My N1 Campaign Prep

[Beoric]

I thought I would kick around some of my prepwork, and things I am working on. Mostly because things are pretty quiet around here, but also because writing it out like this may help me notice flaws in the design.

The campaign is for a group of people I have never gamed with before, but know from other contexts; I think most of them have played a session or two of various editions of D&D, but not more than that. I'm assuming they are used to more of a Trad/NeoTrad playstyle, which is why I picked N1, which has a lot of elements pointing in the direction of adventure.

I want to start the campaign at first level, partly because that's how I prefer to do things, but also because for 4e noobs it's best if they start with as few combat options as possible on the character sheet. The thing is, first level 4e characters don't have access to most of the utility magic that first level characters have in every other edition; they don't get that until second level. So I am converting N1 on the assumption that there will be 7ish PCs of second level, which means I need something for the players to do at first level. So I am putting them through the incomplete sample monastery dungeon at pp. 94-6 of the 1e DMG.

I was going to write more about the setup, but I got interrupted by kids and have run out of time for the evening.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

So I am putting them through the incomplete sample monastery dungeon at pp. 94-6 of the 1e DMG

You ought to check out some of the many published adventures written for that map. In the past, I was tempted to run a converted Dungeon of the Fire Opal, which is a 3e adventure from Dungeon Magazine #84 (you can find a copy on Google, though I believe it is for levels way above what you're looking for). Just never had the time.

 

[Beoric]

You ought to check out some of the many published adventures written for that map. In the past, I was tempted to run a converted Dungeon of the Fire Opal, which is a 3e adventure from Dungeon Magazine #84 (you can find a copy on Google, though I believe it is for levels way above what you're looking for). Just never had the time.

I've pretty much got it keyed now, just cleaning up some details, and need to finish treasure placement.

So, background, some of it not player facing. Gods in Eberron aren't walk-the-earth types, no-one has ever met them, and their existence is purely a matter of faith. Even their angels can't actually claim to have met the gods or communicated with them. Angels, other celestials, and fiends are incarnations of concepts, and don't really have free will, because they always act consistently with the concepts that they represent. There are very rare instances where an incarnation can change, but that just means they are changing the applicable concept, and it can completely change their nature. For example, a fallen couatl becomes a rakshasa.

A fallen angel becomes a "radiant idol", and is cast out of the heavens to the material plane. It is the nature of radiant idols that they want to be worshipped by mortals, and they can charm mortals to follow them. Radiant idols also lose the ability to fly, and no creature can fly within 30 feet of them; this is usually accompanied by a symbolic change to their wings, which may have weights affixed to them, or be nothing more than bloody stumps, for example. Radiant idols embody a twisted version of the concept that used to define them.

Arawai is the goddess of agriculture, love, fertility, and weather, and is an obvious substitute for the goddess Merikka in N1. A former angel of Arawai's that has become a radiant is a good substitute for the titular Reptile God because they both want to gather followers, have a strong charm ability, and are about the same power level. So the BBEG is a radiant idol who styles herself as the "Lady of Love and Life", but is actually a twisted version of those concepts. Through the charm, she compels her followers to love her and only her, which is why you have parents feeding their own kids to crocodiles if the kids resist the Lady's charms (N1 actually has a few pretty dark bits). And whereas Arawai represents life and fertility specifically in the realm of agriculture, the Lady has her lair in a swamp, which has bountiful life, but not the kind of life that Arawai typically represents. It is also why her priests create undead, which are a mockery of life.

Also, the Lady's wings are putrid, rotting things, which she covers with an illusion. Her worshippers wear holy symbols in the shape of an angel with particularly respendant wings, rendered in exquitise detail.

As in the original module, the cult is not confined to Orlane, but has quietly spread out into the countryside. The players will likely learn of its existence before they get to Orlane. They might guess that Orlane is the center of it becuse that is where the adventure is guiding them, but there won't be any hints connecting it to Orlane.

(Bryce, don't yell at me over the length of that, I'm not editing this stuff for publication.)

 

[DangerousPuhson]

(Bryce, don't yell at me over the length of that, I'm not editing this stuff for publication.)

You only get three sentences, then everyone instantly dies of boredom. WotC did a study, you know... [link not found]

 

[Beoric]

You only get three sentences, then everyone instantly dies of boredom. WotC did a study, you know... [link not found]

Like I said, most if it isn't player facing. What is player facing is the teaser sheet I posted a while ago, should they choose to read it, and "Tommy fell in a hole, go get him."

