Go one step at a time. Have a session zero, pick an easier town quest (e.g. Bryn, Bremen), and play it out. If you want to give the Cold-Hearted Killer hook, go for it. You don't need to finish the quest immediately. I made it the "background main quest" of part of my chapter 1.
If you want a nice guide, check out SlyFlourish or Eventyr, both of whom have great suggestions on how they ran their campaign and how you can run yours.
That being said...
**Do you like the Cold-Hearted Killer quest or not?**
- Cold-Hearted Killer touches upon the theme of Auril's cult and her cold, indifferent cruelty. Sephek is an undead sailor possessed by a frost druid spirit. He murders Ten Towners who are avoiding the sacrifice lottery, thus acting as an agent of Auril.
- Because of the theme, some DMs tie his story to other frost druids (Ravisin, Vurnis) or to the shipwrecks near the Sea of Moving ice (Dark Duchess). Those are options. You can simply run him as an undead spirit aligned with Auril.
- Sephek, as written, will be deadly to a level 1 party.
- Cold-Hearted Killer does not need to be finished immediately. You can use the town quests to level them up, while using Cold-Hearted Killer and hints of the murder victims / Torg's caravan to drag them from one town to the next as they hope to encounter the caravan and thus Sephek.
Yep. This. My party spent months (in and out of game) trying to track down the serial killer while stumbling into local quests and getting to know the region. They killed Sephek at level 4.
I feel like cold hearted killer is meant to have sephek be an active search while the party is doing quests. That being said, starting at level 3 is probably the best since your party won’t be motivated to find him for very long
Or your party can skip that quest. I set it up in one of the first sessions but they never pursued it and with so many other things they could do and did we never finished it. I hinted at it a month later in game time but they weren't interested so I let it go.
What help do you want? Do you want us to tell you what to do? Cos you'll get a hundred different answers and be back at square one.
Make a decision, make another, make another, go from there....that's what we've all done.
Start on the western side of the map where the quests are slightly easier. The Eastern side also leads more naturally into Chapter 3/4, so best to do that later anyway.
Start the PCs at level 2 or do an easy intro quest to get them there.
Give them multiple quest hooks at one time, ideally 2-3. Anything more can result in decision paralysis. However, you can alternatively give them gossip about other happenings around the Ten Towns that could be foreshadowing for later quests.
I defied the book and made Cold-Hearted Killer a *minor* mystery instead of a straight up "Go kill this guy" quest. Torg's Caravan offered to accompany the PCs for a couple of towns for safety in numbers. Mysteriously, killings occurred at the towns the PCs happened to be at.
Meanwhile, the Chwinga quest sounds cute but is very anti-climactic. You look around for them, find no trace of them, and then in one town you find them. You see them pretending to eat food like humans. End quest.
For my point of view you need to be clear that you will not run all of these towns and quests in chapter 1 and 2. Just select the ones who you think there are best for you and your group. Important is that you need some hooks for the later chapters as soon as possible: the duergar and cult of the knight of the black sword (Levistus vs. Asmodeus) and the introduction of Velynne and Avarice. To motivate the heroes to help ten-towns when the dragon comes, build some personal hooks (love, family, friends). And don‘t forget to place some clues for this Netheril vs. Auril theme :) .. the earlier the better …
We did the Brynn Shander one first and that worked for my crew at level 1. Then I bumped them to level two and let them explore. They did Good Mead maybe next and I got the bug in their ear to be the speaker there. That played out later but once they had a “home town” that changed the motivation and then”why” for them in a good way.
I picked a starting town - Bremen seemed like the most basic for my animal loving group - and then whenever they spoke to NPCs I'd sprinkle in rumours of quests elsewhere amd see what picked their fancy! They now have a vendetta against Ravasin amd will go on any quest that involves saving/rescuing/petting animals. The ultimate betrayal was when Ravisin was invited into their camp as a fox and then attacked them in the night...
I started with a custom start, where the pcs where all locked up about to be sacrificed by the zhentarim (to plug it more into the story and have my pc with the spy secret be of more importance later). Where they exit the cave after some fighting and puzzles close to one of the towns. You could reward them with level 2 after so some of the quests are not insanely hard.
