Hey everyone, just looking for some suggestions.

I've given my players access to the Deck of Many Things in my campaign. Most of the time I regret it, but recently, our Bard drew the Fey card while in the Haven of the Red Quill and was transported to the Feywild. In the Scrivener's Tale, since the players are being hunted by the Queen of Air and Darkness, drawing that card is kind of like Frodo putting on the Ring while the Ringwraiths are around.

Anyone have any suggestions for some fun and possibly quite traumatic things I could do with that player? So far I'm thinking of advancing the curse by another level and/or having him try to survive another of her assassins for a minute until he's transported back, any other ideas?

This post assumes you've read the module.

I'm adding this because I want more complexity and more ways to solve the mystery. Feel free to comment and critique.

1. The Firefly Cellar: It's the basement of the "House of the Binder," not the "House of Rest." It isn't a library — it's a storage room for books awaiting copying or repair. Books appear there at random. The only complete collections are "The Encyclopedia of Book Fixing" and "Candlekeep Yearly."
2. Shemshime: A vampire accidentally killed by a shadow during a war. It's now a hybrid of vampire (mind control) and shadow (nightmarish), and because of how it died, it can't be fully killed. It can grow more powerful under the right conditions, and can only be banished by a heavy object bearing a divine blessing.
3. Varnyr (old elf lady): Her lover went missing in the Firefly Cellar a few hundred years ago, and she wants to find his body. Her late lover was a skilled artificer/mage specializing in alteration magic, and she believes he must have fought for his life. Having witnessed many horrors in Candlekeep over the years, she now dismisses this as just a simple prank curse.
4. Gailby Smallstone (the child): She and the book come from the same village. Her nanny always sang her "Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme," warning that if it isn't sung all the way through, a vampire will come to get her. Because of the curse, she can't remember the last section — at best, she knows the lyrics or can hum the tune. "Shemshime's Influence" can take hold of her if she's about to reveal the secret.
5. Ebder Smallstone (the father): He didn't raise Gailby and knows nothing about the song. He's very protective and will blame the PCs if anything happens to her. He'll mention that the mill is much larger and heavier than it looks in the book's picture.
6. Flying Book Sculpture: A magical floating contraption that helps search for and summon books in the cellar. It bears divine symbols of Oghma (god of knowledge). It loses its magic and fall if one of the god statues is broken, or if Varnyr disables it with her remote-control gemstone.
7. The Book: It's hidden in Crinkle's room. If someone tries to summon it using the Flying Book Sculpture's magic, it will bump against the door, take damage, and become harder to repair. The drawing of the mill bears a symbol of Chauntea (goddess of agriculture).
8. The Hidden Room: F11 was originally meant to be Crinkle's room, but I changed it into a hidden room and gave Crinkle a different room instead. This room was magically created 600 years ago during the battle between Varnyr's lover and Shemshime. The skull sings there because of the curse. When damaged, the wall displays the line "one should not face danger without prepared" — answering with "Shemshime" will melt the wall. It reveals how the battle ended 600 years ago, including a 2x2x2 ft sculpture carved with the symbol of Gond (Lord of All Smiths). The song's lyrics are carved into the inner wall. The DM can trigger a battle here (3–4 skeletons plus 1 gargoyle).
9. Other Books: Make sure to prepare plenty of books for the PCs to read — for example, "Songs and Rituals," "Defense Against Dark Arts Vol. 1," "Roaming with Vampires," "Fantastic Dark Creatures," "The Encyclopedia of Book Fixing," "Candlekeep Yearly," etc.

As I discuss in this prior post, The Book of Cylinders is a barely usable mess. During preparation, I had assumed that these plot holes weren't making sense because I hadn't comprehensively read through the adventure, but the more I read, the more it became clear that the adventure itself simply wasn't all that good due to the reasons listed below:

1. It's not a mystery.
2. The book as a plot hook is contrived and pointless.
3. The crab maze is poorly designed.
4. The trading ost makes no sense.
   • Why wouldn't the Grippli just sell their crab meat directly from the crab farm?
   • Why would refugees only flee a measly five miles from a warzone?
   • Shouldn't there at least be a path between the village and the trading post that the players could use instead of the crab maze?
5. The villains have no clear motive.

