Hi everybody, well after a lot of sweat and toil, here is the first adventure of my promised Fourth Age Campaign, set in Umbar in Fourth Age 1220 but can easily be run at other times (as I have pinched stuff from ICE's Umbar & ICE's Kin-Strife). See in my sig and also link below:

A Kidnapping in Umbar



Constructive comments welcome!

Robin S.

Wow. You've done an amazing amount of work on this Robin, thank you for posting.

I'm still reading through but I find your development of the rivals very intriguing. The Corsairs make challenging foes & you have some great role-playing possibilities here!

You expand upon ToR's Dreadful Spells to give your villains an added punch. I do as well, because their Holding Spell as released is cool, but I'd like some variety. We both seem to tweak some of the MERP & Decipher LOTR spells, but I'm struggling about the whole balance thing & which ones are too powerful or weak, so when I have a chance, I'm going to have a second look at your Dindair & Dark Priests.

Good stuff

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Please forgive the multiple posts. I'm really getting tired of their 'Server is busy' messages. If any of you run into this, just leave your original post as is

Anyone else read this yet?? I plan to playtest it in about a month's time, but curious to see if anyone else plans to run it.

Robin S.

I've not had time to read through it (it's an epic piece of work - respect! ), but my immediate concern looking at the intro is the "intended resolution". How flexible is the scenario for alternative outcomes like capturing the false prince? Are there other threads that would lead to part 2, and so allow him to be captured without derailing the campaign?

Ovid

Good question - at this stage, no, there are no alternative threads if the PC's manage to capture the False Prince - thank you for posing that one! Having now mulled over it, I can briefly state the options as I see them:

1. The PC's manage to capture the False Prince but don't find out his true identity (ie that he is a Dindair). In my view this is an easy solution - the Dindair will simply escape from whoever has imprisoned him and continue with his missions

I have not gone into detail about these as I was only focusing on Adventure 1 - I had envisaged Gwaerenduath as the major adversary for the PC's for the next few adventures, climaxing with Adventure 6 where the PC's confront Gwaerenduath at the ruins of the Court of Ardor (if anyone recalls this wonderful ICE module!), by which time the PC's hopefully will have learned enough of their enemy to be able to actually defeat him. Remember that Gwaerenduath has lived many centuries and dealt with many enemies, so I don't think it likely that the PC's will be able to best him.

2. The PC's learn that the False Prince isn't human (they learn some or part of the truth) - I still don't think it is a major problem, unless the PC's seriously wound or incapactitate the creature in some way. As a shadow creature Gwaerenduath should be able to escape from nearly any place and captors.

3. The PC's kill Gwaerenduath before the anticpated conflict. This is the only real concern I have, I think I will have to design another major adversary to replace Gwaerenduath if this happens, havent really thought about it at this stage.

What I have envisaged is that the PC's will be too busy dealing with the various schemes Gwaerenduath 'sets up' to further his master's aims in the south. His main mission is to bring peoples back to The Shadow and his master, a secondary one will be to hinder the PC's if they pursue him.

Robin S.