Lake Monster is such a good starting quest. Knucklehead Trout fishing, while keeping an eye out for a lake monster is tense and fun. Especially when the players have to figure out how to save someone from dying of hypothermia after he gets pulled into the water by a trout. The fact that the monster speaks, and can be negotiated with is a cool way of setting up the idea that you don’t have to hack and slash your way out of every encounter.
I had my group come into Bryn Shander as a starting point and really built out the town. The group has connected with a few NPCs and it just naturally happened that they considered this their home base. I'm now filtering quests to other towns through Sheriff Markham. We're still only a few sessions in, but it's been great so far.
Amazing summation and review of the first chapter. Watching in FULL; thank you for your time and effort. I will be immediately watching the rest of the series as I shared many of the same criticisms and was inclined to run with your solutions.
I was gonna move the quest from dougans hole and have it currently being done in by a plague and any nearby towns are aware of it warning anyone trying to go there and anyone coming from that direction is not allowed in. Aldo since it's first in the dragon's path and basically confirmed destroyed town so also the PCs won't feel so bad about it being completely destroyed.
I tweaked the cold hearted killer stat blocks just a tad, but had them chasing the caravan through ten towns and let them complete other quests before they actually reached him so it was more of a chase through the area to get them initially familiar with everything
One of my most favorite modules and cant wait to see your spin on it! Theres a lot of blank space left for DMs to thread this adventure together, so every group is gonna have a completely unique experience.
Also one thing to consider are the implicit quests. For example with Caer Konig you got the situation that they are completly isolated, so having something about getting help or sending supplies is pretty much mandatory for this one. Oh and a little bit of warning about the mine: Id Ascendant.
I want to do Easthaven as the Hometown of my players. Basically, they independently chose to play as undead so I thought it would be a fun idea to have the Gravedigger in Easthaven own a magical shovel that allows him to dig graves even while it's freezing, all the other towns have switched to burning the dead. What that means is that all the people that want to be burried because of their religion or other beliefs move to Easthaven, including people that started worshipping Auril. One of my players was burried there and another one is a canibal that eats the dead so that's why he is in Easthaven. So yeah, I hope I can turn that town into something really fun in my campaign :D
Thanks so much for your reviews of this module. Just got into session 3 and the players are loving it. I started in Termalaine and I thought it went really well.
There's a lot of good ideas in this video. This approach of cutting content that seems dull and relocating quests or dungeons to other towns can work, but I'd recommend having a look at SteelySam's videos on the Ten-Towns and their quests - his approach involves making sense of the book's ideas and activating their potential. Blending these two styles, a DM should have no shortage of inspiration to create a good sequence of clues to guide the party into chapter 2 with enough information.
Absolute legend. I'm just about to start this as my first campaign (I know, bold right!?) and I'm glad you're reinforcing a lot of my own thoughts. I am actually going to be starting my party at level 3 and spread out the encounters and hints across a few towns, as the motivator to have them make the journeys between towns, leading to an encounter where Sephek is in league with Ravesin and is also an avatar for Auril, so at this point the awakened beasts and lotteries are revealed/confirmed as Auril wanting to terrorise the inhabitants. I'm also planning on using your other suggestions on another video, tying in Auril to Ythryn. I am considering having Ythryn be effectively a prison. The Netherese explored too far, delved too deep, and on this city they awakened an otherworldly creature (think Outsiders and Walkers from Dresden Files) and once the city crashed in her domain, she sealed it in the bowels of the city. The arcane brotherhood restarted the Mythallar which has weakened the creature, whose psychic scream causes ID Ascendant to crash and created nightmares across the Sword Coast, which I'm seeding at the start. So Auril is actually trying to blanket freeze the area to contain it and prevent others interfering, and is actively promoting the druid Ravesin, but is contrary to the Duregar as it is presence of this psychic outsider that is causing Chardalyn to have its effects. Sorry for the long comment... I'm just so excited!
