There we are, this is going to be the last Adventure Prep post of the current campaign.
A lot of things were said since that September 6th night where I pondered how to salvage a campaign that started on the wrong foot. Now I’m planning how to end it.
Last game, the PCs met with the Ambassador of Demon Lord Orcus in the Demonic City of Zelatar so they could assume it’s place in Lolth’s upcoming Grand Council for the signature of some pact between Demon Lords and the Goddess of the Drow.
Orcus has no interest in this pact so he had no trouble sending a bunch of suicidal mortals crash the Spider Queen’s party in his name.
Then the Heroes literally got lost in the Demonwebs and so did the player’s interest in that part of the night’s game.
So this week, I decided that I wanted to conclude the adventure and I decided to bring the party at the door of Lolth’s gathering of Demon Lords and Ambassadors.
As you can see on the picture, there are a lot of people in attendance. I’m pretty sure it’s going to drive home the point that a “kick down the door and kill everyone” approach is NOT a good idea, regardless of what the back of the adventure says (Visit the Abyss. Meet Demon Lords. Kill Everything)
I’ve bitched a lot about Expedition to the Demonweb pits, and most of my bitching is well deserved. It is a rather boring adventure (combat and encounter-wise) and un-interactive (Role-playing wise, there are places where it’s written “the NPC ignores whatever the PCs may say”). It’s also based around a very convoluted storyline.
That being said, I must say that the finale is pretty darn cool. Cool enough for me to use it almost ‘As is’.
Without giving anything away to my nosy players, the last scene, based around the Demon Lords council, is a complex sandbox environment where the players can play as many or as few scenes as they feel like to learn, integrate, plan and act to resolve the adventure.
Much like the later Robert Jordan Novel, it was sometimes excruciatingly painful to get there but the finale is totally worth it!
Now in order to tie in the campaign to this adventure, I added a campaign specific BBEG who’s joined the council to cement it’s participation in this Fiendish pact. I look forward to the PCs meeting and recognizing it.
In order to allow the best possible player experience of these scenes, I will ask the players to rewind back to Ptolus and check how ready they are for the mission up ahead in terms of disguises, background checks and so on.
Then my plan of the evening is to fast forward to the Grand Finale, tone down the ‘if party does X, Demons attack’ a bit (as well as keep the classic antagonistic NPC arrogance in check) and let the players run the show.
Of course if they decide to go at it with swords and spells… I’ll be ready (I have some lighter fluid I’ll use to douse the battlemap and a match).
I don’t know how long the scenes in this setup are going to take… And I’m willing to let it go to 2 full sessions if the players are enjoying it.
However, it’s what I have planned for after that makes me look forward to the game.
You see if the PCs make it out of the Abyss alive it will probably mean that the whole silliness about the world getting absorbed into the Demonweb will be resolved…
..But the world is in a bad shape. It lost a large chunk around Ptolus, it has been at war for 2 straight campaigns and it’s been more or less destroyed by the Yugoloths.
The next part will then be about me describing how everything is collapsing in the world while the Players scram to find solutions. The key reward they’ll take from completing the adventure will be a ‘Carte Blanche’ to visit pretty much any plane they feel is necessary to conclude the campaign.
On the one hand, Cixi will want to have her people freed from Carceri and her ancient Homeworld wretched from the Demonwebs (We might play this off camera if time is missing). On the other, the rest of the PCs will want to save the world, or at the very least their own butt.
The problem is that the Chaos that has been fomenting in the Outer Planes (i.e. the Planescape Great Wheel) in the last two campaigns has broken the balance that held everything together for good. The disruption the PCs will have caused in the Abyss will accelerate the unraveling of the multiverse and the planes themselves will be collapsing.
In order to play this out, I’ll throw away the rule books and go with Story alone. As this will be the last game we play in the gameworld I created 22 years ago, each player will be allowed to bring in characters from any campaigns we played in that world and put them to tasks the players believe will help save the world and/o r its inhabitants.
I have a few solutions in mind, and I have been seeding them in the mind of players and the game itself. However, I promised myself to leave the DM Clue Bat in the closet and let the players figure out and suggest solutions.
We’ll see how they handle it.
If it works out, the next campaign (a D&D 4e one most likely) will be set in whatever is left of the world, 1000 years in its future. If the world dies, we’ll start anew and I’ll draw a new map… anyway, after 23 years, it’s a bit frayed now.
Wish me luck!
