Fading Suns True20: A Road so Dark

I ran “A Road so Dark” in True20. True20 is becoming my house system. It went very well although we only got about half way through. Instead of changing it completely, which I do a lot, I read the adventure completely through (which is rare for me) and just tweeked it here and there. Yea, I probably made the young daughter of the Baron a little more sluttier than I should have but it turned out to be fun. With the new surge in stuff like “A Game of Thrones” including the HBO show, I think more interest in this kind of setting will grow. The group seemed to have fun and they really grasped the setting. Thanks to my Wednesday night group for a great game. We may pick it up again later.

The adventure itself really starts out slow. A GM has to add more intrigue elements to keep the players interest. The are a lot of subtle hints towards encounter opportunities but the adventure leaves a lot of that up to the GM. I did not mind that.

The “enhancements” I added were:

• Decados at the birthday party – With the rumors of Keddah unhappy with their alliance with Decados, I added the possibility that Decados may suspect (wrongly or rightly) Baron Halmon Keddah is involved with contacting other houses for help in breaking that alliance. I imagined a fairly elaborate entorage of some nameless Duke arriving, bringing the weirdest present for the girl, and creating a very tense environment.
• Romeo and Juliet – Somehwere in the text it implies that the young daughter of the Baron is open to suitors, although her father is not. Also she is only 15. Without getting too bawdy (because that would be just wrong), I did make her a little more . . . forward about her desires, so to speak. I devised an encounter where she disappears with a (more normal looking) handsome Decados into the gardens and the Baron asks the players to find her. Created an interesting encounter between the Decados and the players.
• My. Grigor – This guy is an Decados Jakovian agent that I plan to use through out the adventure and perhaps through a campaign. I made him almost too perfect looking, descirbing him like Mr. Smith form the Matrix. Makes them wonder, if he is a true Decados, what does he have hiding.
• Introduced the Killroys a little earlier – To give the adventure a little more sense of urgency, I introduced the Killroys while they were in Sangreal space port. If Kam Sharp is in hiding because he is wanted and they go around asking too many questions about Kam, I figured that would raise red flags early on. So they had an encounter with them.

There were enough to get the creative juices flowing. There was plans for more but we never got past the Sangreal space port.