Bane of the Shadowborn: Ideas? :)

[Le Noir Faineant]

Hey, all!

Toying with the idea to run "Bane of the Shadowborn" (Dungeon Mag #31) some time later this year - likely, as my usual yearly Halloween game, something like that. Nothing deep or particularly ambitious, just a BTB-run of the adventure, likely with one of the more basic modern D&D variants, like the DCC RPG, or something like True20.

What are your general thoughts on the adventure, and on the whole Shadowborn/Ebonbane story circle? - What have you done with it over the years? Not yet sure what I'm looking for, yet, notat all sure how I'm going to handle things, but... I'm writing some of my DM stuff together tonight, so now is probably a good time to start this topic.

Thank you,

Rafe

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I have a Knight of the Shadows in my campaign, and have planned to run Bane in future, the next time he's called to Nidala for the pilgrimage. I would draw heavily from the Book of Shadows framing fiction and somehow have the rest of the party pulled in with him, rather than just NPC Knights. That's about as much thought as I've given to it so far.

[RavensCall]

The whole Shadowborn saga is a favorite of mine. I'm only 3 sessions in to our new RL campaign. One of the players is playing a character from Darkon who has faded memories of an attack on his home village. He remembers coming home to his village razed to the ground and found symbols of a horned skull branded in the foreheads of some of the dead villagers and left as "calling cards." He was out with his teacher/mentor at the time. After realizing what happened the mentor then paid the Vistani to get him to a safe haven, hence he ended up in Darkon. The player has basically left any past history in my hands, so I've laid the ground work for him to be of the Shadowborn bloodline. His mentor was actually the knight Lambert. My plan is to slowly seed the memories of the player with clues, using Darkon's memory tricks to keep the information fuzzy for now. As the campaign progresses his dreams and memories will become more vivid. My goal is to eventually play out the saga, using Bane of the Shadowborn as well as A Light in the Belfry and perhaps even expanding into Nidala. Haven't ironed out the details yet. So a little vague and mysterious and eventually this side plot will grow.

As for playing Bane of the Shadowborn, I played it years ago with my old group and they had a lot of fun with it. I would recommend playing up the aspect of the "elemental keys" to defeat Ebonbane. I made it sort of a treasure hunt. After finding Kateri's broken sword, they had to find other elements hidden around the manor and then bring them back to the forge and re-forge the blade. This weapon would then be the final key to defeating (or at least temporarily stopping) Ebonbane. I remember using a lot of ghostly visions to give the players added back story. I plan to replay this adventure more or less the same way, but using the campaign to lay out the back story a little more. I plan to have them go to Avonleigh eventually and they'll make stops at Forenoon Abbey and probably at some point run into Lysander. Early days yet but looking forward to it.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Thanks, guys! Not mapping out the adventure, just yet, but rereading the "Shadowborn" novel. no opinion on the details yet, mainly looking how I can fit all of this into my own home setting. - Looking interesting so far, especially since the implied setting for the novel is so D&D-friendly, with yet-another-Great-Kingdom as the base.

Right now, what I can report is that I think I will "creep up" the whole "Shadownborn" scenario, perhaps with a more martial backstory, to vary the quality of the encounters through the game. Like, a field battle that forces the party to retreat into the cursed manor, something like that - so the actual adventure is more of a surprise to the group.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Going back to this one, even though the group I'm running this for will first have to go through "Phantom of the Northern Marches", an old MERP game. Will probably do an outline for this one quite soon. So, any more recommendations you have for me before I get into the grit of it?