I’ve talked a bit in this series about encounter design. The Pit of Moander works well for it’s lack of encounter design. Or, rather, a designed lack of encounters – specifically random encounters.

After completing Yulash and reaching the entrance to the Pit of Moander (see next blog post), I got to thinking about how to deal with this game’s money problem – in terms of the whole encumbered by cash issue. Aside from not giving cash encumbrance values, that is. And I thought of this based on Yulash, the Pit, and where we’re going to be going to next – Zhentil Keep.

When we last left Curse of the Azure Bonds we were set on something of an introductory railroad, as we were given a little time to get some gear in town, before being thrust into a series of combats, followed by a flight to the Thieves Guild after our party discovered that a variety of dark conspiracies had tattooed us with some marks that let them control us.

So, because I played a lot of Pool of Radiance back in the day, I will admit that I kind of rushed through that game to a degree. Mainly, that was because this was a project where what I really wanted to do was get into uncharted territory, and at long last, I’ve done so, with Curse of the Azure Bonds.