Our group is starting a new campaign, and this time I’m the gamemaster! It’s a homebrew adventure path called "Reavers on the Seas of Fate," and is using the Pathfinder RPG rules to tell tales of piracy and horror on the high seas of the world of Golarion.

As usual, we’ll be posting session summaries, character writeups, etc. on the campaign home page. Since I’m GMing, I’ll also be sharing "behind the scenes" reports on how I design and run the game.

Expect a wild mashup of the first bit of Second Darkness, the Freeport Trilogy, Sinister Adventures' Razor Coast, and more!

The Characters:

• Melako "Ox" Chaalu, a barbaric Garundi slave from Rahadoum (Bruce)
  
• Tommy "Blacktoes" Burrowbank, a halfling rogue from "around" with an attitude (Kevin)
  
• "Serpent" Ref Jorenson, an Ulfen druid with a pet constrictor snake (Paul)
  
• Sindawe H’Kilata Narr, aka "Freak", a Bonuwat Mwangi (Chris)
  
• Wogan, a cleric of Gozreh from Cheliax (Patrick)
  

We've already had our first session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

First Session (12 page pdf) – The characters, still lowly seamen, meet for the first time upon a poorly-disciplined ship, the Albers, bound to Riddleport from Kintargo. With women on board and gambling and fighting allowed, it’s only a matter of time till the captain turns up dead, filling the crew with mutual suspicion, and then a mysterious ship comes out of the fog…

For this first adventure, I combined the old Atlas Games 3e scenario Maiden Voyage and the new Sinister Adventures pdf Mysteries of the Razor Sea. Both are first level ghost ship scenarios; Maiden Voyage focussed more on the ship and crew the players were travelling with. Mysteries of the Razor Sea was totally about the ghost ship - it had more horror and is tougher. So I felt they complemented each other well; basically I am using the ghost ship from Razor and everything else from Maiden Voyage, with some changes to lead in to the next part of the adventure, which will be in Riddleport. Entertainingly, the crewman "Bull" was actually named "Ox" in the adventure. I considered letting him keep it and having him and the PC "Ox" really hate each other in the same way chicks wearing the same dress to a party would, but even with the minor name change they're both bald Garundi and I got a lot of the same dynamic.

As a side note, lots of the Atlas Games stuff is on clearance sale at paizo.com and it's good material. Besides this adventure, I may use some of their other scenarios like Three Days to Kill, and I'm using Nyambe: African Adventures to flesh out the Mwangi Expanse. Heck, if I decide to cross the sea to Arcadia I may use Northern Crown: New World Adventures. Stock up while it's cheap and still available!

I felt the first session went well - I thought we'd get a lot farther, but the players got into the interaction with each other and the NPCs; we played three hands of the card game Skulls, investigated the death of the captain... There were only two very minor combats, a boxing match between Bull and then the PCs helping to subdue Bull when he attacked the first mate, convinced he had murdered the captain. The rest was all roleplaying fun!

And it'll be a great object lesson for when later in the campaign the characters sign on to a pirate charter and read "no women, no gambling, no fighting..." They will nod sagely to themselves about the wisdom of all these strictures.

The second session of our new Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, went off like gangbusters.

Second Session (15 page pdf) - Insanity and chaos reigns as the crew of the Albers investigates the derelict Sea Bear. Soon, they are turning their suspicions against each other. And then, things get out of hand.
Later, the survivors struggle against the uncaring sea and the fury of random encounters!

This is the second part of the intro adventure I was running as a heavily modded combo of Maiden Voyage (3e, Atlas Games) and the new Mysteries of the Razor Sea (3.5e, Sinister Adventures). In this episode, the PCs board a ghost ship that had its mainmast replaced with a native totem pole. As you might expect, things started getting weird fast. I was impressed with how much the players went with it - I started passing them notes about "You think person X is acting suspicious" and they just up and started stabbing one another.

Fun scene - Ellis went running down into the hold to stop Ox and Bull, and Ox failed a Perception check so he got "a figure suddenly looms behind you in the hold!" He stuck his pike right through the poor sea dog's chest.

