The Call of the Netherdeep module calls for a bunch of random encounters between Jigow and Bazzoxan. As with this entire blog, there will be spoilers. I’m a fan of having travel either be interesting, or fast. For instance, a couple weeks ago, the group just traveled from Asarius to Jigow and we just cut to the two scenes. One, the giant toads they were sent to hunt, and one a plot-relevant encounter. This week, was much busier travel.
I’m trying to keep to the module pretty well, without railroading, but this travel was set up for a bunch of encounters. The player choices came once the encounters appeared, but I wasn’t super keen on the “randomness” of the encounter table. I wanted to, instead, tell a story. So, I set up an order depending on the conditions of travel: did the Rivals leave first, how fast was the party traveling. And I kept tweaking that order right up to the game starting, and then this morning, tweaked the remaining encounters for next week based on this week.
Specifically, I made sure they hit the encounters that would lead to social interactions later, because this is a very social group. I had them do the Lucky Break encounter, to show that random combat was a possibility this time and to get Irvan’s ring. We did Crashed Wagon for a possibility of loot – which they took, but to return to the families of the dead. Then we did Demonic Carrion to pick up the dagger – and they didn’t loot anything else but broken arrowheads. Lastly, we did Moorbounder Mayhem, to give them another new friend and an interaction with the mount they all want but cannot afford, yet.
I wanted to tell the story of the dangers of traveling in this land, especially when a bunch of people all head in one direction, tempting predators to pick off easy prey of unwary travelers. I also wanted to see how they interacted with these situations. I was not disappointed. The group did not loot any of the dead humanoids. They actually performed appropriate funereal rites for both groups of the dead.
Next week, I’m going to use Chekhov’s gun. They’ve seen gloomstalkers a couple times now, so instead of the Aurora Watch Patrol encounter I was planning after Ill Omen, I’m thinking of switching up to Feast for the Eyes. They’ve already fought demons and quasits, so I am pondering changing it up. There’s a gloomstalker encounter in the next chapter, too, so I might change the enemy in that one to something more demonic.
I left out the Bandit encounter as they’ve already had one, well one and a half, that were more plot relevant. If they had traveled slowly and carefully, this one would have come into play. They also left a day after the rivals, and stopped twice for funeral rites, so the Reunion isn’t going to happen, either.
Overall, I think this is working well, and makes sense to me, at least. Everyone’s still having fun, so guess it works for them, too.