Overall I have to give Bloodsand Arena high marks. For a free adventure (or pair of mini-adventures) it goes above and beyond. The perfect Dark Sun intro module would give players a feel for the setting by confronting them with challenges and situations they wouldn't face in just any generic module, and Bloodsand does exactly that. It's also not wall-to-wall combat, which I really appreciate - it has two major skill challenges and plenty of opportunity for other skill rolls as well.
I did wind up making some significant modifications. Most notably, the module is designed to be run with pre-gen'd PCs, which we did not use. That meant that I had to come up with some new hooks and work them into the beginning.
Spoilers follow.
The adventure basically has the PCs agreeing to work as caravan guards for an elf named Kaldras whose caravan is bound for Altaruk. Kaldras supposedly has a load of valuable iron goods (which in my game he craftily implied that he has obtained through less than legitimate means) but in fact he's been cheated and the carts are mostly full of worthless ceramics. His backup plan is to 'hire' a bunch of capable-looking guards and then sell them into slavery when he meets up with the rest of his clan to get his money's worth.
I like this setup because it means that basically the first helpful NPC the players meet betrays them, which certainly gives them a good taste of the harsh realities of life on Athas!
To get the PCs to sign on with Kaldras, I added an initial encounter where the PCs discover an illicit id fiend in the caravan district which they are forced to fight. Always start the campaign by rolling initiative, someone once said, and I find that it's good advice. A solo id fiend makes for an easy but fun first encounter.
When they fled the arrival of the templars, Kaldras found them and helped them escape, then persuaded them to sign on with him (a small up-front cash bonus helped smooth this transaction).
The first official encounter of the module is actually a three-part skill challenge. The PCs have to run rather than ride since its an elven caravan (again, lots of DS flavor here!) so there are lots of endurance checks. Then there's a sandstorm in the open desert and a potential ambush.
I don't know if the DCs for this first skill challenge were too low, or if my PCs were just lucky, but they blew through all three parts of the SC. I was disappointed because I thought the sand storm was cool, but I can use it later. Rather than have the PCs avoid the ambush if they pass the third challenge, I decided that they have to fight it out anyway but they get a surprise round if they succeeded on their rolls. The encounter that follows is pretty easy, since most of the baddies are 'human slave' minions. In retrospect I would add in another marauder or two.
Things really get interesting when the PCs arrive at Altaruk. In the module, the PCs get to make an insight check before Kaldras turns on them to avoid a surprise round against them. I expanded this a bit and let them make some stealth and perception checks as well. I also had the dwarven beggar, Birk Suntouched wander by, to setup his appearance in the second half of the module.
This time my PCs didn't really cotton on to what was going on, so Kaldras emerged, made some taunting remarks about slavery, and attacked catching them flat-footed.
The Kaldras fight is supposed to last only until Kaldras is bloodied, at which point the guard shows up. Depending on what your party does, it has the potential to be a tough fight. Kaldras and his kank spitters are tough melee opponents, and the elf snipers running around just out of reach deal a lot of damage. In fact, they managed to drop the party's healer before he got to take his first turn.
But the PCs played smart, and focused fire on Kaldras, taking him down to his bloodied value in one round. So the fight was over quickly. But the players were relieved that it ended so abruptly, so on balance I think it was a good encounter.
In the Bloodsand module, the first mini-adventure ends with the players being forced to fight in the arena, and the second one opens with another arena fight, followed by the murder of Tellemon, the guard captain that intervenes in the fight with Kaldras. I thought it would be much more dramatic to combine these events: having the PCs be victors in the arena only to have Tellemon's murder immediately be discovered. And I didn't need back-to-back arena fights.
But first I needed to make the players invest in Tellemon as an NPC. So I turned him into a towering half-giant with a great deal of au-thori-tae, as they say. The module has the players rolling a diplomacy check against Kaldras' bluff check to see who Tellemon sides with. Again, I expanded this with a couple more checks and my players had some creative ideas here as well.
Unless the players roll stunningly well, they go to the arena. I gave them an extended rest first, since they hadn't had one yet. They spent the night in the cells under the arena and had fun taunting their opponents with psionic effects (they all have wild talents).
The arena encounter is actually a game rather then a straight up fight to the death. Players and their elf enemies try and move large stone coins from the center of the field to coffers on either side. It was pretty fun to play, but the presence of our psionic controller with an at-will that teleports enemies around made it a bit easy for the PCs. They dominated the elves.
