As you might have guessed from the post title it involves a kidnapping (girlnapping?) and I’d actually planned it out before the title came to me.  The original working title was Every Father’s Nightmare.  Although Taken the movie is decent, plot holes not withstanding.

A very basic outline is thus -

A very pretty woman of casual (or not so casual) acquaintance of the party disappears.  No one has seen her for a couple of days.  She might be the pretty barmaid at the tavern they frequent, or the sister of a friend or the strangely attractive fruit vendor on the corner they get their apples from.

So it comes to their attention that she’s missing.  They’re asked to see what happened to her by someone or by their own noticing that she’s gone.

This will lead them to either a Skill Challenge or a Role Play segment (whatever works best for the group mentality) where they investigate leads and track down who saw her last and all that.

They’ll uncover a rash of missing pretty girls and this should lead them to a clue, perhaps a mound of rags in an alley saw something, a tattoo perhaps or a distinctive knife or embroidered patch.

This will lead them penultimately to a gang of thugs that hire themselves out to the highest bidder.  This will involve two encounters, one with a band of these thugs in the streets at night.  This fight will result in the party learning where the gang hangs out, this could be due to capturing one of them and making him talk, following a wounded one to the lair by blood trail, or the DM’s final desperate ploy, the venerable note found on the body.

The gang encounter will take place in and around a warehouse complex, lots of nooks and crannies to add waves of minons from, things to hide behind and hinder combat, perches for artillery to shoot from.  The NPC’s could range from members of the gang to watch-creatures they have.  The fight as envisioned would move from the fairly open warehouse floors to offices on the second floor and then to the rooftops as the leaders flee for their lives.

Capture information (whether from notes or interrogation) will reveal that the gang was procurring pretty women at the bequest of a upscale slaver.  Perhaps a minor noble or influential merchant or something like that that is trying to move up by providing entertainment for others.

This BBEG encounter would take place at the guarded and secured manor house of the BBEG where the current crop of girls is being held.  This should involve sneaking and peaking more than rush the front gate style play, the size of the forces at the manor should strongly encourage that.

The BBEG forces could involve all the above as well as more supernatural elements or perhaps shared resources with another lord or merchant that will result in the party making some powerful enemies that could be recurring plot threads.

Anyway this is rough outline, thought it might spark some ideas for anyone who visits.

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In an effort to be extremely clever and witty I’m calling the module I’m writing for an upcoming session Running With Zizzors. Bow before my awesomeness and weep in joy. This module is for players new to 4th Edition and in the case of one, new to PnP RPG’ing due to hype and hysteria surrounding the hobby in it’s early days.  Ah those were the days, sitting around the pentagrams trying to summon Orcus using the spells out of the players handbook.  Sweet times indeed.

This is my current “Read Aloud” text that I will be presenting the players with at the start of the adventure -

œYou are all residents of a medium sized fishing village on the shores of the Timpani sea.  The climate is moderate with mild winters.  The fishing fleets go out every week and return loaded with fish.  These fish are preserved, some in heavy brine, others dried and the very best ones are subject to rituals by the village ritualist and his apprentice that slow their decay so they can arrive at the city markets as fresh as they were pulled from the waters.

The area has many dangers, bandits from the hills to the south like to prey on travelers, wild animals and worse wander the countryside™s thick forests and low hills making travel a very dangerous thing for the solitary or weak.  To the east lay the dense marshes of Fenglidden (Black Marsh) swamps.  Tribes of reptilian humanoids known as Zizzors live on the edges of these fetid waters and stories abound of the greater dangers that lay deeper inward.

It was a successful trip and you have good news to report to the village, disease has wiped out a good portion of the beef herds so meat is at a premium and your barrels of fish brought a good price. Youre in a hurry to get home and the three day trip seems to drag on forever but finally the trip is drawing to a close.

But what’s this? A sullen glow lines the night sky south.  And as morning breaks, you see billowing smoke columns are on the horizon from where you know your village lies although several hours distant at the speed of the wagons.  You draw straws to see who will take the few horses and hurry on ahead leaving the plodding oxen to continue pulling the wagons of empty barrels.

As you come over the last rise the village lays before you.  Several  houses on the east side are nothing but burning embers,  others further in are partially burned or scorched. Â  Two of the big warehouses and the docks are in ruins.

You hurry down, weapons drawn to find the a pile of zizzor bodies, easily 20 or 30 of them and many shroud covered forms you know to be the bodies of your friends and relatives.

