Because of the constraints of the Jam, I intentionally used the small page size with small type to be able to fit my content into the format, as I expect that pretty much everyone reviewing it would be looking at it either on a computer or an iPad at full screen. It was never intended to be printed and read at its current size.
- Pilgrimage encounter 3 is there to punish players who try to take more than would be prudent. If the PCs were to give all contraband to one high DEX PC, that’s a clever means of bypassing security, so there’s nothing wrong with that. And of course, as with any module, I could be down to do a hard 5 slot limit.
- I was balancing running a hex crawl without the hexes here to save space and create a more narrative section. A three day walk through the marshes and swamps would be 36 miles, and each day PCs would roll for an encounter every 2 hours for a total of 4 checks per day. I did not want to call for the GM to make 12 checks, so I truncated it, and in hindsight would just say they have two encounters per day. In my expanded version I am going to be adding the overland map through the marshes.
- That is cool. I will probably add something like that to the expanded version. I like the idea of the pilgrimage being a straight walk to the temple with no pit stops, pushing endurance.
- The trials are meant to be pretty pass or fail without a lot of creative solutions. They are not puzzles. They are expressions of faith within this cult that the characters are crashing. Ultimately, they have no faith. They are thieves. That’s the dilemma, the sword and sorcery of it. The trials are actually simple to pass, but most will probably come to the end Unworthy. They are completely bypassable as well. The monastery has no roof and scalable walls intentionally there to tempt the party to just try to sneak in. If I was running this and one of the PCs asked the Molted what to do in Area 5, I would have them respond, “Unworthy,” immediately, lol!
Good food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to give me a write up! I will definitely take these notes into account when making my expanded version of this module!