I am very excited to listen through these videos as I take my second pass through the book. Thank you for this content. I remember things I've heard much better than things I have only read. I've heard the complaint about Cold Open quite a few times, but when I read the book I never saw the problem. You assign that quest first, but while players move from town to town looking for the killer, they complete other quests leveling up before they ever encounter the CR3 villain. The two starting quests are intended to get the players moving from town to town, not be the first quest they complete. Also note that there are supposed to be enough blackblades that if the players kill all of the ones at the Caer, they still exists thereafter, perhaps with a grudge!
On Cold Open: I totally get its use of sending the PCs around Ten Towns, but I'd rather just give them the quests from NPCs or rumors or something. Cold Open, as written, isn't compelling at all. Sephek has no real ties to anything and his reveal and motivations are just weird and ultimately inconsequential. Good point about the Black Swords tho! Picturing when the Walking Dead crew first met Negan's group by killing all those folks, then Negan shows up with an even bigger group for revenge....
I actually quite like the talking animal ones, especially when pairing it with the frost druids. Though, this comes with the caveat of already knowing Forgotten Realms lore, so I already know that Auriel is all about suffering, and only looking on in favor for those who embrace the harshness of winter to the point she'll only listen to prayers from her ELEVATED servants if they are praying, kneeled, inside a frozen stream. So that just opens up things like the animals being awakened simply to act as another hazard of life within Icewind Dale. So, rather than just evil, the druids can easily be shaded to be fanatics who simply want to see the best of all life rise to the top (sort of like the crazy angel in the movie "Constantine"). Throw in a sighting and/or rumor here and there of deep dwarves while you're on your quests, even a druid wild shaping once they've led them to a dark crystal deposit, and you have a decent tie in for the crystal dragon.
I'm looking to run this campaign as my first foray into being a DM. I plan to start my players with Foaming Mugs, but I still think they'd enjoy Cold Hearted Killer at some point. I agree though that the killer's motivation kind of sucks and that more mystery would be better. For the mystery, I'm thinking they get a few clues from witnesses so the party can identify the killer when they meet him. For the motivation, I'm going to pull a bit of inspiration from the New York Draft Riots and say this guy is motivated by losing someone who had to take the place of someone else as the sacrifice when the first person was able to bribe their way out of it. My only concern with that is that it opens the door to NPCs being corrupt that I don't necessarily want corrupted. Maybe the victims hired a Zhent agent to keep them out of the lottery or remove a personal enemy?
I like the idea of starting them in Byrn Shander and doing the Foaming Mug quest first. They'll get level 2 after that, and they can survive it. By the book they have surprise on the goblins automatically and I have 6 players so I think they'll do just fine. Either that or I might start them in Bremen for the Lake Monster, which on my chart isn't enough to get them to level 2, but the chart gives 50 XP (to each character) just for exploring a town and the nature quest doesn't even have combat. So those two quests could get them to 2nd level.
I plan on starting in Bryn Shander, one of my players is going to encounter the 3 dwarves in the tundra moving south towards the town and help them to the inn, while my artificer is approached to get a certain magical lantern working again so they can find the chwingas( just an activity as opposed to a quest) once they return to town with the dwarven ingots they learn of a MURDER oh no! The murder trail leads them to the western towns first (ignoring the Targos Quests trigger), then steering them to the East for all of the Durregar madness. And on the road ill have the stray dog lead them towards the mountain straight away skipping the house call part. As for the druids.. one of my players has the reserected secret (and the pirate cannibal) the PC was reserrected by the evil druids sister...that sister was killed by hunters mistaking her for a wild animal... hence the druids obsession with "awakening animals" if the animals are sentient the people might think twice before slaughtering the animals. As for Aurils lack of presence... the pcs might spot her in the sky at night, obviously shell be spoken of in whispers by the townsfolk, building that fear is going to be alot of fun.
I had a thought about the frost druids and awakened beasts. What if each awakened beast was awakened for the purpose of "cruelty", "endurance", "isolation", "preservation " and their corresponding druid is the one who appears in Grimskalle (or players have to hunt them down) as the means for access if they do not pass the tests. Could be a precursor to those tests. What are your thoughts? I know you don't like them . And I didn't really see the point either. But maybe that tie-in gives them some more purpose?
