Fix this Dish - Post Review Thoughts on UK6 (Part 2)

 This is the second of a group of posts triggered by my writing an extensive DriveThruRPG review of UK6. The first post dealing with fixes and additions to the maps can be found here.

Improving the Monsters and NPCs

There were several potential issues with the monsters used in UK6 in my opinion, as outlined in my review on DriveThruRPG using Bryce Lynch's (tenfootpole.org) "good adventure design" principles:

• The monsters have no sense of purpose, inherent action or clear timetable
• There is no "order of battle" for the humanoids once the alarm is sounded
• Limited or no factions throughout the module
• No foreshadowing of the major antagonist

The last suggestion is somewhat irrelevant (or rather the antagonist remaining secret is integral to the plot) but an additional element, random encounter tables, is present in both the wilderness sections but absent from the dungeon sections of the module. Unfortunately, even the wilderness section encounter tables are fairly bland and basic, so upon reflection, they probably count more as a "NO" than a "YES". I'll be reworking or adding these in various posts along the way.

Note: I've just stumbled across a more recent 2016 distillation of Bryce's principles into a 30 point post by Jon Miller (of the now defunct "Into the Dark" blog), that outlines some aspects with greater clarity than Bryce himself as seen in the image below. It's based on Jon's distillation of two of Bryce's lengthy and deeply critical reviews for The Hoard of the Dragon and The Rise of Tiamat. UK6 would seem to score badly on these 8 points, so I'll try and address my original concerns and incorporate in further suggestions and fixes according to Jon's distilled list...

Excerpt from Jon Miller's Summary and Distillation (Mark 2)
of Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips 

Suggested Fixes

Step 1 - Give the Monsters a Sense of Purpose. 

Step 2 - Create an Order of Battle for the Humanoids.

Both of these can be dealt with in the relevant specific sections as addendums, leaving the more general issue of the lack of coherency and factions to be dealt with...

Step 3 - Add Factions! 

Lots of them and detailed. They're really the key behind the principles for monsters in adventures that Bryce espouses in his reviews and Jon distils in the above excerpt from his longer post.

To create workable factions that create dynamic strategic interactions, in turn, requires interesting, believable motivations for monsters and NPCs and this leads to the various schedules, routines, tactics, and orders of battle. Likewise, with workable factions, a choice of party actions opens up and the evocative descriptions and non-standard monster ideas and descriptions follow. Wandering monsters encountered randomly can then become linked to these core faction ideas and add to the evocative atmosphere and concepts as if they were intended to be part of the adventure form the start. In fact, having a key NPC or monster encountered outside it's "set" default context is likely to add greatly to the experience.

So basically UK6 just needs factions. Should be easy right?

Note: a "Sense of Terror" might help also I admit, but I think that's less of an issue here so let's have a look at the module as written and see what implicit factions we can lift from the text and flesh out.