Couple of comments:
First, it seems to run pretty long. I was running on the pushy side, and it still ran a good six hours with the slightly nerfed version of Sancossug.
Less of a comment, more of a rant...What's up with that last encounter? Have other people running this managed to avoid a fight here? I mean, the adventurers have been sent to avenge the deaths of innocent townspeople, and to eliminate the threat of some unknown Ogre King being raised from the dead; they've fought through three solid encounters and been messed about by traps, pits, zombies and so, so many evil goblins. All of whom they have killed without a second thought.
They sneak down the long stairway and come across an Evil High Priest Goblin. Assuming the party are incompetent enough not to get the drop on him and initiate combat on a surprise basis (or if enough of them speak goblin and are prepared to parlay) the deal seems to be:
"OK, you have just fought through the complex, and massacred every member of the tribe that attacked Loudwater. The evil High Priest states that though he is still planning to raise the Evil Ogre King, that if the party hand over the Horn Totem (which may well be the first magic item they have ever received) to help him finish the ceremony, he promises he and the Ogre King won't kill any more innocent townsfolk in Loudwater."
Now, it may be my poor roleplaying of Sancossug (and I do realise that if the party choose to sit down and go over his ritual technique they'll find he's a bit hazy on the details and probably won't succeed, even with their magic item), but what the heck? The party are expected to tell him off, give him the magic dagger and return to the grieving townsfolk to explain that the goblin leader has promised to stop blowing up their town? This happens in other peoples' games?
At least one of the players (Hi, Oz) saw the crossed out Story Award and hit me with a mild rebuke (he prides himself on the roleplaying and I think was a little disappointed that by eliminating the threat to the town he had become a Combat Monster and missed out on a cool roleplaying story award.)
Go on, tell me how proper DMs managed this climatic encounter...:-)
Even cooler, given that one of the questions when reporting concerns the outcome here, can anyone hit me with statistics on whether I am the only one to drop the ball on this one?
Yes, it has been noted that the final encounter does not make any awful lot of sense, and that it inadequately indicates that the shaman is not someone the PCs are supposed to fight. One answer is to help guide the PCs to that conclusion--History or Insight checks to indicate that the PCs could create peace between the goblin tribes and Loudwater, but they don't know what would happen if they kill him and create a power vacuum.
Basically, though, it's not surprising that one of the very first adventures written for 4e (and not designed with LFR in mind) is not going to play as well as modules written after experience with the system and specifically for LFR.
Bottom line, it is a dumb and execrably written ("All goblin hexers, all the time") module without redeeming qualities at all. When I have recently had the opportunity to play the mod a second time, I have chosen to sit it out because I'd prefer not to play at all than to subject myself to that steaming pile of garbage again. If anyone is thinking about playing it, I would advise them not to and if anyone is thinking about offering it at a con or game day, I would advise them to pick another mod or cancel the gameday entirely. Either choice will be more fun than running or playing Barrow of the Ogre King.
On the last encounter- I've played it 3 times. The first time I played it I wanted to kill the goblin, but the rest of the party wanted to RP it, so I went with it, and we gave him the knife. Second and Third time, I let the rest of the party make the choice because I knew how the encounter worked. Second time we gave him the knife. Third time we killed him. I think one of the things that influenced negotiating instead of fighting is that the DMs stressed how incompetent he sounded about the ritual. He was definitely going to fail the ritual, and we slew his tribe, so he's basically a non-threat (I still wanted to kill him, but my opinion was in the minority).
Repetitive encounter design=bad.
Repetitive encounter design with the key feature of each encounter being annoying grind=execrable.
Insulting the players by pulling a "ooh, poor helpless wittle gobwin--you meanies just killed his whole tribe, why don't you give back what you stole from him and all make nice" at the end would, by itself be enough to ruin anything the module might have otherwise had going for it..
Adding in a ridiculously overpowered and mind-numbingly tedious fight as the alternative to accepting that line of poppycock module-writing is enough to give the module a place in the halls of module-writing infamy.