Elders of the village fill you in and answer your questions, a large force of zizzors attacked in the middle of the night setting fire to buildings and destroying and killing.  The villagers fought back but took heavy losses much as the hated reptiles had.

The one thing that sticks out to you from the stories is that the Zizzors seemed to be raiding with a purpose other than just random pillaging. Â Â  A head count reveals that several children are missing and feared taken but the remaining villagers are too few and there are too many wounded and injured to go after them.

But now that youre here perhaps that can change, perhaps a quick chase could recover the children… or their bodies if the worst has already happened.

The party, in my case, will consist of villagers, the best of the best so to speak and as a result they’re the only ones on hand able and capable of going after the zizzors with any speed or hope of success. It could just as easily be a group that’s passing through the village in the time of it’s need by land or perhaps they pulled into dock after spotting the fires and smoke from the oceans, whatever the reason they’re here now and tasked with saving the children.  That’s the good thing about using children, everyone with an ounce of compassion is going to make the attempt.  If the zizzors had raided the Home for Criminally Insane then perhaps it might not be as critical to save them.

And here’s one of the many types of Zizzor’s that I’ve created, not sure why I felt the need to make unique monsters for everything for this module since the people playing aren’t familiar with all the 4E monsters anyway but what the hell right?

Zizzor Spinethrower

Production values are a little… short?  It feels like what I’m sure it is, someone with old school DM experience and  a copy of Word or perhaps In Design but with little knowledge of print press, layout and publishing sat down to make a few bucks.

It’s not a bad module and certainly for the price which is like $7, it might be worth your time to download it and have it on hand when you get stuck for an idea for a session or whatever t but that same $7 will get you a month of Dungeons and Dragons Insider with access to more polished modules.

Again it’s not bad in concept, it’s the implementation that leaves me lacking, the choice of layout design, colors etc. comes off as something more like a stand out garage sale notice on a telephone pole rather than a pay to play published module.  It also doesn’t help that the whole ‘charred paper’ thing is so 1980′s Judges Guild Publishing.

The basic concept is some were-rats are exploiting a village and the party has to enter into the picture and prevent it.  This leads them through caverns and tunnels (sorry but the maps for which are also so 1980′s) and into a final confrontation with an avatar of the Lurker the patron god of rats.

There are a couple of battlemaps which were obviously created in Dundjinni but one of which is nothing but a page of squares with a single water well in the middle, no other decoration etc so I have to question why bother putting it in there when so many other locations could have actually benefited from maps but there are none. Â  And a big empty square map without any terrain to spice it up is rather boring.  It’s the town square, let’s throw a vegetable stand out there or some wagons parked or benches or hitching racks or something, anything other than featureless empty space.

On the plus side, I believe all the monsters in the module have existing mini’s from the various Dungeons and Dragons Miniature’s line.

In good conscience I can only give this a 6/10 and that’s just because I like the no holds barred hook at the start if the players aren’t on the ball and the repercussions and potentially subsequent guilt and further hooks it could bring up especially with strong good characters to make amends for their failure.

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Although a little late, there’s a horror based module for your use if you’d like it and it can be found here.

Here’s a little snippet:

This island was once the hold of a dwarven runesmith and his family. Given his skill and talent, the smith had his own forge and foundry, along with a small village of his clan that had come to join him. The smith chose this island both for its reclusive locale and its abundant natural resources. The island is the tip of a long-dormant volcano, and not far below the surface are ferrous ores rich in the minerals the runesmith needed for his crafts.

The smith lived and prospered here for over two hundred years. On the eve of their two hundredth year celebration, the runesmith’s wife fell from the keeps parapets and died. Over the next weeks and months, the runesmith called in all of his favors with local lords and kings who had benefited from the dwarf’s quality wares. Priests and arcanists were shipped in from lands as far away as the green coast (which, at the time, was the property of the black kings). Unfortunately, no form of resurrection seemed to work, and as time drew on, the runesmith became more and more obsessed and deranged. Many of his clan attempted to bring him to reason, but being dwarves, they had no choice but to trust in and honor their quickly degenerating lord. Then, exactly one year after the accident, the entire keep’s contact with the outside world cut off. Not long after, when ships arrived to restock the dwarves’ supplies, they found nothing but old bones, decrepit and brittle with extreme age.

After a few years experience the only thing I’d truly map out with a lot of planning and forethought was the campaigns beginning and ending and usually middle.  A campaign without a good beginning and ending is crap and you should have some idea of where it goes.

