Updated adventures: The Stolen Staff and Tallinn’s Tower
September 8, 2011 in 4e D&D, Adventures, Maps
Edit 9/15/2011: Based on some play-testing feedback from an awesome reader named Jeff, I have made some improvements to Tallinn’s Tower (mostly just clarifications and clean-up edits; nothing transformative). Thank you, Jeff!
Edit 9/8/2011, evening: I changed the low-level monsters in the first encounter of Tallinn’s Tower to something more interesting. I guess I’ll never be done tweaking these adventures!
After running my own adventures at TactiCon last weekend, I’ve finished tweaking them based on my play testing. The new versions are formatted much better and should be easier to use at the table.
I’ve renamed the first adventure in the trilogy from The Staff of Suha to The Stolen Staff. This is because I’ve decided The Staff of Suha makes more sense as a name for the whole trilogy, while the Stolen Staff is just the first part. I’ve also totally revamped the skill challenge into a series of scenes that I think you’ll find easier to run and more fun for your players. There’s also an alternate encounter for entering the stronghold.
As for Tallinn’s Tower, the main changes are to the formatting; the core content is mostly the same.
The third adventure… well, I’ve decided that I’m going to submit Descent Into Darkness to Dungeon Magazine because, hey, why not? But since they won’t accept anything that’s been previously published elsewhere, I can’t post it on my blog if I want it to have a chance of being accepted.
Based on the odds, I’m guessing they’ll reject it, at which point I’ll publish it here. But until that happens, I’m going to hold off.
Download The Stolen Staff PDF.
Maps for the adventures are below, scaled to a 50-pixel grid for use in programs like MapTool (both with and without a grid).
If you run either or both of these adventures, please let me know how it goes! And if you want to playtest the third adventure, drop me a line at onlinedungeonmaster@gmail.com.
Stolen Staff - Lair Exterior - Gridded
Stolen Staff - Lair Exterior - No Grid
Stolen Staff - Garbage Tunnels - Gridded
Stolen Staff - Garbage Tunnels - No Grid
Stolen Staff - Shrine - Gridded
Stolen Staff - Shrine - No Grid
Stolen Staff - Grak Chamber - Gridded
Stolen Staff - Grak Chamber - No Grid
Tallinn's Tower Level 1 - Gridded
Tallinn's Tower Level 1 - No Grid
Tallinn's Tower Level 2 - Gridded
Tallinn's Tower Level 2 - No Grid
Tallinn's Tower Level 3 - Gridded
Tallinn's Tower Level 3 - No Grid
Tallinn's Tower Level 4 - Gridded
Tallinn's Tower Level 4 - No Grid
Good luck with the submission to Dungeon!
I took a peak at your other modules, and from a quick look through, they look great. I especially like your layout, it just seems cleaner than most LFR modules. Nice work.
Thanks very much! The original layout I used when I first posted these adventures wasn’t really a layout at all. Then I learned that you can make things slightly prettier and easier to read in Word without too much effort. I’m much happier with the way they look now.
[...] OnlineDM – Two free 4e Modules: yay! Free Modules. And well written too. Get The Stolen Staff and the Tower of Talinn while they’re hot! [...]
Reading through the PDF for Tallinn’s Tower, I noticed that you list “Blink Spider – a reskinned Young Phase Spider” and have those in the monster list of the Room of Runes encounter, however the stat block you provide is that of a Shimmering Swarm. Am I just missing something?
That was a simple editing error on my part – sorry about that! I changed the Blink Spiders to Shimmering Swarms after the last update and forgot to change the other references. The PDF has since been updated.
Ah okay. I was just curious which one I should use, since I’m planning on running this for my group here soon. Everything looks really cool though, nice job on it. Oh and I’ll be sure to let everyone know where I got it from
And if you have any feedback or suggestions after running the adventures, please drop me a line!
Sure thing. Is there a better way to get in touch with you than flooding your comments? Heh.
Yep. In the About Me section of the blog, there’s my email address: OnlineDungeonMaster@gmail.com.
[...] decided to submit the third adventure in my Staff of Suha trilogy to Dungeon Magazine for their consideration. The timing was right, after all; the adventure was [...]