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Hey all. Thought it might be a good idea for folks to post side-quest ideas that they have used in orer to help provide other GMs with some ideas for games.
Title: "Slaver Pits"
When: Just after "There is No Honor"
Specifics: The heroes who cleared out the thieves' den are asked by the Dawn Council to go and check out a old temple not far from Blisterwall. It seems that the L-Dragons might have had some connection to it, and Rowyn *might* have escaped the city in that direction.
Heroes get to Blisterwall (decribed in Dragon 349) and are given a hippogriffon ride and dropped off in the jungle, to which they will walk the rest of the way to the temple. (The hippogriffon ride saves them 2-4 days of jungle travel.)
Group needs to get to temple, check it out. It's an old complex once under Hextor's faith. Inside are bullywugs, some kobold allies and a mess of Giant Ants. There's also a good number of slaves.
For the temple and such I used the old "A1" module "Slave Pits of the Undercity," replacing monsters with those more associated with 3.5 and STAP.
Hope that helps inspire.
Nice idead, Floyd. Unfortunately I can't provide too many details of my own since my players read these boards and are currently "in it".
Title: Dungeon of Rust and Fire
When: After The Bullywug Gambit
Specifics: "High in a stony alpine valley stands the massive Dungeon of Rust and Fire, a windowless pillar of jagged, rusting metal. No paths lead to or from this monument, but those tracing the Emerald River to its subterranean headwaters occasionally catch a glimpse of the tower outlined against the sky. Several of these tributaries spring forth from caves and tunnels which burrow endlessly into the earth, some large enough to admit a person, and deep thrumming and clanking noises grow louder the deeper one explores.
At night, the top of the silent tower erupts in periodic bursts of flame, and close to dawn spindly, insect-like forms can sometimes be seen moving ponderously around its base, several stories high and glinting metallically. It’s at these times that the streams feeding the Emerald run black or red, with fish floating belly-up or bearing strange mutations.
Though scholars who have studied the tower from afar believe it to be somehow related to the ruined gnomic enclave of Jzadirune in Cauldron, perhaps a project left unfinished in the wake of the Vanishing, such conjecture has yet to be supported, and the few who have braved the mountainsides for a closer look have not returned." -Savage Tidings: Sasserine and Beyond from Dragon #349
You can read my Campaign Journal, From Sasserine to the Abyss: The Savage Tide for the details on how I'm using the hook from Dragon. So far the players have only scratched the surface and are having some difficulties with one of the guardians.
For a quick side quest, I created a brief jungle crawl that had its denouement in a strange ruined city, for after "There is No Honor", and before TBG. The city was near Sasserine. to the West, along the river which originates near the western mountains. I don't remember the name offhand, and I don't have the mag here at work with me (I get funny looks from people when I have a magazine named "Dungeon" on the desk here, perhaps they assume it is some B&D mag *shrug*)so I can't be sure.
It was fun. The characters took a boat up the river, wisely and were unencountered. After a brief trek through the jungle and a few minor encounters with animals and the like, they arrived at the ruin, where they fought a Kruthik Hatchling and an adult Kruthik, a creature from the Mini's Handbook I had always wanted to run.
I wanted them to get a few items before they went into Kraken's Cove, including some special bullets for the two gunslingers, so I had the Kruthik's previous victim be another gunslinging cleric of Dimajo (the god of artifice, technology and travel as well as, oddly enough, draco-human relations in my Merchants of Astephel campaign setting) who had been armed for an expedition, but had been ambushed by the wily kruthiks.
The combat was tough, with the adult Kruthik spiking one player into neg's from afar, and the baby providing harrassment and flanking. They tore into the vicious predator with a full melee charge, and while I did some damage, the mass bum-rush tactics actually worked for a change, negating both my superior mobility and devastating ranged attack. The baby never had a chance. He tried to flee after the adult fell, but was in turn felled by a well placed rifle shot. A challenging and fun side encounter all in all. And it got them up to Level 3, which I thought would be wholly necessary to proceed to TBG.
Interestingly enough, no-one bothered to read the hyroglyphs & inscriptions on the walls in the city, which would have provided the characters a clue to the mission of the PC's in my Merchants of Astephel campaign, who work for the same coster and section within the coster. They would have known to alert the company and gotten XP and affiliation points for doing so, and their PC's in MoA would have gotten a valuable clue to their next mission: A strange site where aeons ago, a mysterious vessel crashed into some mountains called the Barrier Peaks. Fun, huh?
