My characters are already inside the Whispering Cairn. I couldn't think of a way to introduce them that wasn't labored and that wouldn't delay the action too long.
I wondered if any of you had a creative way of introducing the adventurers. I was thinking I would just have Tirra approach one of my PCs at the Feral Dog and challenge him to a knife fight, going from there.
I found that delaying the action for an extensive period of time did not suite my needs either. However the PCs will be in and out of town repeatedly for the first few adventures so there is lots of opportunity to have them cross paths with the out of town adventurers. You'll definitely want to do that at some point because they play a significant part in The Champion's Belt. Keep them in mind especially if the PCs create a mess in one of the adventures (say they retreat to rest) and the out of town adventures swoop in to vulture their kill or some such. Having the out of town adventurers clean up one of their messes will really infuriate your PCs. In my game the PCs had to retreat from the Ebon Aspect in 3FoE and that thing went on a rampage in Diamond Lake and was killed by the out of Town Adventurers while my players where forced to rest up.
This is probably one of the more likely times when the Out of Town adventurers might be called in as the Ebon Aspect is likely to be encountered when the players are low on resources since they where probably using them heavily and without to much regard against the 'end boss' of the Temple of Vecna.
My characters are already inside the Whispering Cairn. I couldn't think of a way to introduce them that wasn't labored and that wouldn't delay the action too long.
I wondered if any of you had a creative way of introducing the adventurers. I was thinking I would just have Tirra approach one of my PCs at the Feral Dog and challenge him to a knife fight, going from there.
I played up Auric's bragging at the Feral Dog. So, they drew attention to themselves. When the party went to introduce themselves, I had Tirra uninterested, Kelek snooty and Auric a braggart. The party immediately took a dislike to them.
Then, when the party ran away from the Ebon Aspect (low on hp and spells after the Faceless One) I had Auric et al get rid of it as it was making its way into town, creating more animosity.
Champions Belt is gonna be fun :)
Greg
The confrontation with Kullen's gang at the Feral Dog is a good place to put Auric and Tirra (I doubt Khellek would be caught dead in the place). You could have them make a running commentary on a fight if it breaks out. If your party needs to have their asses saved maybe Auric the badass Free City Champion steps in and awes everyone into buying him drinks.
IMC, one of the PC's was Dietrik Cicaeda's son, working as a clerk at the land ownership office. He was also member of one of the youth gangs who used to go to the whispering cairn.
Khellek came over to locate it from the vague indications written down on some preliminary reports sent home to the Seekers by Ulavant.
Said PC sent him on a wild goose chase in the faraway Stirgenest cairn, and then round up all his friends to explore/pillage the right cairn.
When they did meet later, the trio was quite hostile to the PCs, having been "conned" out of "their" cairn.
Fortunately, the meeting took place in town as the PCs had cleaned out the cairn before the expiration of my secret time limit (that is, before the trio became fed up with the Stirgenest cairn, came back in town, and found out on their own about the whispering cairn). It could have been a different story if they had met outside the cairn.
My issue with Auric's Warband is that the adventure does a very poor job (IMO) of working them in. They're supposed to seem like rivals, so you'd think that they'd be investigating the same dungeon as the PCs (sort of forcing a race to the finish)- except that Auric's group is investigating a completely different cairn, which is neither mapped out or explained in any sort of detail. But because of the way that D&D players are, two of the three times I've run this adventure, my players heard that Auric's group were checking out a particular Cairn, and said, "Ooh, let's try to get there first!" Which, of course, is the natural player reaction- but little do they know, the adventure intends for the players to go to the Whispering Cairn, not the Stirgenest Cairn (or whatever the red herring is called). And as a DM, it's difficult to keep the players from going on a wild goose chase in an allegedly empty tomb (which, according to the adventure, is actually empty) instead of going to an allegedly empty tomb (which is where the adventure takes place). The whole thing just seemed very sloppy, marring an otherwise perfect adventure.
My issue with Auric's Warband is that the adventure does a very poor job (IMO) of working them in. They're supposed to seem like rivals, so you'd think that they'd be investigating the same dungeon as the PCs (sort of forcing a race to the finish)- except that Auric's group is investigating a completely different cairn, which is neither mapped out or explained in any sort of detail. But because of the way that D&D players are, two of the three times I've run this adventure, my players heard that Auric's group were checking out a particular Cairn, and said, "Ooh, let's try to get there first!" Which, of course, is the natural player reaction- but little do they know, the adventure intends for the players to go to the Whispering Cairn, not the Stirgenest Cairn (or whatever the red herring is called). And as a DM, it's difficult to keep the players from going on a wild goose chase in an allegedly empty tomb (which, according to the adventure, is actually empty) instead of going to an allegedly empty tomb (which is where the adventure takes place). The whole thing just seemed very sloppy, marring an otherwise perfect adventure.
The background assumes the PCs are locals and that they will know that the Stirgnest Cairn was cleared out long ago and is now just a haunt for local teenagers looking for a private place away from the prying eyes of adults.
Its meant to be what motivated the PCs to finally take the plunge into the life of an adventurer. All that said even if you do have adventurers not from around these parts and they instead 'beat' Auric and his group to the Stirgnest Cairn...well a 'dungeon' with a number of RP scenes involving the local teens getting up to the things teens get up to should be good for some great RP and hopefully some laughs. If my group insisted on exploring it I'd definitely be tempted to run with that just for s%!$s and giggles.
