Happy Halloween - Let's Talk D&D

 Sadly this will be in no way, shape, or form Halloween related.  

Dragon Mountain

I keep turning over in my mind this idea of using both Dragon Mountain and Return to the Tomb of Horrors in the same D&D campaign.   Both are box sets published by TSR back in the 1990s for Advanced Dungeon & Dragons Second Edition.   Dragon Mountain was for levels 10-15 and featured the planes hopping mountain lair of a red dragon, plus the investigation leading up to finding the mountain.  Return to the Tomb of Horrors had suggest levels 13-16, but the one time I played in it the party was comprised of 20^th level characters and the adventure still seemed challenging.  So I’m thinking whatever level a party ends up at after Dragon Mountain ought to work just fine for Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

 

I foresee a few different issues.  I don’t currently have a plan for getting a party to 10^th level to start Dragon Mountain.  Depending on the group I could certainly have them start as 10^th level characters, but I wouldn’t want to do that with relatively inexperienced players.  If I do start them at 1^st or low level, then I’ve still got to actually get them to 10^th level, a not uncommon stopping point for many campaigns, before we can even start my apparent goal of this campaign. Then I’ve got to figure out how to transition from completing Dragon Mountain an adventure that really does feel like a campaign climax, to but wait there’s more here comes Return to the Tomb of Horrors.  Also I’d likely want to run this in 5^th edition, and both of these are definitely 2e adventures. 

Return to the Tomb of Horrors

 

I love the idea of Dragon Mountain, but there are some details I’m not in love with.  The whole first third involving investigating the Mountain and obtaining the needed plot coupons to move on (if I recall correctly a map and a game breakingly powerful magical amulet) has some issues.  The plot hook seems really weak to me.  A dude in a tavern is telling a story about a plane hopping mountain with a dragon horde in it, the adventure assumes the party will naturally want to talk to after hearing this tale.  Even assuming you get 10^th level characters to bite on this hook, the most obvious and logical path forward (the storyteller’s old adventuring companion who the storyteller explicitly identifies to the party as having been to the mountain ) is a red herring.   I’m not saying don’t use red herrings, but maybe give the party a win or two to get them good and committed to this investigation before dropping a false lead on them. 

 

I have some issues with the starting town as well.  I’ll concede these are mostly minor nitpicks that few players would either notice, or care about (but I’m definitely one of those few).  The starting town was supposedly founded (and the adventure assumes the party will learn all this as it has the above storyteller drops all this background on them before ever getting to the dragon treasure bit) by a guy running a ferry at a strategic waypoint on a trade route.  Then the founder managed to offend a powerful wizard who dried up the river to teach him a lesson.  And that is the why the town is in its current shape when the adventure starts, an otherwise unremarkable pseudo medieval fantasy village next to a dried-up riverbed with a rotting dock and ferry.  That just makes me wonder, if the river has been gone long enough for the dock and ferry to start rotting, why is this town not abandoned?  If the river has been magically dried up, why does the region map in the adventure show the village on the second biggest river in the region?  If this is supposed to be a waypoint on a trade route, why is the village not actually located between any two points of interest on the map (it mostly just looks stuck out of the way on the map, river access not withstanding)?  I know I’m probably overthinking this. 

 

I have also played with many players who would immediately latch on to this dry riverbed and wizard story as the plot hook and doggedly pursue it completely ignoring anything about a mountain with a dragon horde in it.  And frankly in most the actual campaigns I’ve run, that would be fine.  Generally, I don’t have any specific goal in mind for the players, I just throw stuff at them and see what they get interested in and expand on that.  I have no doubt I could come up with numerous sessions worth of content regarding a party learning how to and then actually fixing the river.  It’s just the point of this exorcise is I want to run a specific adventure here.

 

Then we get to the actual dungeon part of Dragon Mountain, and the main opposition the party would

face before getting to the dragon. . .  Tucker’s Kobolds (from a Dragon Magazine issue 127 editorial by Roger Moore).  There isn’t anything wrong with Tucker’s Kobolds in principle, when implemented by a GM/DM that knows what they are doing.  When it works, the DM remembers that monsters (even ones weaker than the party) want to survive, they want to win, and they know the place they live in much better than the PCs.  So it’s just a question of the DM running the monsters in a devious, tactically smart manner that takes advantage of the monster’s natural strengths and knowledge of their home turf.  However not every DM is all that tactically sound (I certainly don’t think I’m any kind of tactical genius), so the danger of Tucker’s Kobolds comes in two extremes.  When implemented poorly, either the much stronger party repeated steamrolls the weaker monsters (less of an issue in 5e where numeric advantage can be a great equalizer, but still a real possibility when the monsters always fight on the PCs terms), or the party has to suffer through a seemly endless barrage of DM fiat, unavoidable damage, all the other little power trips used by a DM to keep a party in their place (because otherwise the stronger PCs would just easily defeat the weaker monsters that again aren’t fighting intelligently).     So while Tucker’s Kobolds can absolutely be done well, I just don’t know that I’m the DM to do it justice. 

 

On the plus side the adventure does a pretty good job of giving you some ways of differentiating between the different kobold tribes in the mountain, and provides a handy chart of which tribes are allies and which tribes are rivals.  A canny DM could certainly make sure the party gets this information, and intelligent players can get a lot of millage out of exploiting different factions inside a dungeon. 

 

On the other hand, although I haven’t yet reread it to the same extent that I’ve been looking at Dragon Mountain, The Return to the Tomb of Horrors doesn’t seem to have as many issues.  So far, my biggest complaint is I’ll need to rename Moil the City that Waits to something else.  The problem is, and I’ve witnessed this in action as I’ve been a player in a campaign using this adventure, the presumed pronunciation of Moil, is quite similar to the presumed pronunciation of mohel.  In the campaign I was in every damn time the DM mentioned Moil, the flow of the game ground to a halt as the next two-three minutes was made up of various players (and I probably joined in) making circumcision jokes.  Every damn time.  I need to keep looking over the adventure, I have no doubt I’ll find other things, but for now it’s just I’d need to rename the city where much of it takes place. 

Surprise Post after a "Brief" Hiatus

 

Hello from 2022.  So been awhile hasn’t it?

 

I make no promises of any future posts, but really quickly here’s what I’ve been up to.

 

I moved from Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie, and from Eden Prairie to Saint Paul.  I’m still at that job I had just started back in September of 2011.  I greatly enjoy it.  After working eight years as a telephone operator in rural Minnesota (which wasn’t a bad job at all), and spending however long I spent working for CPP (a company that doesn’t even exist in the US any longer) trying to convince people to not quit their identity theft memberships they signed up for on their random credit cards, I find working for a company that manufactures actual useful physical products to be amazing. 

 

We mainly manufacture and sell variable-frequency drives and related products.  I started in customer service and a few years back moved to technical support of all things.  It’s great.

 

I still play WoW off and on (I tend to come back for an expansion, play a bit at the start and again a bit at the end).  I still play City of Heroes (thank you Homecoming) off and on.  I play the odd other video game off and on (Final Fantasy XIV for example) as well.

 

Still role-playing.  Ran a second BESM campaign set in Nayado using BESM 3^rd edition that ran for five years.  Enjoying D&D 5^th edition quite a bit, trying to DM when I can, and playing in a campaign as well.

 

I still watch the odd anime here and there.  Still read the odd comic book.  Still do most of the same things as before really.

Totally lost that game of chess back in 2011, but I'm far to lazy to go digging around in old Facebook posts to find the moves.

 

Until next time.