The Master's Vault by James Introcaso is a really fun little module that is excellent for teaching people how to play D&D. It's also excellent for learning how to run a D&D game as a dungeon master. I've been running games since I was 15, but there's never an end to learning, and I was still fairly new to running games entirely on Roll20. Still, it was a great start to our campaign.
The premise is that the player characters are alumni of a great teacher, Elaria Feywing.
The first part of the module is sort of a final exam sort of situation, where the players have to go into Elaria's basement and kill some Rodents of Unusual Size. The second part is when they come back together after a time for her funeral. In this campaign, were her last and favorite group of summer students, in the year 1481, Dale Reckoning.
I was planning to run this module as sort of a one-off for teaching purposes and then launch into our normal campaign, but my players really embraced the idea that they were ex-classmates. As it turned out, this unassuming little module turned out to be the basis of our entire campaign. I find the idea that the players are all ex-classmates and have come together for a common goal to be a whole lot less contrived than a bunch of random dungeons and dragons characters meeting in a tavern.
So anyway, our four player characters, Macterah Danorae (a copper Dragonborn druid), Ivar Greenleaf (a half-elven ex-sailor rogue from Saltmarsh)), Atalaya Loravaris (a half-elven ranger from the High Forest), and Tifinin ("Just Tifinin"), a halfling bard, find themselves in the lake town of Parabor for their teacher's funeral.
Of course, this wouldn't be a Dungeons and Dragons game if we didn't discover that their beloved mentor had been murdered. She leaves them her house and some cryptic notes that lets them know that they must embark on a series of small side quests that will take them to different areas of the valley. They must collect nine tiles and bring them back to the house.
The module contains three side adventures that the players can choose to do in any order before heading back to the house for the final challenge. They are, in no particular order:
The Staircase Cliffs
The goal of this adventure is to get the players to learn how to climb up an obstacle, in this case cliffs that look like giant stairs. There are holes in the cliffs where flying serpents will come out and bite the players, forcing them to fight from a precarious foothold.
If you are running this module, you might want to tweak this part of it simply because the players are first-level squishies at this point. And, as written, the mechanics for getting up the cliff are a bit dry. So use your judgment on how to run this part of it.
At the top is a Dragonborn hermit named Alcaeus. He will take care of the players' injuries, feed them, and send them on their way with three of the tiles.
Vixthra's Lair
This is a hidden cave behind a waterfall full of kobolds, and of course, traps. This is probably my favorite of the three side adventures.
One of the reasons I really like running on Roll20 is because Roll20 allows you to set up traps on different layers and spring them on your players as they stumble into them. You don't have to roll to see if your player falls into the trap because it's right there hidden on the map. If your player moves into that square, boom. Player in a trap! It kind of gives you a more realistic, real-time feel.
But anyway, the traps make the fight with the kobolds a heck of a lot more interesting. There is a curtain in the back of the cave, behind which is a kobold shaman and a giant descending spider.
Very interesting low-level combat.
Three more tiles glow from the cobwebs in the ceiling.
Dolor Forest
This leg of the journey is to teach the players about rolling for abilities and role-playing. They will battle their way through wolves and oppressive gloom to reach a remote gravesite in the forest, the final resting place of Helene, The Elaria's late friend. She will ask the players a series of questions and they will have to role-play their way through convincing her and proving their worth. She has the final three tiles.
The Master's Vault
The player characters now make their way home and use the tiles to unlock a mysterious door in the backyard. What's cool about this on Roll20 is that the module gives you a really nice puzzle page that the players will actually have to work in real-time. They will use the blue tiles and place them on a board in the correct order and when they get it right a word will pop up and the door will open.
Inside is an elaborately tiled vault with a dias in the back containing artifacts on pedestals. A magical message is triggered and their teacher appears, confessing that she had become embroiled in a plot involving an artifact of power called the Eye of Death, and keeping it out of the hands of an evil cult.
When the players enter, the big bad villain, an evil necromancer who was responsible for the demise of their teacher, presents himself. He is accompanied by a team of skeletons, ready to battle the now second-level player characters.
What makes this battle particularly fun and interesting is that there are columns in the room that shoot damaging radiant beams at random creatures. The radiant beams are triggered by the presence of undead. As long as the skeletons are still animated, the beams will keep shooting every round. And everyone in the room, regardless of what team they're on, is a potential target.
I actually set up my map so that it had beam trigger tokens on the map itself* (You do not need a subscription to pull this off). All I had to do was click on them and it would trigger an animation and a series of rolls that would tell me if it hit anybody and how much damage it did. So every round, one of these suckers would light up and target somebody.
It certainly added a layer of chaos to the fight, especially when the players figured out it was indiscriminately targeting everyone in the room! "Great, thanks Teach!"
My players did really well. They emerged victorious and inherited Elaria's magical sword, a bag of cash, a few minor magic items, a map, and their teacher's journal.
Here ends the module.
Now, there are a lot of questions that the module doesn't answer. What's in the journal? What's the story with this cult trying to get their hands on the Eye of Death? Where is the Eye of Death now? What are we supposed to do at this point??
I thought it was a great premise for a campaign, so I answered those questions by writing out the pertinent parts of the journal. I also turned the map they found into an escape room-type puzzle to send them to the next leg of their journey. More on this in another post.
* The code for the macro is {{Radient Damage5=[[2d4]]}} {{Saving Throw=DC13vsDEX}} /fx beam-magic @{target|Caster|token_id} @{target|Foe|token_id}
It's inelegant, but it works. Like I said, you don't need a subscription to use this simple macro.
No comments:
Post a Comment