The biggest DM dilemma I faced was when the PCs had the good idea of tossing the skeletons overboard. The skeletons, incidentally, were the new Pathfinder "bloody skeletons" that have fast healing. I had the totem pole raise them back to full unlife with two rounds of its drumming (it couldn't attack with animated objects during those rounds). So Chris, quite innovatively, dumped them overboard when killed. The big question - can a skeleton swim? I ruled yes just to keep the heat on, but await the rogues' gallery's dissection of the physics involved.

I'm really happy with how the NPCs are working out. Thalios Dondrell and Vincenz especially are being treated like "real people." In find that by portraying NPCs as competent, but not infallible Mary Sues, PCs respect them - it's just that most NPCs you meet in games are such one-dimensional chumps, they don't get that.

After the ghost ship, a pretty large percentage of the crew was dead, including the navigator. I am using a combination of the Stormwrack (WotC) and Broadsides! (Living Imagination) sea/shipfaring rules, so as they wandered the seas they exercised their skills trying to follow the charts and keep safe and on course as storms hit. They weathered a big one, but got blown somewhat off course and got their rigging fairly jacked up. They've come up on some islands they think delimit the Gulf of Varisia and stopped in a cove to refit, and had a more lighthearted combat with a dozen demented goblins.

I love the Paizo take on goblins; they are well and truly insane. Dangerous in their way, but spend half their combat actions running around like butt monkeys instead of actually fighting. One clambered up to the crow's nest and was doing the Pantsless Goblin Victory Dance over the shrieking Old Pete when Ox finally got to it.

Seems like everyone enjoyed themselves! Wogan was happy to get a wheellock pistol off the dead captain of the Sea Bear, Serpent was happy that his snake had the biggest kill count in the goblin fight, Ox liked being able to go nuts and kill allies, Sindawe liked the massive combat, and Blacktoes... liked fleeing a lot, I think.

As a final bonus - it turns our our group played Maiden Voyage once before! I didn't remember because I was a player then and GMing now, and it was like four years ago. Here's the session summary of our Eberron party going through Maiden Voyage! I think you'll see some similarities and some differences...

Our aspiring pirates get their first taste of honest ship-to-ship combat in the third installment of our Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

Third Session (12 page pdf) - The crew of the Albers goes foraging on an island to replenish their stores, and comes across some escaped slaves. Of course, the Chelaxian naval frigate bearing their former owner arrives shortly thereafter. Just as they discover a goblin pirate ship! It's hot three-way action in a naval boarding action. And then it's off to Riddleport!

This was a stretch session. I had planned for them to get to Riddleport and get into that this session, but the character who has lived in Riddleport and has most of the hooks for them wasn't going to be there. So I figured I could expand the travel part enough to fill a session.

Leafing through some random supplements, I found a couple things that struck a chord. In WotC's Stormwrack, there is an adventure called "The Sable Drake," basically an encounter with a goblin pirate ship. I had thrown some canoes full of goblins at the PCs last time, supposing they came from a village on the nearby island. By converting those to goblins on two ship's boats from the Sable Drake, it was a lead-in. Then in Atlas Games' En Route II: By Land Or By Sea, there's an encounter called "Water Stop" detailing some escaped slaves hiding on an island; the PCs meet them and then their old master shows up looking for them. This was perfect; I wanted to start pulling in elements from PCs' backgrounds, and most of them have a beef against the Chelaxians. Ox had been the slave of Captain Marcellano, a Chelish seafarer. Thus I mixed the two together.

It wasn't too hard to convince them to go onto the island and poke around; they thought maybe the goblins came from there and they'd get to kick some more ass. They came across the slaves and managed not to kill them (the way the encounter's written is that the poorly armed commoner-type slaves surround the PCs and try to get them to surrender to figure out if they're likely to rat them out; somewhat dangerous in that often PCs take any manner of threat as an invitation to maximum overkill). The slaves tell them about a "weird black ship" in a hidden cove and then the Chelaxian Navy ship Raptor appears and approaches the Albers to see if they have seen some missing slaves. Soon, they're both going after the goblin ship, who the PCs finger as having drug off a bunch of escaped-slave looking people.

