Edit 9/8/2011: This adventure has been further updated; more about the updates can be found here.
I ran my Tallinn’s Tower adventure at my friendly local game store this past Thursday, and I thought it went pretty well. As I ran it, I made a few notes about things to improve. So, I made those improvements and have published an updated version.
Download the updated adventure here.
The updates I made include:
- New layout; each encounter now has the description of the encounter followed by the map and the monsters (instead of having all of the maps and monsters at the end).
- Inclusion of monster stat blocks (built using Power2ool)
- Tweaked the rune trap to no longer knock PCs prone
- Changed the rune puzzle no longer require a variable number of runes depending on the party size
- Allowed the use of Arcana or Thievery to help locate the control panel in the metal maze
- Clarified that the medusa’s statues are carvings she made from petrified adventurers before later releasing them
- Clarified that the wizardess can be persuaded to restore PCs who’ve been petrified
As always, I appreciate feedback. I’m quite happy with this adventure so far and will certainly continue to refine it based on my experience and your suggestions.
Original post about the adventure, including downloadable maps.
This is a pretty nice little adventure. I especially like how you scaled it throughout the heroic tier, making it easy to pick up and use for anyone throughout the tier.
The only part I think I may change if I end up using this is the rune puzzle…I’d like to make it something the players have to figure out, rather than using skills to do it. I’ll ponder what sort of riddle I’d have to put in there to make that happen.
Thanks for the free adventure though. =)
Thanks for giving it a look and for leaving feedback! I’m with you on the rune puzzle, too, though I haven’t figured out how I’d want to do it.
For public play at my local store, I’d stick with it as written (using skill checks to figure out the next rune). But for a home game, I agree that it would be fun to have the rune puzzle be something that the PLAYERS could figure out instead of the CHARACTERS. I’ve been listening to the Fourthcore podcasts recently, and the idea of puzzles for the players intrigues me.
If it were a player puzzle, I could see writing riddles that gave geographic clues – figuring out the north-to-south positions of the runes in order or something like that (probably shifting rune 2 down a row so that no two runes are in the same row). The conclusions should be something along the lines of, “Okay, so we step on the third rune from the top, then the second from the bottom, then the sixth from the top…”
The fun there could come if the players haven’t found all of the runes yet (since some are hidden out of sight behind walls).
If you do come up with this sort of riddle, please share it! I might add it to version 3.