One of the problems with the adventures being written as independant modules is that it is a little harder to foreshadow properly... I was wondering what other DMS have experienced with AOW in this respect (I am only starting the 3 adventure now, so I can learn from you wisdom!) When/how should I foreshadow Dragotha Alhaster ect. Or is just playing through the modules enough to give the players the sense of a story?
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Initially, the Age of Worms Overload was the best source for getting names and locations in an effort to foreshadow looming campaign events. If you are following the release of each issue, it may still be your best resource for this purpose. My campaign is five issues behind the issue releases, so I feel I am at a comfortable forshadow distance with optimal information right from the magazines. But, I miss out in awarding RGPA player Reward Points, because the issues expire well before we get to them.
When to foreshadow is up to you. Some players can tell exactly what is going to happen with the least amount of hints from the judge. Others need to be spoon-fed. You'll have to guage your group and decide when to scare/warn them about specific events that lay in your campaign's future. Some things are best left as a total surprise - others they may want to prepare for, especialy if they'll need Prestige Classes, Feats and spells for future events.
I hope my rambling helps.
Don Kenneth Brown
West Jordan, Utah
I would definently suggest emphasizing the Champions games, like having people excited about it. I would also say something every now and then in the first adventure "You see a dark shadow pass over the sun, blotting it out for a moment." This would be Ilithane.
I have the team Druid/Wizard experience horrible nightmares that show possable futures about the Age of Worms...
His first one was about him and the party members he had not yet met drowning in worms falling from the sky. He noticed that the players where the only ones trying to fight off the worms that where devoering the world and when he met them on the streets the following day he introduced himself and is determined to follow them till the end of the world...
Next one will be about a huge egg cracking open and a full grown Worm/Dragon hybrid crawling out and eating him ;)
After the second adventure, during a period of down time, the party druid was spending a couple of weeks getting in touch with the animals of the region. Because I wanted to foreshadow illthane, I had him find a mated pair of hawks, one of whom had suffered a terrible fright of some sort, gone completely white, and was refusing to leave it's nest. The hawk couldn't tell him what it had seen, other than a great shadow that had passed over it, but the hawk was starving to death, and it's mate was struggling to try to bring it food and get it to eat, etc. The druid ended up taking the hawk to the Lodge where more sedentary druids and rangers could care for it. But that set up the idea that there was big spooky coming, and that it was in the Diamond Lake area. Whether they tie that to illthane when they find out about the dragon's connection to the Lizardfolk is yet to be seen.
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my party is the opposite condition - we have 3 DMs in our party of 6... starting the path tonight, but we are taking turns DMing... I'm taking the whispering cairn, and then will be a player for the next two adventures... it makes for a very different group of ideas, as the PC who is that DM hangs back a little and the fresh ideas take different twists - but because I am going to be a PC for other adventures, I can't read too far ahead to foreshadow... the small entries in the adventure helps a lot by mentioning things without telling me whaat is going to happen.
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i like using dreams/visions to foreshadow as well and since my group is only near the end of 3FoE i've got a lot of things to play with as far as that goes. i have two multiclass druids and they will both be the target of these visions (especially since one is making use of the variant Sidhe Scholar druid and dreams are how he recieves his instruction from the fey). it just makes sense to me that those closest to nature would get them before anyone else would.