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I'm running Swamp Flies for the third time with three different groups on a play by post platform, and in all three occasions the groups had some issue with this adventure, missing leads and hints and often going off track.
That's quite surprising for me, as I think it is a nice and well crafted adventure, but so far I have never really seen it clicking.
In general the groups seemed a bit unfocused, unsure on what to do and often doing things that are a bit out of frame in a settlement or expecting great collaboration from everybody despite being strangers in a relatively suspicious place.
Did you run this adventure? What are your experiences? Can you relate to mine?
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(04-13-2022, 05:35 PM)Yaztromo Wrote: I'm running Swamp Flies for the third time with three different groups on a play by post platform, and in all three occasions the groups had some issue with this adventure, missing leads and hints and often going off track.
That's quite surprising for me, as I think it is a nice and well crafted adventure, but so far I have never really seen it clicking.
In general the groups seemed a bit unfocused, unsure on what to do and often doing things that are a bit out of frame in a settlement or expecting great collaboration from everybody despite being strangers in a relatively suspicious place.
Did you run this adventure? What are your experiences? Can you relate to mine?
I have never run any of the MMRPG adventures, but I just read through Swamp Flies, and I can see where there would be problems. The adventure seems to assume the PCs are going to pursue this mystery, ask certain questions, and take certain actions to eventually find the right places and people where they can gather the right clues. There is too much meandering around required, and there are too many potential failure points.
In fact, if you introduce this adventure exactly as the text suggests, the whole thing could end in paragraph three of the episode summary and first encounter. If the players don't really care about what's going on with the dockhands and don't successfully listen to their conversation, they may never detect that something is amiss. Even if they find out that the crew is shorthanded because someone hasn't shown up to work for two days, if they don't offer to help and don't happen to ask more questions and inquire further, they will never find out about the disappearances. After all, people miss work for a couple of days due to illness all the time. Why would they assume this is somehow unusual or concerning and worthy of asking probing questions?
At any rate, I started jotting down some notes on how I would address these issues, and it turned into a
full revision of the first encounter.
In the revised encounter, the PCs will hopefully be much more easily and organically drawn into the mystery and the adventure, and they can get all the core clues and information they need to take some obvious next steps. This also eliminates some of the extraneous wandering around town and investigating they might need to have at several other locations.
Hopefully I've made things more foolproof with this revised first encounter. There are still technically a couple of failure points if the PCs take no interest in the adventure hook at all, but that isn't the problem you've been having. I would definitely be curious to find out how the adventure works if you start it this way.
