Vobleavira Haven Revision

Well, after the events recounted in last week's post, it was time to lift the hood on the adventure and do some tuning. 

Spoilers aplenty below...

The Haven has some good bones, for sure. The map is a great foundation, with multiple looping paths for exploration, alternative routes, and order of discovery. With the idea of the B1-inspired stronghold/base in mind, I made an attempt to give every room a purpose. I'm sure some work better than others, but there it is. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, for the convention game I'd thrown in the element of the restless/accursed spirit to give the players a focus or stressor, rather than just providing a scenario of wandering around and poking into rooms. Since it worked so well, the ghost needed to become a permanent cast member. Therefore, I needed to create a more cohesive reason for it to be roaming the halls. Since I'd already hinted at the cleric's dabbling with forbidden knowledge, it didn't take a lot of content modification to make sense of the ghost. Adding some color language and appropriate journal pull-quotes, as well as an artifact-object completed the scene.

Pere Kochi having a bad day at work

Other bits and bobs:

• More character and objectives were added to the set-piece NPCs/monsters to round them out and potentially provide the players with gameable information. 
• Toughened up a couple of the encounters.
• I realized that I had mentioned a map of the complex hidden in one of the rooms, so I added a player map for a handout. 
• The ghost is statted up, and presented with its art. I toughened it up a bit, just to make it more of a threat, especially if encountered as a solo monster. 
• Since Expanded Petty Gods is no longer available, I pulled the critter description and stats into the product. 
• Minor treasure modifications to help bring them more in line with B/X-style treasure types.
• Added a couple pieces of mood/color art.
• Of course, a lot of small language changes to improve sentence structure and readability (hopefully). 
• And I reworked the formatting slightly (which led to more word-cutting and editing to fix a bunch of widows and orphans and make the pages line up correctly for digest printing).

I'm pretty happy with it, although we all know that's a low bar. Hopefully a few more adventurers get to crack open the front door and explore the complex' secrets.

The latest and greatest(?) version is currently on DriveThruRPG for those so inclined...

Artist's rendition of actual-play encounter

Bryce still won't like it....