Canonfire!

Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:36 am Red Hand of Doom

Hi All!

Anyone out there run the module Red Hand of Doom in the Flanaess before? I was curious as to where you set this module and if there are any pitfalls or things I need to keep a special eye out for?

Any advice will be appreciated!

Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:49 am

I did and placed it in Western Sterich which is where Living Greyhawk placed it. Brindol becomes Mittleberg in Sterich and the rest of the adventure is set further west.

There is a map that rotates the adventure wilderness map and squeezes everything in somewhere out there but can't recall at the moment where I found it.

Mon Sep 30, 2013 1:42 pm

There's this one.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/ripvanwormer/media/Sterich.jpg.html

From this thread.
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8469

Mon Sep 30, 2013 11:23 pm

Thanks so much guys! I did try searching this site but came up empty.

Tue Oct 01, 2013 4:02 pm

Yay, next Sterich adventure to torment my players! Evil Grin

Wed Oct 02, 2013 7:16 am

Great Piazza thread. I, like David "Big Mac" Shepheard, was struck by the implications of the ancient Flan kingdom of Rhest that Sergio mentions in the conversion document. The history for my Sterich campaign had a Flan kingdom of Staeryc being founded c. -427 CY by the Rhodri I by uniting the various Flan tribes of the Davish River valley, in order to fight the frost giants who lived above the headwaters of the Davish. I'll have to drag out Red Hand of Doom and see how I can fit Rhest into this. Smile

EDIT: Durrr... Looking at my timeline, looks like I've already got a Red Hand of Doom reference I placed in there.

"356 (CY) A humanoid horde from the Chaos Scar, led by the hobgoblin king Grim Eye, breaks through the King’s Wall and pillages western Sterich in what will be known as the Red Hand War. Absorbed in his wars of conquest, Tavish II, does nothing to aid the Earldom. The Barony of Restwell ceases to exist and the western uplands are chaotic and dangerous for long years to come."

Mon Mar 16, 2026 12:47 pm Re: Red Hand of Doom

BUMP!

Wed Mar 18, 2026 9:15 am

Yes.

I ran it three times during LG. It was interesting and fun each time.

I have run it once outside of LG. Again, interesting and fun.

As for the placement, I adapted it to the Pomarj because I wanted to run it and that was as good a place as any.

I do not really like the placement in Sterich.

Overall, the particular map set up is not really compatible with the Flanaess. It requires:

a semi-frontier region that is mostly open
a forest somewhat north of the frontier region
a large wetlands north of the forest and full of . . . wild elves?
a wasteland south of the forest
a mountainous area south and east of the forest with dwarves
a big mountainous area west of the forest

You find about half of those in any one place, but all of them together is a stretch at best.

Oh, and then you need a swarm of goblinoids led by hobgoblins and serving Tiamat.

So, yeah. Not really Sterich, and not particularly anywhere else.
Maybe with a bunch of massaging Pomarj can work. Possibly the Bandit Kingdoms or Horned Society though you get alignment issues as the human city is supposed to be Good aligned and decent.

Hacking the layout and some of the sub-encounters can resolve that and make it easier to place.

As for pitfalls, aside from the usual issues with published adventures and having to customize them for individual groups, particularly with splat book material:

There are a couple of unusual creature selections that might not fit Greyhawk which you might want to adjust.

There are a lot of forced creature selections due to the adventure concept. Specifically: the dragonspawn of Tiamat, several dragons, and all the goblinoids with levels. This causes the power level of the encounters to be very "swingy", ranging from the goblinoids who tend to be mooks even when leveled to the dragons who can easily overwhelm an otherwise prepared party.

The overall flow of the adventure requires diplomacy and making friends. That has the usual pitfalls.

Thu Mar 19, 2026 6:51 am

I have the adventure in question, but I haven't been able to run it yet. I don't want to set it in Stearich, because it doesn't belong there.