And making that fight worth less xp than simply handing over the dagger is unforgivable.
Don't get me wrong, I like dungeon crawls. But there is nothing to like about this module.
Repetitive encounter design=bad.
Repetitive encounter design with the key feature of each encounter beign annoying grind=execrable.
Insulting the players by pulling a "ooh, poor helpless wittle gobwin--you meanies just killed his whole tribe, why don't you give back what you stole from him and all make nice" at the end would, by itself be enough to ruin anything the module might have otherwise had going for it..
Adding in a ridiculously overpowered and mind-numbingly tedious fight as the alternative to accepting that line of poppycock module-writing is enough to give the module a place in the halls of module-writing infamy.
And making that fight worth less xp than simply handing over the dagger is unforgivable.
QFT, and further demonstrating my position that most, if not all, Wizards of the Coast RPG development employees should not be allowed near a word processor for the purposes of writing adventures. Ever.
Hell, compare WEEK 1-[123] to WEEK1-4 for another illustration.
And making that fight worth less xp than simply handing over the dagger is unforgivable.
This part doesn't make any sense to me either. Rewards in D&D are supposed to be based on taking risks and overcoming challenges. How is handing an object to an NPC worth more rewards than winning a difficult and deadly battle? Just using the mechanics of the game, it should have been a really complex skill challenge if it was going to equal that battle (which would have been annoying in it's own right). But getting more XP just for handing over the item? Lame.
Don't get me wrong, I like dungeon crawls. But there is nothing to like about this module.
Repetitive encounter design=bad.
Repetitive encounter design with the key feature of each encounter being annoying grind=execrable.
Insulting the players by pulling a "ooh, poor helpless wittle gobwin--you meanies just killed his whole tribe, why don't you give back what you stole from him and all make nice" at the end would, by itself be enough to ruin anything the module might have otherwise had going for it..
Adding in a ridiculously overpowered and mind-numbingly tedious fight as the alternative to accepting that line of poppycock module-writing is enough to give the module a place in the halls of module-writing infamy.
And making that fight worth less xp than simply handing over the dagger is unforgivable.
I have to agree with every sentiment here. It must be remembered that this is not an LFR mod, but there is no clear way to realise that you're not supposed to fight Sancossug.
Our all level 1 party did, after being severly beaten up in the previous encounter (Hobgoblin soldiers blocking doorway with their feature plus the -4 to hit from the hexer meant that we needed 18+ to hit for most of that encounter), and had a near TPK, before bargaining with Sancossug and handing over the dagger anyway (this was the pre-errata version).
Horrible, horrible mod.
I totally accept that it is an adapted adventure, my comment about the running time was just a heads up to anyone else thinking of running it to be careful before booking it into a fixed four hour slot.
I agree it was a bit samey, the hexer triplets were undoubtedly wearing a little thin by the end.
Did any groups do anything with the dwarven Stepping Stones?
Och, I don't think it was that bad.
I totally accept that it is an adapted adventure, my comment about the running time was just a heads up to anyone else thinking of running it to be careful before booking it into a fixed four hour slot.
I agree it was a bit samey, the hexer triplets were undoubtedly wearing a little thin by the end.
Did any groups do anything with the dwarven Stepping Stones?
We just finished this recently and we didn't want to give up the horn, even though we realized he would not succeed. After getting our **** handed to us when we first tried to attack him (we were all level 1) we ended up setting up a trap using the teleportation discs.
We strung up the disc in the room at the top of the stairs so that anyone teleporting to it would fall in the well in the middle of the stairs, brought the second disc to the bottom of the stair, and set up a trip wire in front of the disc at the bottom of the stairs. All this while our rogue, who could speak goblin, is bluffing his little heart out. Then we waved the horn at him from the bottom of the stairs. He came running, failed his perception check, and tripped & fell onto the disc. Much falling damage later he landed next to the disc and, while prone, was dragged back onto it by our rogue. That sent him for falling damage again. Sadly he landed on the disc and shattered it the last time, but by then he was plenty squishy and it didn't take much to win the battle after that.