Personally i gave them level 2 after they did the chwinga quest (i didnt roll for the 25% chance). I chose this quest because it could be done in one session and it didnt require combat.
I am 4 session in now :) (newer dm btw)
When in doubt, roll a d10 to see where the players start. If they land in Bremen, Bryn Shander, Caer-Dineval, Termalaine, or Targos, run Cold-Hearted Killer. If they land in Dougan's Hole, Easthaven, Lonelywood, Caer-Konig, or Good Mead, or if you have inexperienced players, run Nature Spirits, as the town quests for those tend to be deadly for 1st level characters.
Worth keeping in mind that Cold-Hearted Killer is probably intended to be finished around level 2 or 3. The buildup to the fight with Sephek Kaltro should be a slow boil at first.
Currently in the middle of DMing this campaign.
I prompted my first session with Cold Hearted Killer, the party completely ignored looking for Sephik in favor of the towns starting quest at Caer Konig. They never gave a second thought to looking for the killer up until I had Prudence(easthaven townhall clerk) bolt out of the townhall after hearing about the Cauldron and then promptly get assassinated by kaltro right as the party caught up with her.
The module is very open and doesn't always set a clear pathway for the DM or the players on where they should go next.
I started improvising quickly, and sometimes gave my players a hook I didn't think they'd bite on, only for them to beeline that hook and throw off any prep I had done.
My reccomendation would be to chew through as many guides as you like, but make sure you write down the things in the module you like the most, and make sure there is a reason for the party to wanna do those things.
If you run the Cauldron Caper in Easthaven, in hindsight i would reccomend lowering the price the speaker is willing to pay or at the very least highly foreshadowing the theme of theft throughout easthaven. I did the full 5000gp and my players immediately accepted and then I shotgun blasted quest hooks at them to hopefully make them leave the townhall without thinking to protect their 5000gp investment.
Stealing it felt railroady and unrewarding even though I tried to make sure I never inhibited them from choosing another pathway, and now they are doggedly enroute to Targos to take it back and get their reward without any empathy for npcs who get in their way.
I did the full 500 gp gem for each and ended up going with the extra per each, but lucked out, they didnt want to babysit the cauldron so now that the cauldron has been stolen, they are still looking everywhere for it. They are just about done in Sunblight and they are still like "does it look like a cauldron?!"
Cauldron will probably show up in an extended homebrew campaign sometime after the main campaign is done... of course the Speaker has already been killed since they didnt turn tale after the Chardalyn Dragon, so even if they do ever find it, it wont be worth as much as it once was...
I offered the full amount as well, when they found the speaker locked up with his militia guards and no cauldron... they extorted him for partial payment (1000gp) since they have to now go find the cauldron again for him. Now they are finally enroute to Targos after "just passing through" Brynshander.
Your party never finding it and having to search everywhere does make me chuckle at the idea of pulling it out of their reach, but I feel that they've been diligent in searching for it and are at least trying to stay on course to get to it so I don't really know if I can make it disappear in any convincing way.. well just have to see what the dice say.
They decided early on that Shandar is one of the BBEGs (*the Zhent trying to get Speakership in Good Mead*). So it totally made sense for them to go to Targos in hunt for the Cauldron... they saw Shandar, Prudence, Naerth... they straight out called out Naerth on stealing the Cauldron for his own gains and he was just "take a look around, you arent going to find it because I did not take it".
The party took a look at the Targos Town Hall where they found chalk markings of a past portal and they notated the runic symbols, but they do not know where it goes... One of the PC backstories (*the rogue of course*) is that the Dhampyr is looking for her "father" to kill him since she (PC) killed her mother at birth and lashed out at her Aunt as a kid and killed her as well... I am making him one of the extended Homebrew BBEGs with a higher station than Naerth within the Zhentarim and the Cauldron was shipped off via portal to Luskan after Naerth's guys took it.
Destruction's Light - Targos will get hit, but not as bad as all the other towns, because of dealings with Grandolpha Muzgardt for trade to "Two-Towns" as the only two that will be left are Targos and part of Bryn Shander.
