# Shelter From the Storm - advice on travel



## OnlineDM (Dec 16, 2010)

I'm getting ready to run my party through Shelter From the Storm (4e), and I'm struck by the long travel time from the Fire Forest to Seaquen.  It's set up as some skill challenges, but I have to admit that the consequences of success or failure on the challenges feel pretty abstract to me.  The long journey where failures cost surges and they don't refill until some set point in the future feels odd to me, especially when there doesn't seem to be any combat mixed in where having few surges would be a problem.

I understand that there are connections being drawn to things that will happen in Dassen in adventure number 4, but how important are those connections?  

My party is fine with role-playing and skill challenges, but it feels like there's no action for a long time at the beginning of Shelter - just a massive back story dump and description of scenery.

I want to make this fun, exciting and interesting.  Does anyone have any advice for me?  Or am I over-thinking this and the skill challenges are really a lot of fun for most parties?

I'll admit that I'm tempted to gloss over the details of travel. 


"You leave the Fire Forest and fight your way through a mountain pass."
Maybe run a mini-challenge to see if they're surprised by the winter hobgoblins, then run that battle.
A little role-playing in Cornerwood, then move on.
"You travel through Dassen for many days.  Along the way, you encounter...." (insert a little of the role-playing back story info here, letting the players interact, but keep this short)
"You arrive in Vidor."  A little more role-playing here.  Let the party decide how they want to handle the swamp.
Run the swamp skill challenge and combat encounters more or less as written.
"At long last, you arrive in Seaquen!"
What I'm getting at is that I'm thinking that the journey from Cornerwood to Vidor doesn't feel very interactive, and I'm not sure how to change that.  It feels like the kind of thing that should be glossed over, but I understand that there are plot hooks for the future here.

Any advice?


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## Truename (Dec 16, 2010)

My group is about to start Shelter as well, and I'm actually probably going to cut a lot of it. Fire Forest was a long haul--good, but long--so I think my group might appreciate something a bit faster and less intense.

So, yeah, I'm likely to handwave the travel and toss in some roleplaying in place of the skill challenges. The skill challenges in particular don't look very interesting (although I admit I haven't studied them thoroughly yet). I'd much rather see a story-related consequence of failure rather than the iffy mechanical cost.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 16, 2010)

To be honest, when I ran the original campaign, I had a bunch of stuff planned for the road from the fire forest to Seaquen, but before I could start laying it out, the players had a small rebellion. 

"We're out of the forest? Now we're headed where again? Seaquen? Okay, so now we go to Seaquen."

"Well," I said, "on the way you come across-"

"No. No more stops to help pretty faeries, or investigate ruins, or anything else. We're going to Seaquen. We travel, resting every so often, until we get there."

"Sure, but at one point you find a field where-"

"We don't care. We travel, resting every so often, until we get there."

"You're going across an entire country, and you don't care to find out what's going on?"

"Nope. We travel, resting every so often-"

"-Until you get there, right. Well fine. But there's actually some important stuff in the swamp right outside Seaquen, so will you at least let me do that?"

The players grin. "We knew the rest of it wasn't that important."


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## OnlineDM (Dec 16, 2010)

Thanks for the background, Ryan!  That's pretty much exactly what I expect my players to feel like, too.

Adventure 1 is "Get out of Gate Pass with the case of plans."
Adventure 2 is "Get through the Fire Forest."
Adventure 3 is "Do cool stuff in Seaquen."

They're done with "this adventure is about getting from point A to point B" - that's what the Fire Forest was.  I will feel comfortable ignoring most of Dassen as the party travels through it now.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 16, 2010)

Well, some stuff was added in the 4e version, and it ends up mattering in adventure 4, so I'd read adventure 4 first and figure out what might be worth mentioning. Either do it in passing ("the trip takes x days, and not much of consequence happens except for X, Y, and Z"), or find a way to work those events into the narrative in Seaquen itself.


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## OnlineDM (Dec 18, 2010)

I ran the first session in Shelter last night, and here's how it went.