My party is due a side trek between the 1st adv and the BWG, since Kracken's Cove seems like a really tough series of fights.
Hers how I plan it:
At the gala thrown by the Dawn council, the PC’s are approached by Anwyn Arabani, who would like them to meet a underdark guide and travel with him to procure a painting by Ooril Ortz (spelling) Ooril is a Drow artist detailed in a vault of the Drow article in dragon awhile back. His paintings are all the rage and she wants one. I don’t know if I will bring her mysterious lover into this yet or not…..
Anyway there is a community that exists at an opening to the underdark in the mountains between cauldron and Sasserine where they meet their gnomish or ½ orc guide.
I will rip off the Grimlock U cavern from the TFoE adventure in the AoW AP, because I always thought that encounter was super cool and never had a chance to run it. Although it’s also deadly, so I will water it down just a little…
“ I know it’s a TPK guys, but I DID remove one Grimlock so don’t look at me!!”
(thank you Mr. Mearls for this encounter and Iron Heroes btw-- AWESOME)
I’m having trouble deciding what race to set up the art meet with—Drow make sense, having stolen the painting and now trying to offload it to the surface world, but are very scary for 3 rd level parties. Duergar seem like an unlikely choice for art traffickers. Mind flayers would just cook the party…. I’ll probably create a low level Drow party unless someone has an Idea I like better. I will set the meeting up outside of any large Drow settlement, I don’t want to deal with a underdark city in a side trek.
Anyway, on the way back the guide will have a high likelihood of a fatal accident, making the ascent more difficult for the surface dwellers. Maybe the guide will guide them through a series of confusing passages on the way down for them to find their way back through…..
Any other cool Underdark encounters for 3rd level PC’s are welcome…
Without trying to give too much away to my own players who frequent these boards, my intention is to run some Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures between each of the Savage Tide Chapters.
Here are some to look at. I have listed the recommended levels in brackets after each:
Dungeon Crawl Classics 3.5: The Haunted Lighthouse (4-6)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 4: Bloody Jack's Gold (10-12)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 5: Aerie of the Crow God (7-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 7: Secret of Smugglers Cove (5-7)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 16: Curse of the Emerald Cobra (6-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 19: The Volcano Caves (7-9)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 20: Shadows in Freeport (6-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 22: The Stormbringer Juggernaut (14-16)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 23: The Sunken Ziggurat (5-7)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 24: Legend of the Ripper (1-3)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 25: The Dread Crypt of Srihoz (9-11)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 27: Revenge of the Rat King (4-6)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 29: The Adventure Begins** (1-2)
** This book is fantastic as it has a heap of seafaring or sea related adventures in it.
With a small amount of work, any of these could be worked to fit in-between the Savage Tide chapters. They are designed as RP-lite if you just need your players to level. Ideally, you could even start with something out of DCC#29 and then move onto Chapter 1 of Savage Tide, thus giving the players a little edge.
Just my two-cents!
I like the idea of a small "introduction" adventure to kick this AP off. I wold have perfered to have all the PC's live thru adv #1, and having them level after the Blue Nixie may be just the thing to help that out.
I ran "Funeral Procession" as a side quest in my game, after the Vanderboren Vault but before the zombie pirates. I changed the history of the slaughterhouse last minute, saying that it had been converted to a fish processing plant after the city ran out of cattle.
The players seriously thought Vander Anderhoff was a made up name. Eldara and Kinto both escaped, so they'll come up again later. Since my players "switched sides" and are working for Rowyn, the assassins in "The Bullywug Gambit" (Diamondback and crew) may be hired by Eldara instead of the Kellani house.
One PC is also a bounty hunter, so I keep throwing in little criminal sidequests, and another has fights in the Zelkarune's Horns arena.
Thanks to some creative suggestions in response to a Gladiator Arena question, I decided to run a sort of murder mystery pre-game game. Taking place before TINH, my boys had to unravel the tangled web surrounding the death of a famous retired gladiator come back for an exhibition match.