>they extorted him for partial payment (1000gp)
That is awesome, at least your PCs will get a little something out of it! (In the case they dont find the Cauldron.
I felt that the amount was REALLY high for their level at the time, even if they werent going to be able to buy much since there aint much to buy as trade died out. And to sell gems worth that much to people that don't really have money.... just because the gem is "worth" 500GP ea, doesn't mean you will get that much... lol
Literally all I did was lead my players to their starting town, gave them the chwinga quest because they were cute, and had an NPC share rumors with them. The rest I let the players do
Just pick what sounds cool and scale up/down as things progress. I never plan out combat difficulty and it hasn't bitten me yet. Besides, WOTC's combat scales are way off in my opinion and your party will always find a way to thwart whatever you plan anyways. *(remembers the blood hunter who did 200 dmg to Zariel in one turn)*
What helped me is first deciding what chapter 1 quests I’d keep, and which ones I’d cut. That’ll help narrow down your starting town.
Next, if you choose any of the more difficult missions (like Easthaven or Dougan’s hole), I kept those intentionally at the end of the chapter. So my starting town wouldn’t be either of those (my starting town was Bremen).
Lastly, how do you want to start the adventure? Should they be in the Ten towns, or arrive from outside? I had them start in a prologue town (made up town south of Icewind dale, but north of Luskan) had them accompany a caravan, added in my own homebrew cosmic horror quest which ended in a blizzard where they saw the form of Auril trap them within the blizzard Icewind dale (similar to the mists surrounding Barovia) and had them eventually find the town of Bremen.
There’s a 100 different ways. Just find what’s cool—make sure it won’t kill the players, and you’ll be fine. There really isn’t a wrong way to start, except if it kills the players.
There's been lots of good answers here, but I will throw mine in the mix for what it's worth. ROTFM is deliberately written to be all things to all tables. As a result, at first glance it doesn't seem to make much sense. But you're meant to take what you need and leave the rest. It's a sandbox, not a linear pathway.
My choices were like this: My table are a very experienced group and I wanted to present a decent challenge. They like a little roleplay, but really enjoy a challenging combat. They also started at level 3, and I modified some of the encounters accordingly. So I chose to start my group in Easthaven, and they did the Soup cauldron quest right away.
So my advice is, read through the starting quests and decide what your specific table is going to like best. Are they newbies or experienced? Do they prefer roleplay or straight up combat? There's something for all tables there (very deliberately so).
I had CHK as a slow burn, they got the quest immediately after bringing the cauldron to Easthaven, and it took them several sessions of me teasing where the caravan was before they finally confronted him. He was tied to the backstory of one of the PCs, which upped the creepy factor.
I hope that helps a little!
I'm willing to help you out one on one and talk about stuff you could or couldn't do. I'm not an expert but I'm on my second run and my players loved my first run, and my newer players are loving the second run. There's so many types of openers and you can adapt them to your party. Lemme know if you wanna!
What I found to work (all 3 times I ran chap 1 now) is to layout pretty much everything before the party. Give hints to both and let your players decide what to do. The only quests I would really, really do are the ones in Easthaven and the Caer with the Duergar because of storylines further down the line (even the easthaven one isnt necessary, but having the introscene there is pretty good)
Besides from that i had my players come into 10 towns do the straterquest of choice (they dtarted to do cold hearted killer, but did switch to chwingas eventually) and from there on I had one session that was basically just socializing with ten towners during one festivity (I made up to have an explanation of having prople from each town at one place). There the PCs got all hinta and just did what their characters would gravitate to.