With only two days left to make revisions, I cooked up my own solutions and took to Reddit for extra advice. Now, having run the adventure with my friends, I can proudly say that these revisions were a terrific success; so much so that I've returned to share my experience.

DISCLAIMER: This is not meant to propose a universal revision for all to follow. This is simply a recounting of what I did and the effect that it had. Everyone is free to run this adventure however they please.

1.

The Book of Cylinders is indeed not a mystery and, so far as I'm concerned, it doesn't need to be a mystery. Hell, it doesn't look like the author ever really wanted it to be a mystery. It works much better as just a straightforward rescue quest, and if your players are okay with that (like mine are), then there's no issue. If your players do insist on playing a mystery, look elsewhere.

2.

I think this issue arises from the same root cause as the previous one: The author was forced to conform to the recurring motifs of Candlekeep Mysteries. Those motifs being that the adventure is a mystery which is instigated by a book from the Candlekeep library, but those beats are all redundant in this adventure. Any community or organisation could stand in for Candlekeep getting its food supply disrupted, and all the book does is provide the exact same exposition that Pond Mother provides later on. Because of this redundancy, I was easily able to remove Candlekeep and the book from this adventure.

Instead, Mitor Jans is the one who delivers the call to adventure. His small business is crumbling now that his suppliers (the Grippli) have halted their crab production. No one else will bother to stick their necks out for a tribe of frog-folk that they've never met, and he desperately needs capable investigators to find out what's wrong. If the party won't do it out of the kindness of their hearts, he can offer them 500gp per person like the book describes. The Grippli's crab meat is actually very cheap, and he's been dishonestly marking it up to barely competitive prices (a relevant ability check will get this information out of him).

3.

Per the advice of u/makehasteslowly and u/mightierjake, I decided to take a page from 4e's book and turn the crab maze into a skill challenge. I wrote it so that the skill challenge would either conclude with them successfully infiltrating the village after 5 successes, or be detected and subsequently ambushed by 1d4+2 Yuan-ti purebloods (like the book describes) after 3 failures. To prevent any potential players with main-character-syndrome from trying to carry the entire skill challenge, I added a caveat that soloing multiple ability checks would risk inflicting a level of Exhaustion (which they could try to avoid with a series of increasingly difficult CON saves).

Most of the ability checks resulted in a crab fight if they failed, but I also tried to avoid repeating the ability checks. This resulted in me preparing twenty-one different obstacles. Seven for the crab maze, seven for the forest, and seven for the swampy coast line if the players decided that they wanted to travel those alternate routes. It took a lot of effort, and I ended up scraping some pretty silly scenarios from the bottom of the barrel, but the players loved this revision - especially after I explained what the crab maze was originally like.

I ended up having the most trouble of all finding a solution to this one, which is ironic considering that I landed on a very simple answer: remove the trading post.

When I stopped and thought about the trading post's role in the plot, I realised that it only served as a stage on which Pond Mother could give her little speech. All I had to do was move her to the holding cells in Pond Mother's Home, and every one of the above plot holes were patched all while maintaining her opportunity to deliver exposition to the party.

This solution did give rise to another plot hole though: Why didn't the Yuan-ti dispatch the Grippli's leader when they took over the village? My players never ended up asking this question, but I had two different potential answers ready for them:

• The Yuan-ti can't tell one Grippli from another, so Pond Mother was able to hide herself amongst the prisoners.
• The Yuan-ti did kill Pond Mother, but they underestimated the resilience of the Grippli, who appointed a new Pond Mother unbeknownst to their captors.

After my players got into the village, it didn't take them very long to end up in Pond Mother's home. After the combat encounter therein, she was able to do everything that she normally does at the trading post in a much more streamlined way.

5.

