Sea Wyvern's Wake, what to do on the voyage.

[Steelthorn]

I know they offer alot of events, but I was wondering if anyone had any home grown encounters or events to spice up the 3 months voyage.

[Delfedd]

It depends on your players. If they're my players, they're going to get bored going through a session without fighting, you will want to glaze over the gaps between the planned encounters.

However, if the players enjoy roleplaying, let them.

Basically let the players drive the sessions.

[Curaigh]

I tried to add more pirates because that is what my players wanted. I did add savage lizard folk to the abandoded fort greenrock. I think the Savage Tide is missing savage critters so I added some more here. Ruja uninhabited island was much more inhabited for my folks. Etter caps and the like. Chris West's Drakeborn Sanctum was the kicker though (at least I thought). for length...

Spoiler:

I wanted to do three things: use the map of mystery, use the large crocodile/serpentine head rising out of the jungle (from the second savage tidings article {dragon ???}, and play a few more dragons. The party (actually half party--only two players showed this week) got to look around the abandoned buildings and realized they were built by a reptilian species. When they made it to the top a Red dragon was waiting for them. The red had discovered the abandonded lair and proclaimed himself master, demanding tribute from the party when they arrived. He discovered that dragons were worshipped and ruled the seas from here, and decided it was his right. He did not find the reason for why it was empty though, the players found that: signs of the savage disease. Basically the island was home to dragons (who else ould get up there?) but fell victim to an older savage tide. Green dust, gnawed bones, acid splatters and craters covered they city.

Finally, I had the captain make a bunch of sailing rolls and wrote out day one, day two etc., because those got long and boring. I can post those or send them to you if you want.

[B_Wiklund]

The Sea Wyvern adventure is great for inserting sidetreks or mini-adventures.
I added two homegrown sidetreks. I added in a waystation that the PCs were to stop in to pick up medicine supplies (exotic medicines to protect from tropical fevers the like). The PCs had to unexpectedly deal with a clutch of vampires who were preying on the outpost.
Also spiced up the blockade by inserting one of the locales from Stormwrack. Essentially a covey of sea hags using their powers to run ships aground on the rocky island.

[tav_behemoth]

One of my players chose a rakasta PC, so we did a sidetrek to North Olman Isle where he'd heard some rakasta were still alive. The Scarlet Brotherhood had driven them into the interior.

[Murkmoldiev]

I ran the Origonal Lost Shrine of Tamoachan in place of the little side trek one...

[tav_behemoth]

Murkmoldiev wrote:

I ran the Origonal Lost Shrine of Tamoachan in place of the little side trek one...

Did you use the original module or the 3e conversion from these boards?

I'd done Tamoachan as per the original as a player try-out/intro, so when we got there I just brought in some elements of the original:

- The wall of fire trap opened a time rift (linked to the calendar stone) that brought one over-curious PC back a millenium to the height of the original shrine, where a gold-encrusted dragon (original color hidden beneath gilt & jewels) gave him a suspended animation potion to return thru the eons
- As per the original, the map room gave those who failed a Will save the illusion that they were transported to the southern Olman capital (the northern being Tamoachan), which was on the plateau of the Isle of Dread
- The two monks who were woken from suspended animation in the original awoke when the PCs messed with the calendar stone - in the original I think they're supposed to be Olman, but I made them Suel who'd bought passage in the shrine to a future era when the Scarlet Brotherhood would achieve its destiny: as in the original, they were pissed to be woken prematurely & demanded restitution.

[Murkmoldiev]

Hmmm I diddnt know that there was an conversion on the boards...
The Original I downloaded from RPG now.
Then I took out all the boring bits and made a new map for the levels.

Then I converted it all into 3.5 as the players went along.
The ships had to wait a week for them and Skald got a spear through the throat as he went up the stairs in the Coatal room, and i had to kind of tone down the few TOTAL deathtraps...

But it was Really fun in the end.

42- THE CHAPEL OF KUKILKAN

"If the thief uses this ability to melt an entrance into
a point of the star and enters this triangular nook the wall will
seal up behind him or her in one round and the characters
will be trapped, for this nook can not be opened from the
inside"

Yeah ... Trapped... in a crystal box ... yeah forever... your group leaves you to starve.

............

They also robbed the Zotz Vampire guy and it was pretty funny to have him turn up ...

" Within 2-5 weeks after this tomb has been broken into, every
violator of the tomb will receive a visit from either Tloquespopolocas
or some other agent of Zotz seeking retribution.
Thus the curse of the tomb."

And also the Drow Psion has the axe leaping to hand all the time...

"The axe is
a +2 weapon, -2 versus chaotic evil creatures. The weapon
acts like a cursed sword; once picked up by a character he
or she may never be rid of it, as it will always teleport to his or
her hand and weld itself there in an encounter. The axe will
also choose to appear in touchy encounters with lawful
good creatures. The curse is attached to the new owner‘s
soul and the axe can not be picked up by another until the
owner’s soul is laid to rest."

QUITE A CURSE....

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

I added quite a bit to it, made the 3 month voyage really feel like a 3 month voyage. A lot of my PC's loaded up on prof: sailing and such, and I wanted to play that aspect of the campaign up.

We rolled weather and wind effects twice daily, which I rolled ahead of time and kept in a journal (tables in Stormwrack). The crew were divided into 2 shifts, a day and night shift, each with an hour overlap on each side, meaning 14 hour shifts total. The people with dark or low light vision tended to gravitate towards the night shift naturally, so it felt like they were getting use out of their racial abilities and such. We also had the navigator roll daily to see how well he could predict the weather - I forget where the rules are for that, but it's essentially a DC 15 check on Knowledge:Nature I think, and for every 5 you beat the roll by, you get an extra day's forecast.

I removed the Tamoachan stopover entirely, and put the bat idol in with the Mother of All. But I did add in a ruined jungle temple encounter that combined a lot of the material from the "Serpent Kingdoms" FR supplement into a big encounter featuring the Sarrukh creator race and some Khaasta hunting them. Tons of fun. I also added in several sea based encouters - some sahuagin/wereshark combos for fun, and various other stuff. And then there was just plenty of roleplay and such - most of the time they stayed aboard ship.

It was fun to see the roleplay, particularly when I rolled up the "extremely hot" days. Our mage only had so many "protection from elements" spells on those days, and was not shy about the fact that those who were nicest to him would be most likely to see those spells come their way. And everyone grumbled when he cast it on any of the female NPC's, as it meant they didn't feel the need to shed all but that last layer of clothing. Their motto was, when Amella suffers, everyone else wins. Bunch of horndogs. :)

But every party is different, and as stated, there are those who would want to skim over the sea voyage aspect as quickly as possible and get to the next encounter or whatever, and the module is flexible enough to account for whichever play style you choose to go for.

[Triple20]

If you're group is like mine, once they get hold of a second ship (capturing the Purity's Prow from the Brotherhood pirates), all hell will break loose :

Amella (being played as a PC), now Captain of the 'Prow, starts a recruiting drive to steal crew/supplies from the other ships

The Kordites (2 in the party), bored/sick of the long voyage, agree to crew for Amella, as long as they can run "competitions" on the deck.

"The First Rule of Fight Ship is there are No Gnomes on Fight Ship"

Fishing. For Shipbreaker crabs. Using the ship itself to run them over.

I only did one major side-trek however, on Ruja i played an old Dungeon mag (#49) module called "The Dark Place". Truly creepy module, however i slightly underestimated the 3.5 conversion of the Gacholoth, almost had a TPK. Gave the party a taste of fighting demons, and a glimpse in Gaping Maw through the planar gate spell in the module.