Really, the tough part about all this was that in Golarion, goblins are all total meatheads. It was hard to believe they could pilot a ship, even with a wererat captain and a handful of adepts. But hey, you work with what you're given. I changed them substantially from the "leet ship" in Stormwrack to a barely actionable converted fishing ship.

In the end, everything worked out for the PCs and the slaves. The PCs hoped that the goblins would whittle down the Chelaxian marines enough that they could take them; they were quickly disabused of that - one of the things I wanted to get across before they took up their future life of piracy is that the Chelaxian navy is no one to screw with. They were pretty sober as the goblin ship took

The noble was Marcello Marcellano, the son of the guy who owned Ox. I expected him to go to greater lengths to try to kill him, but he played it cool. A shame, I built a pretty good 4th level swashbuckler using the new class from Tome of Secrets (Adamant Entertainment) and the duelist feats etc. from Way of the Duel (Sinister Adventures).

Selene, Vincenz, and Thalios Dondrel son of Mordekai are now at large in Riddleport as well, so I'll have some good NPCs the PCs are very familiar with to use. Next session's based on Pulp Fiction!

Our would-be pirates are at large on the streets of Riddleport in this, the fourth session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate - "Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold."

Fourth Session (11 page pdf) - First, I hand out fake pirate gold coins I bought at a party shop to represent each character's Infamy Points! I explain how they work (very powerful but rare hero points) and the group seems to like the idea.

Then, the PCs wander around Riddleport and I take the opportunity to introduce various local NPCs. Snake meets Samaritha Beldusk outside the Cypher Lodge and they hit it off. Tommy and Ox go to the temple of Calistria (aka whorehouse); Tommy gets real friendly with the tiefling prostitute Lavender Lil, and Ox gets requested by Selene. Faithful readers will remember Selene was the captain's woman aboard their last ill-fated voyage; she was a hooker before meeting the Captain and so it's back to the life of a working girl. Sindawe goes to find an altar to his god Shimye-Magalla; he finds something that looks kinda similar (the Mwangi worship a janiform incarnation of the god of wind and wave Gozreh and goddess of dream Desna) and has a bad string of luck - a stirge discovers him, and when he tosses himself into Riddleport Harbor to get it off, a swamp barracuda takes notice. It chased him to shore and then chased him onto shore; there was an entertaining chase scene with both of them only moving like 10 feet a round (uphill in mud for Sindawe, and swamp barracuda aren't all that fast out of water).

I open up "Shadow in the Sky," the first installment of the Second Darkness Adventure Path, for the next part. Tommy knows a local guy named Saul Vancaskerkin who owns a gambling hall; they go to his big devil-themed gambling festival "Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold" and end up thwarting an armed robbery by two colorful miscreants and their gang of thugs. I took Thuvalia's opening line from the restaurant robbery in Pulp Fiction; our session scribe didn't get it quite right in the summary but close enough. I decided it would be fun to kinda base the two principals on Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from that fine film. A more notable omission is that Sindawe used one of his Infamy Points to run across the heads and shoulders of a bunch of patrons to jump-kick Thuvalia and take her out before she escaped. Also, Wogan got to use his gun (and my firearm rules) for the first time - and the damage dice exploded; he shot Angvar right through the heart. They end up being recruited by Saul to help run the Gold Goblin and, perhaps, some "side jobs" as well.

A lot of the session was spent getting introduced to Riddleport, the staff of the Goblin, et cetera, so not much action, but everyone had a good time role-playing!

The characters decide to take the fight to the mean streets of Riddleport in the fifth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, "St. Casperian's Salvation."

Fifth Session (11 page pdf) - Michael Vick, eat your heart out. The PCs start off by arranging one of the Gold Goblin's underground animal fights. The NPC ranger, Bojask, got a diseased bear off the back of a ship somewhere, and their boss Saul wanted a championship match with the current champ, Pigsaw the boar.

I based this on reality - I read a recent news article about how all the spectacled bears at this German zoo all lost their fur all over except for on their faces. Zoo staff is baffled.

Anyway, player reaction: OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT THING. They then spent an inordinate amount of their funds buying some drugs to knock it out so they could paint it green. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. They started channeling Don King and dubbed the fight "Pigsaw vs. Bearclaw."

