GM Commentary: Punjar and Mists of Madness

I like Punjar as a campaign setting. The map is a bit confusing, but does have enough interesting elements to spark the imagination. Unfortunately, I don't have the old 3rd edition Goodman Games adventures that take place in Punjar so I'm fuzzy on the city's history. They put out a free campaign guide for the city after I started my campaign, which adds some much needed detail to some of the areas, but it still leaves a lot to the imagination.

I modified the "Mists of Madness" adventure quite a bit. I replaced a few of the toads with stirges to balance out the encounter. The encounter with the cultists turned into a diplomatic skill challenge that I really enjoyed. Turning the minions against their masters was very satisfying for the players.

I completely changed the shadow encounter in the mist filled cave. I didn't want to use homebrewed shadow copies of each of the characters so I restructured it to be a fixed encounter that used shadow and ghost themed monsters. Using a doppleganger to stand in for Malikai helped me patch up a plot hole (Malikai is supposed to be grotesque and I had described him as young and beautiful) while also giving the party a glimpse of their final villain. I made up all the stuff about the blue crystals and the spirit censer to replace the shadow orb trap.

I restructured the dungeon under the Maw. Rather than have two death trap rooms and one hidden "correct" path I made the door puzzle solvable. I ended up using the maps from Keep on the Shadowfell for the last two chambers. I borrowed many ideas from the final battle in that module for the final battle with Malikai. In hind-sight, the ghouls proved to be too powerful for the group. Stunning and dazing PCs every round is very frustrating. I ended up fudging some rolls so they could get past the ghouls and focus on the main baddie.

I liked the "Mists of Madness" is pretty good for a cheap product, but like most of the dungeon crawl classics the maps are pretty pitiful and you pretty much need to make your own.