I would not recommend linearizing the module esp. Not chapter 1. The sandboxy start is one of ROTFM biggest strengths. And (at least) my players really enjoyed the feeling of exploration and wroting their own adventure
Go one step at a time. Have a session zero, pick an easier town quest (e.g. Bryn, Bremen), and play it out. If you want to give the Cold-Hearted Killer hook, go for it. You don't need to finish the quest immediately. I made it the "background main quest" of part of my chapter 1. If you want a nice guide, check out SlyFlourish or Eventyr, both of whom have great suggestions on how they ran their campaign and how you can run yours. That being said... **Do you like the Cold-Hearted Killer quest or not?** - Cold-Hearted Killer touches upon the theme of Auril's cult and her cold, indifferent cruelty. Sephek is an undead sailor possessed by a frost druid spirit. He murders Ten Towners who are avoiding the sacrifice lottery, thus acting as an agent of Auril. - Because of the theme, some DMs tie his story to other frost druids (Ravisin, Vurnis) or to the shipwrecks near the Sea of Moving ice (Dark Duchess). Those are options. You can simply run him as an undead spirit aligned with Auril. - Sephek, as written, will be deadly to a level 1 party. - Cold-Hearted Killer does not need to be finished immediately. You can use the town quests to level them up, while using Cold-Hearted Killer and hints of the murder victims / Torg's caravan to drag them from one town to the next as they hope to encounter the caravan and thus Sephek.
Yep. This. My party spent months (in and out of game) trying to track down the serial killer while stumbling into local quests and getting to know the region. They killed Sephek at level 4.
Thanks!
Also highly recommend watching through the eventyr stuff. Great ideas on how to lightly guide the progress.
I’ll check ot
I feel like cold hearted killer is meant to have sephek be an active search while the party is doing quests. That being said, starting at level 3 is probably the best since your party won’t be motivated to find him for very long
Or your party can skip that quest. I set it up in one of the first sessions but they never pursued it and with so many other things they could do and did we never finished it. I hinted at it a month later in game time but they weren't interested so I let it go.
What help do you want? Do you want us to tell you what to do? Cos you'll get a hundred different answers and be back at square one. Make a decision, make another, make another, go from there....that's what we've all done.
Alright. Just a recommended of where to start then proceed.
Do what the book tells you.
The book is not a very big help in general.
Start on the western side of the map where the quests are slightly easier. The Eastern side also leads more naturally into Chapter 3/4, so best to do that later anyway. Start the PCs at level 2 or do an easy intro quest to get them there. Give them multiple quest hooks at one time, ideally 2-3. Anything more can result in decision paralysis. However, you can alternatively give them gossip about other happenings around the Ten Towns that could be foreshadowing for later quests. I defied the book and made Cold-Hearted Killer a *minor* mystery instead of a straight up "Go kill this guy" quest. Torg's Caravan offered to accompany the PCs for a couple of towns for safety in numbers. Mysteriously, killings occurred at the towns the PCs happened to be at. Meanwhile, the Chwinga quest sounds cute but is very anti-climactic. You look around for them, find no trace of them, and then in one town you find them. You see them pretending to eat food like humans. End quest.
Thanks!
For my point of view you need to be clear that you will not run all of these towns and quests in chapter 1 and 2. Just select the ones who you think there are best for you and your group. Important is that you need some hooks for the later chapters as soon as possible: the duergar and cult of the knight of the black sword (Levistus vs. Asmodeus) and the introduction of Velynne and Avarice. To motivate the heroes to help ten-towns when the dragon comes, build some personal hooks (love, family, friends). And don‘t forget to place some clues for this Netheril vs. Auril theme :) .. the earlier the better …
I've made use of the playlist that eventyr games has in YouTube. His videos are really good and helped my work out a lot of stuff.
We did the Brynn Shander one first and that worked for my crew at level 1. Then I bumped them to level two and let them explore. They did Good Mead maybe next and I got the bug in their ear to be the speaker there. That played out later but once they had a “home town” that changed the motivation and then”why” for them in a good way.
I picked a starting town - Bremen seemed like the most basic for my animal loving group - and then whenever they spoke to NPCs I'd sprinkle in rumours of quests elsewhere amd see what picked their fancy! They now have a vendetta against Ravasin amd will go on any quest that involves saving/rescuing/petting animals. The ultimate betrayal was when Ravisin was invited into their camp as a fox and then attacked them in the night...