The PCs wandered through Riddleport separately to go spread the word and got the worst end of the deal. It's a rough town, and when Ox went into the gambling district run by the head crimelord and started putting up flyers, three goons quickly showed up, beat his ass senseless, and robbed him. Others fared slightly better.

I was planning to run the 3e Atlas Games adventure "Three Days to Kill." I handed out some rumors, though, gleaned while beating the streets doing fight promotion, and they were fascinated by a (totally false) rumor about a haunted treasure hoard in the cellar of St. Casperian's Mission, a local derelict flophouse where, it turns out, their old buddy Vincenz is hiding out. I had planned to run "St. Casperian's Salvation," a side trek adventure set there, later, but the PCs were all over that mission like white on rice as soon as they heard a rumor of cash. Ever prepared, I switched and ran that instead. Basically there's a local small street gang using the second floor as a hideout. This was somewhat of a surprise, and it was a brutal tight quarters battle. The gang leader, the "Splithog Pauper," got away with the gang's loot.

Eventually they had the fight and the bear won. In attendance was Captain Scarbelly, the orc pirate, a clear warning to those in the know that the Freeport trilogy is almost upon us.

Next time - Three Days to Kill! I hope.

The characters become more proactive in their criminal enterprises in the sixth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, “Three Days to Kill.” It's based on a 3e Atlas Games adventure also called “Three Days to Kill.”

Sixth Session (14 page pdf) - One of Clegg Zincher's capps, Braddikar Faje, is headed out of town on the road to Roderic's Cove to conduct some kind of sale at a villa in the hills. Jacking up Zincher's day is more than enough motivation for Saul to send his favorite scum off to break up the deal.

But first, Tommy heads to the local whorehouse/temple of Calistria to see his favorite gal, Lavender Lil. He finds her hiding behind a tapestry; Captain Scarbelly and his orc pirate crew are visiting, and, as she says, "I like it a little rough, but not orc rough." So Tommy tells her he and his comrades are headed out into the woods to try to find the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy they hear tell of, as a cover story for their real job.

It's probably about this time I should share the rumors the PCs got from hitting the streets of Riddleport. It may explain otherwise bizarre behavior on the part of the guys. (The weird terminology is mostly Riddleport slang... As you can tell they are meant to be exactly as a random Riddleporter would relate them.)

Bonfires are sometimes seen in the mountains to the northeast. I hear a bunch of priestesses of Calistria gather there every new moon for secret all-lesbo orgiastic rituals, and they murder any man who glimpses them. It still sounds pretty tempting to try. Woooo! Man, I wonder if that Pamodae sideshow goes there… Mmmmm…..

When the missionary who founded St. Casperian’s Mission died, he left behind a treasure cache of the money he defrauded from credulous citizens. Although the building is dilapidated and overrun with grog-blossoms, there is a secret room beneath the ground where the priest hid his ill-gotten gains. They say it’s guarded by a magical protector that has disappeared everyone that’s tried to claim it.

There are orcs wandering the streets of Riddleport! Captain Scarbelly’s pirate ship, the Bloody Vengeance, is in town and the whole crew is orc. People say he’s killed twenty-nine men in hand to hand combat. He’s probably hooked up with Boss Croat, that snout-lover. I could totally take an orc. It’s about speed, not strength!

Gebediah Crix, keeper of the Riddleport Light, got killed by one of those devils he summons. His parts were strewn all over the lighthouse. The gendarmes have posted guards outside the place. I wonder if the devil’s still around? Hey, I recently came across some Vudran charms, guaranteed to keep evil spirits away. Wanna buy one?

There’s some kind of gang of whiskers that operates in the Rotgut District. I have a cousin who got robbed by a bunch of rats in an alley that suddenly turned into people. And the gendarmes don’t do jack crap about it, say they’re low on funding. The rats must be connected and that’s why they’re getting a pass.

Some guy, an out of town wizard, wanted to become a fancyboy, but when they wouldn’t let him in, he insulted Elias Tammerhawk, the Speaker of the Order of Cyphers. They had a duel in Zincher’s arena. