Some issues prepping Red Flags. Could do with some advice.

[hyphz]

I'm trying to get ready to run Red Flags at the weekend, and there's a few issues.

- There doesn't seem to be anything in the adventure about failure conditions. Celeri tells the PCs that they want to avoid a conflict with Whark but there's nothing about what could actually cause this and no follow-up to it. As written if the PCs just decide to murder everyone at the party then they face a difficult fight but there is no mechanism in the adventure for declaring this a failure. How has this been handled?

- The Kraken seems to be a bit of a hoser for the PCs who face a tough combat encounter despite the preamble that the adventure was not combat heavy. Has anyone changed or adapted this?

- ... Ditto for a room with multiple Darkside Mirrors which could result in an ungodly complex combat encounter. Has there been any experience with this?

- There is a mention that the gaming tables are cursed or rigged. The text for the Fortress Court does not mention if this is true or false but the text for the Pretty Court implies that it is. Is rigging the tables in this way considered an evil act that might require a PC to act? One presumes that the pirate goddess does not mind cheating others, even if they are other pirates and it is specifically under parlay conditions?

[Fuzzypaws]

1. It is counterproductive and likely fatal to try to fight Whark and invoke the wrath of everyone at the party, a substantial percentage of which will likely be combatants due to being pirates. However, there is technically nothing forbidding it. It wouldn't be playing the adventure as intended, but you could murderhobo the adventure since the primary and only important goal is getting the book, by any means.

2. The kraken should be basically impossible for the party if they are less combat focused, and very tough even if they are. There is "technically" an out in dispelling the binding enchantment, BUT information about this is not provided in the adventure, and moreover the dispel check to remove it is almost impossible since it's a 9th level spell. There doesn't seem to be any way for the PCs to find out about either the kraken or its out, unless they happen to get a critical success on Diplomacy against Whark. There is no DC given for this diplomacy check, but it is probably DC 30 or 31 since their Perception DC is 30 and the errata raised other Diplomacy DCs in the adventure to 31. I guess Bardic Lore might potentially offer an answer, but that's about it.

As such, pretty much the only way to deal with the kraken without metaknowledge or kissing Whark's feet is to not fight it at all, and instead focus on avoiding it and fleeing.

3. The biggest problem with the Darkside Mirrors is not just the summoning of the duplicates, but the far worse consequence that the duplicated creature is removed from the game. If 2-3 PCs are absorbed into the mirrors, it's pretty much adventure over, because it's unlikely the remaining PCs will be enough to defeat the duplicates and retrieve their comrades.

This is an encounter where the only way to win is not to play. The PCs pretty much have to disable or bypass the mirrors before they can start going off. However, there is no warning or information about them short of critically Diplomancing Whark as mentioned above, so they'd better be searching for traps as they proceed.

4. The tables being rigged is irrelevant to the party's mission. If a paladin were to insist on causing trouble about it, they would be playing Lawful Stupid and sabotaging the adventure.

[hyphz]

1. The main issue I suppose is I can see a lot of player upset if the players make infiltrators and die to the Kraken, when in fact murderhoboes would not have been penalized and would have had a much better time with it.

4. There is however the risk that the party may try to create a distraction by pointing out that the tables are rigged or attempt to make allies of the "rich and powerful" people who Whark was intending to cheat.

[The Once and Future Kai]

Jason just shared on the Friday Twitch Stream that they'll be releasing some updates to Red Flags on Monday. Some of the encounters - the Kraken is definitely one - needed to be reworked due to their extreme difficulty.

[hyphz]

Another issue was pointed out by the 8 year old son of one of the players (!) - how do the PCs get back after taking the Theorem?

They get teleported to the town but Celeri doesn't say anything about returning. Are they expected to somehow hang out and charter a ship back to, um, Magnimar?? before Whark finds the book missing and locks down the town?

[Mudfoot]

Sometimes this playtesting looks more like proofreading. Shame, as it greatly diminishes the value of the test.

For the last one, just assume that the loot with the book includes a scroll of Teleport...

[DerNils]

The adventure ends with a fadeout when they are with the book in the city, that's how I would Play it, as the rest is irrelevant to the playtest. As for the rigged tables etc., this is just a Piece of fluff that the GM can use to make the Party interesting (there certainly is not a lot of Support for that available in the module.)

[hyphz]

Yea, I'm not trying to be a proofreader, but this made a big difference. I'm cool with ending with a fadeout, but the players and their PCs don't know there will be one, nor that there is a Teleport scroll in the vault, and were getting quite confused about how they were supposed to plan to escape with the book.

Actually, there's another concern come up. One of the PCs cast Detect Magic shortly after arriving at the party, while the PC Bard was fascinating the guards with a performance. The casting was undetected by the guards but he was then outlined in Faerie Fire by the Besmaran ward, and quickly ran to hide underneath one of the gambling tables. Although the adventure does say that the guards are unlikely to be too harsh on someone who has cast a single spell that did no harm, the player does not know that and it appears we are at risk of having a bored player having their PC spend their whole adventure hiding under a table. Is there any work around for this?