I told the party that they left the Fire Forest, heading down the now burned-out Elfroad and up over a mountain pass (no skill challenge).  As they came out of the mountains and down the road I described seeing Cornerwood ahead of them and the guys a mile off who yelled and started riding toward them.  At this point I had them make Perception checks to avoid being surprised by the hobgoblins, who attacked.

After the battle, I had the Cornerwoodians invite them into town for a meal and a story, which the party agreed to.  It was only mid-day at this point, so Torrent advocated pushing on.  The party bought horses and hit the road.

I laid out the choices of the Eastern versus Western Way.  A side note here: The adventure doesn't really present a whole lot of information that the party could use to choose between the two options.  I winged it.  The party went West.

I narrated the events that happened along the way, with a little opportunity for interaction where appropriate, but I mostly just took five or ten minutes to do some storytelling.  The PCs were able to ask questions of some of the travelers on the road and decide whether to pay the toll or not, but that was about it.

Ultimately the party arrived at Vidor and started discussing how they wanted to approach the swamp.  I described the price gouging and the plight of the refugees who had gotten this far but had no money to go farther.  At this point, the party decided to head awesomely off the rails.

The good-aligned warlock in the group couldn't just stand idly by while the poor refugees were gouged by greedy merchants, so she hatched a plan to break into Grimfran's Goods at night and play Robin Hood, stealing from Grimfran to give the money to the refugees.  Okay, time to build a new encounter!

I whipped up a quick map of Grimfran's shop and stocked it with appropriate guards.  I put two thugs on the front porch, one thug sleeping behind the counter, Grimfran sleeping in his bedroom and two guard panthers - one with Grimfran, one under the shop counter.  I gave the place a back door and a few windows, and we were off.http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6875434/GrimfransGoodsNoGrid.jpg





The warlock (who is multiclassed to rogue) picked the lock on the back door and snuck in.  After making some good stealth checks, she ended up coming across Grimfran and his guard panther, both asleep.  She tried to communicate to the party druid, waiting just outside the back door, that there was a panther here and she wanted the druid to tame it, but couldn't figure out how to do that silently, so she went for the trap door, opened it silently and snuck down to the little chamber beneath Grimfran's room.  The druid (a 350-pound minotaur, by the way, with no Stealth training) followed into the building, waiting outside Grimfran's room (yay lucky dice on that stealth check!).

In the chamber beneath the bedroom, the warlock found some casks of high-end liquor, a desk with papers and ledgers, and a treasure chest with a big lock.  She tried and failed to pick the lock, in part because it was so dark down there (some moonlight from the window in Grimfran's room filtering down the open trap door was the only light).  I offered to let her try again if she could get a light source down there.  She closed the trap door and lit a torch using magic (succeeding in doing so silently and without burning herself).  She tried the lock again... and failed again.

Meanwhile, her druid ally who was upstairs trying not to move made a perception check... and smelled the smoke from the torch starting to waft up between the floorboards into the bedroom.  The warlock was oblivious to this, naturally, and decided to (quietly) blast the hinges off the chest using magic.  Four attacks later, she had succeeded and emptied the contents of the chest into her Bag of Holding.  Feeling good, she snuffed the torch and started climbing the ladder back to the bedroom...

At which point I called for initiative rolls.  The panther won, smelled the smoke from the snuffing of the torch, woke up and growled (it hadn't seen anyone yet, just smelled the smoke).  Grimfran had the second-highest initiative, so he woke up from the growling and looked around, confused.  At this point, the warlock, oblivious to the fact that Grimfran and the panther were awake (Perception check: 11), snuck out of the basement and quietly crept through Grimfran's room, heading toward the back door.  While Grimfran and the panther stared, incredulous.

The bad guys went next.  The panther knocked the warlock to the ground, and Grimfran armed himself and called for his guards.  The rest of the PCs hurried to come help, and the warlock ultimately stood up and teleported onto the bed next to Grimfran. Thanks to the Burning Sky effect, she arrived in flames and gave a  horrifying speech about being the angel of justice or something along those lines, calling on him to repent from his money-grubbing ways.  That was a heck of a situational bonus to a Bluff check, let me tell you!  