Because of a wonderful idea from My Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman, the Arena in my Sasserine makes frequent use of items known as "Kord's Rings of Mercy", rings that apply the Merciful Weapon trait to any weapon handled by the wearer. Some dastardly individual had switched the actual enchanted ring with a beautiful but entirely mundane copy. Before anyone really knew what was going on, the old champion was killed! *gasp!*
One of my players was a recent inductee to Zelkarune's Horns, and he took it upon himself to solve the mystery. I was surprised by how naturally it all came together. The party really coalesced over the course of the adventure and the guys did a great job of roleplaying. It gave them a chance to get to run all over Sasserine, chasing red herrings and hunting down clues, getting to know the city and a few notables as well.
It turned out in the end that a rather unscrupulous employee of Neldrak Lorchester, knowing of his patron's interest in the Thunder River Lumber Company, arranged the whole thing. The murdered champion had a goodly amount of shares in the company but was unwilling to part with them. His only heir, however, wasn't so attached to them. Of course, they couldn't connect anything to ol' Neldrak, but they've got their eyes on him.
We're all very excited to meet next week and get the actual AP underway. Sasserine is a wonderful setting and I was surprised how easy it was to throw together such a comprehensive adventure with so little time. The supplements have made DMing a breeze!
Thanks, Paizo! :P
All this talk of missions on behalf of the Dawn Council, boat trips up river into the jungle and tie-ins with the "slaver" series from 1e AD&D has me thinking. Perhaps a certain colonel has taken leave of his senses and the PCs must now head into the "heart of darkness" shall we say? Perhaps even with orders to "terminate with extreme prejudice"?
Cue music from The Doors.
;)
Thanks to some creative suggestions in response to a Gladiator Arena question, I decided to run a sort of murder mystery pre-game game. Taking place before TINH, my boys had to unravel the tangled web surrounding the death of a famous retired gladiator come back for an exhibition match.
Because of a wonderful idea from My Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman, the Arena in my Sasserine makes frequent use of items known as "Kord's Rings of Mercy", rings that apply the Merciful Weapon trait to any weapon handled by the wearer. Some dastardly individual had switched the actual enchanted ring with a beautiful but entirely mundane copy. Before anyone really knew what was going on, the old champion was killed! *gasp!*....
I love the way you fleshed that out, Pippi - and with room for a sequel too!
My party has just finished Bullywug Gambit, and I have a feeling they will be splitting up for some of their 'downtime', which means I have a bunch of sidequests to create.
As two of them are tied to the church of Kord (one is actually a priestess), I think I will take some inspiration from your murder mystery and give them something to play with that brute force alone won't solve. :)
The wonderful backdrop article on the Sasserine region is a goldmine as well. I may try to do something with one of the forts and/or the plantations to the south. I'm thinking of an experiment gone awry with crafting a new type of construct to help guard the regions - the end result being a bunch of low-level clockwork horrors running amok and the PCs getting called in to stop them.
So many ideas....Ah well, sleep is for the weak, right? :P
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
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Heroes get to Blisterwall (decribed in Dragon 349) and are given a hippogriffon ride and dropped off in the jungle, to which they will walk the rest of the way to the temple. (The hippogriffon ride saves them 2-4 days of jungle travel.)
Just curious... do the PC's really get a ride from a "Hippogriffon"? I'm pretty sure I know what a griffin is. And, thank's to Harry Potter, everybody and his dog know what a hippogriff is. But what the heck's a hippogriffon?
What about this for a pre-adventure adventure.
The characters are tasked by the director of a logging company to accompany one of the log rafts that come down to sasserine from the jungles above. Timber has been going missing and the company is losing business. The characters will have to protect their raft from natural hazards, dangerous wildlife and rivals of the logging company intent on preventing them and their cargo from ever reaching sasserine. Raft to raft combat on a fast flowing river would be really cool! Stand by to repel boarders me heartys!
Warmage 101
I was thinking of adding a side quest after BG, just in case my PCs aren't at level 5. I was thinking of sending them to one of Sasserine's holdings from Dragon to "pick up" Urol the gnome for TSWW. I think that after bullywugs and savage pirates, a basic side with goblins and maybe a dragon would fit in great.
I was thinking of a short 'cat and mouse' side quest set at sea. You could have the ship encounter a herd/school (?) of fish eating (non hostile) dinosaurs at sea, perhaps frolicking about in the waves, looking all gentle and swan-like with their long graceful necks, the ships captian decides to let some of the crew approach the herd in rowboats etc (perhaps some npc or other wishes to get closer and feed them fish or something) when all of a sudden!->http://www.futurocine.com/Megalodon_Foto.jpg
After the attack on the poor gentle dinos the ship-sized dire megalodon comes after the players! chasing them down and attacking with suprising cunning! Kill a few npcs off in shocking attacks just to ram home the terror.