I'm indulging in two railroads in this project. Timmy fell down a hole, and after that is resolved, some (probably multiple) reason to go to Orlane.

 

[Beoric]

The player teaser/intro document I mentioned above. No, I don't think anyone will read it, it was as much to get me into the right frame of mind as anything else.

Each of you heard some version of this story in your childhood, from parents, grandparents, teachers, storytellers and bards:

In the beginning, the first age, the Age of Dragons, there were the three progenitor wyrms. Shining Siberys was the source of all magic; Verdant Eberron was the fountain of life, and Shadowy Khyber was the master of secret knowledge, and of the powers that lurk in the darkness.

Together they created the planes of existence, each one to embody a concept; and the final plane, the Material Plane, was to be a place where all ideas become manifest: war and peace, life and death, order and chaos. And so together they made the Sun, and the Moons, and Golden Siberys made the Stars. But Greedy Khyber, who wanted dominion over all things, began to eat the stars as quickly as Siberys could make them.

And so they argued, and Khyber struck Siberys without warning, and tore him asunder, and scattered the broken pieces of his body among the stars he loved so much. And you can still see him, up in the sky, in the white gold band that rings our world.

Then Khyber turned on Eberron. But Khyber was spent from their battle with Siberys, and Eberron was fresh. And rather than slay the Betrayer, Gentle Eberron embraced them, and folded them in her coils, and held them until they were quiescent.

And then Eberron called on the powers of life, and gave birth to soil, tree, and ocean, to me, and to thee, and so she bound Cruel Khyber for the protection of all creation, in her loving embrace, until the end of time.

Is this truth, or metaphor? Nobody really knows. But is true that the Ring of Siberys is a source of great magic. And it is true that the world of Eberron sustains us.

And it is also true that, beneath the surface of this world, in the underworld that we name Khyber, great evils are spawned. Devils and demons and tiger-faced fiends come to the surface, to terrorize, and seduce, and corrupt. And it is true that the depths are a place of malevolence, where even the stone you walk on and the air you breathe will seek to hinder you, and to aid the fiends that hunt you. There is a reason that when we dig into the earth, we are careful not to dig too deep.

But sometimes we have no choice.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You are all from the same village, in the foothills of the Greywall Mountains, close enough to the monstrous nation of Droaam that you must be prepared to fight off raiders and monsters from time to time.

But the Last War was not kind to your village. Though there has been peace for two years, most of the fighting men and women of your village never returned. So when danger calls, the villagers turn to you to address it. Though some of you, whether young or old, are scarcely trained, and the old warriors among you have had your skills atrophy through age and long years of disuse, you are the best your village has to offer.

This afternoon you learned that little Tommy Carter, who never refused an offer of mischief whenever it presented itself, was playing with some friends up by the ruined Abby – where they knew they were not supposed to be – and the earth opened up under Tommy, and he fell into the depths.

And the village expects you to go find him.

 

[Beoric]

TL;DR for the above post, a kid was playing up near the ruined Abbey and fell in a sinkhole. I made a new room for the Abbey Dungeon, room 40, which is found on a branch corridor between areas 1 and 3 on the dungeon map. Room 40 has a corner near the underground stream, and it is erosion from the stream that caused the sinkhole.

The villagers have sent kids to round up the party, and have brought them to the old abbey ruin. They hauled up an old derrick to help people in and out of the hole, and have brought what bits of adventuring gear they can scrounge. The players each get basic gear, and there is a list of other stuff available if any of them want to take it.

Here is a pic of the area around the sinkhole. The larger red rectangle is not visible to players, and marks the edges of room 40, below. The small red square is the actual hole. I had to crop it tightly and reduce the resolution significantly to post it here because of the limits on pic size. Beside it is a part of the dungon map showing the proximity of room 40 to rooms 1, 2 & 3.

 

[Beoric]

Here is a player view and a DM view of room 40.



You can see that water from the river is seeping into the room. The door opens inward and it's movement is partially blocked by the rubble from the sinkhole. Eventually the entire ceiling will collapse, and rubble against the door will prevent the PCs from exiting this way. The area is very muddy, and if you look to the east of the door you can see Tommy's muddy footprints leaving the room.

Room 40 is a storage room, and there are a few items that may be of interest, like lanterns which are better than the torches the PCs brought.

The arcane diagram in the DM's view is a teleport pad, which allows me to "summon" PC tokens from the map of the Ruins above.

