Running the Grand Conjunction

[Quinntonia]

So I have gathered all of the 2nd Edition adventure modules for running the Conjunction from beginning to end.

I have run my players through Adam's Wrath and it is drawing to a close, and I am planning to run them through all of the adventures leading up to the Grand Conjunction next.

So a couple of things:

1. They are between 5-6 levels to start, which seems high for some of the beginning adventures.

2. I am unsure how much work someone who isn't terribly familiar with the story of the Conjunction would have to do on the fly to run them out of order as suggested on this site, from lowest level adventure to highest?

3. I am running 3.5, any tips on conversion would be helpful.

[Garudos Celestar]

1. They are between 5-6 levels to start, which seems high for some of the beginning adventures.

As long as you're converting to 3.5, you can always tweak the levels as needed. The only adventure that could be a problem is Night of the Walking Dead, which was billed as levels 1-3... but note that a Zombie Lord is a fairly powerful challenge for low level characters, so it may not be as much of a walk-in-the-swamp as the label might indicate. Touch of Death is officially listed as for levels 3-5 (so your 5th level characters are on target), and mummies shouldn't necessarily be a push-overs for 6th level characters either.

2. I am unsure how much work someone who isn't terribly familiar with the story of the Conjunction would have to do on the fly to run them out of order as suggested on this site, from lowest level adventure to highest?

The only 2 adventures for which order matters are the final 2, From the Shadows and Roots of Evil. Otherwise, the events are independent from one another; just re-order the verses in Hyskosa's Hexad to match the order you plan to run the adventures.

[Dark Angel]

I always saw the necessity to transport the players from one adventure to another (i.e. domain to domain) as a major issue as I prefer not to use mist traveling and to physically do so would have them gaining major levels. Any other thoughts on bypassing this problem?

[Quinntonia]

Great question, I am planning on running "Walking Dead" right away, but they are in Lamordia....in winter. I'm going to have to use the Mists to get them into a swamp in the dead of summer. Hrm, maybe there is a way.

Now what about the posts I am starts to see as I explore with people claiming that some of the adventures in this series are completely broken? If I run them as written are my players going to think this is some kind of joke?

[Zettaijin]

I'm pretty sure there are reviews to be found here and there on the main site, with most being rather negative.

Ravenloft adventures were sort hit and miss at times, with more misses than hits with regards to the fabled Grand Conjunction series.

[Garudos Celestar]

Now what about the posts I am starts to see as I explore with people claiming that some of the adventures in this series are completely broken? If I run them as written are my players going to think this is some kind of joke?

Here's my overall run-down of the 6 adventures and their biggest concerns...

Only 2 out of the 6 adventures merit a Mists (or Vistani) transport, Night of the Walking Dead and Touch of Death. For a very creative idea of how to run one of them w/out Mist-napping the PCs, read Stu Turner's campaign version of Touch of Death, which takes advantage of the domain Scaena.

Feast of Goblyns and From the Shadows/Roots of Evil take place in the Core, and Ship of Horror can be run from any either of the Core's seas as long as you can find an excuse to get the PCs on a boat (over the course of Ravenloft history, Nebligtode has moved from Island of Terror to the Sea of Sorrows to the Nocturnal Sea, so just drop Graben Island wherever you want it).

Night of the Walking Dead: Solid adventure, and it's the one that generally gets the highest ratings. Big concerns tend to be random encounters that drop random magic items into the PCs' laps, but it's easy to take out the giant frogs. For a lot of people, the modifications otherwise tend to focus on expanding the adventure to include other details of Souragne that have been added since the adventure came out (involving Chicken Bone in some manner seems to be a popular recommendation).

Touch of Death: This is one of those adventures where the biggest problem isn't necessarily any of the specific events in the adventure or the setting, but rather an old-school attitude of "well, we're adventurers and we're stuck here; might as well get involved." There's not a whole lot of effort spent trying to justify the PCs' actions... it basically boils down to "react to these events, then go to the final dungeon for the showdown." It's an impressive final dungeon, Har'Akir is an evocative setting, and the PCs do get to learn a fair bit of the darklord's story, but there's just not a lot of exploration or chance to drive the story.

Feast of Goblyns: This adventure has a lot of really popular characters and moments, but like ToD, has a certain baseline assumption of "we're heroes, so if someone asks for help, we do whatever they ask because that's what heroes do." The biggest compalint most people have is Radaga's dungeon: she created a whole bunch of giant skeletons to decorate the place and sits in one of them as her throne (and she uses a similar motif when the action moves to the domain of Daglan). If there's any scene that the PCs are going to treat as a joke in the Grand Conjunction adventures, the showdown in Radaga's cavern is the most likely.

