|
Hello all, this post requires a large amount of background to make sense so bear with me. This will probably become a rampling mess but thats my current state of mind...I've once again began running AoW with my gaming group. This particular group has been gaming with me for almost 3 years now and they are a very good group I've come to know well. I ran a highly altered Shackled City with them over the last few years and eventually that campaign tied up with some real epic events. Now the problem is this:
Back when Whispering Cairn came out I was gung-ho about running it with this group just to fart around. I gave them a load of information about Diamond Lake and they made their characters and hit the ground running. However, when the time came for them to go through the dungeon the entire thing was a diaster. PCs were getting beaten into an inch of their lives in every fight, the DCs on the traps were constantly too much for them to handle, and they felt that the hook just was not very good. We ended the game about halfway through the Cairn and they never met the ghost or heard about Filge and the Ebon Triad. Now we fast forward to the future...
I am running Age of Worms again with the same group but have made many changes to its beginning. The party is starting in Greyhawk and the majority of them have never heard of Diamond Lake. Today they completed Mad God's Key and I concluded that adventure with allusions to the Faceless One and the cult being in Diamond Lake. I also dropped hints that the Erynthuul (sp?) cult was searching for a temple of their own, seperate from the main complex, and that the Whispering Cairn was a likely possibility. I honestly thought that this was a sweet hook for a group of adventurers and then the problem arose...My players do NOT ever want to see the Whispering Cairn again, and they shuddered when they saw Diamond Lake mentioned. Their characters prompty handed the materials over to the Temple of Boccob and told them that THEY might want to check out this cult bussiness. I was actually prepared for this eventuallity but not to the degree that it occured. I ran the party through Salvage Operation and leveled them to 3 nd basically got a feel for what their long term plans are. Here they are:
-Two of the players are Grandar (a homebrew reptile race from the area around Cauldron). They are currently being mistaken for lizardfolk left and right and are having a hard time in the city. They came here to fight in the arena but can't catch a break. My original plan was to have this break come in The Champions Belt, but they are currently camping outside the arena offices trying to get their foot in the door.
-A female cleric of Kord accompanied the grandar pcs and is currently searching for a relic lost from the temple that she is originally from. She ran that last piece of information past me for the first time today and I'm not sure how to integrate that into the adventures thus far.
-A female ranger from the Bronzewood Lodge has come to Greyhawk to work on cleaning the city up and to just see the world beyond where she is from. This presents the most interesting problem as she does not want to return to Diamond Lake for in-game, in-character, reasons. Out of game she has mentioned interest in following up on the cult but says that she doesn't want to rush back home to the hovel that is Diamond Lake.
-The final PC is a halfling rogue who is in it for the money. He is a foreigner to the entire area with no family, or home to speak of. He is sticking with the party because their recent two jobs have netted nice cash and he has no other people to go to. However, he has stated no small number of times, "I'm no hero!". He was the one most against returning to Diamond Lake, claiming it wasn't his job or the party's to take out cults for charity. He spends his day in the bars waiting for more merchants to come to him in order to hire him for a job...
Essentially I have a few options here. The Age of Worms is going to happen no matter what, but many aspects of it won't be very visible until much later in the game as best I can tell. I have no paucity of adventures to run the party in. There is The Styles, Fiend's Embrace, and an other short one shots that are of high enough caliber to make a campaign, but I am not looking forward to just tossing the first 4 adventures in the path. My other option is a little bit more tricky and requires a little winking to get the PCs moving.
Does anyone have an suggestions with how to more subtly bring my PCs into the adventure path? They have shown interest in running it, but the total lack of hooks for Whispering Cairn is just killing me.
|
Have them somehow hear about the cults in 3FoE, and have the cleric convince them that it would be good to root them out. Drop some hints to the halfling, that the Triad has a fair amount of wealth. Then run 1 or 2 one shots, skipping Blackwall Keep and take them straight into Hall of Harsh Reflections, with them as the targets of Raknian, because they tore up the Ebon Triad. Have them meet the "rain barrel man" and he prophesizes the AOW, then have them meet Eligos with questions about the Apolistic scrolls. From there they win the Champions Games, then Celeste or Eligos, can ask them to go check in on Allustan, because he hasn't been heard from.
From what you say about being all beat up in WC, isn't that the point? Or, are they the kind of group that wants a cakewalk all the time...I personally like encounters where 2-3 members of the party are down, and there is 1 or 2, up fighting and trying to win the day, with an air of desperation. Hell, I had a TPK tonight. I had the party raised, but they just could not handle the Mind Flayer. He kicked their collective asses.
|
Write off the Whispering Cairn. Let the Free City Trio go through it and get all the glory there. You just need to focus on getting the PCs hooked into Three Faces of Evil and have the momentum start from there. It sounds like you have a good foundation of character backgrounds that you can tie into the Age of Worms, so keep being creative and just wait for A Gathering of Winds when they have to go to the Cairn anyways. By then, they'll regret missing out on it.
Sounds to me like they just don't like Diamond Lake and the Cairn. So don't use them. Get them to the right level, then have some other hook send them off into some dungeon complex, which happens to be the one in 3FoE. Skip EaBK, or have the party get some noteriety with the city after handling the cultists and be offered a lucrative amount of money just to go check up on the place. Then you're right on track.
|
|
Thank you all for the suggestions, I'm going to try and integrate some of them. Unfortunately I can't make the relic the cleric is looking for be part of The Rod of 7 Parts as its apparently some set of gloves (I need to talk to her about this more as it just kind of got dropped on me). I also can't move the 3FoE cult complex as the evidence I already gave them (badly burnt of course) already indicated that the Whipsering Cairn was located very close to the complex in Diamond Lake. If I had them meet the cult in the sewers somewhere else I would just get the "are you railroading us?" look from them.