The encounter write-up says that the players aren't supposed to attack the elves directly, but implies that they might cheat if they so wish. It doesn't specify what to DO if this happens, though. One of my players did cheat. Since he's a tempermental half-giant, he lost his temper and threw one of the elves at another one.
I improvised that once this happened the guards were coming to get him, but that he could keep ahead of them with saving throws. Once he failed that, they did a basic ranged attack against him with a net. They hit, and he was entangled in the net and immobilized. But before this could become a serious problem for him, the game was won.
As I said, I had Tellemon's murder take place immediately. What follows is a multi-part skill challenge which I dubbed "CSI: Altaruk" where the players try and solve the mystery of who killed Tellemon.
The idea is cool, but plot-wise this skill challenge is pretty shaky. Basically, the mystery doesn't make a lot of sense as written. That is to say that the way the murder is committed and the motive behind it are kind of stupid. The challenge itself is solid enough.
I was able to tweak the challenge without changing it wholesale to go with a new murder plot that made more sense.
The short version is that in the original version Tellemon is a member of the True faction and is killed by the Veiled Alliance. Such a public method of disposal doesn't make any sense in a town that is literally RUN by the VA. So I reversed it - Tellemon was a member of the VA and he was killed by a defiler. The reason the murder is carried out so publicly is because the murderer has been dominated by said defiler. That sorcerer turns out to be... Birk Suntouched!
Jumping ahead a little bit again. Like I said, the actual SC is solid enough and I used it with just a few tweaks. This time the PCs actually failed the first part. The consequence for this is supposed to be an ambush, but for the sake of time I just made the final encounter tougher.
In the final encounter the PCs confront the mul gladiator who murdered Tellemon. I threw in Birk Suntouched and a bunch of dominated human slaves. I statted out Birk as a controller and gave him a modified defiling power which dealt 3 points of automatic damage to everyone in a close burst 2. This all added up to a TOUGH fight for the PCs, which saw more than one dropping to unconsciousness on multiple occasions. It was great.
Birk tried to run at the end, but by then the PCs had managed to lock him down and surround him, so he couldn't get away. But with his dying breath he outed Altaruk as a stronghold of the Veiled Alliance. Now that the PCs 'know too much' they are due for a confrontation with the governor. That will happen next session. Should be fun.
OK, this write up is a lot longer than I thought it would be. Looking back over it, it looks like I modified Bloodsand Arena pretty extensively. But really the reason I was able to modify it to my needs so easily was because it was a well-written module with a lot of flavor, not to mention cool plot-twists. I think it really started the campaign off on the right foot, instead of with just another dungeon crawl. There was intrigue, betrayal, wilderness survival and gladatorial combat. Just another day in Dark Sun!
Overall it's a solid adventure which is well worth working into one of the first couple of levels of your DS campaign.
One question though. You say that early up in the adventure, the PCs discover an illicit id fiend in the caravan district that they are forced to fight. How did you go about orchestrating the creature's presence in what is a civilized city-state? A 'wandering' id fiend just happens to crawl over Tyr's 20 foot-high wall? A competing caravaneer brought the beast in to hopefully derail Kaldras's plans maybe? I don't mean to nit-pick here, but I like your idea and agree that a solo makes for a good first encounter, and am just interested in a little background.
I figured that since id fiends are sought after by some psionics for the extracts that can be made from them that there might well be an illicit trade in them in Tyr.
Fair question. I didn't want to spend too much time on my additions in the review. The id fiend was being illicitly transported by a local merchant, Lemuel the Unlucky. The PCs bump into Lemuel (literally) while he is supervising some slaves loading a large crate onto a cart. Then Lemuel's usual bad luck strikes, and the cart tips over, breaking the crate. An id fiend crawls out, and chaos ensues. Afterward when the templars show up Lemuel blames the PCs.
I figured that since id fiends are sought after by some psionics for the extracts that can be made from them that there might well be an illicit trade in them in Tyr.
How did you run the fight? Standard attack solo or were some environmental elements thrown in too?
I'm hoping eventually this will lead into the main thrust of the campaign which will be the overthrow of one of the sorcerer-kings (haven't decided which one yet) and possibly the return to Athas of divine magic (in the form of an incredibly weak goddess who represent the planet itself).
Hey mate, good review.
esp liked the way of introducing the characters to Kaldras, might try something similar – was having trouble thinking of how to introduce the party to him short of some good ole fashioned railroading.
Just a quick question - in relation to comments about how easy/hard encounters are, how many PCs where you running the campaign for?
Ill probably be running it for 3-4 PCs and thought I may have to tone down some of the encounters (esp the attempted kidnapping)
Cheers