Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 warpshadow Oct 07, 2009 16:04:04	I am in the early stages of creating a new campaign and I am working on the first adventure. The problem that I am running into is I am having having a bit of a problem with how to make the second half of the adventure interesting. So far I have the idea of four linked combat encounters in a kobold lair. I was wondering about what any of you would do to make this more interesting. Here are the parameters I am working with 1.The party will be 1st level. 2.The second half of the adventure takes place in a monster lair, I am thinking kobolds. 3.There will be other adventuring parties in the area but ideally the players will find the lair first. 4.No Fell Taints.
#2 tomcardin Oct 08, 2009 17:56:01	I would make it a contest with other parties...all competing for patronage. The difficulty is measuring the progress of the other parties which the player party is competing with. You could come up with a point system for speed and accuracy with a complimentary system for awarding creativity and innovation. Then just have the party compete against a baseline, par, figure. Time scores should be the number of rounds a battle takes rather than the actual time of the battle...new characters can take a while to play as the players are still fresh in the skins of the new personae's. The whole course could be illusionary or set up as mock duels with higher powered NPC's pretending to be monsters and limiting themselves to barfight - subdueing type damages. I would also combine the action with a significant puzzle to solve so they have physical and mental challenges to solve. And finally give them an ethics puzzle that will confirm for the patron that they are the right stuff to be representing him.
#3 cymbeline Oct 09, 2009 17:59:31	Have more than one tribe of kobolds, and have one of them manipulate the party into clearing out the opposing tribe. The other tribe can hit back with it's own hired/manipulated NPC party. Something along the lines of : the first tribe is living happily in the caves. The second tribe wants to move in, so it stages a bunch of attacks on a local village, the villagers do the obvious thing and hire a party of adventurers to kill off all the pesky kobolds. Unbeknowenst to the second tribe, the first tribe hires its own party to fight the first party. The whole thing can culminate in a four-way battle at the end between two parties and two tribes of kobolds, where the best strategy might be just to run off and leave them all to it.
#4 warpshadow Oct 10, 2009 17:06:14	Thanks, both of those ideas sound really interesting.
#5 TregMallin Oct 14, 2009 19:50:15	2.The second half of the adventure takes place in a monster lair, I am thinking kobolds. Perhaps add some details that play up the size discrepancy between humans, elves, half-orcs and the kobolds.  Think of them as giving homefield advantage to the shorter defenders: Restricted areas might require tall characters to crawl to get through.  But not everywhere... Kobolds are short.  Intruders might be tall.  Traps might woosh over a short character's head, but hit anyone taller than about 4.5 feet square in the chest.