HoH: GM add-ins?

[Tetrix]

I am going to be running HOH in a while and I have been thinking about adding in something to the adventure path however I also thought it might be good to come here and see what others have added in to their game. So what did you add in and how did it work?

One thing I was thinking of adding was a Anti-Pally NPC that also comes for the burial, but is really a Whispering Way plant replacing the person that was really supposed to answer that summons. It will be obvious that he is a bad egg and the group will have to get rid of him so that their trust levels actually rise. I was thinking that he would flee instead of going down in a fight however. Then he could be sort of the guy that keeps popping up here and there.

Would that work? Would there be any value in having a reoccurring foe for the group in this AP?

[MythicFox]

Actually, there is some value in a reoccurring hostile NPC...

Spoiler:

Have you read the rest of the AP's modules yet? There are some suggestions in SoG about finding some way to incorporate the final 'big bad' of the AP in, or at least drop hints about his existence early. Having someone working for him keeping an eye on things in Ravengro and latching onto the player characters would be a pretty solid idea.

[Evil Paul]

There are two key things that you really *must* add in.

The first is this resource from Mortagon regarding side-plots and backstories for all the people of Ravengro. It also fixes the broken trust point system.

The second is

spoiler:

some foreshadowing and thought about how to weave the main villain from the campaign in. I would have a look at this thread here

Once you have those two, then you can go wild on other additions.

some thoughts:

I also went for a whispering way plant, but remember that your PCs will likely want to capture and interrogate the guy, so it must be someone who doesn't know very much. This is also a low level module. I had one of the necromancers who was a bit incompetent left behind in Ravengro to cover the WW's tracks and feed them any information on the PCs. This allows you to name drop Auren Vrood and big him up as the main baddie, which is what you want to do early on in the AP.

This is an awesome AP, but I would say that the biggest weakness (apart from point 2 above) is that there isn't enough linking between the modules and they play as separate entities. So things that link other parts of the AP to each other are what you really want.

As MythicFox says, the best start is to read all of the other parts of the AP. A bit of a read at first, but worth it...

[Evil Paul]

Evil Paul wrote:

The second is ... (spoiler omitted)

OOPS... wrong link. The second link should be this thread here

[Biichama]

So there was a brass brazier in one of the rooms in Harrowstone and I mispronounced the word "brazier." And one of my players kept giving me s&%$ about it. So when he asked if there was a brass brassiere in the laundry room, I said yes.

So he put it on.

I told him that it gave him him +1 to his armor.

Also, breasts.

He said the bonus was worth it.

Later that night I informed that the brassiere was cursed and he was stuck with it (and the boobs) FOREVER.

Moral: Don't mock the GM.

[Le Cacahuète Galerie]

Biichama, your player has more than new mammaries to worry about.

Maddona will want those brass brasseries back.

[Darkstrom]

I introduced a sideplot where a young girl had recently gone missing. Her family rented Old man Gibs his shack.

Possessed Gibs had kidnapped her and stuffed her in the crawlspace of a cellar that was part of his shack. One of the suggestions given by SM was to ignore her crying.

It changes things a little bit but the group seemed to really like the sideplot :)