Betrayer of Asgard

[enkidu]

Having GMed this adventure, I'd say that is was one of the best purchased adventure I've ever had the pleasure of running. I see a fair bit of concern in this thread about the flashbacks and all I can say is that they played beautifully for my group.

The adventure moves along very quickly, we got through it in eight sessions with lots of action/encounters every night we played.

There's no question that you can quibble about a few things in this product: the cover art is IMO pretty terrible, the maps are poor/nonexistent and I found the encounter areas numbers didn't always match up with the maps so I had to do a little extra prep lining things up.

But these are quibbles. What moves this adventure is the story and the encounters which are both wholly Howardian. The characters move though a variety of interesting challenges which includes a nice mix of skill-based, combat, role-playing, and arcane. Each session they can pick from a set of appropriate foreshadowings that do a nice job of putting the fear of Crom into the players' hearts. The overall plot is nicely laid out with the characters slowly gaining an appreciation of what's happening but with enough held back that the GM can watch in amusement as they blunder along just like Conan would do: spend a moment trying to make sense of what's happening, and then fall back raw action when brainwork inevitably fails. Effective use of a number of point-based encounters allows interesting, occasionally epic, encounters to be played through very quickly without bogging down in detailed roll-play.

I bought this product only in desperation after reading through trial (or trail?) of blood and feeling that is was just not good enough to run. In contrast, Betrayer was wonderful, I highly recommend it. To respond to other people's apprehensions about the flashbacks and the victory point scenarios, I had the same concerns when reading through the adventure. However I can say from experience that they worked well in practice.

 

[tarkhan bey]

Enkidu- Did you use the pre gen PCs or let your group use their own?

 

[Hervé]

****SPOILER****SPOILER****SPOILER****SPOLIER****SPOILER****

Actually they are not really pregenerated PCS, but past lives characters that are played in one flashback chapter only. This is the original party that stopped Logri the first time, some centuries ago.

The two flashbacks are a very nice idea. And no matter what some rigid minds might say, the first one works very well also.

Betrayers of Asgard has fewer supernatural monsters per page than Scarlet Citadel, for a start.

Now, that's "obvious nonsense", as you would like to say.

 

[kintire]

And no matter what some rigid minds might say, the first one works very well also.

Herve Herve! Surely you are not being rude! Also, you forgot the "In my humble opinion" mantra you were so fond of a little while ago. Surely you're not laying down the law? Isn't that what bad and nasty people like me do?

More seriously, the irony here is painful. My objection to the first flashback is exactly that it is too rigid. Its not badly written: it works great... IF the PCs follow the plot, and don't come up with a different plan.

Edit: Mild spoiler below

Now, that's "obvious nonsense", as you would like to say.

Hardly. I suppose if you count each member of the undead horde seperatly it does, but they are treated in the plot as a single menace. In any case the fact remains that the criticism that it has too many supernatural monsters for Conan ignores the fact that some Conan tales have loads of them.

 

[Demetrio]

Do they? I can't think of any Howard ones off-hand that have more than one or two sorts of monstrous creatures.

Betrayer has the following supernatural/monstrous beast encounters, 17 in all:

Giant Wolves
Frost Giants*
White Apes (including their 'god')

Undead Horde*

Water Nymph*
Ghost Bears*
Skull-Faces of the Air*
The Worldworm*

Manticore*
Stranglers of the Candle*
Horrors of the Pit*

Ice Worm*
Scarab Swarm*
Ashen Ghosts*
The Eater of Corpses*
Tentacled Things and Tentacled Horror*

Undead Manticore and Dead Dogs*

I've put * by the ones that are entirely supernatural or monstrous (as opposed to merely 'big creatures'). There's a lot. Even if we assume each of the six sections equates to one 'Conan Story' (rather than the whole extended adventure), there's just far too much supernatural. Most are well done, there's no doubt about that (only the manticore really stinks) but there are too many, it detracts from the Conan feel I think.

 

[kintire]

Compare with

half-demon
80ft poisonous snake
amorphous gelid thing that sounds like a woman
invisible Thing From The Well
horde of mysterious lurkers in the dark
the Yothga plant that eats thought and roots in hell
zombie
forty foot wingspan thing that is neither bat nor bird.
sorcerer transformed into eagle

in Scarlet Citadel, a short story.