As a more meta-plot issue, Feast of Goblyns was the 1st Ravenloft adventure, and thus makes a big deal about the rules of the setting itself. In theory, by the end of the adventure the PCs could understand how domain borders work, be aware of the darklords (as a collective entity at least, and potentially at a couple of their identities), and involve themselves in both the creation of a new domain and its subsequent destruction. In terms of the Grand Conjunction overall plot, this isn't necessarily a bad thing (since the ultimate plotline of FtS/RoE will involve an attempt to dissolve the Demiplane), but be warned that FoG encourages a certain amount of metagaming that plays into some long-standing complaints about the Ravenloft setting in general.

Ship of Horror: This adventure tends to get a bad rap, but there are parts of it that I like. Its retrospective inclusion in the Grand Conjunction actually helps the adventure in my opinion. You see, the Hexad sign that is fulfilled in SoH is the recovery of the dead bodies that Captain Garvyn dumped into the sea to help him redeem himself... but this particular task actually gets completed fairly early in the adventure. The later portions (specifically the arbitrary confrontation w/ Morgoroth) are the parts that tend to get the most flak, but they're not actually necessary to complete the Hexad. My recommendation is to focus on the redemption part of the story; there's no reason for the PCs to actually go up against the darklord, and the PCs getting the chance to help a cursed individual avoid darklordship is a unique experience in the setting. In summary, my recommendation is to significantly shorten the adventure unless the PCs are really eager to go toe-to-toe w/ the Graben family or Morgoroth.

From the Shadows/Roots of Evil: As mentioned w/ FoG above, the climax of the Grand Conjunction deals heavily w/ the very rules of the Ravenloft setting, and there's a lot of "really?" coincidences and significant potential for these adventures to be very confusing w/out some railroading or OOC explanation. That said, the PCs do get to participate in one of the quintessential moments in Ravenloft history. Figure out another way to involve them w/out the Headless Horseman, however.

[Quinntonia]

Is there a central place where some of the fixes that are suggested can be found?

[Dark Angel]

Touch of Death: This is one of those adventures where the biggest problem isn't necessarily any of the specific events in the adventure or the setting, but rather an old-school attitude of "well, we're adventurers and we're stuck here; might as well get involved." There's not a whole lot of effort spent trying to justify the PCs' actions... it basically boils down to "react to these events, then go to the final dungeon for the showdown." It's an impressive final dungeon, Har'Akir is an evocative setting, and the PCs do get to learn a fair bit of the darklord's story, but there's just not a lot of exploration or chance to drive the story.

I had some fun with this. I had a chronomancy spell gone awry and it sent them to Har'Akir where they run across a Vistani caravan toting along a young man (goes by the name of Rudolph van Richten) who is writing a book about the ancient dead. So the group (who didn't believe that the supposedly deceased doctor was real and fairly spry) went through the Chilling Tales adventure set in Har'Akir and then the Touch of Death Adventure. I don't think my two players understood what was going on, but I am trying to set up a moment or two with Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead and find their friend's names in there and find the year it was written almost 20 years ago. So they were entranced by the legend (before he was really the legend) and tagged along because of that. It worked well.

[The Lesser Evil]

There's some comments on the reordering of the modules in the FAQs (as an answer to one of the Grand Conjunction questions):
http://fraternityofshadows.com/FAQs.html

As an alternative to the mists randomly kidnapping and dumping the PCs, the characters could be traveling with the Vistani or Carnival. Perhaps they are chasing the Gentleman Caller, who intends to take advantage of the Grand Conjunction for his own mysterious purposes.

As an alternative, perhaps the Conjunction has drawn together the lands prophesized to play a role in it. Har'Akir and Scouragne could temporarily become attached to the core, or maybe all of the domains are ripped from their normal places and deposited into a temporary cluster.

To get around the Ships of Horror 20th level necromancer thing, perhaps every once in a a while the old grump Meredoth has to rejuvenate his aged immortality by immersing himself in the frozen ice for a long period. While he's doing the Han Solo thing, perhaps an enterprising illusionist snuck in, seized power, and created a simulacrum of him (perhaps using a scroll if 13th level is too high an illusionist level for your purposes). The surplus of ice and snow in Todstein seems to naturally suggest simulacrums.