I also got the DM's guide from Eventyr Games, "What the Players Know" and the Player Primer from DMsguild and finding them to be awesome resources. Especially "What the Players Know", check it out if you haven't seen it. It's $7.50 and only 18 pages but a ton of work and thought went into it.
@@RogueWatson The foaming mugs map is beautiful! I'm crazy, I spent $10 getting it printed up in 11x17 sheets for one encounter! although I could reuse some of the panels for other snowy encounters, just exclude the ones with the cart and wagon. Beautiful map, perfect scenario for a first quest. I'm strongly leaning toward starting them off in Bryn Shander.
I love low level play. I'm going to run this campaign and I got a Milestone XP chart from dmsguild where XP is awarded for specific objectives. This takes into account the varying difficulty of the quests, rather than just giving the same amount of progress for each equally. Going by the book, its just 5 quests to go from level 1 to 4 and that's way too fast, especially when these players are still pretty new to the game and are playing new classes. They need time to learn what their characters can do before they have new abilities piled on too quickly.
I hear you on the Lake Monster, but its the first awakened creature they would encounter and I think whether or not its cheesy or Disney depends on how the DM roleplays.
I feel like there’s opportunities here to introduce your first seeds of horror by making the encounter more terrifying by rping up the lake monster with a deeper voice more like a dragon who they have to barter with.
I am SO torn on whether to start Frostmaiden or Tomb of Annihilation for my next campaign. We just finished Descent into Avernus and before that we played Storm Kings Thunder. Any opinions or thoughts would be much appreciated!
Well we're only 17 sessions into our Frostmaiden campaign, whereas I ran 80+ sessions of ToA. Frostmaiden requires more work to create a coherent story, but the story could be a lot more satisfying and interesting than ToA's. OTOH Omu and the Tomb of the Nine Gods are all fantastic areas to adventure in. It might come down to which theme and setting you like more!
@@RogueWatson this was an extremely reassuring comment! I think I'll stick with ToA for now, but Frostmaiden is definitely in the queue for games! I've got not shortage of players so I'll get to it eventually! Thank you for your insights and videos, I really appreciate it!
Easthaven has a lot for chapter one content for sure but bryn shandar has the most content for chapter two so easthaven is awesome but if you read through the whole campaign before running it there is quite a bit of stuff that comes out of bryn shandar. It just doesn’t necessarily show up right at the forefront. My group chose to start in bryn shandar which was nice because I could start with human sacrifice, get them to level 2 quickly with the first city adventure and then tailor that to the murder mystery which I made into an actual mystery they had to solve but also created a reason for them to go to either Targos or easthaven. They then went to targos and because the climb up Kelvins cairn is most quickly reached by taking the road up to termalaine they also got those quests and heard about other ones in the area like the moose and the black cabin (chapter two - back in bryn shandar was the hook). Also we have a Druid in our group so the Frost Druids and awakened animals has a little more potential because he can acquire some wild shapes this way. There are also plot twists to bring them back to the investigate duergar and undead in caer Koenig as well as get paid by the speaker in easthaven for solving the ice knife murderer so there are ties to get them to all the “key aspects” of chapter one but so far it has been almost completely organic. Also I HIGHLY RECOMMEND doing Termalaine because the party can find one of the hooks for Id Ascendant in chapter two and the monsters at Id Ascendant are AMAZING!!
Yeah the crystal skull thing in A Beautiful Mine is a great way to lead the PCs to Id Ascendant, definitely one of the more interesting locations in chapter 2. And good call making Cold-hearted Killer a mystery, it's distressing that every DM has to fix that damn quest!
