Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

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Nox
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Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by Nox »

Hi all,

I'm gonna run the great conjunction adventures with my group (with some sort of sub-quests and stories). I'm not the kind of master who play 1 adventure per time, i could open up lot of stories and make the meet a lot of NPC's.
I'll set my personal thoughts and my abitudes as SPOILER to make the topic clearer.

I have some questions for those are more experienced than me at DM-ing:
1) There are 3.5 versions of the adventures about great conjunction?
2)Since I'm not gonna play only those adventures but i'll mix them up with other ravenloft's stories and NPC, do you have any advice to make this works?
VIEW CONTENT:
Usually I build my own adventures and let my player live my "world" like the real world: there is no railroad to follow, they can do whatever they want and get the consequences. For this reason i find myself a little lost in the process of building adventures around a pre-made adventure. They dont have to follow the evil vampire into his lair to save the young child, but if they decide to do something else, something bad will happen to the young child, and maybe he will come back looking for revenge as a vampire. I usually not tend to give them too much questlines so they can complete every story without the need of chosing between two or more, since i feel it would be wrong. Although sometimes a difficult decision about "who to save" can improve the immersion and make the player actually feel real suspence, I tend to not abuse this kind of situations since they(the situations) will lose their effectiveness.
3) How would you introduce them to the great conjunction theme and how would you describe the beginning of the campaign? Consider that my player know little about ravenloft themselves and tend to not read much on the handbooks, so I'll have to explain them the situation at the moment they start playin and somehow introduce them to this event (the GC), so they will see the difference between before and after the GC. Also most of their characters come from Faerun and so, only those who are from ravenloft can actually know something about the Great conjuction.
VIEW CONTENT:
My biggest problem with ravenloft is that it "have to be" mysterious, and books advises to not tell too much to the player, but i usually struggle in finding what is too much and what is not. They should of course have some idea about what they know and why they get involved in such a big catastrophic events after all... I know the basics of the great conjuction story (and I will learn the rest before the campaign starts) but I wonder how much do the player know, and how they could've learned that informations.
I will follow the adventures in order, as suggested in fraternity's FAQ about GC. We will start with Night of the Walking Dead. I read a lot of goods about this adventure and i'm really excited to play it. Some advice about it ? maybe the community have a version adapted to 3.5 or something similar!

Before you reply to me I have to say that i still have to read the entire adventure, so If any of my questions are answered in the adventure feel free to tell me and ignore them.

Thank you in advance, every advice will be apreciated, and if you have something that you think may help me run this campaign feel free to express your thoughts.


Edit: I was looking around for the adventures and find out many of them are available, and some of them differs from canon). Specifically i found the Kargatane night of the walking dead, who suppose hyskosa lived about 2 centuries ago and suggest to tell that hyskosa's tribe is part of the Manusa tasque (most likely canjar) so both events can coexists, since that tasque is capable of time-travel. Question is, which adventure do you think is the best, and are they that different? I think i'll go with the kargatane anyway but i'm courious about possibilities.
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thekristhomas
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by thekristhomas »

IMHO most of the Hexad are pretty sand boxy already, FoG in particular I have run completely openly, here's a quick run through with some thoughts

NotWD: If you open up the whole domain to exploration, then the PCs might miss the smaller plot in Marais D'Tarascon, you might let the would be domain lord build up his forces to the point where he is actually a threat to Misroi, as the adventure suggests he was planning

ToD: This one is a bit more railroady, in that the locations are limited (the valley of the pharaohs is inaccessible for most of the adventure and Mudar is only really the Temple and the Vistani camp) and because of that the PCs are almost always present, or nearby, when the time triggered events occur. I've thought that maybe instead of the valley being accessed on a specific date, the PCs would be more involved if there was a sub quest necessary to open it up, preferably away from Mudar.

SoH: Trapped on a cursed ship that transports you from encounter location to encounter location, this adventure could still be sand boxed, the sand boxes being both the ship, which the PCs are free to explore as per the adventure, but also the Nocturnal Sea could be added for the PCs to explore.

FoG: For me this adventure is a Gazeteer for Kartakass and I've always played it as such (if you ignore the lock up scene)

FtS/RoE: These last 2 are like a mini-campaign in their own right, but there's an important element in here relating to sandbox style campaigns and the GC, and that is the Minor/Major Conjunction charts that details the effects of the GC, wherever the PCs are. So if your PCs trigger the GC but then don't directly begin attempts to rectify that, then the GC continues
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by The Lesser Evil »

There's a couple of potential hooks you could use to get the PCs from NotWD->Touch of Death, if you are so inclined, both from Children of the Night: Werebeasts-

1) Abu al Mir, the werejackal fleeing from the mummy
(change the dates of his timeline a little bit, and switch him from Port-a-Lucine/Dementlieu to Port d'Elhour, adjust the mummy's cleric levels as you need to)
2) Have Sheneya hire the PCs in Souragne to go with her and find the artifact she's looking for, possibly pretending it's related to their own quest with the Scroll of Hyskosa

An adventure from Children of the Night: Vampires actually mentions that it might be good to run alongside NotWD. Check out "Myxitizajal".
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Nox
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by Nox »

Thank you both! One question: I was taking a look over feast of goblyns and I cant understand why Daegon has been a ruler so briefly. What did kill him?

