[3.5] Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk

[zarakstan]

I'm DMing the game and I was just wondering if anyone had any hints on DMing it overall I think it is a great adventure, but I you found something you want to change please tell.

[Darwin]

I'm currently playing through the module myself, as a player though, and as far as I'm concerned we're nearing the final encounter.

Be sure to either ask your players to keep notes, or do it yourself, Ruins of Greyhawk has a lot of stuff going on, and we've missed many important parts by forgetting the little details we didn't jot down.

I'd turn down the volume of treasures as well, having found 5 stat increasing tomes at level 12 breaks the WBL quite a bit, and you might want to remove a certain artifact lying in a certain mage's study.

Then there's the illusion room, the one with tomb of horror-esque hidden dangers, I don't think it's fair to have a few failed will saves ensue TPK, especially not at this point in the campaign.

[Thurbane]

Well, not DMing it, but it's what my group are playing currently. I've been enjoying the module a lot. I'm playing a Dragon Shaman, and our group dynamic has been very good.

We've had two party deaths (in our group of 5) - our Grey Elf Beguiler early on, and our Dwarven Fighter just recently.

I can't give you any advice on DMing the module, but I would say from a player's perspective it is really a fun module to play.

[zarakstan]

Thanks for your help, and I think I will tone down the treasure it always seemed like a little too much to me. . .

[Thurbane]

Just thought of a few more things:

- Like many modules, this one seems to encourage putting the party up against a bunch of "walkover" encounters, and then having a really tough "end of level" encounter. It's not really a problem, just something to be aware of.

- As Darwin rightly points out, there is a lot going on in the module at any given time (a lot of quests and sidequests), so the players really need to be taking notes. I believe the web enhancement for the module has some printable handouts for the quests.

- As with many WotC products, interior art sometimes varies wildly from the actual contents of the module. This can vary from such minor things as an NPC who is described as having a bushy beard but depicted as clean shaven, to an encounter with a blue dragon where the illustration clearly depicts a black dragon (this was particularly relevant to me, as a Copper Dragon Shaman with an acid breath weapon!).