My players have just crashed on the northern shore of the Isle of Dread (many thanks to Peruhain of Brithondy for the excellent advice on running the second storm in Fiendish Dire Weasel's post here). At this point they have literally just grounded the boat - we're picking up with salvage operations and whatnot next session.
My problem is I have very smart, very thoughtful players. They decked out the Wyvern with all sorts of smart choices - not the least of which is a Sending Stone (magic item that allows Sending spell to be sent to another mated stone once per day) which has kept them in communication with Lavinia the entire time. At this point they are wanting to contact Farshore and have them swing around and pick them up. It makes perfect sense, and I don't want to take away the PC's thunder in a fit of DM pique, however HTBM is one of my favorite adventures in the path, and I'm jazzed about them playing it. I want to urge them into the interior of the island without taking away the smart idea of having the communication in the first place.
My first thought is to have tougher and tougher challenges hit them from the isle - probably culminating in an attack by the dragon turtle (I forget his name) from Lightless Depths. I'm hoping that will get them moving. The other idea is to have Olrangu eventually show up on the north shore before help arrives - maybe he can wreak enough havoc to draw them into the interior of the island.
I'm sort of stuck here - did anyone else run into a similar problem? Any other ideas on how this can be "fixed?" Thanks in advance!
Creative Director
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If the PCs are resourceful and canny enough... they absolutely don't have to go on the adventure outlined in "Here There Be Monsters." If they call for help and Lavinia comes up to save them with her ship... you can basically move directly from "Sea Wyvern's Wake" immediately into "Tides of Dread."
The PCs will probably be too low level for a lot of the stuff in Tides of Dread, though, so you'll want to have them go on a few adventures before you kick off that one. Using the encounters in "Here There Be Monsters" you can break up those sections into smaller missions. Perhaps someone from Farshore went up to explore the east coast and went missing, and Lavinia asks the PCs to look for them (the missing NPC is lost under the Dark Mountain Pass). Maybe Olangru starts picking off some of the local natives and they come to Farshore looking for help. And so on... You can even just start up Tides of Dread and have Fogmire and other locations be more mini-quests the PCs can go on to earn Victory Points.
Have Lavinia's ship damaged as well during the storm. Sorry, we barely made it to port ourselves.
Meravachni is not willing to send any other ships. He's none too happy to see Lavinia and has no desire for those loyal to here making it back to town any quicker than normal.
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Have Lavinia's ship damaged as well during the storm. Sorry, we barely made it to port ourselves.
Meravachni is not willing to send any other ships. He's none too happy to see Lavinia and has no desire for those loyal to here making it back to town any quicker than normal.
Or the Farshore ships could be damaged by a pirate attack.
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My players are in contact with Lavinia at Farshore as well, but somehow it never occurred to them to ask her to pick them up - perhaps because they're so grateful to have solid land under their feet again! They did ask what she was doing, and I described the political power struggle with the Meravanchis. Perhaps the reason she can't free up the Nixie to go get your PCs is that it's part of her political capital, as having it in the harbor holds out the promise of counterattacking pirates / carrying away refugees if the colony is overwhelmed? Your PCs might rightfully be angry if she puts politics ahead of their safety, which could add an interesting wrinkle to the race for mayor.
So although I have a bunch of players who are eager for an overland trek to Farshore, I'm working to make the trip more player-driven and open-ended. I gave the players the hex map from the original X1 module that just shows the coastal areas, and let them head in any direction they liked. Instead of pre-programming the encounters, I made a random event table that I hope will cover much of the same ground:
Roll two d6 for each day and night spent in the wilderness of the northern sub-plateau of the Isle.