As an example for my Heart of the Universe campaign I knew the characters would start off by dying and would end by dying. Sounds morbid but it worked, trust me on that one. Â  I knew who the recurring bad guy would be and how he would work through proxy to avoid detection and a rough idea how that would limit him. I knew the characters would end up plane hopping and encounter strange lands, dead end worlds at the end of their life cycle and dark gods of chaos festering away in their imprisonment at the far end of the (un)known multi-verse.  But on a week to week basis I might show up with three pages of notes scribbled down at work about the current situation and together the player’s and I would forge the plot threads.

Anyway, I ramble the download links are below.  If you can deal with rar’s then download that one, it’ll be faster for you, otherwise the two links are identical.

Download links:

Module with Battle Maps Zip format (slower download): Savage Worlds Die Roller V3 (47)

Module with Battle Maps Rar Format (faster download):[Download not found]

The RAR aka faster download is smaller (hence the faster download) but you will need a decompressor that can handle rar format.  There are several out there, WinRar, UltimateZip, 7-zip that can handle this type of format.  And of course Windows can deal with Zip files directly.

And if you like them, please comment or send me an email through the comment form.

• See it now! (1 mb PDF)

The word “goblin” brings forth images of shrieking humanoid warriors descending upon a village in the dead of night, long columns of armored hobgoblins marching in precise formation, and cunning bugbears waiting in ambush along a forest track. The Bloodghost Syndicate likes to keep it that way. From hidden lairs in cities across the world, it engages in extortion, assassination, robbery, and even the occasional legitimate business venture. Spurred on by a combination of boundless greed and shrewd cunning, the Bloodghost Syndicate has built an empire of crime beneath the noses of those sworn to defend civilization from goblinoid incursions.

An inheritance should be something you enjoy, but not for Valmour Tessount. His father’s mine stopped producing long ago, and only an unexpected discovery in his father’s papers has the estranged son eager to explore his new acquisition. But then miners went missing, and Valmour is doing anything he can to salvage the situation. But more importantly, what lurks in the depths of Tessount’s Folly, were it to get loose, could cause problems for more than the mine’s owner.

• See it now! (2.9 Mbs PDF)

The black-sheep son of prominent aristocrats, Valmour Tessount found himself written out of his father’s will when his hedonistic behavior shamed his family once too often. In an uncharacteristically public display, the senior Tessount announced that he would bequeath his entire estate to Valmour’s younger brother Sanoped. In response, Valmour pilfered a sizable cache of gems from the family vaults, took up the path of the warlord, and embarked on a life of debauchery and ill-fated adventures. Now, the prodigal son has a chance to restore his fortunes, but a deadly curse stands between him and the wealth he claims as his birthright.

The Scales of War Adventure Path kicked off last month in Dungeon #156. This month, we offer you a chance to customize your character uniquely to Scales of War with these character background concepts. Although intended for use with Scales of War (future adventures might incorporate some of these background elements as plot devices), they’re eminently suitable for any D&D campaign.

• See it now! (1 mb PDF)

The setting of the Scales of War Adventure Path is more implied than actual. That’s intentional on our part. We want you to make the world your own rather than define it for you (beyond the degree of definition required to place future adventures).

But from “Rescue at Rivenroar” onward, the characters at your table will come to life and develop their own backstories, goals, and agendas. As a launching pad for those backstories, we offer this slate of character backgrounds.

Gotta go put my kids to bed so I have nothing more to say about this to be honest.  As always if nothing else give it a look, as with anything, you can learn from it in either direction.

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If you’d like you could possibly use Raiders on Oakhurst to lead into Keep of the Shadowfell and there’s a thread with some suggestions over here that might be of use in that.

You can’t help but thank all the people that put all this work out there for everyone.  It’s one thing to sketch out an adventure for ‘your’ players and your table, another thing entirely to make it usable and useful for someone other than yourself.

Background from the module:

Background: The young black dragon Nightscale has been looking for a way to expand her influence and her hoard for some years. When Varkaze, the leader of a hobgoblin band, approached her with tribute, she jumped at the chance to use the hobgoblins to grab territory. Nightscale, some hobgoblins, and a band of kobolds that the hobgoblins bullied into servitude set up an advance operating base near the thorp of Oakhurst. Varkaze immediately ordered the kobolds to begin exploring the territory to locate opportunities for plunder. True to their nature, the kobolds have been stealing chickens, killing livestock, and vandalizing property around Oakhurst. The villagers, simple farmers who have little experience in warfare, request help from a passing band of PCs.

