My players are on Bonewrack Isle. They have no desire to stay. They left the ship looking for food and water saying "we'll just conjure it when out of sight of the captain". Recall the captain says he won't eat magical stuff.
I'm having a hard time keeping them there and outright out of game asking them to indulge me. Even the thread to go after Sandra isn't enticing to them. We're talking about scoundrels here in this campaign (explicitly suggested in the beginning of the first module) and these guys just don't want to stay.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. This module requires a bit more leaps of faith than I've usually had in running modules and I don't want to bash it so I'd love some ideas how you handled it.
Thanks, appreciate it.
It looked like my characters weren't going to be interested in this either back when I ran this so I made Sandra more central to the PC's plans and set up several "incentives" for the PC's to go to the rescue. Granted I knew this might come up, so I planned ahead accordingly.
First it was Sandra who was the biggest link between the other crew members who wanted to mutiny and the PC's. The other captured crewman also was a PC ally. They didn't even need a wisdom check to realize that suddenly being down two allies would not help them in their cause. They needed her to coordinate the mutineers and tend to the wounded. I also played up how having "The luck of Besmara" on their side would help them as well.
Then I let the PC's know that the punishment for "magic water" that disappeared after one day was summary execution. This at the very least made them want to find the water supply. (From Create water: "This water disappears after 1 day if not consumed") Mr. Plugg let them know that they and their water would be "under watch" until the 24 hour period had expired.
It was Owlbear who convinced them though. Sandra was the only other person who had shown any sympathy to the poor man and he vowed to fight with the PC's if they rescued her. Convincing him to stay chained in the hold "until he was needed" was the hardest part of that one.
You can also just run the numbers by them if everything else fails. I told them all that losing two more crewman that was "stretched too damn bloody thin as it was anyway", would be a "slow fat under defended target" if they got the ship sailing again. You need 20 crew minimum to sail without penalty. For my guys assuming they killed everyone and left Sandra to rot would leave them at 8 sailors loyal to them and they were a 6 person party.
Even after all of this, I told my players that if they wanted to do this that it would be fine. In fact it would have made the actual mutiny a lot better challenge than it turned out to be. But I laid out enough incentive (one of the PC's ended up developing a relationship with Sandra) that they went ahead and explored the island.
Make one (or more) of the PCs succumb to ghoul fever. The ghouls are roaming, so there are many opportunity for encounters near the shore. Sandara is a cleric, perhaps the only one that can save the PC(s). Strongly hint that she may be grateful if rescued and will reward them.
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We didn't have much trouble motivating everyone to explore Bonewrack Isle. The PCs were new and inexperienced. Plugg and Scourge were formidable opponents (I boosted their CR more than a little bit) and their ability to mutiny at first was very limited. They were allowed to each take a dagger ashore, and the archer got to bring along a crossbow with a few bolts. They were concerned and poorly equipped.
There wasn't much of a need for me to fabricate a motivation to stay on the island and explore it; they didn't have any other choice.
Sailing off in the ship's boat wasn't a good option, since they would be easily run down and sunk by the Man's Promise when it was repaired. I'd probably have had them threatened by large and hungry sharks if they had taken the chance anyway.
When they went up the hill to investigate the stockade, they didn't leave anyone behind to watch the boat (even though there were 7 PCs!). I had the grindylows vandalize it, including chopping holes in the hull and drawing vulgar graffiti on the side. They also stole the oars and threw them into the corn field with the botfly heads, and stole the lids to the water barrels and used them to body surf in the bay while taunting the PCs. This further limited their options.
Actually, this also made them all mad and dramatically increased their motivation to explore the caves and kill the slimy buggers.
Other than that, they were motivated by the 'sleep on the beach and die' or 'seek shelter' choice. They used the Survival skill a bunch to figure out how limited their options were (no food, no shelter, lots of threats in the environment).
As soon as they figured out that the botflies caused ghoul fever, the tension picked up.
Maybe if your group is especially stubborn, you could be more aggressive with the ghoul fever. If one of them dies, they might change their minds and 'get on with it.' You could even play it up like a zombie sickness where they 'turn' and have to be 'put down' by their friends...like we've seen over and over again on TV and in movies.
Saving Sandara became a priority for them both because she was one of the few 'nice' NPCs (and very attractive) and also the only Cleric; they figured out that if any of them got sick that she was their best chance of surviving.
Hope some of that helps!
In my game, the PCs cared about Sandara quite a bit and none of them had the trick of conjuring water, so it wasn't an issue.
If that's not going to work for them and clearly having Plugg order them to find the missing crew members doesn't seem like a motivator, you may just let them come back to the ship, which would start the final fight of the AP early.
Once they return without doing what he's told them, Plugg decides that he's had enough of their insolence and orders an attack. Once he's got them out of the way, someone who will do what he's told can be sent to find water.
In my game, Plugg, Scourge and four other pirates versus the PCs wasn't a terribly hard challenge as none of them are combat beasts. Once they're dead, your PCs are in charge of the ship and can leave. Sandara is lost and they might be a level short of where they'd otherwise be, but I would just let them have some random encounters before Raiders of the Fever Sea to get them to where they need to be if they don't want to explore Bonewrack. If Plugg and Scourge are too tough for them at their level (unlikely), just let them wipe. Unless they're dummies, they should be able to put two and two together to understand that the loot and XP on Bonewrack would've been useful before facing Plugg.
1. Make it clear to your party that Scourge and Plugg won't accept magical water. This is not only because they are superstitious, but also because it only lasts a day and they would be dependant on the PCs recasting it - that shift in power wouldn't fly. So your players have to find some source of fresh water on the isle.
2. The only decent source would be Ivys hideout. There is a spyglass which conveniently shows a couple of grindylows near their cave, one of them wearing Sandaras tricorne. If that is not enough for them to investigate, tell them there are rumors the tricorne is actually magical and can transform into a small boat.
Is there some way for the players to deduce that the Grindylows have a lair on the island?
All along the perimeter of the island, the grindylow inhabitants have left "shepherds"--small, twisted "statues" made of the sinew-twisted, scrimshaw-covered skeletons of their prey.
You can have it common knowledge or have someone make an attainable knowledge (local)(for the aquatic goblinesque quality of gridylows) or knowledge (arcana)(for their more official aberration listing) check to recognize the the Bonewrack Shepherds - as lovingly depicted on p39 - as a sure sign of grindylow occupation.
If they need the obvious hook, you can have whomever rolls highest on their perception check just barely glimpse one of the twisted cretins retreat underwater next to one of them. If they fail all other leads on the island, someone with survival might be able to track them from a shepherd to their lair.|
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To motivate the PCs, I had the grindylows vandalize their ship's boat while the party hiked up to investigate the stockade.
The PCs didn't leave anyone on the beach to guard the boat, so the grindylows hacked big holes in it, ripped the sails, drew obscene pictures everywhere, and dragged all of the oars away (they conveniently threw them into the botfly-infested cornfield where the Ankheg lived).
When they all came back down the hill, they saw the damaged boat and freaked out. They easily spotted the grindylows out the sea, laughing and bodysurfing on the waves with the water barrel lids that they stole from the boat.
This... upset the PCs quite a bit.
Later, when they used the spyglass to discover the wreck of Infernus, the grindylows taunted the PCs from the deep waters, beckoning them to come out and play.
The party was highly motivated to investigate the caves.