After a lot of delays my group finally got together last night to take down Black Fang.
There are four of us in my gaming group and only two of us have role-played before so the BB was the ideal introduction. Not wanting to coerce my players into an 'ideal' party build we ended up with two barbarians and a fighter. However, we did also take along my wife's cleric character as a silent partner for a spot of healing and half xp shares on the way.
Everyone had a good time though the adventure ended up being a little combat-centric. Nobody searched for the key in the goblin lair so they ended up smashing up the chest and negotiations in the Goblin Throne Room began with a thrown spear.
I pretty much ran the adventure as written. I did add a few twists to a couple of the combats. After a round of fighting the drunk goblins the players made a DC10 perception check to notice how intoxicated the little guys were. Had anyone made a point of using this knowledge against them, i.e. trying to get them to overbalance or trip up, the plan was to offer a bonus to their attack rolls. Nobody took any notice though.
As the players didn't negotiate with Fatmouth they didn't discover Black Fang's weak spot. I gave them the chance to find out by offering them another perception roll after one round of combat to notice the underdeveloped scales. I also added their base attack bonus to the perception roll, figuring that better fighters would be more experienced at discovering enemies' weak spots.
I think in future I'll spice up more combats this way to add flavour to what can otherwise be a straight DPS race.
Overall this post is another thumbs up for the Box. Although I'll not be continuing this campaign. Instead I'll be launching straight in to the Skull and Shackles AP as it looks awesome.