@@RogueWatson how we did it was that they saw one of the most recent victims the night they died and recognized him as being one of the Bryn Shandar councilmen. They also saw a figure following him. They felt like they needed to share what they saw to the local sheriff and they got involved in line up with the regular suspects and got to go to a morgue to see the body. Talked to the widow and got some more information. Talked to the quest giver who was one of the suspects in the line up and made a deal to split the reward/pay off to find the killer if they were able to free her or get rid of any suspicion of her as the killer. She explained whoever it is they have been traveling up and down the East way a lot. They followed that up and went to the guard houses and talked to the guards to figure out who they were looking for and chased them down and fought it out but mistook which NPC in that group was the actual killer. It went much better than expected. The whole investigation took a single session from start to finish.
I almost forgot that I setup it up further by having the party arrive on the night of an public execution and the person who died was yelling out to the crowd it wasn’t supposed to be me before he got burned alive. So the first session they saw what would have happened to Dzann essentially happen in Bryn Shandar but it made it a little more obvious something was off with the lottery process. This was why the councilman was killed because he was taking bribes and even though he was corrupt the actual person died because he was scared and had talked to the killer beforehand and that was what the quest giver had been discussing with him the night he died. Never got a name or a description of who the killer was but instead ran out of the inn that the party was in at the same time and was followed by both the quest giver and the killer. Killer obviously won that foot race but the only one the party saw leave was the victim and the quest giver. Setup for the murder mystery completed.
![[Live] : ONE 169 วันนี้!! "อนาโตลี vs อูมาร์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IK3YZVWuFJg/mqdefault.jpg)
Lake Monster is such a good starting quest. Knucklehead Trout fishing, while keeping an eye out for a lake monster is tense and fun. Especially when the players have to figure out how to save someone from dying of hypothermia after he gets pulled into the water by a trout. The fact that the monster speaks, and can be negotiated with is a cool way of setting up the idea that you don’t have to hack and slash your way out of every encounter.
you are an absolute lifesaver, Im set to run ROTFM next weekend and these videos have made prep so much easier.
Awesome, glad to hear, good luck with your campaign!
Omg yes thank you for this ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾❤️❤️❤️
I had my group come into Bryn Shander as a starting point and really built out the town. The group has connected with a few NPCs and it just naturally happened that they considered this their home base. I'm now filtering quests to other towns through Sheriff Markham. We're still only a few sessions in, but it's been great so far.
Bryn Shander definitely seems like the obvious choice for a starting town and a central base for the PCs, good call!
Amazing summation and review of the first chapter. Watching in FULL; thank you for your time and effort. I will be immediately watching the rest of the series as I shared many of the same criticisms and was inclined to run with your solutions.
2 years later and I have a lot more to say as we finish our camapaign!
I was gonna move the quest from dougans hole and have it currently being done in by a plague and any nearby towns are aware of it warning anyone trying to go there and anyone coming from that direction is not allowed in. Aldo since it's first in the dragon's path and basically confirmed destroyed town so also the PCs won't feel so bad about it being completely destroyed.
I tweaked the cold hearted killer stat blocks just a tad, but had them chasing the caravan through ten towns and let them complete other quests before they actually reached him so it was more of a chase through the area to get them initially familiar with everything
That's a great idea!
One of my most favorite modules and cant wait to see your spin on it! Theres a lot of blank space left for DMs to thread this adventure together, so every group is gonna have a completely unique experience.
Also one thing to consider are the implicit quests. For example with Caer Konig you got the situation that they are completly isolated, so having something about getting help or sending supplies is pretty much mandatory for this one.
Oh and a little bit of warning about the mine: Id Ascendant.
I want to do Easthaven as the Hometown of my players. Basically, they independently chose to play as undead so I thought it would be a fun idea to have the Gravedigger in Easthaven own a magical shovel that allows him to dig graves even while it's freezing, all the other towns have switched to burning the dead. What that means is that all the people that want to be burried because of their religion or other beliefs move to Easthaven, including people that started worshipping Auril. One of my players was burried there and another one is a canibal that eats the dead so that's why he is in Easthaven. So yeah, I hope I can turn that town into something really fun in my campaign :D
A party full of undead certainly has some interesting paths to pursue!