 

[Beoric]

For those who don't know, the triangles mark areas of difficult terrain. Moving onto terrain marked by a single triangle takes 1 extra point of movement, and moving onto terrain marked by a double triangle takes two extra points of movement.



This shows how movement is tracked by the VTT. It costs 1 point to move into the space with no triangle, 2 points to move into the space with a triangle, and 3 points to move into the space with two triangles. The white lines shows the area that the token can "see", and if this was a real player map instead of a simulation, the areas outside the white lines would show as black (if the token has never seen them), or with a semitransparent grey mask (if the token has seen that area before).

The faded reddish circle shows the area that is naturally lit from the opening above. When the PCs first descend, that is all the humans and halflings are going to see until somebody lights a torch; elves and dwarves see an area with twice the diameter. I might show you more about how vision and lighting works in a later post.

 

[Beoric]

Rooms 1, 2 & 3 are already keyed in the DMG, so I am not going to go through them. However, I do want to show you how I put the key on the map. If I click on the number "1", a popup displays information I cut and pasted from the DMG:



"1-Torstan noncommercial" is the name of the "1" object, and since I'm showing it here I should probably put some copyright information in this thread at some point. I can change the name to something more descriptive, but I don't usually bother. The "1" isn't visible to players, so only I see this information. For objects that players can see, I can put both player information and/or DM information; if a player clicks it he sees player information, whereas if I click it I see both.

Note all of the spider tokens are obscured by a grey mask. That is a reminder to me that none of the spiders are visible to the players (because they are hiding in the webs above).

 

[Beoric]

The random encounter table on p. 94 of the DMG indicates there are bandits in areas 4 & 5. The problem is, there is no exit from the dungeon available to the bandits that doesn't involve getting past the spider. So I decided what happened here is the bandits entered the dungeon not knowing that the spider was there, were attacked by the spider, and fled down a side passage, leaving behind one of their number. So they are hiding in room 4, freaking the hell out about the spider, and trying to figure out how they are getting out of the dungeon.

Here is the DM map, Player view without Fog of War, and Player map with Fog of War (which is how the players will see it):



The secret trapdoors on the floor of 4 & 5 are not known to the bandits. Room 5 is an old treasure room, mostly cleaned out by previous occupants of the abbey and/or dungeon, but with a little coin left as well as a couple of magic items. The coins are in low denominations; I like the idea of heavy treasure, but dislike the idea of a coin weighing 0.1 pounds. So I use more realistic 0.02 pound coins, but I convert it to the next lowest denomination. So the 375 gp and 500 sp that I would have placed here are instead 3,750 sp and 5,000 cp.

These bandits are actually cult members, with nothing to mark them as such. According to the key on p. 94 of the DMG, room 24 contains ghouls, area 27 contains skeletons, and rooms 35-37 contain an evil cleric and hobgoblin flunkies. It was an easy decision to make the cleric a member of the same evil, undead-making cult as will be found in Orlane. Hobgoblins don't work in-setting in this context, so I changed them to bandits who had been "converted". The bandits in room 4 are part of the same gang, but took the wrong entrance and are now stuck. They are afraid and will accept help getting out of there, but will absolutely betray the party if they think they can capture them. Any survivors from this encounter will likely show up in the cultist dungeon at the end of N1.

 

[grodog]

So I am converting N1 on the assumption that there will be 7ish PCs of second level, which means I need something for the players to do at first level. So I am putting them through the incomplete sample monastery dungeon at pp. 94-6 of the 1e DMG.

One of my favorites!: https://grodog.blogspot.com/2018/10/module-challenge-day-6-dmg-monastery-dungeon.html and https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=266815#p266815 and https://grodog.blogspot.com/2020/02/renovating-the-monastery-in-greyhawk-part-1.html and https://doomsdaygames.proboards.com/thread/561/dmg-monastery-adventure?page=6 (yes, it’s a mess spread out over multiple threads and sites ).

Allan.

 

[Beoric]

Given that the bandits left behind one of their number in the spider's lair, I have added a bandit, somewhat depleted of hit points, trussed up and concealed in the webbing that covers the ceiling. If the webs get torched, so does he.

I decided that the spider venom served as an antidote to the radiant idol's charm. Horus (the bandit) is no longer controlled, but also remembers all of the terrible and illegal things he did while charmed (an a fair number from before; he is a bandit, after all). So Horus might tag along as a hireling if he thinks there is profit in it, but is not going to reveal anything about the cult, or his time win it, without leverage. And he definitely won't be going back to Orlane if he has any choice in the matter.