Between the warlock's speech and the other PCs rushing in, Grimfran surrendered and promised to change his ways (though the PCs have their doubts).  The party rushed out to give the gold to the poor and then beat it out of Vidor.

This ended up being a ton of fun.  The tension in the game when the warlock was making her stealth rolls to blast open the chest without making noise was palpable, and the awesomeness of the ultimate victory was complete.  So, if anyone wants a side quest to liven things up in Vidor, I highly recommend the Robin Hood adventure.  Now I just have to make sure Grimfran gets his revenge...


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## RangerWickett (Dec 18, 2010)

Hehe, that was good times.


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## Page_Archangel (Jan 5, 2011)

I have two issues with Shelter:

1) Where are Crystin and Haddin?  Does the party leave them in the Forrest?
2) I can't find the map for the 2nd Tactical Encounter in the Swamp.  I have been going to staples and doing over-sized b&w prints (only about $3 each), but I can't find the file for the blank one (without key for NPC positions).  This is the 4e version.

Lovell


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## Morrus (Jan 5, 2011)

Page_Archangel said:


> I have two issues with Shelter:
> 
> 1) Where are Crystin and Haddin? Does the party leave them in the Forrest?




They're with the party.  Unless the party decides otherwise.


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## OnlineDM (Jan 5, 2011)

Page_Archangel said:


> I have two issues with Shelter:
> 
> 1) Where are Crystin and Haddin?  Does the party leave them in the Forrest?
> 2) I can't find the map for the 2nd Tactical Encounter in the Swamp.  I have been going to staples and doing over-sized b&w prints (only about $3 each), but I can't find the file for the blank one (without key for NPC positions).  This is the 4e version.
> ...




1. As Morrus said, they're with the party, but they don't really have much of a story role in this adventure.  There's a section on page 16 (the 19th page of the PDF) that talks about what happens to them when the party reaches Seaquen (they go their separate ways).

2. I assume you're talking about the Fantasy Grounds map files.  I'm not sure why you're unable to find the map; I found it just fine.  The file is called TE-Swamp-2-pc.


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## Page_Archangel (Jan 6, 2011)

The only map I'm seeing is the multi-page map under the map link.  I am looking for the single sheet map of the first encounter with the three witches.  The single sheet is easier to print and doesn't require extra work ($cost) at the staples.


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## LightPhoenix (Jan 6, 2011)

I've been reading through WotBS (and the forums here) now that I've broken down and accepted the fact that I have to use Paypal to be a CS (and have some spare money).

It's funny you mention that story about the Fire Forest *RangerWickett*, because my thoughts ran along the same lines.  I love the adventure, but there's a fair bit that I think I would cut from it.  I haven't read the third adventure yet, but I think the travel interludes might go over better with the Fire Forest being a little less robust.


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## OnlineDM (Jan 6, 2011)

Page_Archangel said:


> The only map I'm seeing is the multi-page map under the map link.  I am looking for the single sheet map of the first encounter with the three witches.  The single sheet is easier to print and doesn't require extra work () at the staples.




Ah, the witches are actually TE-Swamp-1-pc.jpg.  It's a large JPG, yes (a little over 10 inches by 15 inches), if that's what you're talking about.  If that's too big for you, you can resize it in an image editing program - resize it to about 66% of its initial size and it should fit on an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper.  Of course, the squares will be significantly smaller if you do that, and I don't think it would be usable as a battle map at the table, but that's because it's a large-ish map.


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## Page_Archangel (Jan 7, 2011)

Please...can someone post a link...I cannot seem to find this to SAVE MY LIFE!


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## John Doom (Mar 18, 2011)

seconded on that link; i've been lost ever since the redesign like a year ago...


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## LightPhoenix (Mar 18, 2011)

Subscribers Content -> WotBS on the left hand side.  Linky.


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