So I have found a few issues with the beginning of Library of Last Resort. Not show-stoppers, but things I was glad I thought about earlier and fixed, so here they are for those DM's who have yet to get there:
1. Lashonna has the longest monologue I've ever seen.
Simple to fix really, just make her meeting more interactive, abbreviating what she has to say, and allowing the players to ask questions about things she hints at or omits at first. That worked really well for me, and in fact the group asked a couple of questions on things I'd forgotten to have Lashonna mention at all (like that she had a lock of Heskin's hair!) All up, it was a very pleasant conversation, and my players seem to have just assumed that Lashonna is yet another helpful NPC with nothing but good intentions.
2. Lashonna decides to Scry on Heskin in the middle of the night!
I mean really, who would try and scry on someone at midnight? What do you expect to see - someone asleep tucked up in bed? (if you can see at all, after all it's likely their bedroom is dark!) As written, the results of the midnight scry are just way too convenient, I couldn't run it that way without the risk of losing my credibility. I fixed this by having Lashonna give the PC's her scroll of greater scry, and a lock of Heskin's hair, saying they should use it if they want to see what he's up to and (if they are lucky) get an idea of where he might be (although it's assumed by all he and Darl on on their way to the island). As it turned out, my group never ended up scrying on him (at least not yet), as instead they immediately went looking for info at the docks, asking if anyone say a ship (possibly one of the Prince's ships, or so they thought) leaving with people who matched Darl and/or Heskin's description. I threw them a bone and, for an appropriate bribe, had someone find someone who has seen their ship leave a coupe of days earlier. So my group just wind-walked to the closest part of the shore, the Druid wind-walked to the edge of the storm, then wild shaped into a dolphin and swam to the island, found the beach, them greater teleported back and got the rest of the party there also by greater teleport. Who knows, they might scry on Heskin yet, but I figure it's not mandatory, they might meet him first (see my other post re: Heskin). Of course, they currently have no real idea wabout who (if anyone) now accompanies Darl, but that's also because they have not specifically asked (e.g. they never asked the Orcs who was with Heskin).
3. There appears to be a discontinuity with Lashonna between PoR and LoLR, with regards to her true history and motivations around the Ebon Triad.
In Prince of Redhand, the PC's are told to find Lashonna, because she helped defeat the heretics (i.e. Ebon Triad). This gets no real mention in LoLR, despite it being an obvious question the party would put to her. So I figured she has, in fact, been known to help Zeech's men find and kill the odd Ebon Triad cultist over the years, but only ones she has deemed failures. Maybe even set up some of her enemies who are not cultists, and branded them as such so that Zeech's cronies linch them. What she tells the PCs, of course, is that yes, she has helped put down this cult of deluded mad-men from time to time - more white lies than outright falsehoods. I was lucky in my game; as mentioned above, my players never grilled Lashonna but took her at face value, maybe due to my role-play of her as charming and helpful but also not professing to know all the details - she said something like, "this whole thing about Bucknard has only ever been of vague interest until your group (the PC's) came along and actually backed up his wild theories, why, I'd almost forgotten about it! Here's what I've managed to learn in the last week or so, it's not much, but..." And so the whole Heskin leaving thing was also a very recent development - basically, nothing was going anywhere fast until the PC's turned up (which is a common thread in this campaign).
That's about all, for now. Overall I think the module is going to be great, it just needs a good read before hand and some tweaks and fleshing out in places; certainly not the easiest one to simply pick up and run on the fly...
Excellent insights and solutions. Thanks for sharing!
4. the knowledge unearthed at the end becomes public domain
For me, this is going to totally remove the point of the PC's even undertaking the whole LoLR adventure - I mean, why not just let Darl succeed and scoop the knowledge released themselves? So I'm thinking I'll have Dragotha learn what the PC's do about where his Phylactery is, but not by fiat. For example, maybe Lashonna finds out (PC's tell her, or she asks them through a spell) and secretly passes the info on in order to help split his defences so the PC's have a better chance of success against him, or maybe Dragotha just finds out through some other agent - I guess it will depend on who's still around at that point and what the PC's do to keep the info to themselves.
For me, this is going to totally remove the point of the PC's even undertaking the whole LoLR adventure - I mean, why not just let Darl succeed and scoop the knowledge released themselves?
True dat. I didn't much care for this story element that seems to be just to explain why the party has to fight dragons in King o' the Rift. I guess you could just remove all the dragons from KotR and say Dragotha doesn't know his phylactery is there at all, but the dragon siege is kind of cool.
My plan was to delay the arrival of the dragons at the Rift and allowing the PCs several days of trying negotiation and diplomacy before the dragons show up. Maybe the PCs can even detect a scrying attempt on them so they know Dragotha has tracked his phyly by tailing the PCs.