Greyhawk online once again brings you another article in the series by John Roy, discussing how to introduce new players – especially 5th Edition players – to Greyhawk. In the past three articles, John has talked about how to let creating unique characters be part of the fun of Greyhawk, good ways of introducing the setting without overwhelming players, and gave specific examples of how to immerse players in the world.

With apologies to readers, and to John, for it being late due to PDF formatting issues.

Now, we move forward to the adventure itself!!
Enjoy John’s commentary on the adventure, as he explains all about his thoughts in making the adventure, and ways his campaign is a little different than the published version!

Here is the adventure I’ve been writing about all month.  I made the map with Inkarnate Pro.  I highly recommend it to anyone else who is not a professional artist but wants maps that don’t look like they belong in an eighth grader’s notebook next to a drawing of John Wick killing Deadpool. 

I love stories about soldiers caught behind enemy lines, and I thought it would be fun to flip the trope on its head.  Here, the villains are the soldiers and they are caught in the characters’ territory.  I have watched a lot of westerns recently and the town under siege is a classic western movie situation.  I have no doubt Silverado and Godless were somewhere in my unconscious when plotting out Father Zoreg’s takeover of Cardyn’s Cove.  In terms of pure RPG mechanics, it’s interesting to have the town area itself become the dungeon and have the goal of the players be to turn it back into the town area.

 

Spoilers Ahead!

Please be aware the section below contains SPOILERS … so, if you’re a player, do your DM a favor, and just skip to the end!

Here’s the SPOILERS in a HIDDEN section … dont’ click it, if you don’t want to know!

The stat blocks for monsters include only the most relevant combat information. If you need more detailed stats like ability scores, the Devoted are based on Cultists, and the Soldiers on Bandits. The Zombie Pit Bulls are Mastiffs with the Zombie’s special ability. Varde and Zoreg should have high strength and wisdom respectively.

My favorite element is the demon globes. A grenade that releases a demon is a great way to get fiends into your campaign right from level one, and it just doesn’t feel like Iuz without fiends. This is for hard core Greyhawk nerds, but I always thought the Flight of the Fiends was a terrible idea. It removed the single most interesting thing about Iuz’s army. Without demons, what’s the difference between Iuz and any of the other “evil humans and their humanoid mercenaries” factions that comprise the majority of Greyhawk baddies? Iuz has undead, too, but so does Nerull, and come on… you gotta have demons. Poor Canon Hazel is never gonna find that Crook of Rao while I’m the DM.

The map is meant to share with the players. Put it on the table and let them wander around as they see fit. The Patrols will make sure they can’t get too comfortable. It’s possible the characters don’t shut the Lighthouse down in time. If you don’t want the adventure to end with Zoreg simply sailing away, have the Iuz forces make one last sweep, and throw enough soldiers at the party that they end up imprisoned in the ship.

If Argus makes it out of the first encounter alive, but you don’t want him making the fights too easy, have him run off to search for surviving townsfolk. Whatever accents you end up using for the NPCs, most should be working class, with Zoreg and Kensa the only posh ones. Ilina should be played full crazy. If you want the Iuz folks to have some kind of accent that designates them as “foreign” you can, but it also works if they’re just like the towns-people, just in a demon cult. Brings home the idea that anyone can end up corrupted if they throw in with Iuz. Might be cool if the land of Iuz had no native population, only people from other countries drawn to serve him for different reasons.

In my campaign, Zoreg’s impenetrable magic box contains a locket of the Great Kingdom (see Greyhawk Adventures) that contains the soul of a powerful baddie from the Iuz the Evil supplement. It leads to all kinds of trouble, but it isn’t necessary information for this adventure as there’s no way first level characters can open it.

Download Unwelcome Guests—1869 downloads —1.47 MB

 

 

 

If any of you run the adventure, I would love to know how it goes.  What did your players do?  Were the encounters well balanced for a party of four?  Did you make any changes?  Let me know!  Anyway, here it is. 

Next week I’ll tell you how it turned out for my players.