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Someone once told me that Dungeon was planning on publshing "Key to the Grave", sequel to "Mad God's Key" published in Dungeon #114. I was quite fond of "Mad God's Key" and would enjoy running the sequel. Does anyone know if it's going to be published eventually? If not, is the adventure available through the RPGA?
Someone once told me that Dungeon was planning on publshing "Key to the Grave", sequel to "Mad God's Key" published in Dungeon #114. I was quite fond of "Mad God's Key" and would enjoy running the sequel. Does anyone know if it's going to be published eventually? If not, is the adventure available through the RPGA?
http://www.nyrond.org/turbine/scenario-show?id=COR4-12
We just played the barge end chase from mad god's key and had so much fun with it! I never felt that comfortable with the presented rules for the environmental challenges as a DM. Please dungeon, more scenarios with exciting chases like this one!
Director of Game Design
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Someone once told me that Dungeon was planning on publshing "Key to the Grave", sequel to "Mad God's Key" published in Dungeon #114. I was quite fond of "Mad God's Key" and would enjoy running the sequel. Does anyone know if it's going to be published eventually? If not, is the adventure available through the RPGA?
Unfortunately, I do not think it is still available through the RPGA, but you can check with them. As of this moment, I do not think Dungeon has any intention of running the sequel I am afraid.
Jason Bulmahn
Managing Editor of Dragon
Author of Mad God's Key and Key to the Grave
I also would love to see Key to the Grave published in Dungeon. Mad God's Key was awesome and my players really enjoyed it.
Trouble with Barrier Peaks is that it is really huge - way too big to give the players satisfaction of achievement.
The key to success in a one-off is to keep it focused, keep it fast, and give them a chance of completing it rather than leave it hanging.
Torrents of Dread can definitely work - I ran it this weekend in a one-shot over 6 hours, and it worked well for me...
I started it off with the PC's (who were strangers looking for lost loot in the far-flung tropics) virtually shoved off the boat caught in the storm, so they were rail-roaded into the row-boat and into the action straight away. Funny how no-one could swim or knew how to sail. They spent an hour or so interacting with the village, then foud the dungeon and spent the rest of the time hacking their way through virtually ever monster in the whole complex before they finally found the zombie master.
Unfortunately I mis-calculated the time it would take to deal with the 3rd level cleric then the zombie-master, so when they finally defeated them we had run out of time and the climaz with the Kopru was left hanging - the lesson is to manage the time and even the dungeon layout so that doesn't happen - were I to do it again, I would simply change the layout so they stumble onto the climax in time to resolve it e.g. I could have easily cut out the gelatinous cube and made that room be there the zombie master was (no-ne's going to know, and the idea is to have fun and give the players a chance to live happily ever after or go out in a blaze of glory trying).
What I loved most about this adventure as a one-shot was it had a tight, focused story, which didn't require any motivation for a group to work together beyond survival - they needed to do the adventure simply to survive, so ongoing motivations etc can take a back seat and the group can just get on with the adventuring at hand. And pretty much and group of PC's works well for it, the players don't need to know what they are in for in order to make a good group (I just told my guys they were headed on a boat looking for lost treasures, so they just made a generic adventuring party). And it's got a good balance of some role-play, simple stuff to kill (hacking through masses of zombies and bullywugs) and some quite tough encounters (a dinosaur, tentriculos, golem, etc).
Is there a chance to get a good rundown on the story of this adventure and how it ties in with Mad God's Key? Not sure the copy right rules of discussing the plot of an adventure like this, but I'm not looking for any actual mechanics, just the fluf. I realy loved the first adventure and would like to know more about the sequal.
Is there a chance to get a good rundown on the story of this adventure and how it ties in with Mad God's Key? Not sure the copy right rules of discussing the plot of an adventure like this, but I'm not looking for any actual mechanics, just the fluf. I realy loved the first adventure and would like to know more about the sequal.
Key to the Grave is what I'd call a "site-based investigation". Whereas most investigations I've played are event-based...you interview people and have to ask the right questions to trigger the next event/interview...Key to the Grave gives you a map of a neighborhood, all the relevant NPC's, and expects you to go knock on doors to find clues. I found that both realistic and refreshing.
The adventure begins with a murder in the Inn the characters are staying in (in Greyhawk City, of course). The characters are summoned to help the inn-keeper but when they arrive the body's gone. Which is odd because the door is locked from the inside and the window is barred so how did someone get the body out? There are some clues in the room and from that point forward the PC's pretty much go around the neighborhood trying to figure out what happened.
Despite the investigation being "site-based", there are events that occur at various pre-determined points. These events aren't for the benefit of the PC's however, like in most event-based adventures, but rather for the benefit of the villain. (i.e. "if the PC's haven't done X by Y time, the villain will do Z"). Basically the Villain's doing his thing while the PC's are doing theirs. Again, it felt realistic in that sense to me.