Setting the battlemap on fire is AWESOME! Oh man oh man. I run purely electronic games, because my high school / college friends are dispersed. The upside is pretty maps, the downside is … I cannot set the battlemap on fire!!
Phased Weasels last blog post..Using Consumables
🙂
A few years ago there was this cardboard chit wargame that had variant rules at the back of the rules book. Using lighter fluid and setting the map on fire was the actual rule for simulating a Nuclear Strike.
I haven’t seen a better mechanic since…
For those who are checking the Image, that’s:
1 Huge Creature
17 Large ones
8 medium ones
All figures were chosen to fit as closely as possible with the creatures.
Except Kermit the Slaad and the Mind Flayer. K gets to play Yeenoghu. and the Flayer is an Arcanoloth named Sharlocke ….
I love to torture my players!
Will Yeenoghu have an overly active libido?
Kermit is going to be making an appearance in my next adventure too (at least the mini is.)
Dave T. Games last blog post..D&D 4e: A Whole New World
I was very tempted to put the Elven Warlock into his ‘team’ for reasons that will become oblivious tomorrow night…
That does inspire me to create an actual ‘in-game’ webcomic where we can start exploring the Minis as Actor angle I wanted to do since day one.
Hmmm… feelings of creation are taking over! Damn! I’m at work.
Your trouble with Demonweb sounds similar to mine with Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I started that campaign 4 different times and the best success I had was seeing the 4th party to the Crater Ridge Mines and half-way round the the ring, where they all died. I never could follow the plot.
That said, I had a very different experience with Demonweb than you. I ran the entire adventure, beginning to end without significant variation from the module. My players loved (and I mean LOVED) every session. There was lots of fighting, some NPC role-play interaction, some truly remarkable treasures and a kick-ass, dramatic, mind-blowing finale.
I thought the adventure was nicely laid out. The encounters clearly designed and the plot interesting. The finale was especially nice since the demons refuse to work together or help each other, so my players were able to fight just about everyone in the great hall as single or small encounters.
I guess that means that the adventure wasn’t tailored to my tastes.
My favorite parts was the Beatslands (which I re-wrote 100%) but I really liked Zelatar as is and am feeling that the Grand Finale will be worth it.
Oddly enough, while players grew tired of it at times, we actually completed Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (it took us about 2 years)
I’ve been running a generic/historical Greyhawk for the last 3 years, mostly because of the Temple of Elemental Evil. I have my own campaign world, but The Temple was so Greyhawk-focused that moving it would have meant substantial re-writes to the module, which I felt that I’d already had to do just to follow the story from Hommlet to the Crater Ridge Mines and all points in between. I’ve attempted it several times with my group, each time resulted in a total party kill. This last time, I completely gave up on it. I wanted to love that module and I just couldn’t. So, I know what you mean by an adventure not being tailored to your tastes.
95% of Demonweb took place in the Outer Planes via Sigil so I wouldn’t have needed to do any campaign world-driven alterations to make it fit into my own campaign world. Since we’d just “finished” RTOEE everyone was already in Greyhawk, so I figured I’d focus on this new story over the setting.
Again, I liked the entire book. I read the thing cover-to-cover before running it and for about an hour before each session I’d review what I thought we could cover that night. Most times I was ahead of the players by 1 or 2 encounters. I loved the encounter format. I did less page-flipping while running that module than I do when running my own stuff. I didn’t need to look up anything in the MM or the DMG, and the first few rounds of tactics were always suggested so I didn’t have to do much thinking about what the critters were going to do.
Chatty that sounds similar to some of the best epic endings I’ve seen or heard of for computer roleplaying games. Only I’m sure it will mean more since your players will be running characters of their own devising with motives they chose. I’ve never been through a tabletop game like that myself, little envious now. 🙂
Sharlocke… Last time we meat that son of a ….. he was level a 18 or something around that.
I guess that our full frontal assault plan will need to be re-evaluated. Or then again maybe not… 😛
Full frontal assault plans are always good ideas…
At least in my experience…maybe not the rest of the party, on account of two occasions where this plan led to death for everyone but me, the one who always suggests/enacts such plans…yep…
Ergo the Lighter fluid comment in the post!
@ Lamir: I’ll tell you all about it after… I’ll try to make you feel like you were there!
The campaign is over. Players won, world was saved… My game world has become the standard 4e one.
@Carl: Regardless of our personal differences vis à vis this adventure, the final was absolutely awesome…
Let us rejoice, we start the 4e introductory module Keep on the Shadowfel in 3 weeks.
I’ll put up the final campaign log later today or tomorrow.