In a flurry of crunched stat blocks and flung pages, the last two weeks have seen us send two volumes of Pathfinder Adventure Path off to the printer, Pathfinder Adventure Path #42: "Sanctum of the Serpent God" and, right on its heels, Pathfinder Adventure Path #43: "The Haunting of Harrowstone". While the former brings the Serpent Skull Adventure Path to its climactic close, the latter marks a total shift, taking us from the wild jungles and hidden ruins of the Mwangi Expanse to the foggy moors and haunted ruins of Ustalav, the seat of gothic horror in Golarion. Longtime readers know that every new campaign gives us the opportunity to not just explore new themes, lands, and menaces, but to also reinvent Pathfinder's look for a new series.
And Carrion Crown looks incredible. Beyond Dave Rapoza's fantastic cover and the work of numerous talented interior illustrators, art director Sarah Robinson and graphic designer Andrew Vallas have put together something really amazing that perfectly captures the brooding menace of this grim campaign.
I'm probably more than a little biased, though, as besides the fact that gothic horror is my preferred cup of tea, the campaign is taking place in Ustalav, one of my favorite corners of Golarion. While Carrion Crown continues our long tradition of sword-swinging, spell-slinging high adventure, its inspirations come more from the pens of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelly, M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, and H. P. Lovecraft than J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Jack Vance. Think of it as a campaign set in Transylvania rather than Camelot or the Hyborian Age.
In the weeks before the Carrion Crown Adventure Path begins, check back here for more previews on what to expect from the campaign. Things kick off in the coming months with "The Haunting of Harrowstone," a ghost story that sets the tone for the series perfectly. That same volume also includes details on the sleepy town of Ravengro, new rules and examples that vastly expand the haunts presented in the GameMastery Guide, a creepy new series in the Pathfinder's Journal (by yours truly), an outline of the entire campaign, monthly details on the legends and superstitions of Ustalav, and something a little bit different added to the campaign's Bestiary to increase your toolbox of classic horrors. We've also built a ton of support for the campaign into our Pathfinder Campaign Setting and GameMastery lines, but I'll show off some of that awesome insanity a bit later.
So get ready to start wrapping up those Serpent Skull campaigns, as the Carrion Crown Adventure Path kicks off 2011 with terror.
The original Ravenloft was one of my all time favourite modules to play and later DM; and later on the campaign setting held some promise and had some high points as well.
I hope Wes gets to elaborate on the "built a ton of support for the campaign into our Pathfinder Campaign Setting and GameMastery" tidbits.
Can we expect the players guide out before February ?
I hope some of the Paizo staff gets to chime in with the rest of us on a message board discussion on how to create the proper "feel" of a Gothic horror campaign.
I would be surprised if this has not come up yet, but who are the iconics going to be in the AP? Are Feiya and Merisiel going to be two of the four?
Hurray! for more haunt rules. I just played a session with haunts over Halloween Weekend, complete with darkened room, candles and mood music. It was a blast.
Carrion Crown is the AP I've been looking forward to the most. I've been enjoying Serpent's Skull but gothic horror is definitely my preferred cup of tea too. If only the AP were coming out a month earlier, I could jump into it with my old gaming group that I only meet with three or four times a year. I might just have to run Souls of Smuggler's Shiv in January, and then have the surviving PC's head up to Ustalav in June for "The Haunting of Harrowstone."
I love the skeleton in the left foreground. My thoughts on seeing Merisiel were, "slashing weapons on skeletons? She's gotta hit extra hard!" Then I saw the skeleton with the knife wound deep in its skull. Haha!
I'm looking forward to running this after my CoT campaign ends!
It's fun to see the new Advanced class iconics start to make a showing on the covers, too. Are we ever going to get the rest of those character bios on the blog?
Kajehase wrote:
Anyone know some good creepy background music?
Yeah, sure. I have tons of it. Try anything by Nox Arcana or Midnight Syndicate for a pretty good "Halloween Haunted House" type feel.
For specifically gothic horror with real instruments, check out Danny Elfman's soundtracks for Sleepy Hollow and The Wolfman. The soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula from the 90s is pretty good too, but you'll have to avoid some of the songs that are overly romantic sounding, and for the love of all that's holy, don't play the Annie Lennox song during a session.
Not quite so gothic, but still very appropriate for just about campaign that's got any kind of horror vibe to it at all, you could check out the soundtracks for Solomon Kane, Constantine, Van Helsing, and especially End of Days. Note: I'm not recommending the movies by any means, just the soundtracks as non-stop creepiness in background music that's great for RPG sessions.
For something a little more exotic, there's some really creepy music in the soundtracks for The Mummy, Stargate, and Raiders of the Lost Ark but you have to take out the more upbeat adventurous sounding tracks, or the really familiar songs like "Raiders March" if you want to maintain a creepy mood.
You can also listen to most of the tracks of most of these soundtracks on youtube to see if you like them before you go out of your way to hunt down the CDs or mp3 downloads.
I love the skeleton in the left foreground. My thoughts on seeing Merisiel were, "slashing weapons on skeletons? She's gotta hit extra hard!" Then I saw the skeleton with the knife wound deep in its skull. Haha!
I'm looking forward to running this after my CoT campaign ends!
Having actually played Merisiel in one of Jason Bulmahn's playtests, and with Jason being as obsessed as he is with skeletons... yes. She is indeed pretty cranky about the situation. But she's doing pretty good with the murder nevertheless! That's my girl!!!
