
DrWaites |
First, I'd like to apologize if this topic has been brought up before, but I'm new here. If this has already been discussed, please link me to the appropriate thread.
I'm preparing to start a new campaign with my (mostly) veteran players, and Shackled City looks like a good choice. I have the first two adventures "Life's Bazaar" and "Flood Season" in Dungeon Magazines. I'm planning on ordering the hardcover, but it will have to wait a couple months.
So here's what I want to ask...
Why was Cauldron built in a volcano's crater? I know that this is a dormant volcano, but what rationale did the town's founders find for building on such a hazardous site?
I know this is a cool part of the module, and I'm sure that this feature plays into later adventures of the series, but I know that my players are going to ask "what kind of idiot builds a town in the middle of a volcano?" and "how much longer until it explodes as a part of the plot device?"
I'm even afraid that the party will refuse to help a town that's so blatantly careless.
Has this come up with any other groups? How was it handled? How can I address this with my players?
Thanks,
Doc

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It's explained more in the hardcover, but the founder of Cauldron was a powerful wizard who had mastered the element of earth. He knew mountains. He looked inside the volcano and knew it was dormant. The cauldron in the middle provided a source of water, and the rim made for an excellent natural defense against the monsters of the region, most prominent of which were the demonic hordes of the Demonskar with whom the local human population had already been at war for some time.
The volcano would have stayed dormant forever, and would take powerful magic to waken it. Surabar (the wizard who founded the place) knew mountains, but he was not an oracle and couldn't see the future and couldn't know that there was a method to waken the volcano.
SO: If your PCs are asking questions about why build a town in a volcano, you can tell them that it's for defensive purpsoes and that the site was given the OK by a powerful earth elementalist. The site's been stable for hundreds of years.
All that said... Cauldron IS built in a volcano. It's okay if the players suspect that the place'll blow up eventually, because really, if it doesn't? That's cheating.
Having the volcano blow up BEFORE the end of the campaign is the way we dodge the assumption that the volcano's explosion is the campaign's climax. Those PCs who expect it to blow up probably expect it to blow up at the end of the campaign, not 2 adventures early.
As for not helping a town that's so "blatantly careless"... San Fransisco's built on top of a major earthquake fault line. Pompeii was built in the shadow of a volcano. The entire island chain of Hawaii is volcanic. New Orleans is a coastal city built below sea level. The tradition of building cities in unsafe locations is hardly a tradition limited to D&D.

evilash |

My advice would be to either order the hardcover now or wait until you can afford it. The reason for this is that there's an excellent section on character creation in the hardcover giving the players bonus traits for having their characters be from the region, and I think the best way to make your players care for the city is to make it their home.
Also the background section for the city in the hardcover is also excellent, making it easier for you to make Cauldron a living and breathing city. That's another way you make your players care for the city, even though it's built on an obvious plot device.

ultrazen |
Why was Cauldron built in a volcano's crater? I know that this is a dormant volcano, but what rationale did the town's founders find for building on such a hazardous site?
Mostly what Mr. Jacobs said.
Natural defenses, water, and rich local mineral resources.
However, I nixed the whole chisel organization (what is an earth elementalist anyway? do i need an old planescape supplement or something?) and modified the backstory of the place appropriately. Didn't have the HC, just the mags. Basically, divination magic revealed the volcano is really extinct, not just dormant, so there is no chance of eruption. At least not without powerful magical intervention to reawaken it. I also prepared some answers to obvious divinations I thought the party would end up performing based on my own questions that arose from preparation, party in-game comments, and OOC table-talk. Just about anyone in Cauldron (like Jenya) will tell them the same thing.

zoroaster100 |

In Central America there are communities built inside the craters of extinct volcanoes, which take advantage of the fresh water supply of the lagoon in the center of the crater. There are also communities built on active, but dormant calderas which will one day erupt. There are also communities built on the slopes of active volcanoes.
When a volcano has not erupted in hundreds or thousands of years, people facing immediate and pressing needs for water, land, and defense often choose to build despite the chance that at some point (likely in the distant future) the community may face obliteration from a natural disaster (but possibly only long after current residents and their decendants many generations from now have long since died of natural causes). Human beings are generally not so far-sighted as to consider the consequences for their descendants generations into the future.

The severed head of Mike Hughey |

As for not helping a town that's so "blatantly careless"... San Fransisco's built on top of a major earthquake fault line. Pompeii was built in the shadow of a volcano. The entire island chain of Hawaii is volcanic. New Orleans is a coastal city built below sea level. The tradition of building cities in unsafe locations is hardly a tradition limited to D&D.
Not that I disagree with Mr. Jacobs' sentiments here or anything, but in the interest of accuracy, I feel it should probably be mentioned that in the cases of San Francisco and Pompeii, the danger only became obvious AFTER the cities were built. NOBODY saw Mt. Vesuvius's eruption coming (well, technically, they did, but only about a day before it happened, when smoke started pouring out of the summit...).

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Not that I disagree with Mr. Jacobs' sentiments here or anything, but in the interest of accuracy, I feel it should probably be mentioned that in the cases of San Francisco and Pompeii, the danger only became obvious AFTER the cities were built. NOBODY saw Mt. Vesuvius's eruption coming (well, technically, they did, but only about a day before it happened, when smoke started pouring out of the summit...).
I'll concede that in a rational world: A world of science (like ours) there are too many unknowns to make such a venture seem safe. In D&D however I don't know that I think the examples are at all wrong given the nature of magic.
The problem is narrative thinking. Players (DMs too)have the privilage of narrative thinking which is a kind of meta-game thinking. Simplified: "A" causes "B" or "C", but "C" makes a better story so "C" will obviously happen. In this case a dead volcano will errupt because it makes a good story.
If, in a D&D setting, an experienced and legendary earth elementalist says "This is a dormant volcano it and will stay dormant naturally forever," people will (and should) take his word for it.
As James Jacobs pointed out the elementalist would have been right if the Cagewrights weren't up to their teeth in evil schemes under Cauldron. Thus, the city's impending destruction is unforseeble (even with elemental and divination magic)to the people who live in that world.
So in effect, although we as players can see what is coming the characters should not be any more aware of their danger than those people who built Pompeii or San Francisco.