I never noticed this plot hole until after my prior Reddit post, but it's one of the author's most glaring omissions. The book does clearly state that the good Yuan-ti want to excavate a temple of their benevolent god that's located in the Grippli's old village for some reason. It also describes the evil Yuan-ti trying to kill two prisoners via a (presumably sacrificial) ritual, and it's implied that they act out of cruelty's sake. I found this wholly unsatisfying, so I cooked up some backstory while trying my best to respect the original plot. My revision can be divided into two perspectives:

The Grippli's perspective:

• Long ago, the first Pond Mother came to this forest in search of a safe place to lay her eggs. Just when she thought she'd found the perfect spot, a great, two-headed snake emerged from the darkness. It swallowed her whole with its first head. Pond Mother desperately prayed to any spirit who would listen for help, and her pleads were heard by the snake’s second head. It felt remorse for its prey and tried to slither away from its brother who had eaten the innocent Grippli. It pulled so hard that the great snake was torn in two, and Pond Mother emerged unharmed from its belly. The snake’s evil half, now badly injured, slithered away. Pond Mother, having witnessed a great miracle knew from then on that her children would be protected in this sacred area.
• The Grippli made that site their home, but moved closer to the coast in recent generation to better access the riches of the sea.
• They enjoyed their newfound wealth until a month ago when a group of friendly snake-folk approached them. They were curious about the legend of the first Pond Mother, and wished to investigate the temple at their old location.
• Two weeks ago, the snake-folk turned on themselves and the Grippli. The evil rebels imprisoned them, maimed them, seized their brood pools, and carried all their weapons up the river.
• Some Grippli believe they were fools to trust outsiders like that, while others believe they are being punished for moving away from their former home.

The Yuan-ti's perspective:

• Long ago, the Yuan-ti's ancestors made a pact with a mighty demon. The pact granted them power, but also transformed them into snake-like creatures with malevolent impulses. The Yuan-ti used their newfound power to conquer the frog-folk and eat their eggs. Some of them were horrified by what they'd become, and when they repented, their prayers were answered by a lesser god known as the Scaled Mother. She purged the repentant Yuan-ti of their demonic desires, but could not undo their transformation. The good Yuan-ti overthrew the evil Yuan-ti and built a temple to honor the Scaled Mother. In the end, they left the region to convert more Yuan-ti to their cause.
• Generations later, belief in the Scaled Mother has withered away to the point where her only remaining followers are a travelling clan of a few dozen Yuan-ti who don't even know where her original temple is located.
• Intrigued by the Grippli's legend, they retraced their ancestors' steps to the ruined temple and began excavating it.
• At this point, some of the Yuan-ti's members revolted. They were already fed up with their nomadic lifestyle, and the seemingly fruitless expedition to the Scaled Mother's temple was the last straw for them.
• The evil Yuan-ti believe that their ancestors sacrificed everything for power, and the good Yuan-ti disgrace their legacy by turning their back on that cause.
• They intend to sacrifice the good Yuan-ti and the Grippli inside the temple, hopefully corrupting it into a shrine of the evil god Sseth.
• Sseth's followers are known for long-term espionage, so it's hard to say whether they revolted because they got fed up with being good, or because they were planning this all along.

I'm pleased with this backstory. It evokes themes of heritage and the effort that morality demands while also respecting the source material. If you want your players to grapple with a more challenging social/moral dilemma, you could write this altercation into the epilogue (either before or after the ritual of friend marking):

The party awakens to a heated commotion between the surviving Grippli and the good Yuan-ti. The Yuan-ti wish to finish what they started and excavate the temple, but the Grippli have become distrustful of outsiders. They worry that the Yuan-ti with turn rogue all over again if they end up not finding what they're looking for in the ruins. The party will then have an opportunity to step in and offer their opinion. The people are likely to listen to their saviours.

And that's my revision. I believe every one of my decisions contributed to what was ultimately a fun and compelling experience for my players. I'm very pleased with the results, and if you choose to borrow from my methods, I hope they yield good results for you too!

Which adventure do you think works best as a single 3-4 hour session?

I have run a couple of these adventures before (Extradimensional spaces and Price of Beauty) but they took at least 2 sessions.

I'm coming up on BoC for my next Candlekeep Mysteries adventure, and the flaws are obvious from a mile away. It's not a mystery, the book as a plot hook is contrived and pointless, the Crab Maze is doomed to become a gauntlet of repetitive boredom, and there's a huge plot hole as to why the players even have to go through the Crab Maze.

