Crown of the Kobold King

[jason hammonds]

Ok so my group has been having me GM/DM, and I started them in Hollow's Last Hope. I have been fortunate to come across Crown of the Kobold King, and Revenge of the Kobold King. Ad I was reading through them it mentions a 3rd underground level and unknown is the level and the force ever revealed in another module and if so what module is it? So far my group seems to like the Dark Moon Vale area and adventure. With a few extra plot twist of my own added being its a larger than the module calls for group.

[shadram]

Hungry are the Dead has the 3rd level of that dungeon in it.

Also in the Darkmoon Vale area is Carnival of Tears, which is extremely dark and gruesome, so may not be to everyone's taste. And if you've not seen the Guide to Darkmoon Vale, I'd highly recommend that too.

I'm just wrapping up my Darkmoon Vale campaign, and my whole group has really enjoyed it, too. It's a great setting!

[Sissyl]

Another suggestion is to plan for how the PCs can deal with the Lumber Consortium. Believe me, they will want to.

[Niv Cel'on]

Question which is better to run after Revenge of the Kobold King Hungry are dead or Carnival of Tears?

[Budd the C.H.U.D.]

I'd go with Hungry Are the Dead. If I remember correctly, it has a lot more direct connection to the Kobold King adventures.

[Niv Cel'on]

Thanks, I'll Just raise the monster's power In CoT then

[Sissyl]

Go with CoT. Each of the KK adventures and HatD follow a very similar structure, and at least my group needed the change.

[Niv Cel'on]

Hmm ok, because since the gap between CoKK and RoKK, I going to have them in town doing quest involving Fey creatures, Town politics and corruption till they are lv 5 (which I'll just give them lvs after quest)

[shadram]

Sounds similar to what I did. Lots of social conflict with Kreed and the Lumber Consortium, and subplots with Fey and werewolves.

Carnival of Tears is lower level than Revenge of the Kobold King, so I ran it as part of the time between Crown and Revenge. The Fey theme worked well, and led into Realm of the Fellnight Queen after Hungry are the Dead. I had the fey in Carnival be driven to attack the town by Rhoswen, although they didn't hear her name at that point.

[aboyd]

shadram wrote:

Carnival of Tears is lower level than Revenge of the Kobold King

Hmm. My modules may be a misprint, but for mine it shows that Carnival is for level 5 and Revenge is for... level 5. So you could run them in either order.

However, Hungry Are The Dead does need to be last in the series. It's meant for level 6, and has slightly tougher challenges. Unfortunately, there is a problem: Mutters Kondlan. He's plot-critical in both modules, but if you run the modules in the recommended order, the PCs may kill him before he can appear the 2nd time.

Mutters is in the employ of Thuldrin Kreed and the hated Lumber Consortium. He is not a good person. However, in Hungry Are The Dead, he's just an NPC who kicks off the plot by running into town and begging for help from adventurers. The PCs will know he's from the Lumber Consortium, but they don't know he sucks and in fact he's just been assaulted and needs help. So odds are the PCs will leave him alone and go face the adventure.

On the other hand, in Carnival of Tears, he is a rapist. Not only that, but the woman he wants to rape is married, so he's murdered the husband off-stage, and when the PCs arrive, they see him dragging the newly-widowed woman into a tent so he can rape her. If the PCs try to stop him, he even offers to pay them to look the other way while he does the deed.

Now, the word "rape" is never used in the encounter description. It's possible that the author intended to imply that Mutters was going to murder her or torture her or do some other horrifying thing. But it looks to me like rape was the intention. Obviously, even characters who are not good aligned may step in since the scene is probably graphic and involves terrified screaming and everything that goes with a rape. And Mutters getting dead? Yeah, that's probably going to happen.

The murderer rapist who is mid-rape is probably the most 100% justifiable kill that the PCs will ever face in their careers. So he's gonna be dead.

And that's the problem. If the PCs kill him in Carnival, then... how is he running into town, begging those same PCs for help in the next module, Hungry Are The Dead? The answer of course is that he's not, the plot is ruined. You could say that the Lumber Consortium raised him from the dead, but that has two problems: first, he's not liked or respected enough by the Consortium leaders, second, even if they did raise him why in the WORLD would he run up to the people who just killed him?

Like, if I were a murdering rapist brought back from the dead, I would probably not advertise my 2nd chance at life to the people who want to put me down. I think I might stay far away from them.

So either Mutters is dead or raised from the dead but in hiding. Either way, he's not going to be the NPC that kicks off Hungry Are The Dead.

