New Adventure: The Cup of True Love

[jamesrbrown]

A few weeks ago, I needed an adventure for our gaming group, so I opened The Heart of the Wild for some inspiration. After reading about the West Anduin Vales, I came up with an outline for a five part adventure. I wrote some notes and ran the adventure. Afterwards, I decided to polish it up and make it presentable enough to share with everyone. Somewhere in the process, I decided to illustrate it as well (I hadn't sketched anything in a very long time!). Well, here it is...

The Cup of True Love

A special thank you to shipwreck who helped with the editing and to Francesco for giving me advice on the kinds of notes to include in an adventure scheme.

As always, you can link to my blog site in my signature for all my TOR resources.

NOTE: The name of the post has been changed from "A Cup of Golden Love," which was the original name of the adventure. That title needed some work, so I changed it to "The Cup of True Love" after some feedback here on the forum.

[zedturtle]

Very cool. I look forward to diving in deep!

[Rich H]

Cool!

It's been a while since we had a new piece a fan material by you, James, and this looks like fun; will give it a more thorough read when I have time.

[Corvo]

Thank you for sharing it, JamesRBrown!


SPOILER


I'm going to steal from it for a forthcoming adventure: I like that there is an hidden reason for the theft, a reason that can be noble or heroic. Commitmg a crime to have the means to challenge the beast speaks of pride, courage, desire of glory. And tragedy. It feels very appropriate to M-e.

[jamesrbrown]

I'm going to steal from it for a forthcoming adventure: I like that there is an hidden reason for the theft, a reason that can be noble or heroic. Commitmg a crime to have the means to challenge the beast speaks of pride, courage, desire of glory. And tragedy. It feels very appropriate to M-e.

That is exactly why I presented the adventure in this type of format. Different Loremasters can take the material presented, which is very minimal, and develop it in creative ways that others may not have thought of.

Let me know how things turn out for you. I often replay adventures and change things each time. I did not elaborate on Cilderic or his background, or even his fate really. I only say what he did, why, and that he never returned from Hag's Island (as far as anyone knows!). If you come up with interesting takes, I may want to use them when I play it again. It would be a whole different perspective with a focus on Cilderic.

[nazgul_2000]

*Spoiler Alert*

James - this is excellent, thank you very much. I will definitely be working this in to my DofM campaign, which started off as a TfW campaign, in which the parties have already been to Mountain Hall. There, they were betrayed by Madric the Trapper. The Beorning in my group has wanted vengeance ever since. Madric escaped when the party fought with an orc patrol in the Gladden Fields, so I think I will make him the antagonist of this adventure. Perhaps, realizing that the party was on to him, he crawled back to Mountain Hall while the party went on to the Dwimmerhorn, and stole the cup before making his permanent escape from Mountain Hall . . .

[jamesrbrown]

Once you guys have had a chance to read my adventure fully, please give me some feedback. I would really appreciate it as I plan on writing up further adventures in the same format.

[zedturtle]

Once you guys have had a chance to read my adventure fully, please give me some feedback. I would really appreciate it as I plan on writing up further adventures in the same format.

Ok, I've finally had a chance to take a look at the adventure. I like the effort at incorporating the material from Heart into the adventure, but it feels very "choppy" (probably an artefact of the outline nature).

My suggestions to link things up better.

1. Make Cilderic a close friend of Beranald. Make the betrayal personal to both Beranald and Hartmut. I'd go so far as to make Beranald convinced that Cilderic must have had a good reason to take the treasure. This also begs another question... why did Cilderic want to confront and kill the Hag? Not for gold and treasure, surely? I'd recommend making it personal... maybe the Hag casts a dweomer over herself and visits lonely men as they stand guard over remote outposts? Cilderic realizes his dereliction of duty has produced an offspring and he must end the results of his terrible crime (this also plays off of the wholesome love that the Cup represents).

2. As the adventure is written, the Wolfswood encounter seems completely random and highly determinant on the players picking a Journey plot. Why not have Beranald believe that Cilderic might have hidden out in the old stone fortress in the Wolfswood? That makes their visit purposeful instead of random. Something seems a bit off about the treasure there too... maybe make it be an illusion, just a memory of the Spectre instead of anything real?

3. Speaking to my point on #1, perhaps Widuven is the vehicle for the characters to learn of Cilderic's motivations. The encounter with Widuven could gain a new edge of tension... Widuven won't want to reveal to these strangers the truth of why Cilderic went to the Island, but does not want to disparage his friend as a simple treasure seeker either.

4.I think the Hag is pretty good as written, but mayhap have her be a talker... she may tell stories that her daughter has met her father, and found him delicious, for example.

- - - - -

Don't mean to beat up too badly on you, and I'm going to try to rework Theft a little bit in order to gain more consistency with the published adventures, like Cup has.

Also, I do agree with the rpg.net sentiment that it's perhaps best to think of other names. But maybe not...

[jamesrbrown]

Ok, I've finally had a chance to take a look at the adventure. I like the effort at incorporating the material from Heart into the adventure, but it feels very "choppy" (probably an artefact of the outline nature).

Yes, because it is not fully written out, the Loremaster gets the basic story and must fill in the gaps. That being said, I like some of the ways you've chosen to do that (although I don't really like the idea of having Cilderic father a child with the hag, yikes!).

Here's what I like the most about what you said:

Make Cilderic a close friend of Beranald. Make the betrayal personal to both Beranald and Hartmut. I'd go so far as to make Beranald convinced that Cilderic must have had a good reason to take the treasure.

This idea makes the quest two-fold: to retrieve the cup and to reconcile Cilderic with Beranald.

Why not have Beranald believe that Cilderic might have hidden out in the old stone fortress in the Wolfswood? That makes their visit purposeful instead of random.

Yes, I like this idea better than what I wrote in the encounter with Beranald. Maybe I will re-write and rearrange the order of rewards a little. That would definitely give them a reason to choose the woods as opposed to avoiding it and skipping that part altogether.

The reason I had them find a hoard of treasure and encounter ghosts, etc., was to display the danger of the Wolfswood and to give them a chance to come across any magical items they are "meant" to find before facing the River-hag. Also, to show that greed and robbery often leads to death...

Also, I do agree with the rpg.net sentiment that it's perhaps best to think of other names. But maybe not...

Oh, my! I definitely don't want the title of my adventure to resemble a German porno as that one fella said. So, if anyone can come up with a better name, I'm open to suggestions.

[nazgul_2000]

So after reading the adventure, I visited your blog and read your mass combat rules - awesome! I can't believe this forum hasn't been talking about them more. I plan on writing a post about them once I finish working out the details to implement your rules with my current game.