Modules in Hindsight: B11, King's Festival

 From the second installment in the B series of modules to the penultimate one: B11: King's Festival, by Carl Sargent. Though it was not packaged with a rule set, B11 was billed as an introductory module, complete with DM advice and background information on the wider setting beyond the immediate environs of the module itself. While not a "bad" adventure, it lacks many of the greatest strengths of the earlier modules like B2, and leans on a lot of trends that deviate strongly from the earlier ethos of the game, making it a good module to contrast with the classic Keep on the Borderlands. 

Nowhere are these differences in ethos more evident than in the DM advice with which the book opens. To be sure, there are some good bits, but a great deal of it is geared toward running "scripted" adventures, including advice on how to keep players on the rails and how to get them back on if they insist on deviating from the path. That's a stark contrast to Gary's wisdom in B2, with its emphasis on letting players choose their own paths and the DM being an impartial referee rather than a shepherd to keep a story on track. A few choice tidbits:

• " If the players have been playing well or a battle with a wandering monster would hurt the flow of the game, overrule the dice and don’t use the encounter."
• "On the other hand, you might have a bunch of over-cautious players taking too much time to act. [...] Then you should decide that you’ll have a WM encounter whatever the dice say, and tell players that 'this can happen if you take so long to do everything.'"
• "As with wandering monsters, override the dice on morale rolls if this is sensible. As one example of when you should override the dice, consider a final showdown in an adventure-the 'Big Fight Climax.'"
• "You want the PCs to travel from point A to point B. Out of sheer orneriness (or curiosity), the players decide to go to C instead, despite your polite prompts. You don’t have the right maps for area C, and you’ve got no adventures written for that area. To get the game moving again, you need to steer the PCs to B."
• "You put an important clue (a scroll or book) in a dungeon room, with a warning about a major danger deeper in the dungeon. The PCs never enter the room where the clue is [...] Just move the clue to another location where the PCs will find it. You may want to script a possible alternative when you are setting up the dungeon, so that it looks plausible to the players and not obviously contrived if you need to use it."

This is all dreadful advice, all based on the assumption that the players are simply actors in a play with the DM as director. Their choices don't really matter, nor, ultimately, do the dice or even the rules, because, according to this mindset, you do what you have to do to keep the story on the rails. This shows just how deep the rot had already set in, even before the fall of TSR and the rise of WotC. 

OK, I'm done facepalming now; let's move on to the actual adventure. 

Godawful DM advice aside, the adventure itself is not entirely terrible. In fact, I have some fond memories of running it for my group back in the day. Unlike the sandbox setup of B2, B11 provides a specific inciting incident to get the PCs involved: an orc raid on the village, where the PCs have just arrived to enjoy a local festival. This isn't necessarily a cardinal sin, but it's not what I prefer, and it relies heavily on the players being inclined, or at least willing, to do what they're "supposed" to do. If, in this case, the players don't care about tracking down the orcs and rescuing the cleric, you've already reached an impasse. Still, it's not a wholly unreasonable assumption, so let's run with it. Once the PCs agree to help, they're guided within spitting distance of the orc lair, and left alone to do their thing. 

The dungeon is a fairly basic setup of two levels. The first level is the orc lair, and the party will have to fight the orc chieftain and his lieutenants in order to rescue the kidnapped cleric. It's fine, if a bit unimaginative. The module does a decent job of making each encounter with the orcs and their pets and visitors distinctive and interesting. Once the orcs are vanquished and the cleric is rescued, the PCs are expected to escort him back to town, and he implores them to go back and investigate the evil he senses from deeper in the cave. The module recommends this as an opportunity to award XP, though it's unlikely anyone is going to advance a level with the amount of treasure and monster XP available in the first part of the dungeon.