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If DDI, yes it’s a DDI article, keeps pumping these out at this rate then it might be worth it for the DM to have a subscription.  Their virtual table though keeps getting farther and farther from release.  Not a good sign IMO.

“The Scales of War Adventure Path continues! The troubles in Elsir Vale were not just confined to Rivenroar. Word is spreading that the dwarves of Overlook are summoning all brave souls from the Vale to join in the defense of Bordrin’s Watch. This ancient fortress guards the only known pass through the mountains that border the Vale to the west, and rumors of a vast horde of orcs, trolls, and worse have begun to sound as if they have merit. When the PCs arrive in Overlook, however, events seem even more dire than expected, and they must move quickly to protect Overlook and the lands beyond from an evil beneath the mountains.”

How can we forget the suffering of our kin during the Age of Chains? How can we set aside those ancient grudges when the risk of slavery is now greater than ever? Fellow warriors, the orcs are upon us, marching once more to the beat of the giants’ drum. It falls to us to stop them—to hold fast no matter their numbers. If we falter, we give in to fear. It’s not just ourselves and our way of life that will suffer—all people of the Elsir Vale will perish as well. War is upon us. Now is the time for men and women of courage to stand up and defend those who cannot defend themselves.

As the PCs stumble across a simple group of pilgrims seeking to return the relics of a long-dead champion to their resting place, they witness a horrendous attack. The relics stolen, the PCs must race to the Face in the Hill, a place of mystery and ancient peril in the Warwood — itself a place fillled with the echoes of long-forgotten legends. There, they discover a dark plot to release a terrible madness on the land, fueled by the stolen relics and the blood of innocent victims. Plumbing the Tomb of Dreams reveals dangers the PCs might not expect, as they’re forced to face not only its physical denizens, but their own worst fears.

• See it now! (3.4 mb PDF)

Just over a hundred years ago, two armies met in a cataclysmic conflict that threatened to destroy both sides. An evil paladin favored by his deity led one force. At the head of the other army stood something worse—a creature of greater wickedness whose master possessed far darker aims for the world. Knowing that a battle between the assembled hosts would devastate both, the leaders met in single combat. The loser’s army would forfeit the field and disband. The result was a fluke of fate: The evil generals killed one another simultaneously.

The Free RPG Day module, Treasure of Talon pass has been released for your bemusement.  It’s a biggun at 20+ meg pdf.  It’s really designed for new players and dm’s although in all honesty I think it’s a bad  example for DM’s.

To give you an example. You have a fairly small area where you fight undead, orcs, kobolds, imps, dragon, animated statues.  Essentially each room looks to be randomly generated as to what it contains. Â  There’s no ‘rhyme or reason’ to the module.

And it includes two massive last pages that are advertisements essentially.

But in the interests of being fair, I’m linking to it here.

I would advise that you download these modules while you can, who knows when DDI isn’t going to be free anymore and you lose the access. Although if that happened and you were to ask nice I might let you see my copy.

And if nothing else, these will help you design your own adventures.

Actually now that I read through the blipvert below, this is vaguely familiar from a community written module I read through a few years back.  I wonder if it’s the same guy.

This mansion was once a manor house owned by the Kinceps. They were an old and respected noble family, though not one of any great political import. Though fairly wealthy, the Kinceps lived simply and enjoyed few luxuries, avoiding anything ostentatious. The family home was large but practical, well hidden behind an encircling orchard. A small mausoleum is the final resting place of family members.

A point of pride among the Kinceps was that each generation should make its own way in life, starting out with a small inheritance and earning a living through business, adventuring, or public service.

In more recent years, a series of misfortunes and disasters all but wiped out the youngest generation of Kinceps. Many believed that the family had fallen into poverty, then died out. In fact, the sole heir, Jaccobux Kincep, had traveled to foreign lands as an adventurer and mercenary, becoming rich in the process.

I’m guessing that ‘landscape’ is the new black this year in terms of module layout?  I don’t care for it myself but then they didn’t ask me so I won’t complain much.

There’s a link to the pdf here on the official Wizards post.

And again it’s a DDI login required.

It stands a lonely vigil atop a remote northern shore, hunkered down against the terrible ocean storms. For most of the year, it sits alone, for trade in the region has decreased. If this were any other town, it would long since have been forgotten, or perhaps even abandoned.

But this is no other village. This is Ashenport. Here, the fish are plentiful. Here, the crops grow and thrive despite the rocky soil. Here, the ocean offers up its riches willingly, like a bashful lover.

