Witchy Witch Adventures
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The Curious Tale of Wisteria Vale (Patron)
🕑 Added 2021-05-21 06:52:27 +0000 UTCThere once was a bard named Quill,
Who was struck with a curse most shrill.
Unsure of what could be done,
They locked him away from everyone.
Now go save him with a stab delivered with skill.
This is a good adventure, but it has a few issues. The first is the presence of the beholder appearing randomly. The timing is much too convenient to the story that after so many years it appeared just before the party did.
Instead, have the beholder there as a manifestation of Quill's fears and sense of creativity. The world of the book was made to respond to him, or at least it does now, and every story needs a villain. Thus, Quill dreamed the beholder into existence. He's now been trapped in that painting for a very long time. He's not sure how long because time doesn't pass like normal inside the book.
The next issue is the exploding pepper. Don't destroy their head if you're going to do a save or die. That'll prevent a character from being resurrected by anything less than a true resurrection spell. If you must do it, let the die while still having their body intact so that other players can revivify or resurrect them. If that's not an option your players have, then either give them something so one person doesn't have to sit out for the rest of the night halfway through, or make it do something else like cause a level of exhaustion.
The third is that if your players can't convince Quill to be stabbed, drop hints that you can stab Quill by replaying the memory of how he got his scar. He will subconsciously allow himself to be stabbed so as to complete the story/memory.
The last, and biggest issue is the artwork in connection to this story. I love that they gave a drawing of a black, Elvish woman, but the lore behind them and the fact that in roll20 every token looks like that makes it extremely problematic. In roll20 it appears as a group of black women who are not truly human, don't feel pain lor bleed like a real person, and whose only purpose is to serve a wealthy, lighter-skinned man in a mansion on a hill.
If you run this in roll20 then you might want to add variation to the artwork, remove the not feeling pain thing, and take steps to make sure that you don't accidentally end up incorporating racist stereotypes due to the problematic nature of the artwork chosen compared to the lore. One thing I would recommend, is switch the commoner and constructed commoner tokens in your room across all adventures going forward.
I hope your players have fun!
