning: This is an adventure review that contains spoilers.

I remember back in the days of Old Editions Past when dragons had hard-wired personalities based on whether their scales were made from metal or simply gone over with a Crayola, with metallic dragons usually having a Good component appended to their alignment. Like most “Always X Good” monsters, this meant that if you wanted to throw them at the party you had to get “creative”, which is another way of saying using a cliche. Popular ones included a case of mistaken identity/gross misunderstanding, mind control, or just because. 4th Edition makes this easier by having most monsters be unaligned at best or changing their origins, making them easier to justify as opponents.

The Wayward Wyrmling is a level 3 adventure in the Chaos Scar written by Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel that tells the woeful story of an adamantine dragon hatchling who loses his mother to adventurers, only to befriend a band of kobolds while meandering about the Chaos Scar region. This might make a good Disney movie except for the part where the kobolds kidnap humans and feed them to the dragon. They also do goblins and other kobolds, but those are monsters so no one gives a fuck. The party can be thrown in the mix by either being re-hired by the dwarf that sent the first party in to fetch some scales, or retrieve the corpses of the good-for-nothing husbands that figured going into a notoriously dangerous region to fetch wood was a capital idea (I do like how if the party helps out the wives for free that they get bonus XP).

The adventure isn’t long, reaching delve proportions, but then quality over quantity is paramount when avoiding a KotS-worthy grindfest. The adventure consists of two encounters tackling kobolds doing what they do best: cower behind shit while trying to goad the party into traps or hazardous terrain, while the last encounter includes a dragon with a twist skill challenge that allows you to–mid combat no less–convince it to change sides. As a bonus if you don’t kill it (the pathological pastime of all adventurers), it can team up with you for a few levels while you tour the Chaos Scar as your personal pet dragon. This is a very well written, short adventure with a twist that’s not too predictable.

At the Mines of Madness Adventure

Here is the first adventure in the Tendrils of Fate adventure path, At the Mines of Madness. It’s written entirely by me with some maps redone by Victor (aka ThePlaneswalker) and takes place in Eberron (specifically the Shadow Marches). Unfortunately since its not an “official” adventure by WotC the production value is shit and though I did some proofreading I’m sure I missed a lot of things.

Frankly, I’d consider at best to be a heavy outline of information to use as a framework and modify to taste. Also, I don’t think that I can post stat blocks for some of the monsters (even though its not commercial), so you’ll have to have access to either Adventure Tools (recommended) or the Monster Manual books. Don’t worry, it’ll tell you which ones and for what monsters.

Finally, if you dig it and would like to see more, lemme know in the comments. This took quite awhile to cobble together, so if you really like it, donations are appreciated!