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Procopius
Acolyte
USA
2 Posts |
 Posted - 30 Dec 2024 : 15:54:10
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Hullo everyone,
In lieu of a midlife crisis involving fast cars (not much of a driver, really) or younger women (not terribly handsome or charming, get along pretty well with my very patient wife), I've begun collecting* AD&D 2nd Edition stuff, particularly Forgotten Realms stuff. Something about those boxed sets and all those maps, I reckon.
As a teen in the late 1990s, the Realms, AD&D, and Dragon Magazine all seemed the province of "the big kids", the gamers who'd been playing since the 1980s, or (whisper it) the late 1970s, an era before the advent of written history. I was never able to get into any of it then, a combination of parents who were okay with stuff like the Star Wars D6 RPG (if somewhat resigned to the fact that it meant no grandchildren—joke's on them, I've given them three INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE grandchildren), but not the clearly satanic Dungeons and/or Dragons; the fact that I had only a handful of friends to play with in school at lunch; and no clear conception of what books I even needed to buy to play the game (I"m actually convinced, without a shred of evidence, that this was one of the things that did TSR in, as it was hard for people not in the ecosystem already to know what they needed to spend their pocket money on, and two or three or more necessary books meant two or three or more months before you could play). But now I'm old and dessicated, my blood has turned to dust in my veins, and I can buy whatever I want as long as I'm cool with my kids paying for their own college educations. So I got a bunch of stuff: City of Splendors, Ruins of Zhentil Keep, Spellbound, the Volo's Guides, the Dalelands, Ruins of Undermountain, Elminster's Ecologies, Wizards & Rogues, Warriors & Priests, Powers & Pantheons (for my guy Hoar), Faiths and Avatars, etc etc.
Now, did I have a group of players standing by? Could I convince my old and widely-scattered gaming buddies to play? No, of course not. But you know, if I could, I'm ready to go.
This rather long and tedious preamble gets me to my actual question, for those of you still with me: published adventures aside (Doom of Daggerdale, incidentally, seems somewhat less fatal than Haunted Halls of Eveningstar), how do or did you handle low-level adventuring in the Realms? It feels like most of the creatures roaming about are vastly more powerful than the poor adventurers; and many of the foes are "just" powerful or comparatively-powerful humans existing outside of the traditional dungeons (which I love, in terms of setting design). Do the PCs just spend a lot of time hiding or running for their lives? Are they resigned to fighting rats until they're ready to take on the weakest members of The Black Network?
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"Any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
-- George Orwell |
Edited by - Procopius on 01 Jan 2025 22:47:28
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DoveArrow
Learned Scribe
133 Posts |
Posted - 31 Dec 2024 : 18:03:16
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I don't know a lot about 2E but the few games I've played in usually involved tomb plundering in the early stages of the game. It served two purposes:
1) You could get pit the characters against some easier challenges, like skeletons, zombies, and various vermin.
2) It allows the characters to acquire some treasure that they'll need to be effective against greater threats.
But yeah. Virtually every edition pits the characters against smaller threats in the early stages, like rats and the like. |
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Delnyn
Master of Realmslore
USA
1027 Posts |
Posted - 31 Dec 2024 : 22:49:54
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FR is also politics-friendly. While hunting rats or goblins, the party can build a reputation with potential sponsors. Membership in an established organization has its privileges as well as obligations.
The other point of slow pace easy combat is to acquaint the characters to the wider Realms. I would think it safe to say the PC's don't start knowing the Realms as well as their players. And if the players don't know the Realms well, diplomacy is far more conducive to a longer life than combat. |
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varyar
Learned Scribe
147 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2025 : 13:08:55
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Start small scale, as suggested, and local - have the PCs run through a few low level adventures in or near a given small town, let them establish connections with the local mayor/elder/priest, and then after they've gotten a couple levels, move them on to the next tier - their local contact suggests they get in touch with the mayor/elder/priest of bigger town/small city because they've proven themselves and can maybe help solve Third Level Problem over there. Just because there's a lot of powerful NPCs and factions in the Realms doesn't mean they're going to squash the PCs on sight.
Perhaps in stage one, they come across the local bully and have a few minor altercations. Then, a few sessions in at bigger town/small city, they run into the bully again. Except now the bully is part of a gang. And not just a gang, but a gang that does local leg-breaking for a wizard or priest of Bane, one who does a little work for the Zhentarim as ordered. And now the adventurers are on wizard/priest's radar, and eventually they come to the attention of the actual Zhentarim - but by that time, they've established themselves (and hopefully have made a few friends with influence and power). |
Out Now on the DMs Guild:
Cormanthor: The First Flowering:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/502169/Cormanthor-The-First-Flowering
Leira the Mistshadow:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/493852/Leira-the-Mistshadow
Vandria Gilmadrith, Lady of Grief:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/481871/Vandria-Gilmadrith-Lady-of-Grief |
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Delnyn
Master of Realmslore
USA
1027 Posts |
Posted - 01 Jan 2025 : 22:29:29
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In your Session Zero, I recommend screening out the murderhobos. They will get the other PCs killed through no fault of their own. The NPCs you may be afraid will squash you (and they most likely can) may turn out to be your reliable capable sponsors. FR encourages social interaction. Choose your allies and enemies wisely!