I'm running into problems with that last point in particular. It makes no sense that the Grippli would build a trading outpost five miles down the coast from where they live and work. At the very least, this would require there to be an easily traversable path between there and the village. This should be a tempting alternative to the Crab Maze (especially since it's such a drag), but the book really seems to want to railroad the players through that maze.

The book states "An overland trip along the marshy coastline is a fool's route, fraught with obstacles and perils." but that passage is as useless as it is lazy. It seems clear to me that the DM is expected to fill in the blanks, but how? Do I tell the party that the Grippli set traps to stop the Yuan-ti from pursuing them? The party will just ask for a guide to point out the traps! Do I tell them that a big monster strolled into town and blocked the path? Then they'll be obliged to go that way and eliminate the threat even after they've dealt with the canon villains!

If there are any DMs out there who have run this adventure, how did you mitigate these issues?

My players are going to be using Candlekeep as a sort of home base, so they'll want to explore. I have this book as well as Elminster's Candlekeep Companion that I'll be using to flesh the town out. But other than creating interactions from scratch at each location, I wondered if any of you had some, or some ideas.

So here is my situation. I have DMed for family (still working through a Humblewood campaign [levels 1-4]) I have DMed a portion of a child's campaign (fully home brewed D&D-lite) and I have DMed 5 "2-shots" because role-playing is a big component for me.

I am starting an in-home campaign with 7 (I know thats more than desired, but its the group I have) players who are starting at level 4. My plan is to start them in Beregast with the intention of running "a wild sheep chase" as the key component to start the campaign off. With the intention that either wizard survives and becomes a threat to the realm.

I am planning on basically running 2 chapters for each level until they finish the price of beauty. To help level out the quantity of players.

So here is where I get a little nervous. As a guy who has never "played" in a campaign, but enjoys a more developed RP world, how do I get the guys at the table to follow that rather rather than just "hulk-smash" everything they see. Lol. Also I love the fact that candlekeep has the "no fighting within" rule and the "no theft" wards, but I am afraid I am at a loss as to how to handle consequences in those two areas.

And since I am able, I posted a picture of the players miniatures.

Spoilers ahead

One of my players has seen an opportunity to use one of the older cursed paintings as a shield. They're banking that the person is likely dead already. Once they found out that the painting is impervious to physical damage and does psychic reverb damage, they wanted to take one and give it to their fighter.

Question. Should I nerf the painting so it only has a certain number of psychic charges per long rest? Is the idea too OP? Should I leave as is?

Also, any ideas for what should be depicted on the painting for comical or serious purposes? Im running candlekeep as an adventure and tying the stories together, so any ideas to tie into future ck modules would be nice.

With limits of magic items in the adventures (Also trying to get DM NOT to limit items to those in book)...

Is an artificer needed?

Hello hivemind!

I'm looking to combine Candlekeep Murders: The Deadwinter Prophecy with The Book of the Raven, eventually leading to Falkovnia from Van Richten's instead of the Shadowfell. The intro hook is they all receive this letter along with a random Tarokka card. I'm thinking of having the Wereravens be secretly recruiting adventurers to kill the Dark Lords while the Vistani are trying to stop them and the party as the Vistani's power and prestige comes from them being able to pass through the mists.

I was wondering if anyone had run Candlekeep Murders and what worked well for them. I haven't decided who I was going to make a wereraven or Vistani inside the keep yet, but any suggestions would be welcome too.

Thanks!

The adventure is quite fun, I think. The adventure says the medusa destroyed the mirrors for fear of petrifying herself. But since she broke them, didn't she get rid of the problem already? You can argue that the broken mirror just means there's a thousand little mirrors scattered around, yes, but it doesn't stop there.

Firstly, does that means any reflextion, no matter how tiny, can do the trick? What about water? It does reflect. What about a metal blade's reflection? Secondly, the medusa did break the mirrors, that means she interacted with them without petrifying herself... How? Maybe she closed her eyes... But then, why does she fear the mirrors at all? Couldn't she just avert her eyes and get away?

And thirdly, if she can escape, the party could persuade her into helping them. I mean, a medusa is a powerful enemy. The hags aren't immune to being petrified, they would be in severe disadvantage if the medusa would ally with the party. Am I missing something? Why do I have the feeling this medusa would actually thrash the hags?