Thanks so much for your reviews of this module. Just got into session 3 and the players are loving it. I started in Termalaine and I thought it went really well.
Excellent - good luck with the campaign! We'll be starting our live play of RotFM in a few months.
There's a lot of good ideas in this video. This approach of cutting content that seems dull and relocating quests or dungeons to other towns can work, but I'd recommend having a look at SteelySam's videos on the Ten-Towns and their quests - his approach involves making sense of the book's ideas and activating their potential. Blending these two styles, a DM should have no shortage of inspiration to create a good sequence of clues to guide the party into chapter 2 with enough information.
Absolute legend. I'm just about to start this as my first campaign (I know, bold right!?) and I'm glad you're reinforcing a lot of my own thoughts. I am actually going to be starting my party at level 3 and spread out the encounters and hints across a few towns, as the motivator to have them make the journeys between towns, leading to an encounter where Sephek is in league with Ravesin and is also an avatar for Auril, so at this point the awakened beasts and lotteries are revealed/confirmed as Auril wanting to terrorise the inhabitants.
I'm also planning on using your other suggestions on another video, tying in Auril to Ythryn. I am considering having Ythryn be effectively a prison. The Netherese explored too far, delved too deep, and on this city they awakened an otherworldly creature (think Outsiders and Walkers from Dresden Files) and once the city crashed in her domain, she sealed it in the bowels of the city. The arcane brotherhood restarted the Mythallar which has weakened the creature, whose psychic scream causes ID Ascendant to crash and created nightmares across the Sword Coast, which I'm seeding at the start. So Auril is actually trying to blanket freeze the area to contain it and prevent others interfering, and is actively promoting the druid Ravesin, but is contrary to the Duregar as it is presence of this psychic outsider that is causing Chardalyn to have its effects.
Sorry for the long comment... I'm just so excited!
That all sounds amazing!!
I am very excited to listen through these videos as I take my second pass through the book. Thank you for this content. I remember things I've heard much better than things I have only read.
I've heard the complaint about Cold Open quite a few times, but when I read the book I never saw the problem. You assign that quest first, but while players move from town to town looking for the killer, they complete other quests leveling up before they ever encounter the CR3 villain. The two starting quests are intended to get the players moving from town to town, not be the first quest they complete.
Also note that there are supposed to be enough blackblades that if the players kill all of the ones at the Caer, they still exists thereafter, perhaps with a grudge!
On Cold Open: I totally get its use of sending the PCs around Ten Towns, but I'd rather just give them the quests from NPCs or rumors or something. Cold Open, as written, isn't compelling at all. Sephek has no real ties to anything and his reveal and motivations are just weird and ultimately inconsequential.
Good point about the Black Swords tho! Picturing when the Walking Dead crew first met Negan's group by killing all those folks, then Negan shows up with an even bigger group for revenge....
I actually quite like the talking animal ones, especially when pairing it with the frost druids. Though, this comes with the caveat of already knowing Forgotten Realms lore, so I already know that Auriel is all about suffering, and only looking on in favor for those who embrace the harshness of winter to the point she'll only listen to prayers from her ELEVATED servants if they are praying, kneeled, inside a frozen stream. So that just opens up things like the animals being awakened simply to act as another hazard of life within Icewind Dale. So, rather than just evil, the druids can easily be shaded to be fanatics who simply want to see the best of all life rise to the top (sort of like the crazy angel in the movie "Constantine"). Throw in a sighting and/or rumor here and there of deep dwarves while you're on your quests, even a druid wild shaping once they've led them to a dark crystal deposit, and you have a decent tie in for the crystal dragon.
You forgot your vacuum cleaner on :D Nice video. I enjoy your crafting videos even though I'm not going to run this module for a million years :)
Ugh, sorry, new mic and still fiddling with the settings - it's very sensitive! Probably don't need to broadcast my computer fan to everyone. :D
I'm looking to run this campaign as my first foray into being a DM. I plan to start my players with Foaming Mugs, but I still think they'd enjoy Cold Hearted Killer at some point. I agree though that the killer's motivation kind of sucks and that more mystery would be better.
