Previously in Chatty’s game:
Our heroes, with a treacherous doppelganger in their ranks, faced the Duergar leader in his abode. When failure seemed imminent, the wounded grey dwarf leader sought help from his minions stationed in a nearby room and like a horde they poured in and surrounded our wounded, tired heroes.
Against all odds, the party was victorious. They saved the imprisoned slaves and bartered an agreement with the shapeshiter: It would trade the captive rogue hero and the whereabouts of the missing 2 slaves for its life.
Our last session went really well. That week, Eric, playing the Eladrin wizard was missing, so were had 5 PCs.
I had spent little time prepping as I wanted to play the next part of the adventure called ‘The Well of Demon” pretty much as is. However, I was not satisfied with the adventure’s way of linking both chapters. For those just tuning in this series, I’m currently running Thunderspire Labyrinth.
In fact, the interlude between both chapters of this adventure is the weakest part of the whole product I found so far. As written, the PCs were to get a letter from a Kobold NPC (a harmless pest) that explained that a ‘unnamed benefactor’ from the Duergar faction wanted out of the organization and proposed to meet with the PCs. Of course, said meeting was an ambush. If the DM could get the PCs to go and they defeated the bad guys, they would find enough documents to lead them to the last part of the adventure.
Talk about a plot bottleneck!
Anyway, I had reworked it so that the foiled doppleganger NPC had the necessary info and would provide it to the PCs (along with the captured PC rogue) if they let it live.
During prepping for the game, I asked myself how I would play out the prisoner exchange. The scene didn’t inspire me much but I didn’t want to skip it outright. I therefore decided to let my players tell me how it would go, shared narrative style.
It was a bit more awkward than expected (We all floundered a bit here and there) but here’s the story the players gave me:
The PCs freed the slaves, reassuring them that they would be escorted back outside of the mountain. They then scoured the duergar stronghold for weapons and armed the newly freed captives. In relative chaos, making sure that none of the civilians tripped on their own weapons and such, the group set out to return to the Seven Pillared Hall (the adventure’s underground homebase).
Thinking about feeding the freed men and women on their journey back to the nearest surface town , they retraced their steps to the spot where they had abandoned the food caravan they were escorting 2 sessions ago. However, when they arrived the carts had lost their horses and the 2 duergar captives were nowhere to be found.
The duergar were actually freed by some brethren and an ambush of the PCs was planned but when they were spotted with a group of 12 armed men and women, the duergar decided to leave them be and sneak away undetected.
The captives were brought back safely to the Hall and an expedition back to the surface was organised without the PC participating in it. Our heroes then manhandled the doppleganger to get him to bring them to the captured rogue and the PC was freed and the dopplegangner was allowed to live, vowing eternal gratitude for sparing its wretched life. It then gave the players directions to a compound called ‘The Well of Demons’ where 2 slaves (including the Dragonborn Diplomat, cousin to the party’s warlord) were delivered 24 hours ago.
As I said, It was awkward to get there. I had some trouble structuring how I wanted the narrative to go, giving players alternative turns and asking for complications along the way. Still, it gave us a nice little story that allowed us to move on to the next part of the adventure.
Before they left for the Well of Demons, the PCs were invited to a banquet organized by the ‘good’ segment of the Hall’s small population. A group of dwarven traders, very happy to see the duergar going “out of buisness” in the area fronted the bill.
During the festivities, the head trader tried to approach the party but seemed too embarrassed to actually talk to them. Bjerm, the gruff elven Fighter started saying something along the lines of “you wanna talk to us, do so!” Fortunately, Naquist the diplomatic Eladrin cleric of Bahamut told Bjerm “Let me handle it, I’m better at this” and got the dwarf talking with a resounding “Out with it Dwarf, we haven’t got all night!”
Shocked by such exquisite Fey diplomacy, he nonetheless explained that one of his work crews were massacred in the labyrinth’s mines earlier this week. All members were savagely killed but no traces were found of the old trader’s pet Dire Boar. He asked the players if they could be on the lookout for it in their forays in the labyrinth.
(That part was fun to play out!)
I also squeezed in another quest by having a representative of the Mages of Saruum (the evil wizards running the Hall) ask the PCs to discretly inquire about the recent activites of one Paldemar, one of the Mages of Saruum gone missing a few weeks ago. According to some reports the mages received, Paldemar was up to no good. The players, not missing a beat of making this powerful NPC feel like a schmuck, clicked on ‘Accept Quest’ and got ready to leave for thier next foray.