First die: 1 - weather change, 6 - survival challenge
Second die: 1 - event, 6 - encounter
Weather change:
1 - hot & humid, tropical rain storm, lasts 1d6+2 hours (unless another weather change intervenes)
2 - hot & humid, low clouds, constant drizzle, lasts 1d6 days
3 - hot & humid, broiling sun, lasts 2d6 days
4 - warm & dry, ocean wind, lasts 1d6 days
5 - cool fog from ocean, lasts 2d6 days, may burn off briefly at the height of the day
6 - unnaturally hot & sulfurous fog from center of island, heat lightning, twisters, lasts 2d6 hours
Survival challenge:
1 - quicksand
2 - bloodsucking flying insects, may cause disease
3 - flesh-burrowing insects
4 - chasm or ravine
5 - deadfall
6 - thorny or poisonous undergrowth
Event:
1 - corpses (if desired, roll one or two encounters to determine what creatures were involved)
2 - ancient ruin, e.g. obelisk (can use the Judges Guild Ravaged Ruin table if desired)
3 - modern ruin, e.g. burned tree-huts (ditto)
4 - screams or other eerie noises from jungle
5 - rumbling or tapping from deep underground
6 - aerial monster sighted in distance (or monkeys running overhead if low visibility)
Encounter:
1 - terror bird hunting pack
2 - terror bird pack pursuing dinosaur
3 - terror birds controlled by ancient shrunken aranea hidden in webs in the birds' sinuses
4 - a group of aranea shapechanged to appear as a group of adventurers
5 - roll an AD&D DMG tropical wilderness encounter
6 - roll an encounter using the X1 random encounter table
I don't see the Dark Mountain Passage section as essential, but I'd like to cover some of the same material even if the party slogs over the mountains without benefit of a pass. (They have a ranger who makes such deeds much easier). I'm hoping that the elder aranea in encounter #3 will pressure the party to seek out the site of a meteor strike mentioned in the adventure path, which I of course read as being a crashed spaceship. Here, instead of mummies & mummy rot, the half-roboticized flora and fauna will infect characters with a spreading blight of living metal, and instead of black pudding there'll be a T2-style blob of said metal.
As I use each of these encounters, and as the PCs draw away from the sites of the aranea and terror bird jungle and near other lairs and scripted "stuff that's supposed to happen", I'll swap out the entries to try to get other stuff in without forcing it.
During play last night this chart worked very nicely to make me feel that the Isle was, as it originally was meant to be, a big sandbox where the players could choose to set off in any direction & not even I knew for sure what they'd find. And when random events came up on both dice at once it created some great serendipity; the terror bird pursuing a dinosaur encounter came up along with a tropical storm, causing all manner of fun with mudslides and wet bowstrings that I wouldn't have invented on my own.
Thanks to all for the input - there are some great ideas/suggestions here.
All in all, it has given me the confidence to allow my players to choose their own path. The political implications of Lavinia sending the ship out to get them is something I hadn't considered in the least. I may play it as she's apprehensive to send the boat for political reasons, however if the PCs insist she will send it - it'll just put her behind in the polls, as it were, for the mayoral portion of ToD.
I love the idea of the gargoyles attacking the ship on the way back to Farshore - I'm definitely yoinking that if the PCs end up sailing back to Farshore.
I don't mind working the Fogmire into Tides of Dread, though honestly that isn't my favorite part of HTBM. As a DM I was most looking forward to the Predator style campaign of terror Olrangu was going to wage against the characters as they marched south, far from home and any possibility of rescue. I'm sure I can come up with some side quest that will give the same feel - I was just very jazzed about terrorizing my players with abductions and such (especially since they managed to save so many of the crew and colonists with good skill checks during the storm - oh so many lovely red tunics to be fodder for the demon stalking the party as they marched through the jungle).
Well, I certainly have some work to do this weekend, though I am a bit more focused now after the good advice. I will let you know how it plays out, and I'm certainly all for more ideas if anyone has them. :-)
You could always prolong the mission to the tar pits in TOD. Perhaps the Olman need something from the island that is much further inland. Then you could still let Olangru stalk the party.
Perhaps the Olman need something from the island that is much further inland.
