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View Full Version : Running an Adventure that is TOO well known



Laurellien
2008-11-09, 06:30 PM
There are some adventures that everybody's heard of...

Expedition to Castle Deathtrap Ravenloft
The Tomb of unnecessary character death Horrors
Return to the Temple of arbitrary lethality Elemental Evil
City of the hopelessly mortal characters Spider Queen
Any of the excellent Character sheet paper wastes Adventure Paths published by Paizo

These adventures are famous because they are unnecessarily, arbitrarily lethal fun, exciting, interesting and of a high quality. So naturally, running or playing in one of these campaigns is something that many players and DM's wish to do.

However, a problem now arises. If many people have browsed through, or heard about these adventures beforehand, how then can one run them with players who have played, or even DM'd part of, or the whole of, the adventure?

ChaosDefender24
2008-11-09, 06:37 PM
change stuff

Matthew
2008-11-09, 07:14 PM
Yep, change things around. Play on what the player's likely know and subvert their expectations.

LibraryOgre
2008-11-09, 07:42 PM
Yep, change things around. Play on what the player's likely know and subvert their expectations.

The humans live in a series of caves in a small pocket canyon. The humanoids, under the command of a group of evil priests, live in a keep, just the other side of the border.

Lemur
2008-11-09, 07:44 PM
Yep, change things around. Play on what the player's likely know and subvert their expectations.

This, of course, is good general advice for DMs regardless of what they're running at the time.

Doomsy
2008-11-09, 07:46 PM
Warp it. They get in, it feels familiar, and then everything skews about 90 degrees or more. A friend of mine actually ran the Tomb as having been wrecked and mostly disarmed by time and the sheer weight of corpses, as part of an overall campaign. They had to find a necromancer who had hidden in there mostly for style and easy access to a lot of negative energy. And then the rust monsters attacked, followed by abominations with bone armor and weapons. He turned it from a somewhat unfair trap-filled hell to an unfair tactical nightmare that forced the players to use unfamiliar, new gear and the remnants of ancient, lethal traps that were now pretty haphazardly functioning.

Innis Cabal
2008-11-09, 07:49 PM
Mix all of them togather!

Flickerdart
2008-11-09, 07:52 PM
I'd lampshade the deadliness. Actually running a Tomb of Unnecessary Character Death would be pretty enjoyable for all the veterans, as long as the challenges inside are suitably renamed.

nosignal
2008-11-09, 08:19 PM
Mix all of them togather!

Return to the City of the Spider Queen's Temple of Elemental Horrors Beneath Castle Ravenloft?

Neon Knight
2008-11-09, 08:24 PM
Return to the City of the Spider Queen's Temple of Elemental Horrors Beneath Castle Ravenloft?

On the Bottom Floor of the Tomb of Unnecessary Character Death which is filled with Tucker's Kobolds.

chiasaur11
2008-11-09, 08:38 PM
Add more dinosaurs.

And maybe giant robots.

Project_Mayhem
2008-11-09, 08:39 PM
a somewhat unfair trap-filled hell

Nomination for understatement of the year

Nerd-o-rama
2008-11-09, 08:53 PM
Add more dinosaurs.

And maybe giant robots.http://ffrpg.republika.pl/approve2.PNG

nosignal
2008-11-09, 08:56 PM
Add more dinosaurs.

And maybe giant robots.

http://www.tfarchive.com/creative/content/58/grimlock2.jpg

SilverClawShift
2008-11-09, 10:24 PM
My DM sent us through the Tomb of Horrors...

...in a shadowrun campaign as a raid on an abandoned military labratory being co-opted by a mysterious organization of mages and ghouls.

Doomsy
2008-11-09, 11:23 PM
My DM sent us through the Tomb of Horrors...

...in a shadowrun campaign as a raid on an abandoned military labratory being co-opted by a mysterious organization of mages and ghouls.