The article gives you a link to a PDF for the city of Mithrendain a city of the Feywild.  Might be useful to you if like me you don’t have a clue what the Feywild is.

If DDI keeps this up and drops the price to say $5 I might consider signing up for it for the information and access to a searchable database of data and the place to get Errata etc.  But $15 a person a month in order to use their version of a Virtual Tabletop, when there are free ones like Map Tools?  Not so much.

Deep in the Feywild, beyond the swirling residuum storms of the Plains of Valdrennai, stands one of the most magnificent cities ever constructed by the eladrin: Mithrendain. The city’s name is derived from the elf phrase “wall of the fortress,” but the word has become synonymous with the beauty and longevity of the eladrin. Home to nearly 40,000 people, almost all of them eladrin, Mithrendain is a beautiful city resplendent with soaring towers and graceful architecture. In addition to its proper name, Mithrendain is often referred to as the Autumn City, since most of its towers are colored like autumn leaves, with yellow, gold, and bronze being common.

It’s seems tailor made for the partial successes and failures system of Scads I wrote up.  They have a sliding score of 0 to 6 that could be used easily set up from Total Failure to Total Success on the default 9 point sliding scale of Scads.

Just something to think about.

Anyway if you’d like to see how they’re doing it, then it can be found here as well as some other interesting information.

This could be a good example of how to build a module.  It’s in landscape format which is good for onscreen, not so good for print in my opinion.

These are going to be released probably on a monthly basis so if you only get to play once a month it could be perfect for you.  Otherwise you could wait the roughly 18 months to get them all and do it that way.

What’s an Adventure Path?
Scales of War is the fourth Adventure Path to appear in the pages of Dungeon Magazine. But what, you ask, is an Adventure Path? Quite simply, it is a series of related adventures intended to form a complete D&D campaign that takes your players from 1st level all the way to, in the case of Scales of War, 30th level.
Previous Adventure Paths, presented with the 3rd Edition D&D rules, took characters from 1st to 20th level. But with all three tiers in the new edition ripe and ready to explore, we’re pushing the limit with Scales of War. Each tier takes roughly six adventures to traverse, which means we’ll finish off this Adventure
Path in about eighteen issues. Each adventure advances characters from between one and a half to two levels of experience. We recognize that not everyone will meet every encounter or complete every quest, however, so periodically, we point DMs to a supplemental Side Trek or short adventure to keep your PCs on pace.
Plus, roughly every other month, Dragon will feature
new support content for Scales of War. The first such article appears in Dragon #366 in August 2008, and it details possible character backgrounds for your brand-new Scales of War characters.
Finally, this Adventure Path is intended to function as a complete D&D campaign. That means we make some assumptions about the history of the world as we move along, just as you would in any campaign you run. We borrow heavily from the D&D mythology
of 4th Edition, as well as all the great ideas that have cropped up in other products over the years—including the pages of past issues of Dungeon!
Enjoy your stay in Scales of War, and keep an eye out for next month’s installment, “Siege of Bordrin’s Watch,” by Robert J. Schwalb.

Image Copyright Wizards

Of course this does require your world to be able to support a city floating in the sky. Not perhaps the best basis for a low-magic campaign as a city that not only floats but has movement speeds is certainly indicative of some major magic having been used at one time or another. But it’s easy enough, (realistic enough you’ll have to judge for yourself) to say that it was great acts like the one that gave flight to the city that have reduced the available magic in the world. Hmmm of course that assumes you have a low magic world.

As an alternative you could make a a city in the clouds and put it atop a very tall plateau that is frequently swept with clouds or maybe it’s an alliterative thing and it’s just called that because it is high up.

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To be honest I’ve been a little disappointed at the lack of content from Wizards. In my opinion there should have been several modules released with the core books. Yes I know they released the Keep on the Shadowfell prior to the core books (but that was more a pre-view) and I know there’s that little adventure in the DMG but still. Some people just want to play, they don’t want to have to come up with an adventure before they can.

Picture apropos of nothing, I just needed an image and there’s nothing that really matches Free Module.

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But hey at least it’s a module you don’t have to write yourself. And if you’re still playtesting then who cares how good it is, you’re still busy looking up rules and trying to get your players acquainted with their powers and such.

Anyway, here’s the link to the pdf for Heathen on Wizards web site. If the link doesn’t work blame them, not me! And of course the image and the pdf and the module and all the contents thereof are I’m sure copyright of Wizards so respect that as usual.