SPOILER BELOW
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The "victim" of the murder is really someone who has tranformed himself into a vampire. I.e. it was a ritual killing (maybe even a suicide? memory's hazy) and he turned to gaseous form to escape the room. The guy who turns himself into a vampire is associated with the same cult that the group busted up in Mad God's Key. Ultimately, they must show-down the vampire in the sewers under the neighborhood, finding his lair. If they don't do their job right (the investigation) this is TPK-potential, because I played and judged this at "APL 4" (which is Living Greyhawk language for "an adventure for 4th level characters") and at that level, if you run into a vampire and you're not prepared (with silver, with magic weapon, with a buffing cleric) you are in deep doo-doo. I actually had to break into a silver shop and steal silver daggers in preperation for the final battle. But that was great, because it gave my rogue something to excel at in an undead-based adventure, and the woman who owned the silver shop was an absolute b*tch so I wanted to rip her off anyway. I really liked that aspect of the adventure's design.
If it's not obvious I really liked this scenario and I hope there's a continuation of the series in Living Greyhawk. That being said, it was not universally lauded by the LG community the way Mad God's Key was...I think because it's pretty tough to complete in the 4-hour time slot a Living Greyhawk scenario requires, and because it's so vicious at the end.
I agree, it was refreshingly realistic in terms of how it was structured. Small-scale, but good in terms of being flexible as to how it panned out.
When I ran it, a bit of off-the-cuff DM-ing lead to probably the most hillarious combat I've ever run - while it loses something if you were not there, basically an undead gnome critialled a PC really bad, and so I said it grabbed a hold of his "bits and pieces" with its fangs. Further damage was described as the gnome simply holding on - everyone cracked up at this image of a gnome hanging off the dwarf's undercarrage. It was a pretty tough fight actually, as was the whole thing given the group had no Cleric.
Overall, my group discovered a few interesting pieces of information in the neighbourhood, so managed to find the vampire's lair before it was too late, although most of the scheduled attacks had heppened by then.
Certainly a good one to DM, from the point of view of having a time-line and neighbourhood fairly nicely laid out, and seeing how the PC's interact with it all. Originally I thought it might be a bit "flat", but it worked really well and gave the players some freedom without feeling like they were completely lost as they had the chance to investigate but even if they found nothing new stuff happened giving them things to fight and further ideas on what was going on.
If it does get published, it could definitely do with some editing for small errors etc, but would make a good adventure for Dungeon (at about EL 3-4, although maybe using a vampire-spawn instead of a full-blown vampire as a 3rd level party would likely be slaughtered by a true vampire). It's probably about the right size including all the backdrop / neighbourhood material.
Cool, thank you both for the information. This absolutly sounds like something that deserves to see the pages of Dungeon.
I do have one question though. Perhaps I'm just being simple, but that first part confuses me a tad. There is a murder at the inn, and the inn keeper hires the party to help him. Are they asked to help solve the murder right away? or just help him clean up the room/get rid of the body? Also, the door is locked from the inside and the window is bared shut, so how does the inn keeper know what happened? From what I read on the link someone gave I took it as the inn keeper walks into the room in the morning, finds a corpse, then leaves to go get the local constable. When they return the body is gone, now the PCs get hired to solve the missing body problem. But from the description I just read it sounds like things go differently.
... that first part confuses me a tad. ... the PCs get hired to solve the missing body problem.
This is kind of it. To be honest, the opening for this adventure is its weakest part, and if it were to be published in Dungeon that would be the main part to edit!
As written, Theldrat has heard there's something weird going on, so asks the PC's to hang around. Then they happen to be summoned the next day or so to the scene of what a friend of Theldrat's assumes is a murder scene. Takes up too much time and not focused, in my opinion.
When I ran it, I changed the beginning to tie it in to the group's prior adventuring, making a clearer more explicit hook that gets the PC's to the scene of the "crime" straight away. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly how - cut to the chase is about all I remember.
I'm a fan of "Mad God's Key".
I'm currently running it in my Eberron game, and breaking it up by inserting "Salvage Operation" from Dungeon #123 in the middle of it.
I placed the bloody caern in southwestern Droam, and Aubreck is giving the party a lift to the location from Sharn in exchange for the party's help in rescuing his lost ship.
I'd love to see the sequel to "Mad God's Key" in Dungeon, though I may just make up my own adventure based on the basic idea, from what I've seen in this thread a lot of the details are given out. It sounds like another adventure that will fit well in my CSI: Sharn campaign.
I would like a chance to read "Key to the Grave", as well. It may be a better idea to hopefully make the adventure a pdf download that we could pay $4.00 for and print out ourselves, that way it doesn't have to be reprinted in the magazine and Paizo can make some small profit from offering the download. I don't know about licensing, though, if the RPGA owns the rights.