Thanks for watching! Let us know your thoughts about this adventure and how your play-through is going! Link to social checks referenced in the video: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#ResolvingInteractions We also have a TON of videos dedicated to helping you and your table get the most out of your games. Check out our playlists page for more: www.youtube.com/@JNJTabletop/playlists
Love the idea of leading with the harpies. Leading sailors to their doom with an alluring song? Classic stuff. I'd recommend making the secondary shipwreck very small - a single deck affair, something that can be crewed by just a few people, so if the heroes do check it out it doesn't take long. But leave clues about the harpies eating the sailors - like one of those pods owls hark up but full of human bones.
Classic tropes are classic for a reason! And the small ship idea… we can file that under things EVERYONE should do! Really wished we mentioned that in the video. Great idea here!
I have an alternate viewpoint to Josh's regarding the graveyard, but I'm going to combine them both to make up a whole new encounter for this module. Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, is about restless dead. Graveyards are about rest for the dead. The spiritual significance of a graveyard or cemetery is directly opposed to everything Orcus embodies. The graveyard of a nice place like Dragon's Rest probably has all manner of protective symbolism and wards against raising those interred there built into its construction and decoration. But Josh is right that a graveyard is a ripe "farming ground" for a necromancer, and something Orcus wants to defile. So I propose that destroying it involves risking exactly that - the heroes must take the talisman to a graveyard and run a ritual to purge its restless energy. Doing so, however, risks that the dead resting there will start to rise until the ritual is done. This is a perfect encounter for a skill challenge, and if there's no religious hero in the party, Runara can run the ritual but ask the heroes to protect her.* *This one works best if you go with the plan that Runara is no longer or never was a true dragon.
Maybe you bury the talisman in a cemetery because cemeteries are hallowed ground, and the blessing of the hallowed ground negates the necrotic magic of Orcus?
Thanks for watching! Let us know your thoughts about this adventure and how your play-through is going!
Link to social checks referenced in the video: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#ResolvingInteractions
We also have a TON of videos dedicated to helping you and your table get the most out of your games. Check out our playlists page for more:
www.youtube.com/@JNJTabletop/playlists
Love the idea of leading with the harpies. Leading sailors to their doom with an alluring song? Classic stuff.
I'd recommend making the secondary shipwreck very small - a single deck affair, something that can be crewed by just a few people, so if the heroes do check it out it doesn't take long.
But leave clues about the harpies eating the sailors - like one of those pods owls hark up but full of human bones.
Classic tropes are classic for a reason!
And the small ship idea… we can file that under things EVERYONE should do! Really wished we mentioned that in the video. Great idea here!
@@JNJTabletop Thanks, man!
I have an alternate viewpoint to Josh's regarding the graveyard, but I'm going to combine them both to make up a whole new encounter for this module.
Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, is about restless dead. Graveyards are about rest for the dead. The spiritual significance of a graveyard or cemetery is directly opposed to everything Orcus embodies. The graveyard of a nice place like Dragon's Rest probably has all manner of protective symbolism and wards against raising those interred there built into its construction and decoration.
But Josh is right that a graveyard is a ripe "farming ground" for a necromancer, and something Orcus wants to defile. So I propose that destroying it involves risking exactly that - the heroes must take the talisman to a graveyard and run a ritual to purge its restless energy. Doing so, however, risks that the dead resting there will start to rise until the ritual is done. This is a perfect encounter for a skill challenge, and if there's no religious hero in the party, Runara can run the ritual but ask the heroes to protect her.*
*This one works best if you go with the plan that Runara is no longer or never was a true dragon.
Maybe you bury the talisman in a cemetery because cemeteries are hallowed ground, and the blessing of the hallowed ground negates the necrotic magic of Orcus?
That would be a great move for the designers to have mentioned. It just would’ve been nice for them to explain why that’s a solution.
You ever eat salted seagull?
Are either of our names, Tommy?
@@JNJTabletop only if you’re really bad at pronunciation. 😂