For the mystery, I'm thinking they get a few clues from witnesses so the party can identify the killer when they meet him.
For the motivation, I'm going to pull a bit of inspiration from the New York Draft Riots and say this guy is motivated by losing someone who had to take the place of someone else as the sacrifice when the first person was able to bribe their way out of it. My only concern with that is that it opens the door to NPCs being corrupt that I don't necessarily want corrupted. Maybe the victims hired a Zhent agent to keep them out of the lottery or remove a personal enemy?
Great video!
I like the idea of starting them in Byrn Shander and doing the Foaming Mug quest first. They'll get level 2 after that, and they can survive it. By the book they have surprise on the goblins automatically and I have 6 players so I think they'll do just fine. Either that or I might start them in Bremen for the Lake Monster, which on my chart isn't enough to get them to level 2, but the chart gives 50 XP (to each character) just for exploring a town and the nature quest doesn't even have combat. So those two quests could get them to 2nd level.
Yes, I want to use all the towns and all the quests. I don't care how many NPCs I need to track to do it.
I plan on starting in Bryn Shander, one of my players is going to encounter the 3 dwarves in the tundra moving south towards the town and help them to the inn, while my artificer is approached to get a certain magical lantern working again so they can find the chwingas( just an activity as opposed to a quest) once they return to town with the dwarven ingots they learn of a MURDER oh no! The murder trail leads them to the western towns first (ignoring the Targos Quests trigger), then steering them to the East for all of the Durregar madness. And on the road ill have the stray dog lead them towards the mountain straight away skipping the house call part. As for the druids.. one of my players has the reserected secret (and the pirate cannibal) the PC was reserrected by the evil druids sister...that sister was killed by hunters mistaking her for a wild animal... hence the druids obsession with "awakening animals" if the animals are sentient the people might think twice before slaughtering the animals. As for Aurils lack of presence... the pcs might spot her in the sky at night, obviously shell be spoken of in whispers by the townsfolk, building that fear is going to be alot of fun.
That all sounds awesome!
I can't wait to get started. Thanks for all the good videos
I had a thought about the frost druids and awakened beasts. What if each awakened beast was awakened for the purpose of "cruelty", "endurance", "isolation", "preservation " and their corresponding druid is the one who appears in Grimskalle (or players have to hunt them down) as the means for access if they do not pass the tests. Could be a precursor to those tests. What are your thoughts? I know you don't like them . And I didn't really see the point either. But maybe that tie-in gives them some more purpose?
I believe that the talking animals are for the Druid/ranger players to deal with
I also got the DM's guide from Eventyr Games, "What the Players Know" and the Player Primer from DMsguild and finding them to be awesome resources. Especially "What the Players Know", check it out if you haven't seen it. It's $7.50 and only 18 pages but a ton of work and thought went into it.
Yes that guide is awesome! I ended up using the map from that guide in our Session 1, running Foaming Mugs.
@@RogueWatson The foaming mugs map is beautiful! I'm crazy, I spent $10 getting it printed up in 11x17 sheets for one encounter! although I could reuse some of the panels for other snowy encounters, just exclude the ones with the cart and wagon. Beautiful map, perfect scenario for a first quest. I'm strongly leaning toward starting them off in Bryn Shander.
I love low level play. I'm going to run this campaign and I got a Milestone XP chart from dmsguild where XP is awarded for specific objectives. This takes into account the varying difficulty of the quests, rather than just giving the same amount of progress for each equally. Going by the book, its just 5 quests to go from level 1 to 4 and that's way too fast, especially when these players are still pretty new to the game and are playing new classes. They need time to learn what their characters can do before they have new abilities piled on too quickly.
I hear you on the Lake Monster, but its the first awakened creature they would encounter and I think whether or not its cheesy or Disney depends on how the DM roleplays.
I've heard a lot of DMs have success with Lake Monster as their opening quest.