Solutions -- flip the modules and run Hungry before Carnival. This messes up the power balance of the modules and will need the GM to re-do some CRs. But it's what I did. And I liked what I did, because it meant the entire series ended with some awful, awful Lumber Consortium stuff, which made the PCs extremely eager to have me run them through a homebrew mini-campaign to utterly destroy the Lumber Consortium. However, you could also do the super easy option that I didn't do -- run them as they're supposed to be (Carnival then Hungry), but simply let Mutters die in Carnival, and then change Mutters to be someone else in Hungry Are The Dead.

Whatever you do, don't do the 3rd option. That is, don't try to rail-road the players into not killing that murderous villain as they play through Carnival of Tears. He shouldn't have plot armor.

[shadram]

I didn't even notice that it was the same PC in Carnival and HatD... He's a minor role at best in both modules (particularly Carnival, when it's just a random encounter in the early part), so making it a different PC in each would make no difference, I think.

And apologies, I was under the impression that Carnival was a 4th level module. I ran it for my players at 4th, but there were 6 of them at the time, so +1 APL.

[Niv Cel'on]

Oh, Alright, and after HatD I'm bringing back the Witch Ulizmila and an army at some point to end off Falcon's Hallow. Already stated her

[DmRrostarr]

Also remember the Darkmoon modules were written for the 3.5 rules set. So the XP you gain will not level the PCs the same way. You don't have to make Hungry Are the Dead tougher because if you are using the Pathfinder XP chart and play all the other modules before it then they will be close to the target. To get to 2nd level in 3.5 you needed 1000 xp. Using medium track Pathfinder XP you need 2000 xp.

[DmRrostarr]

Just to correct you, Mutters kicks off Revenge of the Kobold King not Hungry Are the Dead.

Verrin kicks off Hungry Are the Dead....

aboyd wrote:

shadram wrote:

Carnival of Tears is lower level than Revenge of the Kobold King

Hmm. My modules may be a misprint, but for mine it shows that Carnival is for level 5 and Revenge is for... level 5. So you could run them in either order.

However, Hungry Are The Dead does need to be last in the series. It's meant for level 6, and has slightly tougher challenges. Unfortunately, there is a problem: Mutters Kondlan. He's plot-critical in both modules, but if you run the modules in the recommended order, the PCs may kill him before he can appear the 2nd time.

Mutters is in the employ of Thuldrin Kreed and the hated Lumber Consortium. He is not a good person. However, in Hungry Are The Dead, he's just an NPC who kicks off the plot by running into town and begging for help from adventurers. The PCs will know he's from the Lumber Consortium, but they don't know he sucks and in fact he's just been assaulted and needs help. So odds are the PCs will leave him alone and go face the adventure.

On the other hand, in Carnival of Tears, he is a rapist. Not only that, but the woman he wants to rape is married, so he's murdered the husband off-stage, and when the PCs arrive, they see him dragging the newly-widowed woman into a tent so he can rape her. If the PCs try to stop him, he even offers to pay them to look the other way while he does the deed.

Now, the word "rape" is never used in the encounter description. It's possible that the author intended to imply that Mutters was going to murder her or torture her or do some other horrifying thing. But it looks to me like rape was the intention. Obviously, even characters who are not good aligned may step in since the scene is probably graphic and involves terrified screaming and everything that goes with a rape. And Mutters getting dead? Yeah, that's probably going to happen.

The murderer rapist who is mid-rape is probably the most 100% justifiable kill that the PCs will ever face in their careers. So he's gonna be dead....

[Lysle]

The Darkmoon Vale modules make for a fun series. There is a good write-up on Falcon's Hollow in Towns of the Inner Sea, although some of the information in it differs a little from the modules and Guide to the Darkmoon Valve, including some new additions to the town map.

If you need more XP, I'd also suggest running "Wingclipper’s Revenge" from Dungeon Magazine to play up the tensions with the fey and to foreshadow the events in Carnival of Tears.

[aboyd]

DmRrostarr wrote:

Just to correct you, Mutters kicks off Revenge of the Kobold King not Hungry Are the Dead.

Well, I'm an idiot. I run my games off of PDFs, and I had conveniently mis-labeled them. I've been running my games wrong for about 3 years now. Awesome.

Thanks for the tip.

[DmRrostarr]

aboyd wrote:

DmRrostarr wrote:

Just to correct you, Mutters kicks off Revenge of the Kobold King not Hungry Are the Dead.

Well, I'm an idiot. I run my games off of PDFs, and I had conveniently mis-labeled them. I've been running my games wrong for about 3 years now. Awesome.

Thanks for the tip.

Well both of those adventures start off with someone running back to town basically saying, "we're being attacked!!" But yes you are correct that Mutters is not a good person in "Carnival". But since "Carnival" and "Revenge" are both the same level AND they were written with the 3.5 rules, a DM won't have to make much adjustments because of the XP difference because of the rule sets. Therefore you will have to play "Revenge" first so that the PCs wont have to face the dilemma of dealing with Mutters.