The Whispering Cairn is not allegedly empty. Its fallen off the radar of the wider world but the locals know of it and that it has a bad reputation. Its unclear if Allistar Land was known to have entered it by the locals but I believe it was implied that there are rumours of children entering it and not coming back. The local teens know its a scary place by their habit of daring each other just to hang out for a time near its front entrance and the older members of Diamond Lake should know of the earlier Seeker expedition into the Whispering Cairn and how that turned out both good and bad (they got a fair bit of loot - a bunch of them died).
The fact that most of the easy pickings in terms of loot are already long gone is likely a significant element of why its fallen off the radar in the wider world. If I'm an experienced tomb raider I'm not likely to focus on a tomb that is full of death traps but has already been heavily looted. Newly minted adventurers might however if they don't really know better and its whats around.
[The background assumes the PCs are locals and that they will know that the Stirgnest Cairn was cleared out long ago and is now just a haunt for local teenagers looking for a private place away from the prying eyes of adults.
Right, I understand. But my point is, if you sit a bunch of players down and tell them, "There's a tomb up north that you know was cleared out long ago- and a group of adventurers is going there," chances are, at least one person in the group is going to assume that the tomb still holds hidden wonders, and that the players are clearly meant to hurry and beat these rival adventurers there. They'll assume that because that's how fiction works nowadays- if you present an empty tomb, chances are it's not really empty. (I call it "Chekhov's Tomb".)
I had one PC to be from the big city, and he overheard Auric's group talking about the treasure in Diamond Lake. He then sent a message down letting them(the rest of the party) know he was coming and why. The goal was to complete the dungeon before the other group got there. The other group took their time because they did not know the PC's had the jump on them. They met Auric in bar while he was trying to pick up some women. The wizard guy saw the ring they got from the Cairn and asked about it, but he was a jerk. They ignored the girl. They met Auric again later when he was boasting about being the champ of the tourney, and they pick an argument with them. Auric considered them below him, and told them there is a tournament in Sharn later in the year, and if they join he could kill them legally instead of going to jail for it.
Right, I understand. But my point is, if you sit a bunch of players down and tell them, "There's a tomb up north that you know was cleared out long ago- and a group of adventurers is going there," chances are, at least one person in the group is going to assume that the tomb still holds hidden wonders, and that the players are clearly meant to hurry and beat these rival adventurers there. They'll assume that because that's how fiction works nowadays- if you present an empty tomb, chances are it's not really empty. (I call it "Chekhov's Tomb".)
As written, the module assume that 1) the PCs somehow KNOW that the stirgenest cairn is the bad one; 2) the whispering cairn is almost forgotten, except by local youths who themselves stopped to go there wome years ago.
You can either ignore those points and whip up another hook (Dennis Harry suggested a very good one in that thread here), or have a native PC knowing them.
For my part, I went even a little farther and had one of the PCs feed a false lead to Khellek to sent him to the stirgenest cairn in the first place.
That a module intro needs quite a lot of finetuning to fit a given group of PCs/players isn't that exceptional...
Right, I understand. But my point is, if you sit a bunch of players down and tell them, "There's a tomb up north that you know was cleared out long ago- and a group of adventurers is going there," chances are, at least one person in the group is going to assume that the tomb still holds hidden wonders, and that the players are clearly meant to hurry and beat these rival adventurers there. They'll assume that because that's how fiction works nowadays- if you present an empty tomb, chances are it's not really empty. (I call it "Chekhov's Tomb".)
This is just a case of how you present the information to the players. Emphasize the fact that they know as a fact that there is nothing in the Stirgnest Cairn and that their concern should be that the out of Town Adventurers will soon figure that out and then might discover the Whispering Cairn, which the PCs don't want to happen until they have a crack at it then they should figure out which plot thread to follow.
If necessary tell them they've been their themselves prior to the adventures start and they are certain that there is nothing there. You get to start the ball rolling by telling them any events that may have occurred during the time they where growing up or information they have prior to game start.
Furthermore this is an AP - you need to give them reasonable leads and they need to follow them or it will not work. As time goes on there will be literally a couple score of things that might appear to be 'Chekov's gun', some of these false leads (the piece of the Rod of Seven Parts) are pretty big but only a very few are what they should actually be following. You can't have a really ambiguous DMing style that consists of 'here are the facts, tell me what your plans are' in this style of game unless your willing to insert a sandbox around the AP (and if your where planning on doing that you'd not be bringing up this particular issue I don't think).
Your players need to be led, sometimes by the nose, to the next part of the adventure...if they figure out where they need to go by themselves then great - roll with that but a lot of the time it won't be that easy. Either you need to get them in the habit of enthusiastically biting the hook you bring to their attention and not biting other hooks...or at least obeying DM signals to let go of hooks that are not actually relevant.
Alternatively you can take a page out of Star Wars SAGA and insert narratives. Either off stage scenes that make clear what their next objective should be or even full on DM taking control of the scene to tell them what is going down and what their next objective is before smoothly handing control of their characters back to them.
In an AP the players are the protagonists of a story and there needs to be a way to convey that element to the players. You may want to talk to them about this and discuss how you plan to proceed - in fact you probably should do that...a lot of APs blow up completely when one of the players gets it into his or her head that their story trumps the APs story and their story is some how incomparable with the APs story. Fundamentally all APs have railroad tracks...the reason we ride this train is because the scenery is amazing.