I am enjoying running this season of encounters. Big chunks of time between chapters are something new and leave openings for players to add history to their character as they grow. The story is good and I like that they get to face their recurring enemy often, unlike last season when it was eight weeks before they had an encounter with their foil.

I do have a couple requests for the future. Hopefully they could add just a few more paragraphs of information to enhance the story and roleplaying experience. Hammerfast is called a necropolis once in the module. In the adventure summary the plot for this week is revealed as “Vladistone turns the ghosts of Hammerfast against its citizens” but the magnitude of the ghost population is never really revealed until after the boxed text for this session. Just a paragraph or two from the Hammerfast supplement that was released a few years ago would be helpful. A player on his or her toes in week one may have asked, why is Hammerfast a Necropolis? The module does not provide this information. I know as a player I would have gotten much more satisfaction if a big hint got dropped week one that I had a shot at putting together for the future so come week nine we are not caught totally off guard.

On top of the lack of ghostly specifics, this week Vladistone demands “Send out your Lady of Gold. Let the High Master pay the price for this transgression.” Any DM that may be running this module week to week and only got to look this over a few minutes before play would have no idea who the Lady of Gold is nor have time to look it up. Sure, contextually you can assume she is the ‘leader’ of Hammerfast, but two paragraphs down “sergeant of the guards, Thora Longhammer” is described but she is not needed anywhere else as other than someone to parley with Vladistone if the party doesn’t.  I understand they cannot give all the details I would like in a module due to word count for the project but why bother to waste a sentence on Thora Longhammer and not give any clue as to who the Lady of Gold is, someone the antagonist specifically mentions. They included a nice, page size map of Hammerfast. Awesome, I love maps, but nothing is labeled on this map so even if you wanted to use it to let the characters pick their path to the Grand Library you’d be guessing as to what building is the Library.

All that said I did appreciate how they called out for the DM that knowledge of the original Ghost Tower of Inverness module is not needed. I also liked that all the NPCs the characters had to interact with were given a quick quarter page character profile. I guess this is just a case of the more they give you the more you want.

This weeks special guest

In a constant effort to make each week fun for the players I try to come up with something special. A lot of the time I pull something right from the module and just enhance it. The plague demon they found a few sessions back had the most ridiculous description possible with odd horns, strange coloring and big floppy ears like Dumbo.

Other weeks I add in a couple monsters that fit with the theme of the week or enhance the story in some way. This became more common practice since the players have been overwhelming the encounters each week, even with strengthening the encounter as directed in the module. I had something ready to go last week when I thought I was going to have eight players but only four showed up. I enjoyed this monster so much I had to find a way to get him into this week since there were seven players.

When I think of “The Ghost Tower of Inverness” original module, I think of an umber hulk. When I first flipped through that module back in the day and I saw its image on the interior art there was no other monster for me. Sure, an umber hulk would be way too powerful for these characters, but an extremely old and diminished one that was transported here with the castle and left magically hibernated until Vladistone detected it under the ruins of New Inverness would be a viable enemy.

The adventurers have infuriated Vladistone to the point where he wanted this special monster to destroy them. To bend it to his will Vladistone cast a powerful ritual that bonded the “Welcome to New Inverness” sign to the beasts rocky hide. Salazar then sent his spectral wolf companion into Hammerfast to find the party and signal the hulk. They knew something was up when the wolf leapt atop the fountain statue howling loudly, but could do nothing about it since some ghostly orcs and dwarves were keeping them busy. A couple rounds later the hulk made an appropriately cinematic entrance destroying the fountain.

The hulks rocky skin had become brittle (manageable AC) and it was sickly (only had a handful of hit points) but it got the desired result. Invy (sorry, yes, I named him) scared the crap out of the players and had them thinking it was time for a tactical retreat. Everyone that is except for Belgos, he wanted another trophy. Remember the plague demon, he took one of the ears for a prize. When I added that their destroyed homes signpost was bonded to its rocky flesh the rest of the party took the insult appropriately and joined in against it.

This week my addition paid off with role playing dividends. I used the standard Jurassic Park reference to describe what was happening to the water in the fountain just before the hulk smashed through the bottom of the fountain and destroyed the statue that decorated its center. I was barely done with the flowery description of what happened when one of the players asked, “Who was it a statue of?” Missing only half a beat, I couldn’t think of a dwarf warlord off the top of my head, I informed them it was a statue of Gransen an expert mausoleum stonecutter from centuries ago.  I was pleased when a few rounds later that player’s character called out “In Gransen’s honor!” as he delivered the death blow to the hulk. It’s moments like that that I play the game for.

The poor thing never got a hit in but it did confuse half of the party and kept everyone else on their toes. From how difficult the rest of the module is, mostly the fact that there are five encounters, I do not think I’ll be able to add anything else nifty in, so I’m glad I was able to use him here.