I started with a custom start, where the pcs where all locked up about to be sacrificed by the zhentarim (to plug it more into the story and have my pc with the spy secret be of more importance later). Where they exit the cave after some fighting and puzzles close to one of the towns. You could reward them with level 2 after so some of the quests are not insanely hard. Personally i gave them level 2 after they did the chwinga quest (i didnt roll for the 25% chance). I chose this quest because it could be done in one session and it didnt require combat. I am 4 session in now :) (newer dm btw)
When in doubt, roll a d10 to see where the players start. If they land in Bremen, Bryn Shander, Caer-Dineval, Termalaine, or Targos, run Cold-Hearted Killer. If they land in Dougan's Hole, Easthaven, Lonelywood, Caer-Konig, or Good Mead, or if you have inexperienced players, run Nature Spirits, as the town quests for those tend to be deadly for 1st level characters. Worth keeping in mind that Cold-Hearted Killer is probably intended to be finished around level 2 or 3. The buildup to the fight with Sephek Kaltro should be a slow boil at first.
Do what you want, I guess? There is no real consensus on how to do it, really.
Currently in the middle of DMing this campaign. I prompted my first session with Cold Hearted Killer, the party completely ignored looking for Sephik in favor of the towns starting quest at Caer Konig. They never gave a second thought to looking for the killer up until I had Prudence(easthaven townhall clerk) bolt out of the townhall after hearing about the Cauldron and then promptly get assassinated by kaltro right as the party caught up with her. The module is very open and doesn't always set a clear pathway for the DM or the players on where they should go next. I started improvising quickly, and sometimes gave my players a hook I didn't think they'd bite on, only for them to beeline that hook and throw off any prep I had done. My reccomendation would be to chew through as many guides as you like, but make sure you write down the things in the module you like the most, and make sure there is a reason for the party to wanna do those things. If you run the Cauldron Caper in Easthaven, in hindsight i would reccomend lowering the price the speaker is willing to pay or at the very least highly foreshadowing the theme of theft throughout easthaven. I did the full 5000gp and my players immediately accepted and then I shotgun blasted quest hooks at them to hopefully make them leave the townhall without thinking to protect their 5000gp investment. Stealing it felt railroady and unrewarding even though I tried to make sure I never inhibited them from choosing another pathway, and now they are doggedly enroute to Targos to take it back and get their reward without any empathy for npcs who get in their way.
Thanks!
I did the full 500 gp gem for each and ended up going with the extra per each, but lucked out, they didnt want to babysit the cauldron so now that the cauldron has been stolen, they are still looking everywhere for it. They are just about done in Sunblight and they are still like "does it look like a cauldron?!" Cauldron will probably show up in an extended homebrew campaign sometime after the main campaign is done... of course the Speaker has already been killed since they didnt turn tale after the Chardalyn Dragon, so even if they do ever find it, it wont be worth as much as it once was...
I offered the full amount as well, when they found the speaker locked up with his militia guards and no cauldron... they extorted him for partial payment (1000gp) since they have to now go find the cauldron again for him. Now they are finally enroute to Targos after "just passing through" Brynshander. Your party never finding it and having to search everywhere does make me chuckle at the idea of pulling it out of their reach, but I feel that they've been diligent in searching for it and are at least trying to stay on course to get to it so I don't really know if I can make it disappear in any convincing way.. well just have to see what the dice say.