Assuming the PCs once again respond to the narrative carrot, back to the dungeon they go to venture down into the second level. This part of the cave is infested with undead, courtesy of a tomb-robbing Chaotic cleric. Once they deal with him, they can return to town as heroes and probably at this point advance to level 2. Again, the encounters are at least well-crafted, and should provide a decent challenge and a few chances for some problem-solving skills to shine, should the players actually possess any and the DM allow it.

What I like about this module

1. The dungeon, though limited, is not completely linear, and features some genuinely interesting encounters.

2. It's not a cake walk. In fact, it's actually a fairly challenging scenario, assuming the DM doesn't succumb too much to the urge, and the explicit encouragement, to coddle the players.

3. The checklist of monsters and treasure is a feature novice DMs might find useful.

4. The artwork, both cover and interior, is pretty cool, and depicts actual scenes from the module so it could be used as visual aids to be shown to the players.

What I don't like about it

1. It's a railroad. There's an explicit, externally imposed win condition, and the players are expected to do certain things and find certain clues in order to advance toward the preordained conclusion. They could still fail by suffering a TPK, and a more laissez-faire DM might even permit them to abandon the quest before completion, but otherwise, there's not a lot of big-picture agency for the players.

2. The rails aren't even always visible. In particular, the party is expected to discover a secret door that leads to the lair of Petrides the evil priest on the second dungeon level, but the module offers no clues at all to its existence. I guess that's one of those cases in which the DM is advised to get heavy-handed should the players fail to search the right spot or the dice come up empty for them.

3. "Boss fights." The idea that each adventure must end in a climactic battle with the Big Bad Evil Guy or some intermediary sub-boss is an odious practice that should have never been back-ported into TTRPGs from computer games. It's not only lame and predictable, it also forces a pitched battle on parties that may be underpowered or just disinclined to it. Win this tough fight, or you fail to accomplish the predetermined goal, and everything else you've done is meaningless. It also creates an expectation that the DM will provide the means for the party to be at or near full strength on reaching the final battle. In fact, if they're not, it'll likely be way too tough for them. Nothing ruins a whole session of play quite like a mandatory no-win situation. 

4. The DM advice. Oh, sweet freaky Jesus, the DM advice. 

5. It's one-and-done, and tightly focused on one story. Except for the section on the Grand Duchy of Karameikos setting, which is mere background that doesn't even come into play in the adventure, there is nothing non-essential to that story; no sidetracks, no red herrings, nothing to come back and investigate after the primary crisis is dealt with, and no stone that can afford to be left unturned. Where B2 offers the possibility of many hours of open-ended play, B11 provides one fairly short adventure (or two mini-adventures, depending on how you slice it.) There's little or no built-in potential for expansion or reuse of the setting or the dungeon. An enterprising DM could certainly do the work, but there aren't a lot of anchor points to build from. 

6. Boxed text. Need I say more?

Can it be fixed?

All this raises an obvious question: How would I rehabilitate this module to be more compatible with a real old school D&D mindset? First, I'd jettison all that awful advice, and refer DMs back to the excellent tips from B2. Secondly, I'd expand the dungeon to include more than just the bare minimum, so it feels really lived-in instead of tailor made for a single story. I'd move Aralic the priest to some other location, so the party doesn't necessarily have to beat the orc chief in a "Big Fight Climax" as the terrible advice puts it, in order to rescue him. The rooms could also use a little fleshing out to give the players a few more "handles" to interact with in ways other than combat. In particular, the presence of secret doors and other hidden things could be subtly telegraphed. I might even create additional caves, perhaps lairs of rival orc tribes or other monsters, which would help explain why these particular orcs felt the need for a captive cleric to heal their warriors, as well as serve as faction rivals for clever PCs to exploit. 

Another way to go would be to take the dungeon from this module, place it on a wilderness map with a selection of other dungeons and locations, and scrap the mandatory storyline. Ttreat Stallanford as a home base for the entire area, and this scenario as merely one of several possible adventure hooks, a la the kidnapped merchant of B2, and run it in much the same way as B2.