Tales of the Black Kingdoms: some GM tips

[Thamilon]

Hey all. Long time lurker, first time poster. Just thought I'd chip in with some of my comments since I ran this adventure with some pre-rolled characters I made in order to get the Howard virgins in my group interesting in the setting. Mission accomplished, as I'm now running them through Shadizar with the characters they made themselves.

Anyway, I had some similar concerns but I got around them this way...

1. The original intent of the lion encounter was to act as a coincidental event that would aid in drawing the players in to the mood of the game (through a sudden encounter) and to reflect that the beasts of the city are feeling the rage of the beast god.

Personally, I thought this was reflected quite well and indeed random animal attacks are such a staple of newbie D&D adventures none of my players thought much of it until later. (Oh, so THAT'S why the animals are going crazy!)

2. The opening attack by cultists does have precedent: they are trying to eliminate Artelios' allies from the Pride of Messantia; thus the captain is slain, and the cultists intend to do the same with all of the crew, including the PCs. The attack isn't aimed specifically at them....they just happened to crew on the wrong ship at the wrong time.

I found it helpful to make sure the party attempts to gather information while they are at the bar waiting for the Captain. Once you let loose with the gossip that people are afraid to go out at night and that men have been turning up dead and women being kidnapped, it establishes an idea that someone is intentionally scaring the populace... and given the effect that a fire would have on the docks (I remember the flavor text said something about it spreading quickly if it weren't for the bucket brigade), it can, at first, seem to be just one more act of terrorism by some unknown party.

Indeed, when my group caught Anubar (the thief sent by the Scarlet Hand to get the map) in the alley, they didn't ask what he was doing on their ship... they asked why he started the fire, not believing him when he insisted he had nothing to do with it.

4. The Map of the Second Adventure: The origins of this map were left intentionally vague. Personally, I imagined that the map was either a relic from an age long ago, in which the secrecy of the matter was less important, or a creation of an outcast from Atlaia, or a renegade perhaps...or even later treasure hunters who failed.

I wove in that later detail in my campaign, figuring the map was made by a group of thieves who found the temple, couldn't get to it because of the guards and just made the map for future reference when they came back with a mercenary army. Obviously, they never made it back but the legend of the map and what it lead to did escape.

5. On Kophethu: The intent of Kophethu is to provide an extra plot link to the later rebellious Stygian; I also see Kophethu as having been around for sometime in Zabhela, trying to figure out how to follow his expatriate target to a land for which he can find no maps or records. At some point between adventures one and two, he figures out that this Zebhelan noble has a map to said region, and so he sets about to insinuating himself in to Artelios' trust. As mentioned elsewhere, everyone mistrusts Stygians, and so the idea of his introduction in part two was to try and slip him in as quietly as possible, without too many chances for the PCs to kill him off in the first scenario due to justified paranoia... :wink:

Yes, I had that problem myself since one of my characters was a Kushite barbarian who had been taken northward by Stygian slavers and was now trying to fight his way home. By luck of the draw, (I had my players dice off for who got what character), he went to the one player who had read Howard's Conan works before and his first question when I introduced the character was "So how long before he tries to kill us?"

The way I got around the sudden appearance is that I spun it that Kophethu (a wise man of many talents) had been in Artellios's service for just over a year and was away tending to his master's business in another city. Figuring that Artellios organizing the caravan for Part Two of the adventure would take a few weeks, I had Kophethu show up during that time, at which point he joined the caravan and the party.

When it came time to explain what he was doing there, I went with the idea that Stygian's spy network is always looking for rumors of ancient treasures and that Kophethu was planted with Artellios for that reason - finding the renegade general pulling a Col. Kurtz was just a happy coincidence and not one that he had been planning to deal with, but one he was obligated to handle because of his alligence. No doubt all Stygian agents were dispatched messages to be on the look out for this kind of thing under the guise of letters from their sister or some such.

 

[Thamilon]

Heh. And in all that "what I did to deal with that problem" malarky I forgot why I wanted to post to this message in the first place. Oddly, nobody seemed to have any problems with Part 3, which is where I ran into my biggest challenge running this scenario. Thankfully I was able to BS my way through it and use the tried and true tactic of letting the players think of a solution for me as I threw out things to consider making them think I was actually telling them why it wouldn't work.

Anyway...one flaw I did notice in what I thought was otherwise the strongest of the three adventures - there is no provisions made for a party entering the Red Citadel through stealth and subterfuge. There's all manner of discussion for "If you fight your way in and are defeated, do this" or "If you try and talk your way past Haza, do this."

Bit disappointing that, after we are given a hook in Watabbi and the great adventure of going to the secret passage into the abandoned temple that there is little discussion about how a GM should deal with a totally covert approach. Give my group credit, they pulled this off beautifully thanks to some amazing rolls and taking what they got beautifully.

The party consisted of four 6 level characters - a Zingarian Pirate (female), a Kushite Barbarian (male), an Argosean Solider (male) and a Corinitian Barbarian (female). Noting that there were some foreign soldiders walking around along with a number of scantily or unclad females (the wives and concubines and servants of the high chief), the Pirate and Barbarian opted to strip down, give their weapons and clothes to the Solidier and then they just walked into the inner compound at near sundown, non-challantly.

Yep. The old Han Solo and Luke Skywalker "escorting the prisoner" trick.

Following Watabi's directions (at this point they were interested only in recovering the stolen scepter; not dealing with the slavers operating from the citidael) they made their way to the wizard's tower. It was unlocked but not unguarded as they encounter the wizard's manservant, who demanded to know what they wanted.

The Kushite took charge, saying that these two girls (both had high charisma) had been delivered to the wizard by the High Chief as a gift. He noted that the Corinithian was a particularly fine dancer and ordered her to perform as he and the soldier clapped out a beat. She had max ranks (I built her using the recomendations for female barabarians in Hyboria's Fiercest) and wound up getting over a 30 on her perform check.

I noted that the guard was less than impressed.

One player quipped, in reference to History of the World: Part One... "Now THAT'S a eunnch!"

Actually, when I expanded the character past the base stats for Haza's Personal Guard... I did put in a note that he WAS a eunnech and we ran from there.

Luckily, the soldier won the iniative round and his action was to take the women's weapons and hold them out. He had quick draw, so I ruled he was able to hand them their weapons since they were both 5 feet away from him. Before the eunnech could shout a warning to his master, the female Barbarian charged, critted and the rest of the party was able to finish him off.

Of course the noise got the attention of the sorceror upstairs, who immediately went to seal the trap door. Again, the barbarian female with the Run feat made the listen check to hear him moving and the spot check to see the flash of motion at the top of the stairs. Since she had the run speed and a base movement of 40 ft, I gave her a reflex roll to try and get up the steps and block the closing of the trap door with her sword.

Make a long story short, not only was she successful, but on the next round as the wizard was trying to cast Shape-Shifter, she critted again... which I decided negated any chance he had of concetrating to finish the spell. And the pirate, who was right behind her, finished the wizard off.

So the mighty Level 12 wizard and main bad guy of this campaign was slain by two naked women with swords. Gad, but I love this setting.

Of course after that, I didn't have the heart to tell them the scepter wasn't there (to say nothing of having no WAY to tell them that it was with the tribes of the North with the wizard dead) so I just decided to abort the rest of the adventure, have the scepter there in the tower and allow them to loot the place as best they could and then sneak back out in the night, still disguised as soldiers and slavegirls.