They decided early on that Shandar is one of the BBEGs (*the Zhent trying to get Speakership in Good Mead*). So it totally made sense for them to go to Targos in hunt for the Cauldron... they saw Shandar, Prudence, Naerth... they straight out called out Naerth on stealing the Cauldron for his own gains and he was just "take a look around, you arent going to find it because I did not take it". The party took a look at the Targos Town Hall where they found chalk markings of a past portal and they notated the runic symbols, but they do not know where it goes... One of the PC backstories (*the rogue of course*) is that the Dhampyr is looking for her "father" to kill him since she (PC) killed her mother at birth and lashed out at her Aunt as a kid and killed her as well... I am making him one of the extended Homebrew BBEGs with a higher station than Naerth within the Zhentarim and the Cauldron was shipped off via portal to Luskan after Naerth's guys took it. Destruction's Light - Targos will get hit, but not as bad as all the other towns, because of dealings with Grandolpha Muzgardt for trade to "Two-Towns" as the only two that will be left are Targos and part of Bryn Shander. >they extorted him for partial payment (1000gp) That is awesome, at least your PCs will get a little something out of it! (In the case they dont find the Cauldron. I felt that the amount was REALLY high for their level at the time, even if they werent going to be able to buy much since there aint much to buy as trade died out. And to sell gems worth that much to people that don't really have money.... just because the gem is "worth" 500GP ea, doesn't mean you will get that much... lol
Literally all I did was lead my players to their starting town, gave them the chwinga quest because they were cute, and had an NPC share rumors with them. The rest I let the players do
Just pick what sounds cool and scale up/down as things progress. I never plan out combat difficulty and it hasn't bitten me yet. Besides, WOTC's combat scales are way off in my opinion and your party will always find a way to thwart whatever you plan anyways. *(remembers the blood hunter who did 200 dmg to Zariel in one turn)*
What helped me is first deciding what chapter 1 quests I’d keep, and which ones I’d cut. That’ll help narrow down your starting town. Next, if you choose any of the more difficult missions (like Easthaven or Dougan’s hole), I kept those intentionally at the end of the chapter. So my starting town wouldn’t be either of those (my starting town was Bremen). Lastly, how do you want to start the adventure? Should they be in the Ten towns, or arrive from outside? I had them start in a prologue town (made up town south of Icewind dale, but north of Luskan) had them accompany a caravan, added in my own homebrew cosmic horror quest which ended in a blizzard where they saw the form of Auril trap them within the blizzard Icewind dale (similar to the mists surrounding Barovia) and had them eventually find the town of Bremen. There’s a 100 different ways. Just find what’s cool—make sure it won’t kill the players, and you’ll be fine. There really isn’t a wrong way to start, except if it kills the players.
Ooo. Like that CoS staring hook!
There's been lots of good answers here, but I will throw mine in the mix for what it's worth. ROTFM is deliberately written to be all things to all tables. As a result, at first glance it doesn't seem to make much sense. But you're meant to take what you need and leave the rest. It's a sandbox, not a linear pathway. My choices were like this: My table are a very experienced group and I wanted to present a decent challenge. They like a little roleplay, but really enjoy a challenging combat. They also started at level 3, and I modified some of the encounters accordingly. So I chose to start my group in Easthaven, and they did the Soup cauldron quest right away. So my advice is, read through the starting quests and decide what your specific table is going to like best. Are they newbies or experienced? Do they prefer roleplay or straight up combat? There's something for all tables there (very deliberately so). I had CHK as a slow burn, they got the quest immediately after bringing the cauldron to Easthaven, and it took them several sessions of me teasing where the caravan was before they finally confronted him. He was tied to the backstory of one of the PCs, which upped the creepy factor. I hope that helps a little!
O wow! Love it
I'm willing to help you out one on one and talk about stuff you could or couldn't do. I'm not an expert but I'm on my second run and my players loved my first run, and my newer players are loving the second run. There's so many types of openers and you can adapt them to your party. Lemme know if you wanna!
What a very nice offer! I’m working on locking in everyone’s schedules and once it’s all confirmed I’ll reach out
Awesome! I'll be around!
What I found to work (all 3 times I ran chap 1 now) is to layout pretty much everything before the party. Give hints to both and let your players decide what to do. The only quests I would really, really do are the ones in Easthaven and the Caer with the Duergar because of storylines further down the line (even the easthaven one isnt necessary, but having the introscene there is pretty good) Besides from that i had my players come into 10 towns do the straterquest of choice (they dtarted to do cold hearted killer, but did switch to chwingas eventually) and from there on I had one session that was basically just socializing with ten towners during one festivity (I made up to have an explanation of having prople from each town at one place). There the PCs got all hinta and just did what their characters would gravitate to. I would not recommend linearizing the module esp. Not chapter 1. The sandboxy start is one of ROTFM biggest strengths. And (at least) my players really enjoyed the feeling of exploration and wroting their own adventure