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| Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth – J. M. W. Turner |
Something a little different today - I wrote a module! It is intended as a precursor to Rusthenge, giving the PCs a chance to get to know their home town a little bit and grow connected to it before being sent away from it. It is designed for 4 apprentices (level 0 characters with the "apprentice option"), though I ran it for 2 level 1 characters instead and it went fine. It's fairly short - I ran it for my partner (controlling both PCs), and it took about 3 hours.
The rest of this post is a bit of explaining my thought process, a bit of advice for running it - let's jump in!
Advice for Running
I tried to make the module as easy to read and run as possible, as I'll talk about later, but I want to start off with tips for GMs who want to run this module!
Character Creation
Level 0 characters are pretty fragile. I tried to make the threats in this module fairly manageable, and give plenty of healing resources/potential allies, but the game is undeniably swingy at these levels. Make sure that the PCs are aware of this! They only get Ancestry + Con HP at level 0, so those two numbers are much more important than normal. An Elf who dumps Con might get taken out by the storm in a single round! In addition, PCs might want to consider spell options like stabilize or rousing splash more seriously than they would otherwise.
If your players are new or aren't the most tactical party, you might want to consider giving them half their level 1 HP as a bonus (so a Fighter would get +5 HP, a Wizard +3, etc.), just to make things less swingy. That being said, the adventure isn't that scary, so most groups should be fine!
In addition, make sure to emphasize that the PCs grew up in a fishing village. They'll need skills that help them navigate the ocean! At the same time, it's an island with lots of small ruins related to ancient Thassilon, and curiosity about these elements makes a lot of sense for PCs. Rusthenge's backgrounds help with this a lot.
In terms of equipment, I would caution players against buying expensive tools like Healers Toolkits or Repair Kits - not only is this all or most of their money, but you might even want to let them know that the townsfolk will likely let them borrow these. I would also have Ordwi pay the PCs up front, letting them buy healing items or better armor before they set out. (I'd do the same once you start Rusthenge).
If you want to highlight how out-of-stock the town is, you might limit stock to a few sets of light armor (1 each of leather, studded leather, rattan, and quilted), a few weapons (2 daggers, a staff, a sling, a longspear, 2 spears, and a sickle), basic adventuring gear (a handful of adventurers packs, tents, etc.) and some consumables (3 minor elixirs of life, 2 drakeheart mutagens, a potency crystal, and 3 spell scrolls of a tradition the PCs could use).
Vibes and Theme
This is meant to be an wonder-filled coming of age story. The PCs are small fish in a big pond (or rather, storm-wracked ocean) who must contend with forces far beyond them! They must cross the storm, oust the mitflits, defeat the demons, and reunite two powerful elemental spirits who are kept apart by magic.
On the one hand, play up how scary things are! The crashing waves and crackling thunder, the pincers juuuust big enough to latch around their neck, and so on. On the other hand, play up how beautiful and wonderous the world is! A random merfolk or less sentient creature might help them out just because they need help, the ocean and skies hide incredible secrets, and the ultimate resolution to the story is one of love reunited at last.
This adventure should feel like exploring a brave new world, and should instill in the PCs a love of adventuring and a confidence in their abilities that will serve them well in the tougher challenges beyond!
Adjudicating Plans
Hopefully, the limited options available to the PCs at level 0 along with their general fragility will lead them to come up with options other than fighting! Make sure to reward clever ideas with easier checks or automatic successes, even if it seems like it would bypass things too easily. Every NPC is a potential friend (other than the Fuath Gremlin or the Quasits, and even those might be trickable or scare-able). Every detail is a potential solution (with a clever enough idea).
The Elemental Gems
At the end of the module, I give PCs two items that are way too powerful for their level! This is on purpose, and comes in part from my affection for the OSR style. Either of these gems could potentially be used to win basically any encounter in Rusthenge - but only if the PCs can come up with a good enough plan!
