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Hello everyone, since the hard copy of Tales from Eriador on it's way soon I'm prepping to run the Troll Hole adventure and I'm thinking of how I'm going to make the ambush work.

I am puzzling over how to make it work in the daytime when the trolls have to be extremely careful. I have some thoughts on this and since this is the Loremaster's section I'm going to assume it's ok to have some spoilers here, if that is not the case then let me know and I will edit those out.

If the players stumble into the valley at night or at certain times of the day when the sun is obscured by the hills then the ambush is no problem, but if they think that is a bad idea then I'm not sure how the trolls are supposed to ambush them during the day without making a few changes. Looking at the map I don't feel like the gully has enough cover from the sun to protect the trolls in full daylight, unless we just say that it does. Then they have to wait till dark to get the players to the larder.
Nelly has the Fog Cloud, but it only has a 40 ft radius, so I'm thinking of changing that to cover the whole valley. I'm presuming the fog is dense enough to obscure the sun, which would allow the trolls to take any action they want and would be completely unexpected for the players who may assume they are safe from trolls.
I think the idea is that Nelly is able to tip the raft and kill the prisoners if the players try to rescue them during the day, but if they really have been lulled into complacency by Jari and aren't expecting trolls, then entering the valley in broad daylight is going to reveal a bunch of people sitting on a raft for no good reason, which doesn't really benefit the trolls if they have to kill off their food supply prematurely. All they are doing is trading one source of food for another - they have to cook all of them right away and their larder doesn't get bigger. And if the players see the prisoners on the raft get killed and it is daylight, they could just run for it.

So I'm thinking that the trolls allow the players to enter the valley, then then the fog rolls in... Sometimes I overthink things but that sounds fun to me.

Have I missed something or do others have different ideas?

Fog notwithstanding, I do wonder whether the Trolls could venture out on a heavily overcast day? Thick clouds and maybe rain could be enough to protect them from sunlight. It worked for Dracula!

Ya we have a precedent there don't we?

It made me think another fun idea would be to have a cave nearby full of bats, and they emerge to cover trolls the same way they do for orcs and goblins.

I think they do need to be hit by direct sunlight. Others might disagree of course.

Ya we have a precedent there don't we?

It made me think another fun idea would be to have a cave nearby full of bats, and they emerge to cover trolls the same way they do for orcs and goblins.

I think they do need to be hit by direct sunlight. Others might disagree of course.

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Well, moonlight is (IRL) just reflected sunlight, so that tracks! The bat idea might work if the trolls have some sort of control over them, but there would have to be an awful lot of them. The fog-summoning ability is a bit more simple (if limited).

All good points and I'm going to save the bats for a different Troll hunt, perhaps closer to Mount Gram.

There was another thing that caught my attention about the text for this adventure, and it must have been added for humor. Jari is supposed to warn the trolls my making a fox sound, which forces me to ask:

What does the fox say?

Ringading-ding-a-dingading-ding!

Foxes bark and howl, just like dogs. They also make a noise called gekkering.

A lot of animals in Tolkien talk too.

Ok but you get the joke right?

It would be fun to hear from the writers about what they were thinking when they wrote that.

Ok but you get the joke right?

It would be fun to hear from the writers about what they were thinking when they wrote that.

I thought the samt thing when i read it! I'm not too proud to admit that it made me giggle a bit

There was another thing that caught my attention about the text for this adventure, and it must have been added for humor. Jari is supposed to warn the trolls my making a fox sound, which forces me to ask:

The book mentions that Jari has two signals: the paragraph says "If all is well, he makes the cry of a curlew three times ... The other signal is to cry like a fox three times."
It is unclear to me if these two signals are meant to equivalent, or if they have different meanings. If the curlew signal means "all is well", does the fox signal mean that there are problems?
What's your understanding?

Yes I would assume the fox means there are problems
It's a good excuse to play the Ylvis song and watch your players go "wuh?"