I recently started as GM for a group of poorly skilled no good acolytes and tehy are trying to survive Edge of Darkness and having a blast doing it. Afterwards i was planning to do the Shattered Hope -> illuminations -> Purge the Unclean route of campaigning, as it seems a logical way of working through them. But after reading a bit up on the different scenarios it seems that "Shattered Hope" and "Baron Hopes" is basically the same adventure. Both on Sepheris Secundus and something with clean up in a mine after mutants everyone thought dead returns. Or am I wrong?

So my question is - should I drop Shattered Hope all together, since the Baron Hope seems like a more detailed version or how is the xperience with the two adventures?

/Eido

Whatever my views on the quality of Shattered Hopes (a rather deadly uninspiring dungeon crawl) it is is a distinct adventure from Baron Hopes. Apart from the setting of the mines of Sepheris Secundus the similiraties are not so much that both cannot be played.

Regardless of what it does or does not have in common with Baron Hopes, the general opinion of Shattered Hope is very low. It is little more than a dungeon crawl. I'd advise you not to run it just because it's not that interesting.

aethel said:

Works good as an intro though, especially for new players that need to get the hang of the rules. Oh and if you make the "dungeon" a little longer by inventing some own stuff, along with playing some select songs from the Resident Evil Remake soundtrack in the bakground it can make a really interesting fright-fest for a dungeon crawl!

(yes, yours truly did that and we had a blast, in spite of Shattered Hope lacking any sort of a story)

Varnias Tybalt said:

Oh, well in that case let me rethink what I had planned for next Tuesday. Shattered Hope it is.

thanks for all the advice. I think I will skip Shattered Hope, just as i thought. I don't want my players to sit with that feeling "hey, didn't we do this once already?", and it seems Shattered Hope is the least favourite of the two. And it will speed up the process of getting faster to all the juicy stuff aka. Purge / Haarlock. Yay.

@ varnias: Maybe i can just use the resident evil soundtrack on Baron Hopes

Take care and thanks again

Eido

Taling "shattered hope":

If you want to run this, do it AFTER "Baron Hopes".

In "Shattered Hope", the pc are OBVIOUS Inquisitorial Agents. In "Baron Hopes", they are under cover. Even the noblility is not in the know. Hardly believeable if they were "official involved in a major cleaning involving the Imperial Guard".

Anyway, there was a GOOD rework of Shattered Hopes around (turning it into something playalbe). It changed most of it , gave a number of IG "red shirts" along and introduced some attacks by "unclean spirits" instead of this wacky mutations going on in the final (and don´t mention the plague bearer!)

It was somehwere ..but the search function isn´t helpfull.

With a bit of luck, the author will read this and re-introduce his re-work.

The suggested revisions for Shattered Hope I am familiar with were called "and suddenly a plague bearer appeared."

I think it was on the old forums though. You could check dark reign and see if it was posted there.

aethel said:

That's not funny!

Still, I did say it works as an intro adventure, but not much else. What I did with it was expanding The Shatters with another set of maps so it was much larger than the original. Then I made the "and suddenly there's a plaugebearer" into making a bit more sense. I amped up the number of mutants the acolytes had to face (there were simply not enough mutants in the original) and also made sure to give them mutations that were slightly "Nurglish" in nature (like the vomit attack mutation, corpulent mutation etc.).

It's really quite funny seeing first level acolytes going up against mutants with the corpulent mutation, since their puny lasguns and stub weapons sometimes have no effect at all on the mutant.

Along with that, I armed the mutants with a bit more appropriate weapons than military stuff like lasguns and autoguns. Instead they got stuff from Inquisitors Handbook like Drive Nailers, Steam Drills and "improved" welding torches working like flamers etc. Much more fitting for mutant scum confined to the underground.

Also I made the only surviving miner that they found to give some more interesting explainations, along with tidbits of written notes and other clues of what was going on. Towards the ending they reached the corrupt stone, but at least there was a reason for the Plaguebearer to appear (because it had a few mutated cult fanatics and a cult magus summoning it from the stone). Naturally I didn't use the stats for the Plaguebearer from the scenario (because it's so pathetic and weak), but opted for the real thing described in the rulebook instead.

Suffice to say that once tha scenario was done, fate points had been burned, and insanity and corruption points had been acquired.

Oh! And I added another area on my map-addition to the scenario where the mine had sort of collapsed, so the only way to get through was by squeezing between the collapsed rock, and midway through that tight squeeze the collapsed tunnel went through an area filled with water, where the PC's had to worm their way through this really tight, narrow crawlspace while at the same time being submerged underwater. (Just imagine the panic you'd feel if it was for real). And to top it off, once they reached the water surface again, they found themselves in a low cielinged cave, filled with floating, bloated corpses and another "nasty surprise" in the form of a heavily mutated being that had taken it's residence in the watery cave.

So with significant changes and amped up difficulty, it works. It's not great, and it will only be a more advanced form of dungeoun crawl. But it works (unlike the original with it's "suddenly there's a plaguebearer"-cheesyness)

Great stuff - thanks a bundle

I think i might just take the advice and run Shattered Hopes some time after Baron Hopes as "Baron Hopes 2 - Shattered Hope" with the very well explained extra something something + watery graves and all the other nice thingys. Would be nice to try a direct sequel, and I can even make the inquisition blame the characters for not doing a good enough job the first time. Yay. In your face, players (hehe).

/Eido

@Varnias Tybalt

You mention a lot of maps you made. Might I coax you into sharing them somehow (rapidshare, some pic-holder or something)? I am always happy to have some more maps at hand & I am loosy in producing some!

Gregorius21778 said:

I guess. But it is a hand-drawn map drawn on squared paper and I don't know where it is right now (somewhere in my piles of papers and documents). But if you really want it I'll have a look. Can't promise that I'll find it but I'll try my best.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Well, don´t trouble yourself. But IF you find the time... I am always happy about any material. Especially since I am hard on "inventing" a map. Inspiration is a thing I am always in need for. Many thanks in advance

While Shattered Hopes was way worse, I found I had to modify Baron Hopes heavily to make it fun for my group. I always mod to personalize any adventure to my group, but I changed the whole climax of Baron Hopes.

After the three Purge the Unclean adventures there are plenty more to choose from. You can skip Shattered Hopes if you want. I would.

The Support section of the DH website contains three free fan-made adventures. Mine, Scrivner's Star, assumes you have Disciples of the Dark Gods, the others can be run with just the core book.

And in DofDG, you'll find The House of Dust and Ash, which is a great prologue to the Haarlock trilogy, starting with Tattered Fates.

You can find other adventures on fan websites, such as Dark Reign.