This is precisely what I was thinking. I am re-reading ToD now to get myself into the mindset of running it next, but last night I was thinking that I might come up with some adventure/side quest involving an overland trek and substitute the colonist/crew red shirts with Olman red shirts. Then maybe the creepy zombie welcome wagon in Fogmire could actually be a buddy of theirs.
I love being an evil DM sometimes. :-)
The Blue Nixie also came through the storm, tough she arrived safely. She might need repairs. There is also the pirate threat. LOTS of good reasons for Lavinia to be reluctant.
My players were in a similar situation, but decided to take the trek as it was easiest on the colony as a whole.
To the OP: Glad someone got some use out of my earlier post. Unfortunately I never got to run my STAP campaign this far. :(
Re: using the old Isle of Dread coastal map to make it less railroady and more like an exploration where the characters have some initiative--I like this idea. If you think about Francisco de Orellana, or Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Spanish conquistadors who set out on doomed expeditions through the wilds (exploring the Amazon and shipwrecked on the wild coast of Texas respectively), that gives you a good model. These guys didn't just let themselves be railroaded, they made choices about how to proceed through hostile terrain when they had no way of turning back. They had iron wills and, ahem, big cojones. Their men dropped like flies, and those who survived questioned their leadership and even mutinied.
I think one could run things this way. The PCs are presented with choices:
1) Wait, possibly for several weeks, near the site of the shipwreck while Lavinia refits her ship and/or calms down the political climate at Farshore. Of course the Tyrannosaurus attack and the Terror Birds can provide a warning of what is to come, but the PCs could respond by scouting for a good site nearby and building a safe temporary stronghold, rather than by running away on a 100-mile trek through hostile terrain.
2) Urol claims that he knows a good "safe" route back to the Olman villages on the peninsula. Of course, Urol may not come off as being very trustworthy, but his route does have the advantage of being along the coast--and that means, if the party brings the communication device, that if Lavinia gets the rescue mission underway early, they might be able to catch a lift partway while not sticking around to get eaten by hungry dinosaurs. If the party gets to the point where they have to set off inland to make further progress, they still have the choice of halting there and waiting for Lavinia, or returning to some other potential rescue point on the coast.
3) The Sea Wyvern of course is equipped with an accurate coastal chart of the Isle of Dread (represented by the old Isle of Dread map). But Lavinia's mother was never able to explore the inland parts of the northern section of the isle. The shipwreck is an "opportunity" to do so, rather than a "railroad." If the players see things this way, let them explore. They might, of course, run into some things that give hints about what's coming up--they might even wander into the sites attached to the two later adventures, but hopefully they'll be scared off by encounters that are obviously too tough for them--"we'll have to come back and tackle this when we're stronger and better equipped"--and not spoil things. But they'll feel as though they've been given choices.
They could even try a combo of 1) and 3) or 1) and 2)--build a safe temporary fort and leave an NPC in charge, watching for Lavinia's arrival, while they do some exploring or try to go for help overland. This combo would, of course, provide opportunities for Olangru to work his mischief . . .
If you run things in this more flexible fashion, the adventure shouldn't feel railroady at all--you've given the PCs lots of choices, and you can roll with whatever choice they make. Of course, you might want to be flexible on the timelines involved--if someone is captured by Olangru, you want to have a chance of rescue for that person, even if the party feels it needs to go to Farshore for resupply and use divination to find where the victim is--if the party spends three months knocking about on the north end of the island you still want to give them some time to prepare for the pirate attack, etc. You'll also want to use Tav's random event tables and find ways to work in some or all of the published encounters even if the players don't follow the published railroad tracks. And you may want to cut out or abbreviate some of the dungeony parts of HTBM and ToD to keep the AP moving and the PCs at the right level.
In short, the old Isle of Dread X-1 module and a little creativity gives tons of scope for a good DM and a creative party to escape the AP railroad just a bit, if that's what they want to do.
Good luck!