I doubt the players will end up accessing any of this information, but it is there as a reward for clever play if they figure it out.

Also, thanks @grodog for the links, it was an interesting read!

 

[grodog]

I doubt the players will end up accessing any of this information, but it is there as a reward for clever play if they figure it out.

Definitely fun!

Also, thanks @grodog for the links, it was an interesting read!

I’m glad you enjoyed them.

I’ve also run N1 as a Lovecraftian scenario, in case that might be useful food for thought:

- replace trogs with deep ones
- replace townie cultists with CE monks (at the time I was using Dragon #53 monks, but I still tweaked their powers further to be non-Euclidean and otherworldly)
- change Explictica Defilus to a dark naga (see Creature Catalog #1 in Dragon #89)
- add a shoggoth to final encounter

The party I ran it for was definitely higher than N1’s suggested level range, probably 5th-6th-ish.

Allan.

 

[Beoric]

The dice said Room 6 was empty, and I like to have a few retreats so I left it that way. Moving on to #7 & #8, the DMG random monster key for the Abbey Dungeon said there were goblins here, so, Goblins!

Goblins aren't necessarily an enemy in Eberron; there are a lot of goblins who are citizens of the nation where the campaign is set (Breland, in case it comes up again), but most of them live in slums in the cities, would be pretty rare in this area, and are somewhat integrated into society. But the "nation" to the west (Droaam) has goblins (among other things). Droaamish goblins are culturally distinct from Brelish goblins; most of them band together with kobolds to protect each other from everything bigger that lives in Droaam, from orcs to minotaurs. So, Goblins! And, Kobolds!

A few more rolls. I pre-rolled the reaction checks, and rolled on my "what are the monsters doing" table: fighting other monsters, so Zombies!

Here are the maps:



DM view only. Looking at this, I think I need to add more zombies. The goblins (and kobolds) in #7 are bracing the door (which opens inward) to keep out the zombies. Their reaction to the PCs is neutral, leaning slightly positive; they have had run-ins with the bandits. That "A" object contains a reminder to me that the zombies are eating dead kobolds.

These are Mabaran zombies - that is, the energy that animates them is drawn from the plane of Mabar, the Endless Night, which drives them to consume all life. These are distinct from Dolurrh zombies, which are animated by energy drawn from the plane Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead; Dolurrh zombies are not driven to kill, and generally try to either re-enact the routines of their life, or try to settle some unfinished business that they can't quite remember.

The goblins in #8 are actively fighting zombies; their reaction to the PCs is neutral but leaning negative. The green zone is a "Vexing Cloud" cast by the Goblin Hexer, a swirling mist that jinxes enemies. Right now it is a drawing on the map, but I should probably change it to a token because it is supposed to be able to move.

If the encounters go that way, these goblins have some limited personal treasure calculated using 4e standards. The bulk of the treasure, using 1e standards, I put in the treasure room (#29).

 

[Beoric]

I added a bunch more zombies to areas 7 & 8. The next few entries don't have a lot going on, so I'm foregoing maps.

Area 9 has a trick. I have a generator on a spreadsheet that randomly assigns three trick attributes from Courtney Campbell's "Tricks, Empty Rooms, & Basic Trap Design". I can't remember what the attributes were, other than teleportation, but I ended up with a room with a bunch of empty bookshelves and a a wardrobe. The map indicates a concealed door here, so I have a bookcase in front of it. If you get in the wardrobe and close the doors, it transports you to the surface.

Areas 10 and 11 are prison cells. The floor in one of the cells is strewn with dirt; under a flagstone is a small box containing three pale blue gemstones (500 gp tourmalines).

I haven't been talking much about the treasure in here, but one of the things I like to do is describe the gems rather than state the type and value. Unless players have something in their background or build that implies they would know something about gems, the odds of them successfully guessing a low, so they have an incentive to find an honest jeweler, or at least an honest appraiser. For items that the players haven't figured out, I give them a code - module/location/room - so when they want to sell something or try to figure out what it does, I have a reference point.

Areas 12 & 13 are fire beetles according to the DMG text. Those in area 12 are aggressive, the beetles in area 13 are friendly.

