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Reading over the module it had occured to me my group may have some difficulty. I have 5 regular players and three of them are evil, two are neutral, all are players under the age of 21 with a kick in the door mentality.As I get to page 16 in the module and the good writers Nick and Tim mention "evil characters can still play the senario" in a sidebar and I think to myself "Ok, lets give it a shot".
Carnival time, and I am looking to give out virtue points. At the ticket booth, several beggars are asking for coin to join in a little merryment. Easy virtue points, right? The ranger of the group produces a gold coin from his pouch and tells two bums to fight, the winner gets the gold. This causes one to strangle the other. The ranger then backs out and offers instead a bag of silver to the best fighter of the ravel. This starts a mob, and after the carnies step in to break up the fight, no less than four towns folk lay dead. No virtue points here.
The ale tent and a drunken lumberjack sees a PC that he has had words with in the past comes over to insult Adventurers in general.This leads to hurt feelings and comes to punches at the would be hero who then pulls out his scimatar and admantine hammer and obliterates the lumberjack with two swift strokes. Holding his weapons on high he warns any other loggers if they dont shut their mouths, they can die the same. No virtue points here.
Later, the vacant tent and the group notice a wealthy aristocrat who has paid Kabran Bloodeye for the services of his ladies. One tries to buy her off the noble for his own purposes, one offers to guard his tent for the aristocrat for possible favors later, two others pay to join in the fun. No virtue points here.
Needless to say, the virtue point total was a little less than stellar when it was said and done. Syntira was never seen, giving up hope for the town, she and her court decided to stay out of the private war of the cold rider. This presented a little more of a tricky module for me to finish. I was fortunate that one PC made the save against the Eye of Rapture. This caused the party to think he had lost his mind. It wasnt until they approached the beer tent filled with trees that others noticed the strangeness too. Maybe they can still live through this.
A fight with the pixie turned the ranger to a tree, later to be seen by lumberjacks who were agrivated someone put a sculpture of the adventurer who killed a fellow jack earlier that day in that same tent.
It wasnt pretty.
The titans wheel almost killed another as one adventurer fell into the manacle trap as participants stood in line to spin it. The fighters agreed they need to get to the bottom of this. The ringleader Namdrin Quinn "obviously" must be slain to stop this crazyness and they ran off to his tent to do just that.
Now, in the module, the authors say Quinn does not attack the players even if provoked. Why? I dont think it is in Quinn's best interest to be emo enough to just let the players kill him and loot his corpse. Look at all this free loot he would be giving them. I decided to try a diffrent approach. As they entered the tent, Namdrin is getting confirmation from two of the cold rider's frosty chislers "All is going according to plan, you have served us well Mr Quinn and as promised you will be reunited with your wife, as long as you stay out of our way." The players were aware of Namdrin's loss and the rogue of the group disguised herself as his wife to disorient him before attacking him. The conversation between Quinn and the chislers was the turning point for my evil path and with a good diplomacy check the players were able to speak to Quinn with the promise they would help him find his wife if he helped them with the fey problem. From that point, I used Quinn in the place of Syntira and the information she would have offered came from the gaunt elf who slowly realized the cold rider fed him only lies.
We ended the game at that point this evening, I feel confident they may be able to pull out of this one. Nick and Tim are good writers, a little demented, dark and sick individuals but the concepts are good and challenging. It is fun to watch my players wretch at descriptions of children walking by licking twitching eyeballs on a stick.In my opinion fey CRs may be a little low. They gave my APL 5 group a harder challenge. The frosty chislers curse is interesting but I would have just left it at the 1d6 damage and dropped the stat damage. The fight with the swineomancer may be more interesting if you could have added a spell that adds weight (girth) to a target. Lowering Charisma, exhaustion and maybe giving -2 Dexterity due to armor not fitting well. The Freak show is good but I would have liked to know what happens to the freaks after the events. Why no animated Modern Machines? I know there isnt much that can be done with already printed modules, I hope this may help future modules be more well rounded.
Still, I am having a blast with the module. Please keep writing them.
I made Quinn into the cover Clown and had him as an antagonist. Clown Shoes of Elvenkind? Twin Short Swords that look like a bowling pin and a wet fish? What self-respecting adventurer would use them?
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I made Quinn into the cover Clown and had him as an antagonist. Clown Shoes of Elvenkind? Twin Short Swords that look like a bowling pin and a wet fish? What self-respecting adventurer would use them?
LOL, funny, yeah, but my group is not above using clown shoes if the magical bonuses are there to justify it.
You sir ARE evil... however, i can not deny the logic.
The sneak attack from an invisible bowling pin had to be painful to watch.
I made Quinn into the cover Clown and had him as an antagonist. Clown Shoes of Elvenkind? Twin Short Swords that look like a bowling pin and a wet fish? What self-respecting adventurer would use them?LOL, funny, yeah, but my group is not above using clown shoes if the magical bonuses are there to justify it.
You sir ARE evil... however, i can not deny the logic.
The sneak attack from an invisible bowling pin had to be painful to watch.
Yeah, my player is now desperately trying to get rid of them. She asked if she could sell them to the Vikings she's going to meet. I told her that such as sale would be a challenge that would make her name in merchanting circles around the globe. As she's a 12th level bard, she may yet attempt it.