I feel like there’s opportunities here to introduce your first seeds of horror by making the encounter more terrifying by rping up the lake monster with a deeper voice more like a dragon who they have to barter with.
I am SO torn on whether to start Frostmaiden or Tomb of Annihilation for my next campaign. We just finished Descent into Avernus and before that we played Storm Kings Thunder. Any opinions or thoughts would be much appreciated!
Well we're only 17 sessions into our Frostmaiden campaign, whereas I ran 80+ sessions of ToA. Frostmaiden requires more work to create a coherent story, but the story could be a lot more satisfying and interesting than ToA's.
OTOH Omu and the Tomb of the Nine Gods are all fantastic areas to adventure in. It might come down to which theme and setting you like more!
@@RogueWatson this was an extremely reassuring comment! I think I'll stick with ToA for now, but Frostmaiden is definitely in the queue for games! I've got not shortage of players so I'll get to it eventually! Thank you for your insights and videos, I really appreciate it!
God I have the dnd combat maps.. why are every rooms empty? they couldn't have been bottered to put stuff in them?
Easthaven has a lot for chapter one content for sure but bryn shandar has the most content for chapter two so easthaven is awesome but if you read through the whole campaign before running it there is quite a bit of stuff that comes out of bryn shandar. It just doesn’t necessarily show up right at the forefront.
My group chose to start in bryn shandar which was nice because I could start with human sacrifice, get them to level 2 quickly with the first city adventure and then tailor that to the murder mystery which I made into an actual mystery they had to solve but also created a reason for them to go to either Targos or easthaven. They then went to targos and because the climb up Kelvins cairn is most quickly reached by taking the road up to termalaine they also got those quests and heard about other ones in the area like the moose and the black cabin (chapter two - back in bryn shandar was the hook). Also we have a Druid in our group so the Frost Druids and awakened animals has a little more potential because he can acquire some wild shapes this way.
There are also plot twists to bring them back to the investigate duergar and undead in caer Koenig as well as get paid by the speaker in easthaven for solving the ice knife murderer so there are ties to get them to all the “key aspects” of chapter one but so far it has been almost completely organic. Also I HIGHLY RECOMMEND doing Termalaine because the party can find one of the hooks for Id Ascendant in chapter two and the monsters at Id Ascendant are AMAZING!!
Yeah the crystal skull thing in A Beautiful Mine is a great way to lead the PCs to Id Ascendant, definitely one of the more interesting locations in chapter 2. And good call making Cold-hearted Killer a mystery, it's distressing that every DM has to fix that damn quest!
@@RogueWatson how we did it was that they saw one of the most recent victims the night they died and recognized him as being one of the Bryn Shandar councilmen. They also saw a figure following him. They felt like they needed to share what they saw to the local sheriff and they got involved in line up with the regular suspects and got to go to a morgue to see the body. Talked to the widow and got some more information.
Talked to the quest giver who was one of the suspects in the line up and made a deal to split the reward/pay off to find the killer if they were able to free her or get rid of any suspicion of her as the killer. She explained whoever it is they have been traveling up and down the East way a lot. They followed that up and went to the guard houses and talked to the guards to figure out who they were looking for and chased them down and fought it out but mistook which NPC in that group was the actual killer. It went much better than expected. The whole investigation took a single session from start to finish.
I almost forgot that I setup it up further by having the party arrive on the night of an public execution and the person who died was yelling out to the crowd it wasn’t supposed to be me before he got burned alive. So the first session they saw what would have happened to Dzann essentially happen in Bryn Shandar but it made it a little more obvious something was off with the lottery process. This was why the councilman was killed because he was taking bribes and even though he was corrupt the actual person died because he was scared and had talked to the killer beforehand and that was what the quest giver had been discussing with him the night he died. Never got a name or a description of who the killer was but instead ran out of the inn that the party was in at the same time and was followed by both the quest giver and the killer. Killer obviously won that foot race but the only one the party saw leave was the victim and the quest giver. Setup for the murder mystery completed.