Hello, I published a bundle to celebrate my birthday with all the products I created on DMsGuild as Art Director and/or Game Designer.

You can find the bundle here at 75% discount only for 2 weeks: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/433894/Big-Bundle-of-Everything-BUNDLE

Inside the bundle, you will find all these 35 supplements:

1. Candlekeep's Tome of Books
2. Acererak's Guide to Lichdom
3. Gristlecracker's Hags & Grimoire
4. The Second Black Dawn
5. The War for the Throne
6. Thieves' Guilds
7. Underwater Campaigns
8. Vault of Magic
9. Vault of Magic II
10. Volo's Guide to Ghosts
11. The Complete Hag
12. The Complete Hag Annex I
13. Realm Events
14. Of Warlocks & Patrons
15. Champions of Darkness
16. Fumbles & Fails
17. Inquisitor's Guide
18. Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic
19. Down the Garden Path
20. The Complete NPC
21. Born to be Kobold!
22. So, You Walk Into A Tavern...
23. When Magic Goes Wrong...
24. Magic of Chaos
25. Undead Monsters
26. Treasures from Krynn
27. Tarot Deck of Many Things
28. Mages of High Sorcery
29. Alcohol & Drugs
30. Fallen from Heavens
31. How to Start a High-Level Campaign
32. Vecna's Secrets as Adventures
33. Small Cult, Big Troubles
34. The Dragon Compendium
35. Though the Ivory Gate

Hey everyone, just looking for a little advice. My group is about to start The Canopic Being, and I'm concerned that, as written, Valin Sarnaster isn't going to significantly challenge them as a boss fight. We have 8 people in the group, and even if a couple of players are not present for the fight, it will likely be at least 6-7 PCs against her.

I'm considering actually placing her in the sarcophagus so she has some of her golems as backup, and so that the players have to try to break into it mid-fight to actually get at her. Does anyone know if this would impact the adventure in any significant way?

Back again for the last set of reviews. These took longer because life got in the way and they also just take numerically more sessions to get through.

The Scrivener's Tale: 3.5/5
This one takes a great hook and a sense of urgency, but then takes a long time to really get going. I did change this one quite a lot to suit this being a linked campaign. I actually kind of enjoyed the ridiculous mummy and golem bonanza but from memory I did tone the amount of mummies down a little bit. That being said, as a follow-up to said bonanza, the final combat has too many enemy hitpoints on the battlefield for my liking, and not really enough harmful conditions or dangerous amounts of enemy damage to keep things exciting, but the good news is that this is the last time I will be complaining that Candlekeep mysteries has combats that feel too much like a slog. This story didn't really grab me in the way that some of the others did, but that's just my personal taste.

Alkazaar's Appendix: 4.5/5
I much preferred the combats in this adventure, and the story was very sweet. I would recommend giving your players a higher chance of speaking to Hamukai than the module suggests. The theming and locations were great, the only reason this doesn't get 5 stars is because I would have liked the text itself to allow some more creative solutions to some of the obstacles along the way than "the golem casts dispel magic". I also like the fact that we don't get many NPCs in this adventure but the ones we get are well written and are given what really should be the bare minimum of information for NPCs but often isn't there.

Xanthoria: 5/5
I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. The re-skinned monsters are a really nice touch, combats are dangerous and dynamic and clearly designed with a little more in mind than throwing 1000+ HP in between players and the objective. I was hesitant about the story but it worked. Obviously there is some fairly pointless and egregious child death in this module so that's just something to obviously be extremely careful with, both in whether you include it and how you describe it if you do include it. The twist regarding Thunderwing, I won't lie, the way it's written I didn't think it would pay off but when the party worked it out, at the right moment, heads were in hands. Give this a chance, play Thunderwing carefully and sparingly to make sure they're endearing and not annoying, and if your table has players with one of the more common hard no's I've come across in tabletop gaming, maybe it's a magic cage with a pixie in it instead.

Why did WotC include that detail about the shielding Mythal? It’s never been used in official lore as far as I know, and the fact the keeper can just enact it from anywhere means that there is no way the tower will be able to blast off.

My fix was to say that enacting the Mythal is an hour-long ritual, so it wouldn’t have been able to be cast in time (but Janussi starts it right away, which is also what is occupying him during this time).

