Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde

[tricktroller]

Hey everyone!
I will be running this campaign for 4-5 players here in the near future and I was wondering if anyone has any advice for running this adventure. If your advice is to run a different module, kindly stick it in your nose. I plan to run a series of modules with an interconnecting story I have built around them all to take the group form level 1 to 20.

[Big Fau]

I have some personal experience with it.


The plot is extremely thin, and needs to be fleshed out. There's little to no motivation behind the Goblinoids' attacks against the Chicane Guild. Give the enemies a goal and the module becomes much more interesting.
Sumberton is extremely generic as far as specifications go. Some of the buildings are labeled on the town map, but very few are actually given a description. If you want your players to actually care about that town, give it more personality. Look into Cityscape for that.
Several enemies make no thematic sense (the Yuan-Ti, the Dark Creepers, the switch from Goblinoids to Drow to Gnolls, the Whitespawn Hordlings, the Clockwork Horror, the Derro). Pick a group and stick with it. When I ran the module, I picked Goblinoids and replaced the Drow with Bugbears/Hobgoblins (specifically MM5 ones), Varags, and Blues with Psychic Warrior/Ardent levels (and other goblins). Drow are a mixed bag, as they discourage weaker types of spells and encourage Conjuration/Buffing over other tactics, and the dungeons are ideal locations for Web spells (it will end your encounters, no questions asked).
The first dungeon has pitiful traps. Seriously, they are not a threat to a 1st level party that plays it smart (outside of the easily avoidable Scythe trap, which actually can kill a party member). Redesign those using the encounter traps from Dungeonscape and Magic of Eberron. Also mix in some enemies in those areas.
The devs did not think about the action economy or AoEs very much, if at all. Most enemies are encountered either solo (the Magma Hurler being the most capable at this, as it has ludicrous damage output for it's C; most of the rest are pathetically easy) or in pairs (in which case the party can overwhelm them.
Melee-based enemies in this dungeon need a massive overhaul on feats. For the mooks I recommend a level or two of Fighter, and the Bosses should have levels in Martial Adept classes.
In spite of focusing on the portals, the final dungeon has very little in the way of evil outsiders. There's a succubus and a Mezzoloth and a Hezrou, but that's it. The Teiflings don't even count. You could easily replace some enemies in that dungeon with more, specifically ones from the Fiendish Codex books (I used a few Legion Devils, and my party hated me for it).
Something about the Shattered Gate is that it can be used with RHoD as a backdrop for the Wyrmlords and their plot. The Gates would be providing evil outsiders from Tiamat to help Azar Kul, making the module much more memorable.
One final note: The enemies are expected to be played stupidly, at least by the Devs. This module becomes significantly more difficult if you play the enemies as an organized group instead of ragtag idiots. Hobgoblins especially; flavor-wise there is little to no excuse for them to be as unorganized as the Devs assumed.


The worst part about the module was the flavor behind the dungeons: Mu-Tahn Laa was a demon prince, and he transposed a small mountain onto the material plane. This mountain was located in the southeast corner of the map, yet two of the three dungeons you encounter are miles away from that location and the third is located right in where the mountain exploded. This makes no sense.

I personally moved the final dungeon to Castle Grief, and then refluffed the dungeons themselves to be remnants of the good-aligned army's battle against Muu-Tahn Laa. The enemies encountered in the dungeon have repurposed the Shattered Gates for evil. This could actually be a plothook for you if your party contains a good-aligned spellcaster, as you can have an emissary of his deity deliver a message/vision about it. The Luminous Order could even be the messenger if you want.

[Callin]

I was bored and decided to just do it as a dungeon crawl solo for myself then my stepson wanted in. So me and him went in a decimated the first 2 dungeons. Its stupid easy and a party of more will steamroll it. edit- I was a Hexblade/Crusader mulitclass and he was a Crusader/Blackguard by the end of it.

[Torben Raibeart]

I haven't looked at what they say in the spoilers - as I'm a player in an on-going iteration of this adventure - but give the players som heads-up on what kind of languages and knowledges that might come in handy plot-wise. We're nearing the end, but as no-one had the appropriate knowledges or languages (we started without a cleric), we still got no idéa what the plot actually encompass.

[KitTheOdd]

I ran this several years ago, so this is from my vague memories. Most of my group were new, and all were looking for a basic dungeon crawl type game.

1) There is a LOT of "free time" built in between the dungeons. And the levels the dungeons are built for encourage you to use that time for your own story.

2) The 3 dungeons will not take you to level 20, not by a long shot. So have more story.

3) It is very generic, by design, to fit into almost any world or setting. This can be a strength or weakness depending on what you want from it.

4) The maps and artwork were very nice to help bring the players into it.

5) The room write ups and suggested tactics made it very easy to run the game with little or no preparation time. They tactics might not be optimal, but they worked well enough for my group.

I enjoyed running it and my group enjoyed playing it. What more can you hope for?

[tricktroller]

I plan to run a series of modules with an interconnecting story I have built around them all to take the group form level 1 to 20.
A series, as in a bunch of different modules that I have found that I like and think will work well together and have an overarching storyline that I have come up with.

I will be running

The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft
Heart of Nightfang Spire
Deep Horizon
Lord of the Iron Fortress
My own little interlude to get them to 18 and then
Bastion of Broken Souls

these modules strung together with slight twists to the story and a good background plot should make for a long term fun campaign bringing the characters from 1st to 20th level.

[tricktroller]

Bumpity?

I really appreciate the posts so far, but anything else that could be useful is more than welcome.