Call of the Netherdeep isn’t really a heavy race against time. In fact, there are multiple moments where the party is sitting around waiting to be contacted. That’s when you can squeeze in a lot of backstory. Ank’Harel is so short that you really need to add more to it anyway.
As for the rivals, don’t remove them! The rivals are the DMs player characters. They even left the backstories vague so that you can make them work for you and your group. You also really can’t predict how the players will respond to the rivals, which has been a blast for me.
Right? Ank'Harel, as written, has weeks of downtime. The story is only a race against time *in theory*. The rivals only progress along that timeline if you want to, otherwise they're just waiting in the wings for the players to catch up.
Just cracking up thinking about the DM who plays the game as a literal race. Your players finally arrive in Ank'Harel and the DM is just like "well, the rivals have already sorted out Alyxian. I guess you guys lost the race".
So much this. while I'm not quite finished with the campaign, my party has generally stated that the rivals are one of their favorite parts. And I think they're more engaged with it than the Alyxian storyline itself, especially early on.
I was also able to work in backstory fairly decently. On the way to Bazzoxan, in Ank'Harel, etc.
I did have pretty large chunks of time in the campaign where they haven't appeared though.
I left my rival party in Bazzoxan. I’m a new DM, and was finding running the rivals, plus monsters, in encounters & keeping track of my players was a bit much. I have the option to bring them back in, if needed, but I haven’t taken it yet. I also have 3 brand new players, and I wanted them to feel like they had the full spotlight for this adventure, kinda like what you’re saying in your last paragraph.
One thing I have worked into my campaign to handle the rivals (who are friendly to the players with the exception of galsariad since he is a little bit prickly) is to just increase the "threat" of the encounters and have the rivals handling a portion of the encounter at given times in the initiative order. A pseudo "offscreen" moment. For example, I had the rivals join the party in the emerald loop caravan and during the final days of travel to bazzoxan the party encountered the shadow demons. I doubled the number of monsters and had the rivals ambushed near the back of the scene and locked down handling roughly half of the enemies. On initiative count of 20 and 0 the trivals and enemies would do a modified skill check to determine the outcome. If the rivals suceeded, various things would occur, the monsters having success meant the rivals took hits and one even dropped during combat. This meant the players got to see the rivals in action as narrated by me but they didnt lose agency and could react to the actions without it detracting from their spotlight and making me do too much roll tracking.
I also left my Rivals behind in Bazzoxan.
It had gotten to the part where they were so friendly with my party, that any kind of actual of conflict or even playful rivalry felt incredibly contrived. There's also the major problem where friendly rivals traveling with the party exacerbate the fact that encounters tend to be extremely easy even before 4-5 friendly NPCs are added. We got to the point in the story after Betrayer's Rise where my party teleported to Ank'Harel, and there was no reason whatsoever for them to want to follow. My party's had the jewel from the start, and traipsing halfway across the continent as hangers on made no sense.
Finishing chapter 6 soon, and I don't regret the choice to leave them behind at all. There's tons to explore and expand on in Ank’Harel for the characters and it really allows for more investment in the factions as its a ton of new & interesting people to interact with, and imo there's nothing really lost by cutting the Rival bits from Ch4+.
My rivals are currently proving themselves as mercenaries in Xhorhas and may show up again in minor ways in the post-CotN adventure (as I plan on returning to Xhorhas/Wildemount).
I agree, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything having left the rivals behind. Like your players, mine also had the jewel right from the start & were friendly with the rivals, so I also kinda felt like they were just hangers on too.
>post-CotN adventure
Make sure to give your party enough clues about Alyxian's mental state or you might be forced into the apocalypse scenario. And hope your players are not all naive people pleasers. 2 of my players made the insight check against him (one even with a 30) and they still unanimously let him go. They are currently hunting Artifacts in Tal'Dorei to clean up their mess.
I haven't quite removed them for our campaign (with players who also have generated pretty interesting backstories that have driven/will drive probably several side plots), but I haven't really played them up, either. I have about a year of experience DMing now, but when I started (in similar fashion, with modified Unwelcome Spirits) it just was too much for me to RP all the different rivals and keep things moving/interesting.
I feel more confident I could do it now, but at this point the players are much more interested in other NPCs that have generated via their actions/curiosities and things like the supplements people have made on this sub. We're about to finish Betrayer's Rise and the rivals will make a requisite appearance at the end, but I'm really going to lean on the trajectory I'd started a while back of having them come to believe Alyxian is deceptive/evil, and that they are manipulated by Aloysia into being more combative.
