Friday, August 26, 2022

Chadranthar's Bane - Dungeon Magazine 18

Here's one that played as-is feels like it would be a blast. When looked at from a Ptolus perspective however, would probably need a hatchet taken to it. Once pruned down to its core, the magic item that causes people to shrink, there are some awesome things you can do with the scenario.

The core elements and where it can go:

A former apprentice wizard steals magic items and treasure from their former teacher's home. Place the site of the theft near Vock Row, once again perhaps Dweomer Street. The crooked wizard teleports out of the vault and it goes awry, popping in 30' above the intended target. Make this an abandoned home's overgrown garden in maybe the Rivergate District.

The crash landing scatters ill-gotten gains all over the place with the powerful globe of diminution safely splashing down into the fountain. The thieving wizard then shrinks to the size of a typical miniature figure about 1 and 1/2 inches. 

If you wanted to stick closer to the adventure as written then you'd want to introduce the location into your city as a known no-go zone from the beginning, because people that go there don't come back. The wizard that was stolen from might not report the theft because they don't want to be held responsible for the resulting problem.

Getting the player characters involved could be problematic without some careful thought. Is the victim of the theft alive? Is the victim of the theft in the city when this happens? Would the wizard hire the party to do the job of going after the item because they don't want to risk their life, and anyone learning the problem item is theirs? There are many ways to go about this, but be aware of the potential repercussions.

Ideally the characters would be unaware of the true nature of the magic item and would be affected some time after entering the property. This is when the heart of the adventure takes off.

It may be that the writer intended for players and DM to take their minis all over the playing location using the real furniture as the actual scale of play. I'm sorely tempted to put a kitchen chair up on top of the gaming table to give the players both a sense of scale and a laugh when the shrinking occurs. 

Fixing the problem involves breaking the cause, shattering the globe. The globe is about the size of a baseball and is transparent, clear glass. It survived the fall into the fountain by luck.

The adventure takes place in the abandoned house and garden with encounters with rats, spiders, insects, etc, being scaled up compared to the diminutive characters. If your pet cat jumps up on the game table you have another example of scale to reference, and an encounter to play out.

Eventually they will find the also shrunken thieving wizard and work out how to deal with them. This thief won't want to be caught by the wizard they stole from, but does want to be restored to original size. Coming to a compromise is entirely possible.

In the original module the theft happened many years ago and in the intervening time the orb had worked its magic on large numbers of people. Entire tribal colonies had come into existence in the garden and wilderness waystation building and stable. Something like this happening in Ptolus would be a major issue, but not out of keeping with the setting. 

You could even have the location be somewhere under the city within the dungeons and caverns. A vast mushroom garden is not out of the question to represent the garden environment. I can certainly make that happen. My collection of terrain includes a bunch of varied mushrooms scaled up, including one that's a foot tall. The minis are tiny compared to some of these pieces.

Having the adventure location be down in the dungeons may actually be the best way to go and keep more of the original scenario ideas intact.

There are many ways to make use of this adventure's parts and plot within Ptolus. However you do it, I expect this adventure to be fun.



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