 

[Demetrio]

As you are well aware, three of those things are not fought, or even evaded. They are not encounters in the same sense, merely manifestations of sorcery, which I omitted from the Asgard examples.

Deducting them, you're quite right, you have six encounters. But they are all connected with Tsotha-lanti's 'hell'. One place. Whereas many of the supernatural creatures in Asgard are independent of the main villain and are scattered like random encounters through the adventure.

It's fair to say that it is still a lot, and to my mind justifies a decent concentration of the supernatural in one or (maybe) two 'chapters' of Asgard, in places - like the 'dungeon' where such a concentration is more reasonable. But a horde of undead, and frost giants, and ghost bears etc etc... It's a marvel any Vanir or Aesir are left alive at all.

And some are just weak - especially the manticore. Some are great: the Worldworm, the brilliantly named Stranglers of the Candle and the assorted 'tentacled things', but for me their impact is diluted by the fact there are so many different monsters encountered in fairly quick succession and infesting nearly every chapter

 

[Mongoose Gar]

A lot of the Betrayer of Asgard monsters have a common origin, which I do think counts for something. All the ghosts are summoned or bound by... ghost dude. (Checks manuscript) Mimir the Wise, and the undead, manticore, Skull-Faces and Stranglers are all the result of Logri's magic.

I agree that Betrayer's got a lot of magic flying around, but I don't think it's too unHowardian. Just think of it as three 'Scarlet Citadels' in a row.

The next big adventure will be less occult, I promise.

 

[Demetrio]

But many of the best monsters don't have that common origin...

The Worldworm, the frost giants, man apes etc. They really are like random encounters. And that seems to demean them in a way. I feel they deserve more of a 'focal' status.

And I'm sorry but the manticore... yuck. What next? Griffins? Hippogriffs? Chimerae? Some 'other setting' monsters might translate well into Howard's world, but I thought manticore just screamed 'false'.

I thought the adventure was really well written and the flashback device a good one. And some of the ideas (like victory points, foreshadowing ideas and experience guidelines) should be standard from now on I think. It was really enjoyable to run, probably the mini-campaign we've enjoyed most since escorting the Giant's Cradle through Prax in the 80s... and certainly the only Conan adventure I've read to date where I was thinking how great it would be to run (not that any of the others have been bad, just lacked that wow! factor, at least part of which was down to the clever use of flashbacks, but also the way the thing was laid out really clearly for the GM, as well as the twists and turns of the plot).

 

[Mongoose Gar]

In retrospect, I should probably have done the manticore as a stitched-together, vat-grown abomination - the most successful of Logri's creations, but still a sorcery-wrought _thing_.

 

[kintire]

As you are well aware, three of those things are not fought, or even evaded. They are not encounters in the same sense, merely manifestations of sorcery, which I omitted from the Asgard examples.

What exactly is the difference between a "supernatural monster" and a "manifestation of sorcery"?

I am no longer sure what you are arguing. I thought you were saying that Betrayer of Asgard was out of step with the Conan background because that background had limited magic and supernatural creatures. That's a perfectly reasonable concern, but the plethora of monsters in Scarlet Citadel (and the less stark case in Hour of the Dragon) indicates that actually some Conan tales are pretty creature- heavy.

But if that's your argument, what does it matter if they are hostile encounters or not? You seem now to be arguing that Betrayer is bad because it has a different structure and narrative style to Howard. I'm afraid I have much less sympathy with that. Each writer has his own style, and a scenario is a different medium to a short story. I don't think asking scenario writers to emulate Howard's structure and pacing to that degree is reasonable. Not to mention the fact that Howard himself varied the story structure, of course.

The Worldworm, the frost giants, man apes etc. They really are like random encounters. And that seems to demean them in a way. I feel they deserve more of a 'focal' status.

The worldworm is a nod to Norse myth, which inspires the Nordheimers. the Frost Giants were encountered by Conan in this very region, and giant Apes are Howards single favourite monster. Giant Apes and man apes... they are all over the place.