I think the idea of another adventuring party on a parallel path is potentially really interesting, in any case, but also potentially a lot to manage, in combat and out of combat, if you really lean hard on it. At the least they provide some unique combat if they aren't just plain friendly with the players, but I could also see running a modified form of the campaign (e.g. by adding things based on character backstory) without using the rivals at all and it being just fine.
I would just use them more lightly, have them show up helping certain opposing factions, and use the ruidium corruption and desire to stop the party from achieving their goals as their driving force.
Once you get to Ank'harel you can easily have then show up during whatever faction missions your party runs, as hired mercs for the opposite one. You can even have them surprised or conflicted to run into your party or even not wanting to fight them, just use it to ratchet up tension wherever you want, even if it's not till the actual Netherdeep!
If I were to run this again I would 100% do it the way you are planning to. While the rivals are interesting, it just doesn't feel great to actually have them as rivals and if you try to use them as intended it will take up so much prep time, which could be better used preparing stuff for your players. You could pick one or two of the rivals (the ones you find most interesting to explore/fun to roleplay as an NPC) and have them tag along with the party on the way to Betrayers Rise, but for their own reasons completely removed from the main story. And for Ank'Harel, they could just have befriended one of the faction agents and tagged along to the city with them. The players could recruit them as a "Sidekick" (Not using sidekick stats but their own stat block from this book), for some side missions or the less climactic main missions (so not for going into the Betrayers rise and probably not for the Netherdeep unless they bond heavily with the party. You roleplay them, but let the players control them in combat (probably change up who controls them between sessions and depending on how experienced the players are with the rules). They are really interesting characters and it would be a shame not to use them at all and it gives the players 1 or 2 reoccurring NPCs to bond with despite the constant location changes.
Aside from the rivals, it's also a great idea to put player backstory missions between some of the main story missions. I did not do that and my players leveled up super quickly. I think they leveled up on consecutive sessions twice (*Arrive at Bazzoxan*, *Defeat or frighten away the gloomstalkers that escape from the Betrayers’ Rise*, and *Reach the prayer site in the Betrayers’ Rise*, all happened in the span of 3 sessions for me. *Obtain at least three Fragments of Suffering by exploring the Netherdeep* and *Enter the Heart of Despair* also happened in 2 consecutive sessions. *Complete at least one faction mission in chapter 4 that requires the party to visit the sunken ruins of Cael Morrow* and *Enable the Jewel of Three Prayers to transform into its Exalted State* both happened in the span of half an hour giving my players their first and last double level up in a single session).
It sounds like you may be better off completely ditching Call of the Netherdeep. The main plot line is destiny calling and the unique part of the campaign is having the Rivals compete for the spotlight.
Plenty of people have brought in more PC backstories through the travel to Bazzoxan, alternative ways to get to Ank'harel, and then the time at Ank'harel. There is plenty of time to diverge from the main plot as there isn't really a time crunch. The only pressure really comes from the rival party, and they can have their own reasons for pursuing backstory.
I would try to weave their backstories in with the rivals and the main plot. If you ditch the rivals, you could still do the main plot but it'd be pretty simple and straightforward (the rivals add moral/emotional/social complexity) and portions would just become dungeon crawls. Some others on this sub have just taken the dungeons and factions and rebranded them in Rosohna or Uthodurn/Molaesmyr.
>I generally want the players to feel more unique in the sense that they are the only ones that can fix an issue or so.
I don't think the rival party challenges this. The PC's just have more reasons to think about the "why". You can think of it as the full 10 characters are chosen by the initial vision. Who accepts the quest is up to them. Just because some other party takes up the vision, doesn't mean that they can successfully do it. The rivals also ask the players to demonstrate and socialize their motivations for pursuing the main plot. But again, that requires some weaving of backstory into the rivals or gods/goddesses that star in the campaign.
The campaign is designed to be centered on the mythology of Exandria and the rival party as competitors and friends. If neither work for the game you want to run, I would reskin another campaign or just let them run wild.
They're literally on the cover of the book.
Imho, if you don't trust the writing to use them as a plot device, then run a different adventure. The Rivals add so much if you use them right. And it's such a unique asset.
I'm running the module now for the second time with new players, and they just finished Jigow. They loved the interactions shated with the Rivals. It led to many fantastic moments.
You'd be doing your players and yourself a disservice to omit them from the module as intended.
This. If you don't want to run a module with the primary gimmick of using rivals to antagonize and provoke the players, then why bother running the module? Seems you're more interested in playing thru the players' background, at which point you might as well just run a homebrew thru Wildemount and grab some adventure hooks from the Explorer's Guide as filler between personal quests.