I bought Dungeon 100 so I can introduce the modules Beasts of Burden (6th level adventure) at some point on the Isle of Dread and also the raid on the githyanki queens palace (18th level adventure) when they reach that level and interplanar travel begins in STAP. I can only recommend these as they are well written and very special in nature.
I was in need of a quick side quest that wasn’t to hard. Two new players joined the party last night and I didn’t have time to make anything up. I pulled “Wreck Ashore” form the D&D web site. I amped up the pirates a little to make it challenging for the higher level characters. It worked out quite well.
I won't be running There is No Honor with my group. They are 6 characters at L4 from a previous game. None of them want to restart the characters. Instead of scaling the entire adventure, I am just removing it. I am also removing much of TBG.
Being set in Eberron, and starting in Sharn, the characters first need to get to Sasserine, which is being placed off the coast of Q'barra. To get there, the players will be taking a lightning rail (air elemental powered locomotive) to Korranberg, where they will then pick up a ship to Q'barra. Along the way on the rail, I fully plan on running Riding the Rail from the latest Dungeon, especially since I will be changing Demogorgon to one of the imprisoned Lords of Dust (Dhemogha Khan).
Along the sea route they wiull run into Kraken's Cove specifically to see the results of the Savage Tide first hand. There will be no fight against bullywugs though.
Then it will be on to TSWW. I haven't decided if I want to expand Tamoachan or not.
Did anyone who used the "Funera; Procession" make the funeral for Lavinia's parents?
Did anyone who used the "Funera; Procession" make the funeral for Lavinia's parents?
One of the problems with doing that is that the cult of Graz'zt wants the body of Crimson because he's a serial killer that would rise as a Mohrg in several days if his corpse were not destroyed. I guess it could work if they wanted to resurrect the Vanderborens as some other horrible undead thing. But there's also the fact that the ship burned down to the waterline, likely consuming their corpses or at least setting them out to sea.
Did anyone who used the "Funera; Procession" make the funeral for Lavinia's parents?
Rather than her parents perhaps Crimson was an accomplice of Vanthus Vanderboren who was left to take the fall for the murder. An undead rampage would further divert attention away from Vanthus if he became a suspect.
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Did anyone who used the "Funera; Procession" make the funeral for Lavinia's parents?Rather than her parents perhaps Crimson was an accomplice of Vanthus Vanderboren who was left to take the fall for the murder. An undead rampage would further divert attention away from Vanthus if he became a suspect.
He could be Cap'n Crimson, a horrible, horrible pirate lord infamous for slaughtering everyone aboard prize ships whether or not they fought back against the pirates.
He could be Cap'n Crimson, a horrible, horrible pirate lord infamous for slaughtering everyone aboard prize ships whether or not they fought back against the pirates.
I like the Cap'n Crimson idea a lot. It makes an excellent introduction and I can write a short story about the Evil Cap'n Crimson as a player handout to start them off.
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He could be Cap'n Crimson, a horrible, horrible pirate lord infamous for slaughtering everyone aboard prize ships whether or not they fought back against the pirates.I like the Cap'n Crimson idea a lot. It makes an excellent introduction and I can write a short story about the Evil Cap'n Crimson as a player handout to start them off.
sd
When they executed Captain Kidd, they hung his body in a steel cage at the docks for public viewing. Kinda like those cages you'd've seen in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I was thinking they'd probably put a few of his cohorts in them, but try to bury him in hallowed ground so he doesn't come back. Then, the cohorts could be animated and pull some undead crap.|
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I am considering a trip for my PCs up to Cauldron after the Bullywug Gambit adventure. Perhaps escorting Lavinia up to the city to meet with some family friends that might help back her operation in the third adventure.
Thinking of throwing a kidnapping attempt, perhaps by Kellani mercenaries.
Just a random idea.
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I also am doing this myself. I am using Dugeon Interludes from Goodman Games.The other one I used is In our Age of Worms game 1 of Ilthanes spawn got away so i had the Pcs run into him and a new band of lizardmen on Ruja island he is searching for a new lair and has several worms to infest there eggs with attempting to recreate his mothers plan in Blackwall keep. .
