I submitted an early draft of my adventure last week for the next edition of The Chaos Crier by The Merry Mushmen. Even though it didn't get accepted this time around, Eric was incredibly generous with his time and gave me excellent, much needed feedback. Some of the crits include: editing for brevity while still maintaining evocative flavor; giving players more agency by telegraphing danger; not rewarding PC exploration with combat (I didn't intend this to happen, but it happened!); and some logic problems with the fictional setup of the hamlet the PCs can use as a basecamp for their adventure.
The issue I need to resolve first, centers around the setup of Hol, its people, and its problems. The seed of the idea came from two of my favorite stories: The Pearls of the Vampire Queen, by Michael Shea, and Cugel's Saga, by Jack Vance. Both of these stories feature protagonists that take some (literal) dirt jobs which have them harvesting valuables buried deep in the muck and mire. I represented these ideas in the hook #2. I ended up with some logic problems in answering the question at the end of the hook: "...why are the hamlet's people barely surviving?" - particularly if there are valuables nearby!
2. The PCs find themselves in Hol, a moribund fishing hamlet on briny Moodover Loch. They have heard rumors that the loch is home to rare, immensely valuable water serpents. If these rumors are indeed true, why are the hamlet’s people barely surviving?
Let's rewind a bit. My goals for the hamlet are to 1) to provide a basecamp for the PCs to rest and resupply, and 2) to provide a new hook for the PCs to be in the area (seemingly unrelated to the other hooks), and 3) set up another faction that can interact with the two factions described in the other hooks.
I don't know if I'm going to keep the 'dirty jobs' aspect of hook #2. I'll do some brainstorming to see if I can salvage the idea so that it makes logical sense with the fiction, but without any unneeded complexity. I might ditch that idea all together, and do something much more straightforward by putting Hol in some sort of danger (from the Thieves Guild, or the ancient site) that the PCs could either help resolve, or exacerbate. Even though the idea represented in hook #2 did relate to the ancient site described in hook #1, those ties could be much stronger.
The Fun puzzles to solve!
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