How did you improve the campaign?

[Hespi]

I am planning to run this AP in March. I saw it has some faults(like Ardax teleporting), but still it seems like a fun adventure. Give me your best tips, how did you improved the original storyline, or what extra options did you allow to your players, which improved the campaign overall?
I only have one idea so far:
- I am gonna introduce K'zaard to the party probably in the Torrentmoot.

[Skellyscribe]

Hespi wrote:

I am planning to run this AP in March. I saw it has some faults(like Ardax teleporting), but still it seems like a fun adventure. Give me your best tips, how did you improved the original storyline, or what extra options did you allow to your players, which improved the campaign overall?

I only have one idea so far:
- I am gonna introduce K'zaard to the party probably in the Torrentmoot.

I'm going to start running this AP in two weeks! Running on Foundry using the purchased module. I am going to nerf Ardax's teleportation, of course, and also planned to bring K'zaard to the moot. The foundry mod includes all kinds of great tokens for the briefly mentioned other guests, so I'm giving them stats and will make some of them influence-able like the three named influence NPCs. This party played through 1e's Ironfang Invasion a couple years ago so I think they will be drawn to the ambassadors from Oprak.

Foundry makes running combats a lot faster so I'm not afraid of them dragging some other moot guests along on the various chapter 1 quests. There will be 5 PCs so I will likely add to some of the encounters. We just finished Season of Ghosts and I think some really tough fights could be a nice change of pace.

I'm still reading through the 2nd and 3rd books so I'll post some more when I decide what I'm changing about those.

[Stellar_Seafarer]

I had Segrek get attacked by a ghoul during the 'Flee!' Chase, cursing him with Forbidden Cravings. He craves raw meat, and regardless of if the players find his anti-weretiger amulet or not, he will rampage as a weretiger one night soon after the quest to find the amulet, in an attempt to quell his forbidden cravings. I'm gonna have him bite my tiger stance using monk player so that he can choose if he wants to be cursed with weretiger lycanthropy. I think my player will enjoy the curse so I'd like to give him a choice to fail the save.

[Stellar_Seafarer]

I also have a ranger player using a bear Companion, and during the low level zombie bear encounter, I revealed the zombie bears to be the young bear companions parents:(

Gotta pull at the heart strings of my players a bit! Plus it was too perfect to not throw in there. Now the companion has a backstory too!

[Paulyhedron]

Finished it a few weeks ago, Just make all the NPC's have pro wrester voices. There's a few problems, but I loved it, one of the better 2e campaigns I've played thus far.

[Skellyscribe]

Here are some more things I changed about the campaign so far. We're currently in book 2, chapter 2.

A major piece of advice I have for GMs starting this AP is to steer your orc PCs towards plot-relevant holds. My group's cleric is a Storm-Screamer of Rull and the player was absolutely engrossed with the first part of book 2. Seeing her engage with the rites of the hold even convinced the bard to start worshipping Rull. The bard is from the Drowning Sand hold so I have book 3 to look forward to there.

The party's fighter is a hobgoblin that calls back to my group's 1e playthrough of Ironfang Invasion. So I added an alternate quest-giver in Urgir in the form of a Naga Ironfang spy who passes strange commands to the fighter from "the General." The party brought the vampire Azdroni back to Urgir so I plan to have him start acting as a sub-quest giver soon.

My group took a liking to the various influence NPCs from book 1 so I had Ardax send Davorr and Grothlyn out on missions around Belkzen so the party could meet them again later. Kestrel sadly perished during the raid on Splitskull Keep. Davorr was amongst the Storm-Screamers during the aurochs migration and Grothlyn will naturally be back home amongst the Gutspear at the start of book 2, chapter 3.