Without trying to give too much away to my own players who frequent these boards, my intention is to run some Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures between each of the Savage Tide Chapters.
Here are some to look at. I have listed the recommended levels in brackets after each:
Dungeon Crawl Classics 3.5: The Haunted Lighthouse (4-6)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 4: Bloody Jack's Gold (10-12)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 5: Aerie of the Crow God (7-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 7: Secret of Smugglers Cove (5-7)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 16: Curse of the Emerald Cobra (6-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 19: The Volcano Caves (7-9)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 20: Shadows in Freeport (6-8)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 22: The Stormbringer Juggernaut (14-16)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 23: The Sunken Ziggurat (5-7)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 24: Legend of the Ripper (1-3)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 25: The Dread Crypt of Srihoz (9-11)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 27: Revenge of the Rat King (4-6)
Dungeon Crawl Classics 29: The Adventure Begins** (1-2)** This book is fantastic as it has a heap of seafaring or sea related adventures in it.
With a small amount of work, any of these could be worked to fit in-between the Savage Tide chapters. They are designed as RP-lite if you just need your players to level. Ideally, you could even start with something out of DCC#29 and then move onto Chapter 1 of Savage Tide, thus giving the players a little edge.
Just my two-cents!
I have a group plenty of magical users.
First adventure before Savage Tide.
I want them to join together.
Plan: A monthly magical market. Once per month, wizards and merchants sell magical items. THere's a place where you can get a good magical item if you pass a test and pay 5 gp.
It's just a trap, when the character is alone trying to pass the test, a net with a silence spell on it is thrown to the magical user. Then he, incoscious, is left without money or possessions in an alley with the rest of the characters in the group... hihi
Nanmaniac
I am serving two Savage Sides to my party:
The leader/diplomat of my PCs is an aquatic elf whose community (a few days' sail away) is not overly fond of the 'air-breathers' (ignore the fact that most of their observations were of the Sea Princes during Sasserine's occupation). She has taken up the cause of trying to build better relations between the two communities, and to get their help in training a group of 'marines' to protect Sasserine's harbor depths.
Needless to say, it's been a dialogue marathon, but she's done very well. They may have a treaty before they leave for Farshore!
The rest of the party is heading inland to take care of a problem based on an idea I posted earlier in this thread, deliciously augmented by a 'tweaked' version of Steve Greer's "Dungeon of Rust and Fire" side adventure.
My only problem is that, because I want to get through SWW and get to the Isle of Dread sooooo bad, I have to fight the urge to rush through these. Grrrrr!!!!!!!!!! ;P
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
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Our adventure will actually begin on board a ship. I am starting the AP tonight, and my PC's will begin as crew on the ship Ravaged Pride (Yes I shamefully stole the name)...
It will be a small ship, a pinnace from the books, and will be captained by an old dwarf named Captain Argus. I fully expect all the boys, flush with piratical anticipation to call him ARRRRRR-gus. Half the fun and why I chose the name. :)
It's to be a small merchant vessel sailing between Sasserine and Sammarash, a city-state of Lapilliya (we're playing in the Forgotten Realms, on the Shining Sea), along the "Dolphingulf" iirc.
At any rate, after a storm that the PC's help get the ship through (off-screen before the adventure starts), the Captain will send the PC's to their bunks for some well-earned shut eye...saying something to the effect that "he's sailed this route for 20 years and knows this stretch of sea like the back of his hand"...which are of course famous last words, as the ship will be set upon by some sahuagin, who, with the help of a dire shark, will actually bite a hole in the bottom of the ship and infiltrate, creating dual crises of a sinking ship and being attacked by sahuagin. They'll have to quickly dispatch the sahuagin and man the bilge pump, making whatever makeshift repairs they can with the materials on hand to limp for a day or so back to Sasserine.
At that point, the old salt Cap'n will decide to sell the ship and retire, leaving the PC's jobless until Lavinia's halfling shows up with an all-too-conveniently timed job offer. Should be fun.
As a fun side note, I had already decided that Captain Argus will sell his boat at "It Still Floats", and as it turns out, there is some adventure goings on there. If they go there seeking info on Vanthus, they'll have a leg up on matters due to familiarity via their recent past dealings.