Up next: 3 Combat encounters in 2 hours.
Aah, your group is catching up to ours. The Well of Demons is fun – the ‘Proving Grounds’ encounter was as exciting as the reviews say, though our party (lvl6) handled it quite easily, even with the wacky boulder rolling around. (We used my racquetball-sized d20 for the boulder – a spectacular prop.) The post-Grounds encounter nearly did us in, though, even without a high-stepping devil-may-care Fey Pact halfling warlock teleporting heedlessly across the room to free the cousin…
Your doppelganger edit to the module is smart – the ambush was a nice little combat encounter, giving everyone something interesting to do, but it felt disconnected from the main thrust of the adventure, and you’re right that it’s a weirdly risky bottleneck as written. I know I’m relatively new to this stuff but I’m just now realizing that the modules as written are frameworks for stories, the combat encounters merely plot elements – but most of the plot (as opposed to the story) is left up to the DM. I’ve been too quick to see the modules as a litany of combats – they just look that way. Huh, I’m learning a new way of reading! Awesome. What remains of the story, meanwhile, is up to the players…
(BTW We’ve been using NeonKnight’s H2 battle maps from cartographersguild.com (along with the poster map of course), and the bright colours and giant statues of the blood pool room helped make for a memorable setting.)
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I’m beginning to suspect that the D&D dev team expected most people to assume that was the intent of all adventures published so far… sadly even I missed that lesson while I was reading Keep on the Shadowfell.
Hacking published adventures is fun as hell, and often necessary to fit the story/flow to your group’s tastes.
My group is just completed the Well of Demons part and I had to say that the battles were awesome. However, the way you’ve added and extrapolated the story is amazing! Our DM has done his best, but nothing compared to what I’ve read here. Keep up the good work, and keep posting it
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Awww schucks! Thanks Dawn Raven. I’m really looking forward to the Proving Grounds Encounter… this will be the most complex 4e encounter I ran since Play testing my Kobold vs the Whole Dungeon encounter from my Kobold Love adventure.
Hey guys,
Thanks for posting this type of stuff ChattyDM. It’s nice to read what other DM’s are doing with this adventure. My group just started the Well of Demons last Saturday and I can already tell it’s going to be fun. However, I’m going to need to increase the difficulty level of the dungeon since my group is now (surprisingly) level 9 after a rather lengthy (almost 8 sessions) detour from the main storyline: After the party finished the Horned Hold, I sent the group back up to the surface to hunt down some of Paldemar’s contacts which ended up being a huge section of the overall storyline. As of last session, the group managed to free Terlan Darkseeker from his curse by journeying down to the House of Silence and solving a riddle. In return, Darkseeker provided them with a map to Well of Demons.
I was surprised to find that the first encounter of the WoD (the room with the ropers, ghouls, and the squid monster thing in the well) actually turned out to be a difficult fight for the group and one of the most tactically strong battles for the monsters since I actually used the monster’s abilities to their advantage. For example, the ropers that were hanging from the ceiling managed to continually grab the Fighter and prevent him from tanking (he couldn’t attack them either since they’re only able to be hit with ranged attacks), while the phalagar (I think it was called) tied up the Warlord keeping him from getting close enough to his allies to use some of his better abilities, and the ghoul immobilized the wizard which prevented him from escaping to a safe distance for a good part of the fight. Overall it was a fun battle for me, and a frusteratingly fun battle for the players.
I’m definitely going to have to redesign the dungeon to cater to their high level though, and I also think I’ll pull out a few of the encounters. My group gets bored quick if there is nothing but room after room of combat, so I’m going to try to limit the number of enemy occupied side rooms to one or two at the most.
Anyway, just thought I’d share. Probably left too big of a comment though. 🙂
We’re about to start H2 ourselves.
I think I better stop reading these posts, but I can’t draw myself away! 😀
Lol! Go read last year’s logs… it was 3.5 stuff anyway 🙂
I’ll be done in a few sessions, then it’s all homebrewed stuff for a while.
Great stuff! Can’t wait to see how it wraps up.
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@ Z Adam Wolf: Damn I was sure I sent the reply before, That will teach me to work on multiple computers. Welcome to the blog and don’t worry about leaving long comments. I’m not called Chatty for nothing and enjoy reading all comments… no matter how long…
Funny, the encounter you describe went completely the opposite way (as you’ll see today) for our group.
@Ron: The second part is up!