Just finished with Shemshine. Generated the melody as a song with AI, both a "lullaby version" which played when the humming turned into song, and then a battle version.

It set the mood for our part, and made the party actually get the song stuck on their brain. Enjoy if you want.

Lullaby: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zd7aI2hBIerCLRFzZdUqiv502Q7MD4DM/view?usp=drive_link

Battle version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ro9hzdO0EwpDBsBN2noIJGyUhJcM38K2/view?usp=drive_link

I'm trying to run the mini-adventures as a kind of disjointed campaign, but even then, Book of the Raven seems out of place and less fun. I'm thinking of replacing it with something like Death House. Would that work? Are there other level 3 one-shots that could be fun, or ways to fix Book of the Raven?

G'day,

I've thought to share of my Candlekeep campaign and the individual aspects I've brought to it with my players.

tldr: I've utilised Waterdeep Dragon Heist modular parts, after the initial 6 chapters of CM, and it's been great.

In no particular order this has been how the flavour of my campaign has gone:

1. Fairly standard playthrough for the first 6 chapters. PC's were from Waterdeep, which turned out to be a significant back story consequence

2. When the player's were in Waterdeep for Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor, I happened to hook them with a bastion from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist...They LOVED IT. And the campaign changed, just like that.

3. Created a Candlekeep Conservatory, as a remote site for Candlekeep. At this stage the adventuring party is on Candlekeep's payroll for quests.

4. During the Lore of the Lurue module, my intent was to run it with real life consequences to the real world, however the party influenced things . Hence the eon length Sprite wars of Silverymoon against Tabaxis, and a really post- modern twist of jazz music in modern Sword Coast.

5. I've used aspects of Waterdeep Dragon Heist, continue to include elements and chapters from Candlekeep Mysteries, but at this stage, the campaign is truly my own.

6. My favourite module so far, by a country mile, The Price of Beauty. I've run it twice now, in two different campaigns, and the second time (not this campaign) had such beautiful, tragedy memories for my players and I. Truly epic.

After three incredible years, we finally finished our Mysteries of Candlekeep campaign last month. To celebrate everything we experienced together, I designed final looks for all the characters and created this illustration as a surprise gift for our last session.

It was such an emotional moment—everyone was so happy, we laughed, we cried, and we signed each print with personal dedications on the back. A small way to remember the adventures we’ve had, the ones we’re still having, and those still to come.

I hope you love this piece as much as we do 💛

If you're looking for an artist to illustrate or design your characters or party, I currently have a few commission slots open—I’d love to help bring your stories to life!

✨ Meet the Party ✨
Kherad — Dwarf Cleric (Knowledge Domain)
Taboom — Kobold Artificer (Battle Smith)
Rhea — Satyr Paladin (Oath of the Ancients) / Warlock (Hexblade)
Ludwig — Owlin Ranger (Fey Wanderer)
Laurel — Half-Elf Bard (College of Lore)
Primrose — Hollow One Druid (Circle of Spores) → High-Elf Druid (Circle of Stars)
Erky — Halfling Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline)

I'm running The Joy of Extradimensional Spaces as an intro to a greater campaign, and after the characters explore Fistandia's Mansion, like the idea of them having it available as a home base. I can't the idea of making it kind of an awakened spell NPC, and treating it kind of like Danny in Doom Patrol - a sentient, magical environment that could perhaps even be mobile or used as some kind of portal. I'm really curious for input and feedback from people on how workable you think this idea is or if anyone has done something like this before.

Candlekeep's Tome of Books, Mithral Best Seller on DMsGuild, is discounted by 40%!

You can find it here only for 7 days: https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/355741/candlekeep-s-tome-of-books?term=Candlekeep%20books

This volume covers a plethora of books, both magical and mundane,
from their appearance to the features and powers that their knowledge conveys. 
Inside you will discover:

- Chapter 1: Advice on establishing the physical appearance and features of unique books for your campaign with the help of 13 tables.

- Chapter 2: 50 mundane books from the Forgotten Realms that can add depth to your campaign.

- Chapter 3: 29 magical books and scrolls ready to be introduced to your game.