On that note I guess I have to toss Whipsering Cairn so now the new problem is getting them into 3FoE (still located in Diamond Lake). Here is what I am thinking. One of the grandar already ran into Auric in the temple of Kord and has been trying to leave him messages at the temple since then. Thus far Auric has been gone adventuring and has not been there to get the messages, perhaps it is time for him to come back...
I really see two options here: 1) The temple of Bocob takes the cult threat kind of seriously and hires some adventurers to check it out or convinces the temple of Kord to help them out. Perhaps they could dangle the chance to enter the arena in front of the grandar? But that still leaves a weak hook for the other PCs. If they are told to check out the Cairn it kind of works, but at this point I don't know how they can find the Ebon Complex without someone doing the research for them. 2) I suppose Auric and his band could be hired to go to the Whispering Cairn. This might make some of the PCs jealous but I'm not sure how I to use it to motivate them.
Any suggestions are still welcome.
Organize another session and throw out a whispering cairn hook. If they don't take it just close your books, fold up your DM screen, carefully pack up your miniatures and dice then sit back in the chair, cross your arms and ask "so, what do you guys want to do now?"
Seriously, players should be given great freedom to develope characters that they will enjoy but it should be done with the understanding that there is a set plotline that, while somewhat flexible, should be followed. I love player input when it comes to a campaign and I go to great lengths to weave their back stories into the game but I also expect them go along with the story/world I have labored to bring to the table. It sounds like you may want to have a talk with your players about the concept of this trade off.
|
|
Organize another session and throw out a whispering cairn hook. If they don't take it just close your books, fold up your DM screen, carefully pack up your miniatures and dice then sit back in the chair, cross your arms and ask "so, what do you guys want to do now?"
Seriously, players should be given great freedom to develope characters that they will enjoy but it should be done with the understanding that there is a set plotline that, while somewhat flexible, should be followed. I love player input when it comes to a campaign and I go to great lengths to weave their back stories into the game but I also expect them go along with the story/world I have labored to bring to the table. It sounds like you may want to have a talk with your players about the concept of this trade off.
Yeah, I can see what you are saying there and I can see that my posts paint my group as not really following the unspoken "rules" of D&D. However, these players are the best of the best that I've played with. During Shackled City they came up with ingenious methods of defeating the encouters that often times nullified encounters 100x more powerful than them. However, from the reverse angle I as the DM am often held to a very strict standard. Even if there is a set plot they need to feel that its their characters that are progressing it, not just following the railroad. At this point I'm having trouble making that leap and I require stronger hooks to do it.
Khellek is contacted by the Faceless One (god I love that villain!) and recruited to the Vecnan ranks. They need experiment victims, but not just run of the mill commoners. Guess who? The PCs of course! They are taking captive somehow and find themselves coming to in the Black Cathedral. Change the map slightly, so they have to explore some to get out, and probably have to fight through the cultists, too (the Faceless One has some sort of "key" they need to get out, or something). The temple complex itself can be anywhere.
They see more and more disturbing things as they progress through the temple (change some things around to make them more horrific and shocking), and they know that the Age of Worms is coming, and it is horrible. Maybe drop a hint about a whole city being turned undead (the result of the Ulgurstata's plans if carried out right)? Play up the darkness factor. They may not go to it, but that means nothing. Let the evil of the campaign find and envelop them, and they can't just escape.
Auric turns out to be evil, and says he can get them into a smaller arena to begin with, and tricks them into coming with him to the Battle Temple. There are so many things to do with the AoW.
|
|
Alright I thought I would update everyone on how I attempted to solve this and the results I got. After deep thought I came up with two separate plans that would bring the PCs in AoW without The Whispering Cairn. Here they go:
1) My first plan involved the Library of Greyhawk and the missing pages of the book. The party is hired by the library in order to retrieve the pages before The Arcane Order gets their hands on the pages. The party is chosen for two reasons. One, they are the original retrievers of the book, and two, they are the only people to see copies of the maps and journal pages that were left in the temple of Vecna (the PCs turned that material over to the Arcane Order). Here is how I intend that to be played out...On the way to Diamond Lake the PCs are hit by a huge rainstorm. They seek shelter in a nearby Cairn where they meet Allustan for the first time. He too was caught in the storm and is simply resting the night away underneath the hill. However, midway through the night lightning strikes the cairn several times and when daybreak comes the party will be able to see that a portion of the walls within the cairn have collapsed. Beyond the walls they will enter a hallway lined with Wind Duke statues and paraphernalia. Allustan will be all giddy to explore the cairn and will ask the PCs to help him. Beyond the hallway will be the iron ball room and they will meet the ghost from Whispering Cairn and the module will continue from there. I'm doing this because my party already explored the Whispering Cairn in that ill-fated firs campaign but they never got past the giant face. Therefore they never met Alastor and never found Filge. This gives me the chance to complete the "Whispering Cairn" module without ever taking my party to the cairn itself! Hopefully they will never know that I tricked them and the campaign will continue to move forward.
2) If my party senses my deceit though and does not accept the library job, I still have a plan. I will begin the module "Fiends Embrace". However, instead of the marsh in that module I will send them into the Mistmarch. The wizard seeking the Fiend's Embrace will meet them at the keep in the third Module and when the party first goes there the lizard folk attack will already be underway.
Phew! How does that sound? As a side note, two of my PCs have already said they want to do the library job, December 4th is when we play so wish me luck and I'll update you all!