Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 chanter_hound Nov 02, 2009 23:18:17	Basically what this adventure consists of is a limited timed event. You have zombies and other undead coming to ransack a town. Your party must stop them. Problem is, its a huge swarm of undead.. not just a petty handful of them. So you must fight them, then retreat, fight them again, and retreat. I'm estimating you are allowed 5 retreats before you are at the city gates. Any enemy not killed becomes fully healed with all encounter powers. (Not dailies.) There will be a large amount of minons, but will also have enemies from all areas.. even solos. Once you get to the city, a small amount of minons may join your fight against the zombie horde, but you lose points for each of them killed.
#2 johnnyslick Nov 03, 2009 2:22:00	IMO an adventure ought to look less like a sequence of events (I will grant you, this is how WOTC's adventures look; in fairness, it's much easier to introduce it like that) and more like a flowchart. When the first wave comes in, map out what generally ought to happen if the PCs win the fight, if they lose, and so on. This would be an excellent situation to bring in more elements than grinding: tossing solos in is nice, but what about having them rescue a poor little girl before the zombies eat her and then the necromancers get to her and turn her into some monstrosity out of the Open Grave sourcebook? Or at some point, after slogging through zombies, they see a bunch of undead surrounding a group casters performing a ritual? Stopping the casters before the ritual finishes (say, 5 rounds) could stop the flow of recently dead for a little while, but if they do complete it, the party has to contend with a zombie hulk or two (heh, from a player's standpoint I don't think I'd want to stop the casters! But I digress). Also think out what might happen if the characters think outside of the box. Because if you have players who are worth anything, they *will* try to break your game. That's what players do. Sometimes I think the object of DnD is that the DM comes up with an elaborate plot and the players are tasked to do everything they can to not fulfill it.
#3 chanter_hound Nov 03, 2009 9:22:10	Well there really isn't any elaborate plots going on here. Just something like 100 minons, and a couple dozen of the rest of the zombies (other undead.) all running at the village. If they kill them all at the first map, then good. If not, then they get a few more chanaces to finish them off. They players should be able to do things like set up ambushes for the enemy, place traps and the like. But over all this is would be  a high combat sort of adventure. Which rewards some feats, like restful healing.
#4 xii Nov 03, 2009 12:38:38	The flowchart idea would help a great deal - espacially when married with the 'you get x retreates before you are at the city gates' mechanic. The only thing that would make this hard is the open nature of dnd. What if the players climb on-top of the house instead of retreating to the next? I would just make sure you've got enough info to be quick on your feet. I would also add elements to each encounter which aren't very easy to get but offer a great deal of help in subsequent areas and may even help you survive your last stand at the city gates. It gives you an objective other than 'kill stuff for as long as you can' and something to try and accomplish before you retreat.
#5 chanter_hound Nov 04, 2009 8:42:42	Well pretty much if they climb on the house instead of retreating.. they would still be in the battle. There will probally be some skill challanges at the start, just before the invasion begins to allow the players to fortify the city.. so if they wanted to they could try to take on the entire invasion at the city gates rather than string out some of the battles.   They could possibly also get traps and other obsticals to eliminate zombies before they even had to fight them.
#6 chanter_hound Nov 08, 2009 1:12:45	Nothing else the players might try to do?
#7 individuality Nov 08, 2009 19:03:39	If I were the player in this situation, I'd tell the people to evacuate the city, and then let the zombies come in. Once they're all inside the city, close the gates and trap 'em in. Then, we either open the gates a little and fight the zombies in small groups as they squeeze through, or fire volley after volley of arrows over the city walls and into the crowd of zombies on the other side. Or we scale the city walls and barrage 'em from there with greater accuracy. Or we just burn the entire city to the ground. Lots of options.
#8 chanter_hound Nov 08, 2009 22:01:04	If I were the player in this situation, I'd tell the people to evacuate the city, and then let the zombies come in. Once they're all inside the city, close the gates and trap 'em in. Then, we either open the gates a little and fight the zombies in small groups as they squeeze through, or fire volley after volley of arrows over the city walls and into the crowd of zombies on the other side. Or we scale the city walls and barrage 'em from there with greater accuracy. Or we just burn the entire city to the ground. Lots of options. This is assuming the town has gates though. Which yeah, it probally would. But it would be highly suggested from the DMs possition to say hey, you are going to be fighting at least a hundred zombies, you might want to weed them out a little bit before you get to the final battle at the gates. And from the townsfolk position... Burning thier city down might turn them on you, even if you did get rid of the zombie menece it would be kinda meaningless if you destroyed the entire town. In otherwords, sure.. you stopped the zombies, but no soup for you! Besides.. the zombies have Chuck. A really big zombie that can thrown smelters.. a goblin zombie that when killed.. explodes in poison bile. (like several zombies already do.) After all it wouldn't be intresting if it was just normal moan and groan type of zombies. There is a few more that i'm working on with the ideas...
#9 novatack Nov 10, 2009 18:10:51	I'm not sure what  kinds of players you have, but you may want to be ready for the possibility that they'll think "A whole army of zombies is impossible to kill, the adventure is obviously to go after the necromancer or whatever controlling them." Whether you want to run with this (it could make an interesting challenge- storm the keep/fortress/tomb within a certain amount of time) or tell them "No, you actually are going to be fighting them" is up to you.
#10 chanter_hound Nov 10, 2009 21:09:56	Well the necromancer might be there, like in the center of the army. It may be possible the players could possibly sneek into the zombie warcamp thing and off him. Then have to start running back to the town while the zombies have an ongoing 5 damage. (minons instantly die.) Wouldn't be the easiest route.. or perhaps it could be depending on the players. This could shape up to be even funner than i had origanlly thought.