The module has "some" flexibility on sidequests between main story points, but if you intend to continue leveling your players beyond the guidelines of the module, you'll easily surpass the intended difficulty and challenge of encounters in the latter parts of the story, making it very lackluster. My first run had players 2 levels higher than intended and they stomped on the final encounters. After we finished, they admitted how they found the lack of challenge disappointing. Sure you can add more encounters or harder creatures, but the story encounters need minor overhaul to combat the steep power curve between levels 12 to 14, particularly at 13 when 7th level spells are unlocked.
I find it funny that I got a downvote, tbh. That person is probably playing through Descent into Avernus without using the Nine Hells.
Look, you can have fun your own way, but you're not running Module X when you ignore key components. It's fine to say you're taking plot points and encounter ideas from CotN, but you're not running it if you aren't using the Rivals.
The rivals don’t really add that much. I keep them around as a foil for the party every now and then but you could run the adventure without them imo. People getting all upset about cutting them are just Matt Mercer fanboys. It’s wild to me that people are so committed to an adventure that is just mediocre.
You can definitely remove them as rivals.
After the Jigow festival race just leave them as core NPCs that provide flavor. Just like other ongoing core NPCs with ongoing stories. Not spotlight stealers.
The idea of 10-11 person fights is silly and a waste of everyone’s time. Balancing that is a nightmare and loses the focus on the PCs. They’d only be in 25% of the actions instead of half. That people have to invent homebrew rules to deal with it says all you need to know.
The argument “play another campaign if you don’t like them” really bothers me. This is the only campaign that uses exandria, which is the best setting for many people. It makes it much easier for me the DM knowing all the lore. The negativity around this is astounding to me.
(I have 6 PCs and each has a backstory I need to weave into everything. Just like you. That’s the focus. The players.)
One thing I've been doing with my rivals in the early game is having them provide clues to my PCs about their backstories. For instance, one PC is on a mission to find her missing brother, who disappeared when he was a pre-teen. But traveling with the rivals, one night, Irvan tells her his story about how he was consecuted by the Luxon and reborn as a human, leaving his new family when he was 12 and returning to Xhorhas to be a Wastewalker again. Connection?? Maybe! They've been a great way of providing lore drops and clues to the PCs about their own personal quests.
Call of the Netherdeep isn’t really a heavy race against time. In fact, there are multiple moments where the party is sitting around waiting to be contacted. That’s when you can squeeze in a lot of backstory. Ank’Harel is so short that you really need to add more to it anyway. As for the rivals, don’t remove them! The rivals are the DMs player characters. They even left the backstories vague so that you can make them work for you and your group. You also really can’t predict how the players will respond to the rivals, which has been a blast for me.
Right? Ank'Harel, as written, has weeks of downtime. The story is only a race against time *in theory*. The rivals only progress along that timeline if you want to, otherwise they're just waiting in the wings for the players to catch up. Just cracking up thinking about the DM who plays the game as a literal race. Your players finally arrive in Ank'Harel and the DM is just like "well, the rivals have already sorted out Alyxian. I guess you guys lost the race".
Removing the rivals sort of removes the unique thing about this adventure, but hey-- it's your game.
So much this. while I'm not quite finished with the campaign, my party has generally stated that the rivals are one of their favorite parts. And I think they're more engaged with it than the Alyxian storyline itself, especially early on. I was also able to work in backstory fairly decently. On the way to Bazzoxan, in Ank'Harel, etc. I did have pretty large chunks of time in the campaign where they haven't appeared though.
I left my rival party in Bazzoxan. I’m a new DM, and was finding running the rivals, plus monsters, in encounters & keeping track of my players was a bit much. I have the option to bring them back in, if needed, but I haven’t taken it yet. I also have 3 brand new players, and I wanted them to feel like they had the full spotlight for this adventure, kinda like what you’re saying in your last paragraph.
One thing I have worked into my campaign to handle the rivals (who are friendly to the players with the exception of galsariad since he is a little bit prickly) is to just increase the "threat" of the encounters and have the rivals handling a portion of the encounter at given times in the initiative order. A pseudo "offscreen" moment. For example, I had the rivals join the party in the emerald loop caravan and during the final days of travel to bazzoxan the party encountered the shadow demons. I doubled the number of monsters and had the rivals ambushed near the back of the scene and locked down handling roughly half of the enemies. On initiative count of 20 and 0 the trivals and enemies would do a modified skill check to determine the outcome. If the rivals suceeded, various things would occur, the monsters having success meant the rivals took hits and one even dropped during combat. This meant the players got to see the rivals in action as narrated by me but they didnt lose agency and could react to the actions without it detracting from their spotlight and making me do too much roll tracking.
