Regarding the Birdman, I believe a draconomicon preview from one of the magazines on the insider revealed they're going back to the Bahamut lore of his incarnation as an old man surrounded by seven canaries (polymorphed gold dragons), so his appearance here is likely more meaningful later.

Just a heads up of something to prepare for: my players turned the first few encounters of the Karak location on their head, by making what now seems to me to be an obvious decision. On reaching the entrance they noticed the arrow slits and the first portcullis, and immediately said "we're finding another way in". They ended up scouting the roof and encountering the harpies first, which then led them to the hole in the ceiling and the encounter with the crawler. Of course, there are arrow slits facing the courtyard from the troglodytes, and they ended up getting them involved quickly as well, and very nearly got crushed by fighting the crawler and trogs simultaneously, after just spending their daily powers trying to survive the harpies trying to slide them off the rooftop. In the end it all worked out, but just a head's up to DMs: parties may (sensibly, really) not choose to simply stroll past the portcullis, arrow slits, and murder holes to knock on the front door. So be prepared! :)

For what it's worth, my party went in through the roof as well. They got into a rough battle on the rooftop, with the harpies coming after them, the trogs trying to scale the walls using the characters climbing gear, etc. It got really ugly because the paladin and cleric had both taken their armor off to climb. My point is, DMs should be prepared for the rooftop assault.

As with the others above, my players too decided to scale the bluff to find anothe enterence into the mines. All of the players made it to the top and battled the Hapries, except for the very last player up the rope, the Halfling Sorc, who rolled a one on his very last climb check and fell 100ft to the gound below. He survived with only 6hp left, but lost consciousness. The other players were locked in combat with the harpies and did not notice that he had fallen. When the battle was over, they looked over the edge and saw where he impacted, saw foot prints leading out of the enterence and drag marks leading back in. We now have a rescue situation on our hands, which should add a little to this game.

On another note, how did everyone handle the 'evidence' in the Queen's chamber? Did you lay on the clues extra heavy to direct the players away from thinking it was Sarshan who was controlling the mines? Based on all the information they players have this far, they will naturally think that the extra planar enemy will be Sarshan whom they faced in the Shadowfell and may think has minions in the Elemental Chaos.

Hello all,

Due to some delays in my gaming schedule, my group is just getting to the end of this adventure. In the next session, the group will be facing the real queen and will then travel back to Overlook.

I am seeking suggestions from those who have run this adventure on how you handled the return to Overlook and more precicely, the players interaction with Bram Ironfell and the Elsir Consortium. In the module, it says that Bram will simply say he plans to close the mines, did any of you have players who wanted to oversee this indevor? Did you, perhaps, employ some bigger hints that Sarshan was using this ore to fuel his war machine to get he players to focus on other maters vs. the EC and Bram?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,
Ryan

One of my players is playing a dwarven paladin of Moradin, and chose the "Seeker of the Lost Clan" background from the Dragon supplement. I decided that while the Ironfells might have been involved with the Mine, at the time, it was his ancestors that were actually directing the action. This put him directly in competition with the Ironfell Clan, and I decided that Bram was going to challenge him on the ownership, leading to a legal battle. As I wanted this to be a background element, I simply hand-waved that he found a suitable arbiter, and left to go through Den of the Destroyer.

Now, when he got back, that's when I decided to mention that the legal battle brought up Bram's ties to Sarshan, and Bram fled the city before they could arrest him on conspiracy and arms dealing charges. This invalidated the Ironfell claim upon the Karak Lode, which meant the PC was now the rightful lord of Karak. Since they had just acquired a ritual that could close portals, I wrote up an adventure in which the PCs returned to the Karak Lode, gathered some allies (the Hammerfists, who I retconned into being a sundered Clan and now more mercenary than anything else), and dove into the depths. The demons had taken over during that time, so they got to kill a bunch of nasty creatures. The final battle was between a couple of mezzodemons and a pair of shadow demons, during which they had to perform the ritual (which was a skill challenge). Also, since the Ring was a bit overpowered, and it had been claimed by the party's halfling rogue, I decided that dropping the ring into the lava would give two automatic successes in the challenge. What can I say, I'm a sucker for the classics.

Hey guys why aren't their any maps on this page for the lost mines? I've not got to reading this far forward but I'm starting to by using this site as my main intro jumping on point before sitting down to read the actual adventure.

Thanks

Ab

This is random and may fall under braggine, but I have some pictures of the Queen battle at the end of LMoK. I try and use printed out maps for my games but sometimes I like to go above and beyond.

For the Nexus battle in Siege at Bordin's Watch, I created an actual model of the final room. I made it out of paited cardboard and photocopied dungeon tiles. It tured out really well and the players loved being able to see where the catwalks where and visalize how far it was between landings and the floor.

For the Queen battle, I tore apart the Nexus model and used some more carboard and styrafoam to create model so there was an acual rift in the floor for and such. I even added lights but they don't show in the pictures very well.

I wil try and figure out a way to attach the photos so you all can see them.