The Dark Powers, amused by the antics of the illusionist, grants the simulacrum temporary lordship of the domain while the real Meredoth is on ice (either channeling Meredoth's intelligence [albeit still at reduced level] into the simulacrum or turning it into a dread construct). Now dealing with two evil, resourceful mid/high level wizards (the illusionist and his half-strength Meredoth simulacrum) should probably be pretty hard for the PCs, but it's certain more doable than a 20th level necromancer. If Meredoth-lite became a dread construct, perhaps a certain degree of animosity between the illusionist and his construct could be exploited.

[HuManBing]

I rejigged the GC a few times. I'm currently running an "Azalin's apocalypse" style campaign and I'm seriously divided as to whether to use the GC adventures are written at all.

There were certain problems I had with the adventures, but this was how I (sort of) worked around them:

1. Levels were out of order
Rearrange them into the order of increasing levels. However, this is a purely convenience issue, as the thematic content of the first four modules were largely irrelevant. Later on, I rejigged the difficulties of encounters on my own to re-order them. Lately I've switched to a game system that does not use levels to measure character progression, so this gives me significantly more free form control over challenge ratings.

2. Adventures were thematically unrelated
This, to me, was a far greater problem than the levelling (which you could fudge, albeit not easily, behind the GM screen). I rewrote the major theme of each adventure to focus more on a specific magical item that gave some insight as to the creation, destruction, or escape from the Demiplane. That would explain why each adventure is of scientific interest to Azalin, and it would also give stronger thematic continuity across them. It also leaves open the possibility that Azalin intentionally nudged the PCs towards collecting the various items.

This list has changed numerous times in the past few iterations, but here is what I'm doing with the adventures and the "MacGuffins" for Azalin:

• Feast of Goblyns: Crown of Souls - obviously very important to the creation, maintenance, and destruction of the domain of Daglan.
• Night of the Walking Dead: Julio's Glassman Amulet (see Tales of Ravenloft) - the item is a secondary mission objective and if the PCs don't collect it, one of the NPC allies eventually does. This item is much more related to the theme of escape (however unsuccessful) from the Demiplane. The Amulet itself is with an incorporeal undead creature, which marks it as clearly separate from the corporeal undead that feature in the rest of the adventure.
• Touch of Death: Some of Anhktepot's funereal vestments include religious papyrus wrappings. One segment of them is a hieroglyphic translation of a Scroll of Return. Again, Azalin would want that to aid in his research about escaping the Demiplane.
• Ship of Horror: This was the hardest to find something suitable. My final decision was that Meredoth had also conducted significant research into the Demiplane's physics, and Azalin was sending the PCs there to loot his findings. The PCs would be opening the way to his journals and books and notes.

In all cases, the actual item of importance was treated fairly lightly. Part of the idea was that the PCs could be pawns, so they'd know of the items as a sort of secondary mission objective, but if they failed to bring them back, Azalin had Kargat and other operatives who could retrieve them anyway once the adventure was over.

That leaves us with four items for four of the adventures. I like the idea of adding House of Strahd to the mix as a fifth adventure, setting them up for From the Shadows as the big reveal of Azalin's plan. At HoS, the PCs could be sent to recover the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind and the Icon of Ravenloft (as the fifth and sixth items - both crucially present at the creation of the first domain of Ravenloft). Even if they fail, as is highly likely, it sets up the time-travel component of FtS as an alternative method which not even Strahd can directly interdict.

3. Logistics of sending the PCs to collect stuff
In my campaign, I made a big deal out of Darkon's memory drain properties. If you start off your PCs as memory-wiped, or with weird confusing scrambled memories, then it's easier for them to accept a friendly organization as a mission-assigner. In my campaign, it's a trading guild called "L'Agence d'Affaires" (or "the Agency"), and they have various stockholders and clients who arbitrarily want them to do weird missions. Based on that, the Agency can much more believably say "Hey, we want you to go to Martira Bay with this Vistani woman (Dulcimae) and board this boat to Muhar in Har'Akir. Keep Dulcimae safe so she can guide the boat through the Mistways, and await further instructions at the Mahdi al-Kurr trading post".

4. Hyskosa's Hexad
I just ignored this. The poetry is stilted and it was clear the writers didn't coordinate well about what he verses meant. Even as a postfacto rationalization, it doesn't hold together well. I just went with Tarokka card readings at key junctures instead - the players liked those.


All of the above are personal canon, and make no pretension to objective quality or universal applicability. They may or may not work for you.