EDIT: I agree strongly with Varyar with regard to starting local and small. |
Edited by - Delnyn on 01 Jan 2025 22:31:13 |
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Delnyn
Master of Realmslore
USA
1027 Posts |
Posted - 19 Jan 2025 : 22:44:10
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| Any further news on your campaign? |
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Procopius
Acolyte
USA
2 Posts |
Posted - 19 Jan 2025 : 22:47:44
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quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn
Any further news on your campaign?
Yes, actually! The first session is tomorrow night; we're starting with The Doom of Daggerdale and hopefully going on from there. |
"Any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
-- George Orwell |
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Ozreth
Learned Scribe
206 Posts |
Posted - 13 Mar 2025 : 19:00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Procopius
quote:
Originally posted by Delnyn
Any further news on your campaign?
Yes, actually! The first session is tomorrow night; we're starting with The Doom of Daggerdale and hopefully going on from there.
How has it been going? |
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Steven Schend
Forgotten Realms Designer & Author
USA
1727 Posts |
Posted - 16 Mar 2025 : 17:38:44
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Just an FYI (which I may or may not have noted in Lands of Intrigue—I can't recall at moment), the generic D&D module I used when I started my first FR campaign was N3 Destiny of Kings, and with some tweaks to names and maps, I slotted it to the east of Tethyr and built Erlkazar from it.
If nothing else, it's another artifact from which one can find low-level adventures for the Realms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_of_Kings |
For current projects and general natter, see www.steveneschend.com
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LostSoul
Acolyte
United Kingdom
1 Posts |
Posted - 18 Mar 2025 : 14:21:50
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quote:
How has it been going?
Reasonably well! We just finished session 5 last night. I lost one player after session 4 due to limited time for gaming, but the remaining four players seem to be having fun and meshing well, and I like them all.
The group initially was:
A half-elven druid (departed after session 4)
A dwarven barbarian
A half-elven fighter with the swashbuckler kit
A half-elven dual-classed cleric/mage
A half-elven thief
Clearly the elves have been slumming in the Dalelands.
The first three sessions were focused on the Doom of Dagger Falls. In common with many other groups who played, the PCs went under the temple first and only decided to explore the abandoned dwarven citadel afterwards. I used Dungeondraft to make somewhat fancier versions of the book maps and the virtual tabletop tool Owlbear, which is bare-bones but largely bug-free.
Playing the module, I discovered that there appear to have been some errors that slipped through, e.g. Colderan and Eragyn's locations in his crypt don't seem fully defined, and the dungeon itself is rather small, even accounting for the 10-foot squares. I'm weak, and prefer to help the party out rather than wipe them out, so I had the nixie help them by reversing the current of the river to enable the party to make an end-run around the wall of thorns and take on Colderan in his lair, where the death of his familiar resulted in the mage-lord dying before he could even monologue at the players. Despite some initial confusion when the thief forgot that Eragyn was a priestess of Cyric and tried to give her the temple service of Lathander, all ended well, and the party left town feted.
The Eagle's Eyrie nearly did for them all, however; after the druid got them past the bear and the beastmen, the fire beetles nearly wiped the group out before they managed to triumph.
I altered the Dalelands a bit by having a temple of Lathander be at Anathar's Dell and having Anathar's tower be wrecked after a mutually-fatal battle with a dragon some years ago. This gave the PCs a place to return the temple service to, AND meant they could take the Brightblade dwarves their magic sword.
I wanted to use a smaller settlement with a temple of Lathander, because I was planning on running the skeletons adventure from the 1e Lords of Darkness. To sort of seed the field, as it were, I had the PCs stumble upon a walled homestead whose inhabitants had been killed by their own dead raised as skeletons by the adventure's villain.
When the party got to Anathar's Dell, they decided the wrecked tower was a dungeon to explore (whoops!), and were undeterred by the lack of a ground-level entrance, scaling it to enter it via the gaping hole on what used to be the ninth floor. This meant I was forced to design my own dungeon for pretty much the first time ever, and with liberal cribbing from the 1e Forgotten Realms introductory adventures and the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar for trap ideas, I worked out some maps for levels 8-6, which is what they went through last night.
It's not a large tower, and I tried to organize it logically; 8 was a sort of eating and common area with some healing potions hidden in a bolthole protected by a Lock Lurker (who promptly paralyzed the fighter when he stuck his finger in the hole it occupied while the others dithered about it).
7 was living quarters, a library (filled with an alarming number of minotaur-themed monster romances, which left the party very anxious about possibly running into some minotaurs with funny ideas) and a bedroom, containing a spare spellbook of lower-level spells, a wand of magic missile with three charges (only one left after the session). In the adjoining room was a massive gold orrery firmly affixed to the floor, the picked-clean bones of a previous adventuring party, and two huge spiders, who again paralyzed the recently un-paralyzed fighter.
Level 6, which was where the party stopped after I suggested to them that lower levels felt dangerously unformed, was an owlbear storage area with a single surviving owlbear. A one-way portal intermittently discharged very confused cows for it to eat, explaining its survival. It almost put the hapless fighter in the ground before being polished off via a combination of magic missile, rapier critical hit, and shortbow fire.
I think my DMing has been a little shaky at times as I still work to learn the system and what the party can handle, as well as how to design levels -- I'm much more used to theater of the mind. Happily, the players have meshed well and seem to be enjoying themselves, and I find a good group can carry a DM though many a rough patch.
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DMing low-level [2e] adventuring in the Realms