I also do not understand the Hyskosa verse that mention him:

In the house of Daegon the sorcerer born
Through life, unlife, unliving shall scorn.

Could someone explain me what does it means ("Though
VIEW CONTENT:
I'm not sure if this is Though or through, since i found 2 versions...
life, unlife, unliving shall scorn")? what is the sign the player should recognize? A part "Daegon" ofcourse..
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by Skyrock »

Nox wrote:1) There are 3.5 versions of the adventures about great conjunction?
Nope. Unless you care about balancing encounters according to the DMG, it shouldn't be too hard though.

Specifically for Night of the Walking Dead, there was discussion on how to stat Madman Jean d'Tarascon as a viable encounter: http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... f=1&t=9140
(Solo bosses do much worse in 3.5 than in 2E, as the damage potential is greater and HP alone isn't such a comfy cushion as it used to be. That, and rogues do terrible in 3.5 without a flanking buddy.)

There is more if you search a bit. Especially NotWD and FoG are probably the most popular and best Ravenloft adventure straight after original I6.

One piece of advice for 3.5 NotWD I would give is not to start the characters on level 1. Lvl1 play is much too swingy for the many fights and tight schedule especially at the end of it. Chances are also good that the Zombie Lord will outright kill some of the low level characters with his Save-or-Dies, even if they play careful and use Protection from Evil and all the other precautions available at their level.
Nun gut, es sei dir überlassen!
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Und führ ihn, kannst du ihn erfassen
Auf deinem Wege mit herab.
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Nox
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by Nox »

Skyrock wrote:
Nox wrote:1) There are 3.5 versions of the adventures about great conjunction?
Nope. Unless you care about balancing encounters according to the DMG, it shouldn't be too hard though.

Specifically for Night of the Walking Dead, there was discussion on how to stat Madman Jean d'Tarascon as a viable encounter: http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/foru ... f=1&t=9140
(Solo bosses do much worse in 3.5 than in 2E, as the damage potential is greater and HP alone isn't such a comfy cushion as it used to be. That, and rogues do terrible in 3.5 without a flanking buddy.)

There is more if you search a bit. Especially NotWD and FoG are probably the most popular and best Ravenloft adventure straight after original I6.

One piece of advice for 3.5 NotWD I would give is not to start the characters on level 1. Lvl1 play is much too swingy for the many fights and tight schedule especially at the end of it. Chances are also good that the Zombie Lord will outright kill some of the low level characters with his Save-or-Dies, even if they play careful and use Protection from Evil and all the other precautions available at their level.
Ty for the answer,
I think i'll let them start at level 1 just because they'll get XP every session, i suppose they will reach lvl 4 by the time they will end the adventure, since as i wrote above the will have some side-ques, random encounters, and so on.
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by The Lesser Evil »

Nox wrote:Thank you both! One question: I was taking a look over feast of goblyns and I cant understand why Daegon has been a ruler so briefly. What did kill him?

I also do not understand the Hyskosa verse that mention him:

In the house of Daegon the sorcerer born
Through life, unlife, unliving shall scorn.

Could someone explain me what does it means ("Though
VIEW CONTENT:
I'm not sure if this is Though or through, since i found 2 versions...
life, unlife, unliving shall scorn")? what is the sign the player should recognize? A part "Daegon" ofcourse..
Here's the best interpretation I could find:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3398&p=51533&hilit= ... yns#p51533
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Nox
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Re: Need help/advices with Great conjunction Adventures!

Post by Nox »

The Lesser Evil wrote:
Nox wrote:Thank you both! One question: I was taking a look over feast of goblyns and I cant understand why Daegon has been a ruler so briefly. What did kill him?

I also do not understand the Hyskosa verse that mention him:

In the house of Daegon the sorcerer born
Through life, unlife, unliving shall scorn.

Could someone explain me what does it means ("Though
VIEW CONTENT:
I'm not sure if this is Though or through, since i found 2 versions...
life, unlife, unliving shall scorn")? what is the sign the player should recognize? A part "Daegon" ofcourse..
Here's the best interpretation I could find:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3398&p=51533&hilit= ... yns#p51533
Thank you very much, this is quite clear now
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