So, I'm going to be DMing CotCT for a group in about a month once we finish Council of Thieves. I've already DMed the first two parts of Edge of Anarchy for 3 of the 5 members of my group, so I was looking into how I would go about changing the first part of the adventure to surprise and interest my PCs. I've already considered [spoilers]making Zellara's son the ghost of the Harrow deck[/spoilers] and want to see what the board would change up if they wanted to completely re-invent Part 1.

My main goals are to make Gaedren Lamm a) more of a threat, b) more involved and c) less isolated without making it feel like a "stealth mission" specifically.

So far, my ideas were to put Gaedren in a tenement house on the docks ("Lamm's Home for the Poor" came to mind, though I may make a more direct reference) with all of his thugs guarding his lair, or to put him in a bar or something akin to that. I feel the tenement house has the most promise for both roleplaying and combat confusion!

What do you guys think?

Bonus Round:
Compared to Council of Thieves, where would you put this game's difficulty curve?

I'm so ashamed of my broken spoiler tags.

I'm so ashamed of my broken spoiler tags.

remove the "s" at the end of spoiler.

Instead of being this washed-up pickpocket, Lamm could be a leader in the criminal community. You could place him in Eel's End (part 5) and use him and his gator in lieu of Devargo and his spiders.

That's just off the top of my head, mind you (although I confessed I looked up Devargo's name), but I think the challenge level works out okay.

Of course, then you wouldn't get to run the actual Ambassador's Secret part of the book, but I don't think much depends on that other than as a meeting with Vencarlo which sets it up. He'd have to be introduced in some other way.

Instead of being this washed-up pickpocket, Lamm could be a leader in the criminal community. You could place him in Eel's End (part 5) and use him and his gator in lieu of Devargo and his spiders.

That's just off the top of my head, mind you (although I confessed I looked up Devargo's name), but I think the challenge level works out okay.

Of course, then you wouldn't get to run the actual Ambassador's Secret part of the book, but I don't think much depends on that other than as a meeting with Vencarlo which sets it up. He'd have to be introduced in some other way.

I considered this, but I ultimately decided not to. It removes the beginning of the campaign and kind of takes away from Eel's End, which I think is a fairly open-ended, well-written part of the module where the party gets to show me their modus operandi-- are they gonna break in and steal the papers, are they going to threaten Devargo, are they going to fight the thieves, or are they going to be diplomatic?

For Gaedren, I think I'm going to go with an orphanage. Maybe he makes the orphans run drugs for Devargo Barvasi. Maybe this could help stir up some PCs to want to take care of Devargo-- maybe some of them remember him and know what kind of pain he inflicts on the world with his existence.

You could go an entirely different route, as well. You could easily create a sub-criminal based off of the Arkona family's influence in Old Korvosa and go with an NPC the players have never heard of at all.