I wanted to see if anyone who has started Return has had a similar experience to what I had this past weekend.
I'm GM'ing a group who has been chomping at the bit to get this Adventure started for months now. We are huge fans of the Runelords Trilogy and some of our most memorable moments have happened in this story-line. So I want to give the creative team at Paizo my deepest thanks for giving us the opportunities to fall in love all over again, and a shout out to Adam Daigle for a fantastically written adventure.
During the investigative portion of the adventure at the beginning, before the visit to Roderic's Wreck, my party was extraordinarily thorough in checking into leads. They were able to gather info about Kynae quickly and were able to address him in a way that got the info about "appropriating a runelords rune," in their first conversation with him. All the while experiencing the town haunts that prodded them in a "Rodric is restless, let's figure this out," sort of way.
They had decided to focus on the Horned Fangs a little bit to find out what they could have done to instigate the 'incident' that left a half dozen of their members dead. They gathered proper info to be pointed to Jana. All the while the town haunts continued.
Now here is where things get iffy. They found out where Jana was holed up and decided to pay her a visit. After not getting an answer from the door at the out building she was staying at, the party Rogue decided to peek around a little bit. He was able to, with time and his party keeping watch, find the door to the cellar. Fine. He was so intrigued by the situation he invited the party down. Another party member found the secret door in the freezer. This was my first mistake, although I didn't recognize it at the time. I should've had Jana here to intercept them.
It was about here I realized they are about to wade into one hell of a bad situation. They were still level 1 at this point. So I intensified the haunts that were persisting in town and made them trigger while they were in the basement. Sort of a "Hey! Go to the wreck and check out what's up with Roderic!" They did in fact take the hint, and headed out to the wreck. Ok, that worked fantastic. The Rogue takes time to ensure that they covered their tracks, so that Jana didn't think anyone went into the out building.
They ended up clearing out the wreck and found the map. They took out the drawer the map was stuck to and ran it to Cove Hall to find the entirety of the map. So far so good. After deciphering the map they decided to GO BACK TO JANA'S PLACE TO CHECK IT OUT ONE MORE TIME.
Ok, fair enough. It was suspicious, and they wanted some clear answers. Sure. They make sure she isn't there (so far as they knew) first. Then the rogue goes down to scout it out. He ends up cracking open the door to the ballroom to find two Horned Fang Members sparring with the Fleshdregs.
I should note that they have, in fact, encountered a few Fleshdregs from from the well.
Instead of retreating back to the party to report or engage what could have been seen as Horned Fangs defending against a bunch of monsters, he opted to wait and see the outcome of the fight. After a few rounds he was able to determine that they were not fighting to the death, but in fact sparring with each other. Then he goes back to the party to report.
"The Horned Fangs are in cahoots with the Fleshdregs!" Was the overall consensus. Now being faced with the choice of, "follow Roderic's lead and go to the stonehouse to help save the cove" or deal with an obvious threat to the town that was literally right beneath them.
They chose to address the monsters below the town. Their reasoning was "Rodric wants us to protect the town. We should deal with this threat first." And I honestly can't fault them for that. They went down into the Underflume and got their asses handed to them. They had to retreat and lost the Monk in the process.
Now the Monk didn't die, he had just gone unconscious by the time the party booked it. I plan on having Mozamer capture him. My idea is to then have Jana try and strike a deal with the monk in captivity to help her loosen Mozamer's grip on her Horned Fangs, and then release him. Let me know your thoughts, as I don't want to outright punish what, at the time and to the party, was a good idea.
TL;DR Party goes from a level appropriate haunted wreck and dives straight into something intended for level 4 party. Doh!