Aside from a thread that's been going on for a long time just for this reason, I totally do! In fact, check out my forwards throughout this series. On top of the usual editorial digressions and descriptions of who's on the cover, I'm using a column to recommend music that GMs can use to create playlists appropriate for the month's adventure. And that'll be every month for this entire AP! I actually put two in the first one, one general one of music that would be great for the whole campaign, and one specific to ghost stories like Harrowstone. And then, of course, there's always the list of recommended music in the GameMastery Guide that James and I put together. I'm trying not to repeat too much between these two lists, so there won't be much overlap.
You know, back in the Dragon days I wrote an article called like "iDragon" or something, that was a big using music in RPGs article - like the 5,000 articles with the same gist that had come before it. BUT, to make it a little different, I created playlists on the iTunes store to go along with it, one general (I think it was called iDragon) and one for the Savage Tide Adventure Path.
I find it odd that the description of the nation quoted many authors and settings as inspiration and the writer tried real hard to avoid mentioning the #1 all-time inspiration and first gothic medieval swords&sorcery setting, RAVENLOFT!
I find it odd that the description of the nation quoted many authors and settings as inspiration and the writer tried real hard to avoid mentioning the #1 all-time inspiration and first gothic medieval swords&sorcery setting, RAVENLOFT!
The Ravenloft brand belongs to a competitor? I don't think anyone doubts it's an inspiration. ;-)
Oh, and as for creepy music, you can't do much better than the soundtrack for Resident Evil Remake. The songs Lost in Darkness, Rush of Fear, and Rush of Horror are amazingly spooky ambient music.
Any chance this Adventure Path, or at least one of its adventures, will incorporate the Harrow deck for some macabre purpose?
We kind of already did the Harrow deck heavy thing with Curse of the Crimson throne, so the Harrow doesn't play a huge role in the AP in the hands of NPCs. In the hands of PCs however...
Check out the Carrion Crown Player's Guide we'll be releasing as a free PDF in a few weeks here.
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F. Wesley Schneider wrote:
You know, back in the Dragon days I wrote an article called like "iDragon" or something, that was a big using music in RPGs article...I bet they're still up there.
Yeah, I remember getting that Dragon issue, being all excited ... and then finding out that said playlists were only available in the US iTunes store, and I couldn't access them :(. Just mentioning it in case you decide to do something like that again :D.
You know, back in the Dragon days I wrote an article called like "iDragon" or something, that was a big using music in RPGs article...I bet they're still up there.
I demand a new artice or blog like this!!!! Please with sugar, cherries, and impladed goblins :)
You know, back in the Dragon days I wrote an article called like "iDragon" or something, that was a big using music in RPGs article...I bet they're still up there.
I demand a new artice or blog like this!!!! Please with sugar, cherries, and impladed goblins :)
How about this: Remind us in a few months here and once we have all of Carrion Crown out, I'll compile the playlists I'm presenting in the volumes' forewords into one big playlist blog. Cool?
Yeah, I remember getting that Dragon issue, being all excited ... and then finding out that said playlists were only available in the US iTunes store, and I couldn't access them :(. Just mentioning it in case you decide to do something like that again :D.
I actually just looked for this yesterday and the iMix technology on iTunes seems to have been replaced with the recent creation of iPing. So I'm not sure how to get to them now...
Update: I Found Them! So, give this a try. Go to iTunes and search for "iDragon." In what it returned for me, an app called "iDragon Ball Sports" and the Master and Commander soundtrack showed up. If you look to the bar on the left and scroll down you'll see a header for playlists, with "iDragon Savage Tide" on the list. Hit the option for "More" and the first seven should be those iDragon playlists. I'd actually forgotten I did so many, there's ones for Savage Tide, battles, dungeons, heroes, villains, towns, and - appropriately - horror. Like DoR said above, these might not be available to iTunes users outside the states, and I'm also not sure if these are only coming up for me due to the program's freaky ability to determine what its user wants, but if anyone looks for these check back in here tell us how your search went.
If this technology proves useful and widely accessible.. well, we might just be on to something here.
You know, back in the Dragon days I wrote an article called like "iDragon" or something, that was a big using music in RPGs article...I bet they're still up there.
I demand a new artice or blog like this!!!! Please with sugar, cherries, and impladed goblins :)
How about this: Remind us in a few months here and once we have all of Carrion Crown out, I'll compile the playlists I'm presenting in the volumes' forewords into one big playlist blog. Cool?
Yeah, I remember getting that Dragon issue, being all excited ... and then finding out that said playlists were only available in the US iTunes store, and I couldn't access them :(. Just mentioning it in case you decide to do something like that again :D.
I actually just looked for this yesterday and the iMix technology on iTunes seems to have been replaced with the recent creation of iPing. So I'm not sure how to get to them now...
Update: I Found Them! So, give this a try. Go to iTunes and search for "iDragon." In what it returned for me, an app called "iDragon Ball Sports" and the Master and Commander soundtrack showed up. If you look to the bar on the left and scroll down you'll see a header for playlists, with "iDragon Savage Tide" on the list. Hit the option for "More" and the first seven should be those iDragon playlists. I'd actually forgotten I did so many, there's ones for Savage Tide, battles, dungeons, heroes, villains, towns, and - appropriately - horror. Like DoR said above, these might not be available to iTunes users outside the states, and I'm also not sure if these are only coming up for me due to the program's freaky ability to determine what its user wants, but if anyone looks for these check back in here tell us how your search went.
If this technology proves useful and widely accessible.. well, we might just be on to something here.
Can anyone, at least, copy/paste the name and performer of the songs for us who don't use iTunes?
I just tired and I can't find out a way to copy and past. So short of typing every song from every list which would be a lot of songs. I don't see how it could be done. Least I can't figure out how.
I left the Savage Tide one off because it's too long to fit without scrolling and snapping the screenshot twice, plus, I figured it was in the article already.
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