Sadly this will be in no way, shape, or form Halloween related.
Dragon Mountain |
I foresee a few
different issues. I don’t currently have
a plan for getting a party to 10th level to start Dragon Mountain. Depending on the group I could certainly have
them start as 10th level characters, but I wouldn’t want to do that
with relatively inexperienced players. If
I do start them at 1st or low level, then I’ve still got to actually
get them to 10th 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 5th 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 10th 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.
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