Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

My choice was for the winning entry. My rationale was pretty simple; I rather enjoyed that the author used several Field Guide creatures, and that just felt very refreshing.

Otherwise, I really found each of the entries to be very good and I am very glad that in the end, all the entries are going to get produced together.

Solomoriah wrote:I'm assembling the multimodule, and I've found a couple of issues with Fortress of the Barbarian Queen. To wit:

1) The Queen herself is rather complicated, a consequence of having all those Barbarian bits tacked on. I'd like to present a stripped-down version of that character as an alternative for those who don't use the Barbarian supplement but would like to run the adventure; we can retain the full details for those who want them.

2) More significantly, the adventure is for 2 to 6 characters, rather than 4 to 8. We should look it over carefully with an eye toward beefing it up a bit.

1) Okay, for the queen. I say we remove the note pointing players to the Barbarian sub-class. We remove all the special abilities except for rage with these modifications to the text:

Special Ability - Rage: Once per day Dawnivia can fly into a Rage, which will last ten rounds. While raging, Dawnivia will charge directly into combat with the nearest recognizable enemy. While raging, Dawnivia temporarily gains a +2 bonus on attack rolls, damage rolls and saving throws versus mind-altering spells, but suffers a penalty of -2 to Armor Class.

2) My suggestion for beefing things up is simply adding more creatures to the room. Where there may be one dire wolf we could have three instead. We could add additional barbarians in the rooms for barbarians. OR we could bring the stats up. For instance, have one Winter Wolf and a few Dire Wolves together instead of just dire wolves. We also can increase the HP of certain creatures.

OR

we could leave the adventure the way it is and actually have it listed for 2 - 6 players. I know its ideal in BFRPG to build adventures for 3 or higher. However, I know of many, many players who can only ever get a group of 3 together (1 GM and 2 Players). These groups are often seeking adventures that could fit their needs but have difficulty finding them. Having it at 2 - 6 can provide that alternative.

Finally, here is a blurb for Fortress of the Barbarian Queen: Lord Theodore is looking to hold his annual winter festival in the old Blacksworn Castle by the sea. Unfortunately, the castle has been overtaken by a clan of Barbarian women. Will the adventurers be able to cleanse the castle of their presence?

Thanks for the feedback and thanks for editing and including my picture.

One of the requirements for the contest was a group of 4 to 8 players. Since you didn't win, I didn't have to decide about disqualifying you. For the purposes of the collection, I do want to move the numbers up to that range for consistency.

As to the Barbarian issue... I haven't looked at that supplement in a while. If her abilities are standard for her level of ability, then my preference would be to present a simplified version for those who don't use that supplement, with a sidebar added for those who do. In my opinion, it's the best way to handle it for both audiences.

Here's a sample of the cover. I had to crop the cover art a bit, as I couldn't make the text legible over it; however, I think it still came out really nice.

... and if you're wondering about the "Contest Series" bit... yes, we're going to do something like this again.

My plan is to put out an adventure, probably entitled "The Ancient Archive" or some such, featuring a single very small (10 or so rooms) above-ground adventure area. The contest will require entrants to create at least one dungeon level to go below the given level (both map and key).

I'm thinking March or so. More on that subject later.

Hey, the cover looks great. Thanks for letting me submit it!

You just made my morning.

Thanks for doing it. I'm glad you don't mind how I cropped it to fit.

I'd love to do full-cover artwork all the time, but you need art pieces that have no significant detail in the top or bottom areas (where the text goes). The tree in the picture made it impossible to get the titles to work.

Honestly, most of the time I'd rather have landscape-formatted cover pieces so I can keep the text separate. It's just easier on me... lazy, I guess.

Landscape it is, next time! The crop looks fine.

I've made necessary adjustments to my own adventure "Fortress of the Barbarian Queen" in the R4 document. I have just attached the document with revisions here. Here are the changes:

1. I added a description to table of contents for "Fortress of the Barbarian Queen."

2. I simplified and streamlined Dawnivia's stats and abilities. Players no longer need to reference the Barbarian supplement.

3. I beefed up the difficulty of the adventure to make it appropriate for 4 to 8 players. In some of the rooms I simply multiplied the number of enemies. (adding in additional dire wolves, rats, floating heads, etc.) In other rooms I boosted the stats by increasing the HP for certain enemies--mostly for the barbarians themselves. I increased the difficulty of the final battle by adding a few guards with Dawnivia in the room.

I did a quick flow-check on your version, updated it to R5, and am uploading it now. Thanks!