GM Commentary: Scions of Punjar

I had a lot of fun with these sessions. The Saturday group tends to deal with situations much more differently than the Friday group. Saturday sessions tend to have more role-play, character development, unique problem-solving techniques, and fewer combat challenges. The combat challenges they do have also tend to be more difficult, maybe because there are only four of them usually. I think it makes things more intense.

I ran "Scions of Punjar" pretty close to the written material, which made it easy on me with my limited time to prep. As a module I think it's fairly interesting, but my standard complaints about Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics still apply. The maps are practically useless, the encounters are wildly variable in challenge level, and there are many editorial errors in the text and in the monster stat blocks. I had to replace or modify many of the monsters to better fit my group.

Some of my favorite moments from this game were Corvus getting cornered in the family tomb by zombies, Chiana biting Aletha for a quick healing surge to get back in the fight, Regnor getting a magical lobster bib, the entire session with "Regno" in the tavern, the introduction of Mongo, frustrating the party with the smelly wererat in the mines, and watching the party get more and more pissed off at Cadavra and her hit and run tactics. I also enjoyed listening to the party try and decipher the clues she left behind.

Here are some notable changes I made to the module. Since the party skipped a solo encounter in the pawn shop I replaced the, in my opinion lame, elite dire stirge with a young green dragon encounter to give them some more XP. The windmill encounters were reworked a bit. I added the wraiths in the basement, which were inspired by the rumors about the miller's family. The undead marsh troll on the first floor became a cauldron corpse in the final room, since the party skipped the whole upper levels of the windmill. I took the cauldron corpse stats from the Penny Arcade inspired module in Dragon Magazine. The inner sanctum battle with Cadavra was retooled a bit, I got rid of the fleshripper vampires just because they didn't fit with any of the other undead we'd seen in the game so far.

I had to wing the encounter in the Rudebakers' house. The module ends at the inner sanctum and only gives hints as to the other potential encounters. I really had no way of knowing where the PCs would go next so I didn't prep anything specific. Despite me goofing up the map, I think it was fun doing some impromptu DMing.

Going into the last session I agonized over how to reintroduce Earl's character when I thought he was going to be able to make it. It turned out not to matter since he couldn't be there, but I had all sorts of ideas on how to explain how he went from Elkridge to the windmill just in time to catch up with other group during their cliff-hanger. Just goes to show you, don't over prepare because your time will be wasted.

This next session we will be cleaning up loose ends and exploring the connection between Cadavra and "The Sisters".