Your DM is a magnificent bastard.

jcsw
2008-11-09, 11:32 PM
Methinks just a bastard. If he were really magnificent he would have gone back in time to make sure none of the players had heard of Tomb of Horrors, then when the players notice the rifts in time and deliberately read up tomb of horrors, still send them into the temple of elemental evil instead.

kbk
2008-11-10, 03:18 AM
Same thing that happens ever time we do undermountain.

Change stuff. Keep the theme, but change stuff.

Waspinator
2008-11-10, 03:39 AM
Add more dinosaurs.

And maybe giant robots.

And steampunk.

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5641/orcishmechagodzillasg4.png

Iku Rex
2008-11-10, 03:45 AM
Don't worry about changing stuff. Only do it if you feel that the change improves the adventure on its own merits.

People make too much of a deal out of the players knowing the "secrets". If the players want to metagame and/or cheat they don't need to have read the module to do it.

Ethdred
2008-11-10, 08:03 AM
The humans live in a series of caves in a small pocket canyon. The humanoids, under the command of a group of evil priests, live in a keep, just the other side of the border.

Nice one! Presumably the humans should live in just one of those caves, the others being occupied by other PC races. And of course, both sides are part of a clear and logically functioning ecosystem, and everyone has a proper name.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-10, 08:19 AM
Yep, change things around. Play on what the player's likely know and subvert their expectations.

The first thing I did when I and my friends started playing RuneQuest was run the adventure out of the back of the third edition (I think) GM book, with the silver-leaf tree and the peg-legged duck bandit. When they came to the duck bandit bit, they gleefully ignored the looming shapes of crossbow-wielding bandits in the bushes, knowing they were just dummies. (Incidentally, one wonders why the hell the duck bandit didn't just sell the incredibly expensive crossbows and live comfortably off the cash for several months.)

So, as soon as they refused to capitulate to the duck's demands, chortling over their cleverness in using knowledge of the adventure as-written, the duck gave a signal and a half-dozen bandits fired at the PCs, nearly killing them. They made a hasty escape before a second volley (or a charge) came.

Changing things up on the fly works nicely if you're good at improving, otherwise you'll want to give it more thought beforehand.

prufock
2008-11-10, 09:28 AM
Hey, my group has made it to section 14 of the Tomb of Unnecessary Character Death and no one has died yet!

...Been some pretty close calls, though.

...And there's still 2/3 of the dungeon left to tackle.

DrizztFan24
2008-11-10, 09:45 AM
Hey, my group has made it to section 14 of the Tomb of Unnecessary Character Death and no one has died yet!

...Been some pretty close calls, though.

...And there's still 2/3 of the dungeon left to tackle.

Sorry but I win, my group (led by my beguiler) with no previous exposure to the tomb (and all but 1 player below the age of 14) survived with no fatalities. And we won. And got the loot. With no resets.

I would have to say not to worry. The adventures may be good and may be known but just because they know the trap is there doesn't mean they can find it and disarm it....or maybe switch two doors or something. Just keep most of the elements the safe to throw the players off and switch "minor" details to lead to chracter sheet scrapping.

Seatbelt
2008-11-10, 10:04 AM
I could send you my restatted CR 22 greater vampire strahd. That will throw off the party's expectations.

Did you know that the XP table doesnt cover CRs that high for 12th level characters?

Funkyodor
2008-11-10, 10:44 AM
With Ravenloft, we've had multiple groups run through that one. Write down who dies / gets left behind and the DM can use them as vampires, werewolves, & critters to surprise the next group.

Project_Mayhem
2008-11-10, 10:45 AM
I could send you my restatted CR 22 greater vampire strahd. That will throw off the party's expectations.

Did you know that the XP table doesnt cover CRs that high for 12th level characters?

Thats mean ...

SilverClawShift
2008-11-10, 11:51 AM
Your DM is a magnificent bastard.

Very much so, doubly when considering the fact that we had no clue what we were going into, and didn't even realize it was the tomb of horrors 2.0 until nearly the end.

It was the Tomb of Horrors with military grade neurotoxins and automated sentry bots, but it was room for room the Tomb of Horrors.