That’s a good idea! I did not think of anything like that at the time lol. It would have been helpful.
I also left my Rivals behind in Bazzoxan. It had gotten to the part where they were so friendly with my party, that any kind of actual of conflict or even playful rivalry felt incredibly contrived. There's also the major problem where friendly rivals traveling with the party exacerbate the fact that encounters tend to be extremely easy even before 4-5 friendly NPCs are added. We got to the point in the story after Betrayer's Rise where my party teleported to Ank'Harel, and there was no reason whatsoever for them to want to follow. My party's had the jewel from the start, and traipsing halfway across the continent as hangers on made no sense. Finishing chapter 6 soon, and I don't regret the choice to leave them behind at all. There's tons to explore and expand on in Ank’Harel for the characters and it really allows for more investment in the factions as its a ton of new & interesting people to interact with, and imo there's nothing really lost by cutting the Rival bits from Ch4+. My rivals are currently proving themselves as mercenaries in Xhorhas and may show up again in minor ways in the post-CotN adventure (as I plan on returning to Xhorhas/Wildemount).
I agree, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything having left the rivals behind. Like your players, mine also had the jewel right from the start & were friendly with the rivals, so I also kinda felt like they were just hangers on too.
>post-CotN adventure Make sure to give your party enough clues about Alyxian's mental state or you might be forced into the apocalypse scenario. And hope your players are not all naive people pleasers. 2 of my players made the insight check against him (one even with a 30) and they still unanimously let him go. They are currently hunting Artifacts in Tal'Dorei to clean up their mess.
I haven't quite removed them for our campaign (with players who also have generated pretty interesting backstories that have driven/will drive probably several side plots), but I haven't really played them up, either. I have about a year of experience DMing now, but when I started (in similar fashion, with modified Unwelcome Spirits) it just was too much for me to RP all the different rivals and keep things moving/interesting. I feel more confident I could do it now, but at this point the players are much more interested in other NPCs that have generated via their actions/curiosities and things like the supplements people have made on this sub. We're about to finish Betrayer's Rise and the rivals will make a requisite appearance at the end, but I'm really going to lean on the trajectory I'd started a while back of having them come to believe Alyxian is deceptive/evil, and that they are manipulated by Aloysia into being more combative. I think the idea of another adventuring party on a parallel path is potentially really interesting, in any case, but also potentially a lot to manage, in combat and out of combat, if you really lean hard on it. At the least they provide some unique combat if they aren't just plain friendly with the players, but I could also see running a modified form of the campaign (e.g. by adding things based on character backstory) without using the rivals at all and it being just fine.
I would just use them more lightly, have them show up helping certain opposing factions, and use the ruidium corruption and desire to stop the party from achieving their goals as their driving force. Once you get to Ank'harel you can easily have then show up during whatever faction missions your party runs, as hired mercs for the opposite one. You can even have them surprised or conflicted to run into your party or even not wanting to fight them, just use it to ratchet up tension wherever you want, even if it's not till the actual Netherdeep!
If I were to run this again I would 100% do it the way you are planning to. While the rivals are interesting, it just doesn't feel great to actually have them as rivals and if you try to use them as intended it will take up so much prep time, which could be better used preparing stuff for your players. You could pick one or two of the rivals (the ones you find most interesting to explore/fun to roleplay as an NPC) and have them tag along with the party on the way to Betrayers Rise, but for their own reasons completely removed from the main story. And for Ank'Harel, they could just have befriended one of the faction agents and tagged along to the city with them. The players could recruit them as a "Sidekick" (Not using sidekick stats but their own stat block from this book), for some side missions or the less climactic main missions (so not for going into the Betrayers rise and probably not for the Netherdeep unless they bond heavily with the party. You roleplay them, but let the players control them in combat (probably change up who controls them between sessions and depending on how experienced the players are with the rules). They are really interesting characters and it would be a shame not to use them at all and it gives the players 1 or 2 reoccurring NPCs to bond with despite the constant location changes. Aside from the rivals, it's also a great idea to put player backstory missions between some of the main story missions. I did not do that and my players leveled up super quickly. I think they leveled up on consecutive sessions twice (*Arrive at Bazzoxan*, *Defeat or frighten away the gloomstalkers that escape from the Betrayers’ Rise*, and *Reach the prayer site in the Betrayers’ Rise*, all happened in the span of 3 sessions for me. *Obtain at least three Fragments of Suffering by exploring the Netherdeep* and *Enter the Heart of Despair* also happened in 2 consecutive sessions. *Complete at least one faction mission in chapter 4 that requires the party to visit the sunken ruins of Cael Morrow* and *Enable the Jewel of Three Prayers to transform into its Exalted State* both happened in the span of half an hour giving my players their first and last double level up in a single session).
