Before I say terrible things about Scarlet Citadel and why it needs fixing, I need to say Kobold Press does great work. Midgard Worldbook is my favorite 5E world book. Love their monster books, and their pawns. Pirates of Atlantis uses OGL Kobold Press monsters.
Players, read no further. Spoilers ahead!

There are great things in Scarlet Citadel, things that make it worth saving. Great maps, including an amazing map pack. If you get it, get the map pack! Some amazing locations and encounters. If your group only cares about encounters and doesn’t need motivation or story, you are good to go.

What to fix?

Motivation. There is only one reason for your PCs to enter the Scarlet Citadel as written, and that is loot. While the loot is OKish, it’s not great or even good as a motivator. The danger in this dungeon crawl is high, very high. There are many places where the book tells you how to kill PCs, and it’s not kidding. High risk, medium loot, zero motivation, story, or long term tension. If you have other adventures and allow your PCs to go elsewhere, they should.

There is no threat to the surrounding lands, no one asking for help, and the most boring villain (Gellert the Gruesome) I’ve ever seen. You could replace him with a turnip and the adventure wouldn’t change. He does nothing, threatens nothing, and is a passive lump. All the level bosses are supposed to report to him, but to what purpose? They all have their own unconnected projects that don’t feed into his work. If the PCs abandon Scarlet Citadel, the world would not be harmed in any way. Instead of high stakes, there are no stakes.

Any dungeon crawl can become a dungeon grind, despite the great encounters. Many players start to pine for the wider world. The book does recommend sending the PCs on occasional side quests, with no suggestions as to what they might be.

My Fixes

Consider these example fixes, you can probably improve on them to fit your table.

Ley Lines

A villain has to be up to something that makes your players care about thwarting them. Mike Shea, over in his Sly Flourish YouTube videos about preping for Scarlet Citadel sessions, ran into the motivation problem and came up with one answer: change the ley lines that are described throughout the book to actually have a purpose. Let the players know that Gellert is binding them up in such a way as to fuel his magic at the risk of creating a catastrophic event that would cause the surrounding lands to turn into something like the Western Wastes of Midgard. The stakes? Replacing civilization with uninhabitable ruins and Cthulhuish-Kaiju. Great motivation.

Many of the set piece encounters in the dungeon should be tied to the ley line madness, so it gives a reason for the PCs to do those set pieces. I stole this from Mike, and you can too.

MacGuffin

To get the ball rolling I wanted a MacGuffin deep down in the dungeon for the PCs to quest for. I asked the PCs what they could be looking for, and before you knew it they were searching for an ancient elven waffle maker made of mithril. If you want something more serious, maybe come up with it yourself, or at least don’t ask my players. Once that was settled, I had the alchemical furnace make syrup as well as oozes, and we were off to the races.

My PCs call themselves the Waffle Stompers.

Mixing It Up

To break up the dungeon crawl, I’m sprinkling in adventures in the Shadow Realms from Tales from the Shadows (adventures) and the Book of Ebon Tides (dark fey setting). These Kobold Press short adventures are fun and come complete with motivation. And the Shadow Realms is amazing.

Back in Scarlet Citadel, I noticed down in the ruins of the dwarven barracks, the trollkin were mercenaries and organized as a military unit. That gave me the opportunity to have Gellert order then to sack the town the PCs stay in, Redtower. Time for a mass battle! I wrote all about it here.

Patrons

A patron is always nice, two nicer. These give your campaign people that care if the PCs succeed and can lend help, especially with intelligence. I had an uneasy alliance of elves from the summer lands and the shadow realms send them off for the waffle iron.

My side adventures to the Shadow Realms introduced followers of Baba Yaga, so to explain the fight to save the lands from ley line apocalypse, I created a daughter of Baba Yaga who communicates through a magic mail pouch. “You’ve got mail.”

A Dungeon of Secrets

The subtitle of Scarlet Citadel is A Dungeon of Secrets. And there is a lot of interesting history and secrets sprinkled throughout the book, but no obvious way for the players to uncover them. I do the same thing Mike Shea does, I look ahead, note down the fun secrets, and then dole them out whenever the PCs are doing something that might reveal them: reading a book or old inscription, interrogating a prisoner, getting advice from a patron, and so on.

Some games call these floating clues, in Cypher System they are called keys, but no matter what you call them, they are information your PCs can learn whenever they go looking for information. Sometimes I just volunteer the information. For example when the trollkins tried to surrender they called out “We know things about Scarlet Citadel that you don’t. We’ll tell you if you let us withdraw in peace.”

Zobek

Zobek is a cool city with revolution, gearforged, and shadow fey, has its own book, and is close to Scarlet Citadel, so I’m bringing that in as well. My elven patrons meet there.

Scarlet Citadel by Kobold Press is a dungeon crawl adventure for 5E D&D that spans 10 levels of play. The adventure includes a town setting, a multi-level dungeon, new monsters, spells, items, and traps, and a map folio with poster maps and overlays. It is set in the Midgard campaign setting, but can be adapted to any fantasy world.

You can copy these fixes, or use them as inspiration for your own. Our Scarlet Citadel game became a lot more fun once I decided to fix it. Have you tried Scarlet Citadel? How did it go?

Game On!

Jun 4 Fixing Scarlet Citadel

What to fix?