I intentionally put some fairly severe restrictions on them. The blue gem requires the PCs to be near an ocean or other large body of water (I would personally let the lake in F10 count, though the PCs will still have to draw their foes to it and thus it's useless against the final boss), and the white gem can only be summoned under the open sky (and thus not inside a dungeon). To make these work, PCs will have to set up ambushes, draw foes to them, or otherwise dictate the terms of engagement. My hope is that giving them items so powerful but with such significant restrictions will get the PCs thinking laterally about creative ways to approach things!
I mentioned this briefly in the module as well, but I want to hammer home that these gems should feel powerful when they are used! Whenever they are used! The actual elementals that the PCs reunited are probably like level 15, so even at high levels it's very in character for them to send meaningful aid. I recommend having the elemental be the higher of level 5 or 2 levels lower than the party. This way, at higher levels, the elemental is still meaningfully helpful, but no longer simply wins an encounter.
Designing This Adventure
I had a lot of fun writing this adventure, both in terms of theming and in terms design. There were a lot of things that I tried to balance in writing this.
Foreshadowing
I wanted this adventure to directly tie into Rusthenge without being too similar. Ordwi is again the quest-giver, but she's not an Elder yet, just an important member of the town. The rust quasits escaped from Rusthenge, emerging after a long slumber and wreaking havoc among the Boggards, causing them to send Gurga to investigate (though she's still an apprentice). The Swordfish has not yet been commandeered by Meitremar, and it turns out its captain is super nice and chill (if gruff on the outside), giving the PCs just a bit more motivation to delve into the depths of Rusthenge!
There are lots of questions unanswered. Why did the quasits awake now? What was their ultimate goal in completing this ritual? Why was this shrine here in the first place?
I personally like leaving non-essential questions like this open-ended, allowing the GM to fill in gaps as they please or even just letting the mystery go unsolved, leading the world to feel deeper and more complex. However, I acknowledge that some GMs might want answers, so here are some ideas you can steal if you want! Note, these are not cannon unless you want them to be, and your answer will probably be just as good.
- One answer, if you are going from Rusthenge to 7 Dooms for Sandpoint, is that the Red Baron is behind it all! In this case, make sure to seed a red seagull watching the PCs at various points. The Baron might have freed the quasits and tasked them with performing this ritual, intending to let them draw fledgling heroes to them that he might be able to exploit.
- Another answer might be that the quasits are trying to harness the power of the storms to free their master! Could this work? Probably not, but perhaps they were familiars of Theiltemar seeking to continue his work, and thought the connection of both the shrine and the dungeon to Belimarius might allow a transfer of power. Maybe they even have notes hinting that Belimarius created a bigger complex nearby?
- In terms of how they got out, maybe it was Gurga's fault, and that's why she got sent here! Maybe she was too curious, and it ended up hurting her people.
Formatting
I have criticized Paizo's adventure formatting in the past, and tend to prefer a much sparser format (as shown off on this blog mostly by side-quests for my Red Hand of Doom conversion such as the Mad Mage's Manor). Still, I empathize tremendously with the tough constraints paizo writers face: they are paid by the word, they work on a really tight schedule and various pieces get written at the same time, they don't have complete control of the formatting, and they write to the formatting standards they are given.
and besides I love a challenge, so I decided to see how closely I could follow their format while not sacrificing clarity and ease of use.
I think I pulled it off! I think this format strikes a pretty good balance between easy of use/reference and joy of reading. I don't think this is my preferred format, but it works well enough.
I believe there was more, but honestly, real life has gotten pretty busy leaving very little time for side projects like this and I can't quite remember! I may go back and edit this post to include more thoughts, but for now I think I just want to get the post out there. It's already been a month since my last post! Crazy. And it's sure been a crazy month - my Strength of Thousands campaign officially wrapped up with some really beautiful epilogues, and some of my players will be running shorter adventures while we gear up for our next big thing. In addition, work has been super busy, and I've been jumping back into some old martial arts hobbies, so less time for RPG stuff outside my normal campaigns! Red Hand of Doom has been going strong, but I haven't needed to write much about it. That's what I get for prepping ahead of time!
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