Reavers Of Harkenwold Begins Sunday

Reavers Of Harkenwold:

About two weeks ago I finished making the maps for the Iron Keep, the place where the final encounters will take place in the Reaver's of Harkenwold. I'm excited at the prospect of running this final encounter, there are several ways to enter the keep and unfortunately, I can go back and re-run this encounter and try them all!

My current concern is baiting the players into the adventure, and creating a smooth transition between HS1 and Reavers Of Harkenwold. Some of my Eladrin characters aren't too easy to hook into adventures as the setting involves many humans, and their Eladrin characters are "too good to help the humans". Gold is always a good way to get the heroes in and I've decided to have Lord Warden Faren Markely of Fallcrest hire the heroes as bounty hunters. My players like to haggle, so I'm worried that they will up their price beyond the level appropriate levels.

I'm not a big fan of playing overland movement especially in 4th edition. It takes only one day to restore the party to full resources. So encounters need to take place in sequence over a period of one day to challenge the players and give them a slight chance of dying. So I'm opting to skip over traveling between Gorizabbad and Fallcrest. Though the players would have to pay to restore their rations and pay for rooms in Winterhaven Fallcrest. I do like hitting the players up for small coin here and there to add to the imaginations of the players.

Payment is a solid hook but there is always the question, "How much do I pay these players without unbalancing the game?"

After posting the synopsis on facebook, the players seem excited about the game, a good sign.

HS1: The Slaying Stone

The Slaying Stones Thoughts:

My players are just about to finish the module as I wrote this.

I found the module too open-ended. Often the players were left wondering what to do and the game slowed down considerably. I would have like to have more dungeon like buildings for the character's to explore. My players were new and did not understand skill challenges. 

I thought the stealth challenge could have been more straight forward. The players were puzzled how to go about the stealth challenge, enter an encounter, then still not set off the alarm.

I played this module twice, and in my previous group the party chose to attack the dragon to get the Slaying Stone, there was no option for a violent encounter with the dragon, and once players get to the dragon, the module doesn't suggest any sample text to set up the dragon.

The module could of included sample text to start off the conversations with NPCS. Characters needed more development, more sample conversation text.

I'm pleased the encounters used only the dungeon tiles and the two battle-maps included.

The two battlemaps only last for 4 encounters, unlike the Reavers of Harkenwold which reuses different sections of the same battlemap.

My most favorable memories of this module, were when the players argued over who got what treasure. The players decided to not trust the wererat, and not trust the Kiris Alkirk and Treona in the tower. I ended up introducing Dreus, by giving the players a sending stone but the players, but the players quickly covered it up before I could introduce Dreus as an angry sorceress, upset that she did not get the slaying stone.

All in all, its very open module, but it also feels like some standard things were left out. Because the module is very open, the ending can be very unpredictable.

I'm looking forward to playing the Reavers of Harkenwold, I plan to make Dreus a Sorceress of the Iron Circle.