Wrapping up Rappan Athuk

 

I'm way past due to update how my Rappan Athuk campaign is going....umm....well really just way past due to even provide a new blog post. I'm finally past my kid's dance and gymnastic competition season, so hopefully more time to post this summer...no promises though to whichever poor soul is actually reading these blog posts.

My group and I are roughly over 20 sessions into our Rappan Athuk game that has been running for the past couple of year online. If you remember from a previous post, I had taken the reigns a bit of the campaign, which was quickly turning into a homebrew affair, and an imminent battle was about to take place at their newly reconstructed castle just west of the small town of Zelkor's Ferry. I had played around and brainstormed a few options on how to accomplish the whole mass combat session for this 5E game. I borrowed bits from the Stronghold's and Followers source book, letting my players role up troops and followers whom had come to their cause and in support of their claim to the region. These turned out to be not used as much in the battle, but more on that later. Each player also was able to randomly roll for an NPC support character that had come to the castle as well (blacksmith, sage, diplomatic aid, etc.). For the battle itself, I ran this as a chain of encounters, starting with the landing at the docks in Zelkor's Ferry, moving to the skirmishes in the countryside and concluding with the siege and final showdown of the arch-mage leader of the elves. The players had the option to spend their troop resources in these encounters for advantage and/or a means to reduce the creatures encountered.

My planning for the balancing of this assumed the group would be stretched pretty thin by the end of this string of encounters which included a showdown with a young silver dragon, multiple grey elves (reskinned drow for this campaign), and the culmination battle with the arch-mage and his escort of troops. Sadly, my group, now full of magic items which continue to break the balance big time in 5E cake walked it mostly, with some brief close calls in the final battle. The 200+ HP dragon went down in under two rounds, after being stunned locked by the monk in the opening round....sigh....I hope they had fun with it at least.

With the battle won, I set forth the shift to get the group back into the megadungeon and pursuing putting an end to Orcus and minions that populate the depths below. To accomplish this, I had the undead army muster up and help drive off the grey elves who were sieging the castle, presenting them as "allies" to the group, with the vampire leader of these forces stating that one of the players had sworn allegiance to Orcus....was this a lie to my players or did someone in the group really betray the others?.....regardless, it set off some amazing roleplay between the players as they tried to determine the validity of these claims amongst themselves. The other piece of direction, was providing information that beneath their very own castle was a portal to the dark layers of Rappan Athuk.

With a new level up, the group decided to find this portal and without much prodding...surprisingly...They stepped on through. I had this portal send them to level 4 of the megadungeon, the First Chapel of Orcus. Per the book and I quote: "This encounter should fully test the players. Don't hold back, you should except several deaths, but the players will feel great accomplishment for overcoming this major obstacle of the dungeon." Well....I'm sure that was the case for this encounter when originally published for 3rd edition, not so much now in the 5E days of player invincibility. Again, my players stomped everything I throw at them, saves continually made and monsters felled one after the other. This is one of my complaints with Rappan Athuk, at least as presented for the 5E version, the amount of low-powered / minion type creatures in these encounters serves no purpose and just feels like lazy design....I digress.

With no where left to go but down at this point, the group collected their loot and set off towards the 5th level and layer of the mad doctor Banth. By this point in the campaign I had learned my lesson and manually adjusted the monsters for the planned encounters on this level and it helped greatly. The highlight of this level of the megadungeon is certainly the laboratory of the mad doctor Banth, who is essentially a high level wizard / transmuter. I had worked part of a story arc for one of the players here, who was a captive of the mad doctor. The culmination encounter with Banth was really great, a good mix of adversaries are mixed and pop-up throughout the encounter, including the captive who gets tossed into the melee after being transformed back to a human from a mouse previously....it is pretty wild, you'll just have to read it yourself....some close calls, but the party pulls through in the end. 

This gets us caught up to present, the group has found a passage back to the surface and I provided a rumor / clue directing towards the lair of Zelkor, "the don't go down the well guy". When I started running Rappan Athuk, I never intended to hit every level and encounter, but before we wrap up this campaign, I'd like to at least hit some of the fun and more memorable all the while tying this massive sandbox into a fitting story end for my group. Having now run Rappan Athuk for a good part of two years and up to player level 12, I'm less a fan of it than I was going in. There are great encounters and adventures to be had, but man is it a lot of work to tie together and work your way through the fluff and bloat of this book. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading again, we'll be back soon for will likely be the conclusion of the Rappan Athuk campaign and onto more great adventures in the D&D universe.