Gameplay: Rival Adventurers


Age of Worms Adventure Path


Ok, I've finally got a chance to do some reading into the Diamond Lake backdrop, and I see a several opportunities for the Rival Adventurers to find out that the party is exploring the whispering cairn and explore it themselves. There is mention that the fighter NPC will face the players later when they get to Free City, but not much else about that I see about how the Rival Party figures into things.

Is anyone planning on actually having the rival party head into the whispering cairn (given that the players spill where they are exploring)?


Why is it that the rival adventurers have spent an entire week blabbing about raiding the Stirgenest Cairn? You'd think they'd get in town, maybe take a day or two to gather info & supplies, & then head to the cairn.

Dark Archive

Rob Bastard wrote:
Why is it that the rival adventurers have spent an entire week blabbing about raiding the Stirgenest Cairn? You'd think they'd get in town, maybe take a day or two to gather info & supplies, & then head to the cairn.

I plan to say that they are waiting for a special order from Tyrol Ebberly or Venelle and its taking week for the item to get there. They did not pick up this weapon or piece of equipment from another town before arriving because they were not sure that their would be any useful info and only made the orders after they got to town and decided where they were going. Besides, it sounds like a harsh trip from Free City to Diamond Lake and they might want to rest for a week. This gives them time to play Dragonchess and even introduces the PCs to the two vendors I mentioned when the Rival Party mentions waiting for their orders.

On a side note: I always regretted not using the Stormblades properly and would really love to know how everyone integrates these guys into your game. Having them follow the PCs into the Cairn after they leave for the first time might be interesting. Especially since they might draw attention to themselves at the Feral Dog. If I were a crafty NPC that just found nothing in the Cairn I was exploring then I'd want to know why a bunch of level nothing commoners (thats how my PCs will likely be living their lives at first) are wandering around in the hills...


Well, all my players are brand new, and I want to get them right into the action as soon as possible, so I'm creating their characters for them with writeups filling in their history, and plopping them down right in front of the entrance. However, I'm sure they're going to get banged up pretty quickly and need to get some rest / return to town in short order.

I'm creating a young wizard apprentice to allustan as one of the characters, so the players should have a friendly and informed patron to help them.

I want the players to meet up with the rival adventurers, but I haven't decided how yet, since the players are so inexperienced I want to keep them from blabbing what they're doing to the other party. Maybe I'll have Allustan warn them to keep quiet about their findings upon return from their first foray into the cairn.

Scarab Sages

Rob Bastard wrote:
Why is it that the rival adventurers have spent an entire week blabbing about raiding the Stirgenest Cairn? You'd think they'd get in town, maybe take a day or two to gather info & supplies, & then head to the cairn.

I had them meet the PCs during/shortly after a running drunken brawl between the Greyhawk Trio (or rather, Auric), the patrons of The Feral Dog, and several militia and the Garrison troops, who unwisely tried to break it up.

Since half my PCs are based at the Garrison, they were all drinking in The Spinning Giant, when several wounded soldiers came in, dragging their unconscious comrade.

Auric came by immediately after, and demanded service, having been barred from The Feral Dog by Kullen. This prompted the regulars to threaten him, and the PCs to try calming things down, getting him to agree to a quiet drink in a corner, if he promised not to make a scene.

For my game, I rebuilt Auric as a Grappler, partly as a way to make his violent brawling less lethal, and more likely to be forgiven by the authorities, less likely to kill a PC if they became enemies, and to justify how a relatively low-level NPC could be Champion of the Games (given the standard of the other teams in later chapters). I assumed there could be multiple Championships for different leagues, and Auric could have won his belt in the 'Little League' of hopeful amateurs and less popular events, leaving the likes of Pitchblade, etc to hack their way through the 'Big Boys' lethal matches. Of course, in Greyhawk, everyone knows he's 'Okay, but not that good', so he left the city, using his fancy Belt to impress country folk who don't know any better.

During that conversation, they asked what they were doing in town, and it was obvious that the other two were putting silent pressure on Auric to reveal nothing. Thus they decided to follow them, and overheard them giving Auric a stern telling-off about not mentioning 'the cairn'.

The PCs put their heads together, and decided the only cairn not plundered was one known only to the two Dwarf PCs from when they were children. And off they went...


The only difficulty with Auric as champion of the "little league" is that it kind of diminishes the impact of the planned sacrifice of Auric the Champion to the Apostle of Kyuss, later on in Champion's Belt.

I, too, cast Auric as a drunken, bumbling brawler, who tried to grope the party's female PC, and prompting the party bard to make him try to dance on the table with a suggestion spell, sending himself and a table load of beer-steins crashing to the floor. It was the highlight of Feral Dog taproom gossip for months afterwards. The bard avoided the repercussions of thus embarrassing Auric by casting Tasha's hideous laughter (a spell he had earlier used to escape being mashed to a pulp by Kullen).

This made for interesting roleplay later when the party tried to warn Auric about his being slated for the Apostle's gullet. (Hope to have the campaign journal entry on this up in the next week or two).

Scarab Sages

Peruhain of Brithondy wrote:
The only difficulty with Auric as champion of the "little league" is that it kind of diminishes the impact of the planned sacrifice of Auric the Champion to the Apostle of Kyuss, later on in Champion's Belt.

Possibly, but I'm trying to avoid future problems with verisimilitude.

If the PCs enter the Games, and come up against the teams in TCB, this is going to clash with their expectations from what came before.

"If these guys are typical contenders, how come Auric got the Belt?"

Bumping Auric, Khellek and Tirra to match the power level of the teams in TCB, means they become far too dangerous for the PCs to tangle with at level 1, thus removing the possibility of using them, and risking a TPK.

As it is, I've got lots of mileage out of them, using them to point the PCs toward exploring the cairns, giving them rivals to keep up the time-pressure (because puzzle/trap-dungeons are dull otherwise, right?), using them as a difficult combat encounter, and to inform the players of a long-term McGuffin that I can use to jump-start the campaign if it stalls (the journal of one PC's father, an ex-Seeker).

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