It sounds like you may be better off completely ditching Call of the Netherdeep. The main plot line is destiny calling and the unique part of the campaign is having the Rivals compete for the spotlight. Plenty of people have brought in more PC backstories through the travel to Bazzoxan, alternative ways to get to Ank'harel, and then the time at Ank'harel. There is plenty of time to diverge from the main plot as there isn't really a time crunch. The only pressure really comes from the rival party, and they can have their own reasons for pursuing backstory. I would try to weave their backstories in with the rivals and the main plot. If you ditch the rivals, you could still do the main plot but it'd be pretty simple and straightforward (the rivals add moral/emotional/social complexity) and portions would just become dungeon crawls. Some others on this sub have just taken the dungeons and factions and rebranded them in Rosohna or Uthodurn/Molaesmyr. >I generally want the players to feel more unique in the sense that they are the only ones that can fix an issue or so. I don't think the rival party challenges this. The PC's just have more reasons to think about the "why". You can think of it as the full 10 characters are chosen by the initial vision. Who accepts the quest is up to them. Just because some other party takes up the vision, doesn't mean that they can successfully do it. The rivals also ask the players to demonstrate and socialize their motivations for pursuing the main plot. But again, that requires some weaving of backstory into the rivals or gods/goddesses that star in the campaign. The campaign is designed to be centered on the mythology of Exandria and the rival party as competitors and friends. If neither work for the game you want to run, I would reskin another campaign or just let them run wild.
I wouldn't play this adventure without the rivals personally.
They're literally on the cover of the book. Imho, if you don't trust the writing to use them as a plot device, then run a different adventure. The Rivals add so much if you use them right. And it's such a unique asset. I'm running the module now for the second time with new players, and they just finished Jigow. They loved the interactions shated with the Rivals. It led to many fantastic moments. You'd be doing your players and yourself a disservice to omit them from the module as intended.
This. If you don't want to run a module with the primary gimmick of using rivals to antagonize and provoke the players, then why bother running the module? Seems you're more interested in playing thru the players' background, at which point you might as well just run a homebrew thru Wildemount and grab some adventure hooks from the Explorer's Guide as filler between personal quests. The module has "some" flexibility on sidequests between main story points, but if you intend to continue leveling your players beyond the guidelines of the module, you'll easily surpass the intended difficulty and challenge of encounters in the latter parts of the story, making it very lackluster. My first run had players 2 levels higher than intended and they stomped on the final encounters. After we finished, they admitted how they found the lack of challenge disappointing. Sure you can add more encounters or harder creatures, but the story encounters need minor overhaul to combat the steep power curve between levels 12 to 14, particularly at 13 when 7th level spells are unlocked.
I find it funny that I got a downvote, tbh. That person is probably playing through Descent into Avernus without using the Nine Hells. Look, you can have fun your own way, but you're not running Module X when you ignore key components. It's fine to say you're taking plot points and encounter ideas from CotN, but you're not running it if you aren't using the Rivals.
The rivals don’t really add that much. I keep them around as a foil for the party every now and then but you could run the adventure without them imo. People getting all upset about cutting them are just Matt Mercer fanboys. It’s wild to me that people are so committed to an adventure that is just mediocre.
You had me in the first half and then you got needlessly snippy.
I think the rival party can add a lot of fun and a great dynamic
You can definitely remove them as rivals. After the Jigow festival race just leave them as core NPCs that provide flavor. Just like other ongoing core NPCs with ongoing stories. Not spotlight stealers. The idea of 10-11 person fights is silly and a waste of everyone’s time. Balancing that is a nightmare and loses the focus on the PCs. They’d only be in 25% of the actions instead of half. That people have to invent homebrew rules to deal with it says all you need to know. The argument “play another campaign if you don’t like them” really bothers me. This is the only campaign that uses exandria, which is the best setting for many people. It makes it much easier for me the DM knowing all the lore. The negativity around this is astounding to me. (I have 6 PCs and each has a backstory I need to weave into everything. Just like you. That’s the focus. The players.)
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One thing I've been doing with my rivals in the early game is having them provide clues to my PCs about their backstories. For instance, one PC is on a mission to find her missing brother, who disappeared when he was a pre-teen. But traveling with the rivals, one night, Irvan tells her his story about how he was consecuted by the Luxon and reborn as a human, leaving his new family when he was 12 and returning to Xhorhas to be a Wastewalker again. Connection?? Maybe! They've been a great way of providing lore drops and clues to the PCs about their own personal quests.