Area 14 is a flaming burst trap. The dangerous areas are covered in soot. The trap has a magical proximity trigger which is tripped when more than one row of creatures is present in a danger zone at a time. Thus, several creatures can move across at a time if they walk abreast each other, but if they walk single file, as soon as the second creature enters the area, the trap triggers. The The maps are set out below.

The first map is the DM view, with the flame burst objects hidden from the players. The star off to the right is a token I use to attack and apply damage to creatures that get caught in the flames.



The second map is the player view, showing the soot marks on the floor.



The third is the the DM view again, but with the flame burst objects selected. You can see how it populates the "Selected" window with macros for each object. At the top of the window there is a "Common Macros" group that picks out the macros that the tokens have in common. If I press "Reveal" in the common macro group, it runs the Reveal macro on each token, revealing them all at once.



The fourth map is the player view, showing the flame bursts.



You may notice that the door on the left disappears in the player view. That is an artifact of viewing it from the DM screen. The "player view" is really a simulation of what the players will see. If I wanted to show you what the players actually see, I would have to start the server in the program I am using, and connect to that using either a different computer (which is generally what players will have), or start a second instance of the MapTool program and connect using that. (It is weird to me that I can have an application running a server on my computer, and a second instance of that application on the same computer connecting to that server through the Wi-Fi, but I guess that's what's happening). I would also have to add a PC token, which messes up the fog of war layer, which I would then have to reset...

TL;DR, the player view is really an imperfect simulation of what the players see, and the players would see that door that appears to be missing.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Damn, good on you for putting in the legwork - though it really reminds me why I dislike playing games online. So much extra prep. Macros and hidden tokens? Hard pass from me... I'd have just said the thing does what it does, and that'd be that. Imagination does all the legwork in my case.

I do find your documentation interesting. Keep em comin'.

 

[Beoric]

Damn, good on you for putting in the legwork - though it really reminds me why I dislike playing games online. So much extra prep. Macros and hidden tokens? Hard pass from me... I'd have just said the thing does what it does, and that'd be that. Imagination does all the legwork in my case.

The prep helps the games go more smoothly. It also helps combat go much more quickly, for an edition where there are legitimate complaints about how long combat takes. It's hard to schedule games, so there can be a lot of downtime between sessions; I have the time.

The time consuming part about the macros is figuring out how to program them. Once I have that down, I can use them over and over again very quickly.

This particular one didn't take me that long. I already had the black masks for the soot, so painting the floor was easy. For the flames, I just ran a search in my object library and dragged it onto the map. I dragged the "Hide" and "Reveal" macro buttons onto a flame object, copied the object, and pasted it five times. I changed the orientation of three of the flame objects. The combat macro for the attack/damage was very simple, assisted by macros written by somebody much more skilled than me, and took no time to write. In all, it took a lot longer to write about it than it took to set up the encounter.

I do find your documentation interesting. Keep em comin'.

Thanks!

 

[Beoric]

When I'm stocking a dungeon with multiple entrances I use a tool (4e specific and no longer available, or I would link it) which flowcharts dungeon areas and tracks accumulated experience. The chart assumes locations at the top of the chart are cleared before entries at the bottom. And it will draw a line wherever it is likely that the party will level; essentially, it says "if the party clears everything and gets all of the experience for these keyed areas at the top of the dungeon, the partly is likely to increase by one level.

When I have several entrances that are reasonably easy to find, I try to encourage exploration by making what is behind them relatively similar in terms of level of risk. What I don't want is to discourage exploration by demolishing the party if they don't use the most obvious entrance. So I treat all of the entrances as leading to the top level of the dungeon. So "deeper into the dungeon" doesn't mean a change in physical level so much as being the distance from the nearest readily accessible dungeon entrance. This is what that looks like for the Abbey Dungeon:

When I review the dungeon to prep, I focus on the first few encounters that are likely to occur for each entrance. As long as I have a general recollection of the rest of the dungeon, I find the first few encounters is all I really need, because after that I'm warmed up and have an easier time doing things on the fly.

The flowchart maps to an, er, map within the same program, so you can see the relationships within the dungeon itself. It helps me make sure I have the relationship correct. For instance, I can see that finding Tommy requires the PC to go through either 24 or 27 first, and I haven't taken those relationships into account.

 

[grodog]

If you have an old link for the tool, do please share it—it may still be available via the Internet Archive.
The tool reminds me a little of Gabor’s map flow analysis post from EnWorld these 20-ish years ago: https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeon-layout-map-flow-and-old-school-game-design.168563/

Allan.