I've added them to the Images folder. There is IMG00119, IMG00120, IMG00123, Nexus and Queen.

Moderator: if these files are too big or do not meet the criteria for being allowable file uploads, please delete them. My intent is not to muck up the site.

Well done! I like to do stuff like that too when I have the time. My group is currently still in R@R but I posted pics from the last few games as well on our site: http://www.epicwords.com/sowarizona

I just uploaded all my Lost Mines maps to the Files section.
I play online so I don't know about what size or shape or format people need.
If people need any changed, or edited, like I realized that I drew the dunes free hand so it shows where the slow sand is and I'm gonna change that, just let me know. I'm not an artist, but I can cut and paste with the best of them.

Great shots Ryan very inspirational. And thanks Pink Rose for uploading the files, I will take a look at them, downloading is very sloooooow at present. Thanks people.

Ab

I am going to skip this module. It does not appear to play any major role. I will instead use the Lost Ones, in a city crawl to keep the PC in the correct amount of XP. Any thing I might be missing by not running this?

While it does not play a huge role, it does have some additional pieces to the puzzle that the players will enjoy getting.

With my group, this adventure really cemeted the notion that something major was about to happen and while Sarshan was a player, he was not the big fish.

I decided to run this module anyway. Indeed my PC's decided that the front door was not an option on this as well. They decided to climb up to the roof where they encountered the Harpies. This ended up being a pretty drug out battle expecially since the Harpies ended up Pulling two of the players off the roof. 5d10 points of damage! With climb checks and 1/2 movement and etc. I guess I should have had the Harpies fly off when they got bloodied, but I know my party and they would have probley tried chasing them down anyway. They then lowered a rope down right on top of the sand pile in the courtyard where the carion crawler was waiting. I thought this was going to be a tougher fight with 1/2 the party still trying to climb down. They killed the crawler pretty fast and part they are still partially split. We ended the fight there, but as soon as we game again, the door is going to bust open and Trogs are going to rush in the room without them having a short rest.... We shall see :P

The birdman really confused the players...As it did the DM as well. . Not sure how I would have handled this diffrently, however the players spent 1 hour or more of game time trying to figure him out. Also they spend a long time trying to figure out what they were missing after they cleared out the upper levels. They knew they needed to find the mines, but could not do so. Of coarse the only way down the shaft is if someone comes up from down below. The players wanted to RP the total search of the upper level thinking they missed something. Details and another hour or more later they finally had to be railroaded into waiting a while. ( I might have been able to change this up a bit, however I was trying to go with the flow if the module). DM's look this over and be prepared for some confusion with these areas. Other than that, I recommend the you let the players know that there characters are feeling funny. I let them figure out that the elemental chaos is starting to affect them. I am trying to make sure they decide that this place is dangerous to be in. I am considering some temp side effects that they start feeling.

My play group is great they always approach things differently I often have to adjust on the fly. In this case they get to the Naga and having already found and found out what happened to the Karak Lode, and not really knowing the Naga's strength decided to forgo fighting it and letting it be Bram Ironfell's problem. They also early in the Thornwastes keep one of the Hammerfists alive and eventually after questioning him let him go. I had the Hammerfist offer the characters to reveal to him the location of Lode to him once they got back in Overlook, promising to pay more than Bram Ironfell. When the party returned to Overlook they let Bram know about both the Hammerfist and the Naga, and even floated to Bram the idea of letting them give the location to the Hammerfists, as a way to trick them into mixing it up the Naga. Thus prehaps taking care of 2 problems at once. My question is do you think I should have Bram pay them to go back and take care of the Naga, let them share the info with the Hammerfists, or just let them go onto the DotD? Ideas?

Pretty much what everyone has said so far in my run through on this. Players went up the cliff to tackle the harpies first, then dropped a dwarf on a rope onto the sand pile to trigger the crawler, at which point they just shot him a lot. I fudged things a bit for the upper level exploration, and did it as a bit of skill challenge and turned the longtooth/minion encounter into a roving patrol failure condition which worked decently, if not great. My general thought about this module is that it's very much set up on assuming the players are going to do things in a very specific order, which has pretty much NO chance of happening.

I'm right at the "foiled ambush" point in this module. One of my players figured out the Birdman - much to my amazement, but his PC failed the skill roll (rolled a 1) so the players are aware but are forbidden to meta-game. One of my players wanted to go through the ceiling but was overruled by the rest of the party. Yes, there is a quite a bit of leading them around by the nose-ring, but I feel it will work.

I'm approaching this module in a very open-minded way. Since it seems it doesn't have much to do with the overral story, I figured there's not really need for any leading around, but on the contrary I let them approach it however they like. At the moment our group has bluffed (they are coming with grave news from Dunesend and wish to join the Rightful Rulers ranks if possible) their way for an audience with the (false) Queen of the Drylands, except for one of them who's running so called "plan B" and sneaking his way from above... I think he's gonna get busted and maybe jailed after falling a long way down, but only tomorrow will show...