As I looked at the next chapter for the Lost Mine Of Phandelver from the Starter Set, I noticed it mentioned players should be at level 4 by this point in the adventure. The problem is, most of the players are smack in the middle of level 3. What to do?
A recent announcement from Wizards Of The Coast came to my aid. The Dungeon Master’s Guild has opened up shop. This means user created modules as well as tools and other errata can be found. Think additional character classes, pre-generated characters, Adventurer’s League encounters, playtest encounters (for when the new edition was still referred to as D&D Next), some user created modules and more. And that’s just for the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
There are several ways to sort the contents of the Dungeon Master’s Guild, by edition, world setting, and even product type. This last one, however, poses a major issue I hope is rectified soon. Within the product type of sourcebooks, we are given an absolute mish-mash of items. Yes, you can sort out the various adventures from the new classes or character backgrounds, but the user created and those by Wizards Of The Coast are presented side by side. Yes, you can sort by publisher, opting to omit those published by Wizards Of The Coast, but what you have left is a list of adventures as well as some other sourcebooks which are decidedly not adventures. This is a problem with the back-end of the website and needs to get fixed before it grows in content too much and becomes unwieldy and impractical to do so.
I downloaded one of the free single-session adventure, The Wild Sheep Chase, which I had hoped to use to get enough experience points for the party so at least one character might advance up to 4th level. The problem with having 5 members in your party is that experience points get divided among those present, rather than stacking (as in 200 experience points divided by five players rather than 200 for each).
It was a good adventure, featured some laughs and a decent unique monster. I don’t want to give anything away, but will say that I completely jettisoned the introductory portion of the adventure. Gone was the town and instead had the tower placed in a remote area between the town of Phandalin and the mine the party was headed toward. Easily folded into the already existing adventure.
But still nobody in the party was level 4. I am going to have to figure something out.
Wizards Of The Coast announced one of its most famed adventures would be revisited, one off the most iconic adventures of all-time. Ravenloft is returning to Dungeons & Dragons in a new adventure. Curse Of Strahd will be made available March 15, and this looks like it might fulfill a couple of requirements for me.
First, I am going to need something to have the party tackle next. While March 15 is a bit of time, I might be able to stretch out this last bit of dungeon until then. If not, there are plenty of other small session adventures I can use that are available on the Dungeon Master’s Guild before Curse Of Strahd becomes available.
The second reason I am looking forward to this is it will allow me to explain what the party’s wizard is doing here. You may remember (though probably not) when I helped create backstories for each of the player characters I allowed for the wizard to come in at 2nd level because the player was bringing his already generated and in-use character. I had constructed a mechanic for him to suddenly appear with the party, but not an actual reason for his presence. Now I have a reason. At least I think so.
As I ruminate on both the original Ravenloft adventure and the one about to be launched, the idea forms in my head I may be able to turn this adventure on its ear. I was thinking about figuring a way to incorporate that classic module into the current campaign. And now? I am thinking I can run both adventures simultaneously. The magical mist that surrounds the area could easily transport players through time as it does across dimension or planes of existence. How awesome (as a dungeon master) would it be to have the party enter one room of Castle Ravenloft and then enter the next room 400 years earlier?
Obviously there will need to be some planning. I need to read through the new adventure as well as reread the original, but from what I have seen so far, I am excited.