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My players are on the cusp of completing the Whispering Cairn. They have all been well-motivated to hate Diamond Lake, and want nothing more than to leave ASAP. Of course, the DM has other things in mind (3FOE!)
The question that has come up is, how much does it cost to travel by coach to the Free City? Unless I missed it, there doesn't seem to be any indication of this in the backdrop article or in Overload.
The players have come to learn that folks come to Diamond Lake to seek their fortune. Once there, they squander their money (or have it stolen), and have to take menial jobs to support themselves, never earning enough money to actually afford to leave. This is the reason for most of the PCs to take up adventuring in the first place.
As a result, I want it to cost a pretty penny to leave by the relatively safe means of the Able Carter Coach lines, but I don't want it to be stupidly expensive and entirely out of whack either.
Any suggestions?
Per the Grayhawk map, it's about 90 miles from Diamond Lake to the Free City.
Per the PHB pg 129, hiring a Coach Cab is 3cp per mile.
I'd jack the price up by 50% since it's coming from Diamond Lake and everything is inflated.
3*90*1.5 = 405 cp so I'd say it's about 4 gold per seat to get to FC from DL. They should have more than enough after their first adventure, assuming they were able to sell some loot. That might be an issue, as very few in town have the liquid assets to buy equipment.
-BS
I think you might be better off coming up with an immediate reason for them to stay, rather than trying to make leaving too costly. After all, they're adventurers, they could just strike out on foot if they're really determined to go.
I honestly can't remember much about the provided plot hooks for TFoE. However, you might consider having one of the PC's younger siblings get kidnapped (either by the cultists, or more likely by Smenk who has the kidnappers leave some clues that should send the PCs searching in the mine and suspecting Ragnolin). Maybe some "good samaritan"/old friend gets paid off to tell the PCs he saw the kidnapping, and feeds them some of the info about the mine as if he'd seen it once?
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The cost of travel is cheap by PC standards. Trying to get the PCs "stuck" in Diamond Lake will require some creative alternatives.
I had started my game in late winter and had the environmental conditions outside fairly miserable so the PCs wouldn't be tempted to wander too far. Just getting to the Whispering Cairn was an excercise in mud mucking or plowing through snow.
If you don't have the weather to fall back on, you need to get the NPCs of Diamond Lake interacting with the PCs. I had Chaum Gansworth and Balabar Smenk attempt to "recruit" the PCs to their mini-"empires". Or the Greysmere Covenant notices the PCs "loot" and figures they may be up to some investigations of the Dourstone Mine.
I think that link also has links to other threads from '05 when the first wave of people running AoW started.
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Thanks all. I am not too worried about the PCs bolting on me. Smenk, Chaum, and the dwarves of Greysmere will be able to leverage the PCs into hanging around for a bit. As well, once they try to start unloading their illgotten gains, they will be led into an enconter with Allustan (which they have avoided as of yet).
However, I am a little surprised at the relatively low cost of travelling to the Free City.
I have built up the relative danger of travelling alone through the wilderness of the hills surrounding the mining town; and have indicated that most coaches travelling to/from Diamond Lake are guarded by a squad of mounted troops. Thus I'm considering a cost of about 40 gp.
That would still be in the range of PCs successful in raiding the Whispering Cairn, but would empty the pockets of those thinking of bailing on TFOE.
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Happy to help, David.
Various DMs have added lots of great material for AoW via these Boards, so much so I've been keeping an electronic file of "goodies" to add into my game. The Search line really is your friend at this point with the AoW well into it's second year of use. Try various combos of words on one topic and you should find different Archive articles that should be helpful.
There's also a "Best of" topic with lots of links as well.
Good luck and 40 gp for a heavy guard is reasonable enough. Tessius' suggested bandits work well along with the group of trolls hinted at in the wandering encounter list for the trip to the Free City. Both of these eliminated by the Free City Trio makes their subsequent level gains more logical by the time of the Champions' Games.
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just had an idea. What if the bandits were actually started up by Smenk. They rob people en route to Diamond Lake, the victims have to look for work in DL and Smenk's recruiters sucker them into working the mines for cheap wages. If the PCs actually go after Smenk in his home or office after TFoE they could discover documents or other evidence tying Smenk to the bandits.
Here's an Idea. What if the coach is meant to stop at Blackwall, gets turned over and things. The trick is going to be making it seem like a random encounter.
One of the important things that the players will miss is the first spawn of Kyuss, as well as experiencing the effects of the worms firsthand.
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Those are both interesting suggestions.
Organizing the bandits outside of town to strip travellers of wealth while simultaneously creating a cheap workforce for himself sounds like just the sort of thing Smenk would do.
If my PCs are bound and determined to skip out of town (and skip TFOE), having the coach they're travelling in attacked near Blackwall Keep (thereby dumping them into that game) would be a decent way of putting the campaign back on track.
I will keep both of these ideas in mind. Thanks.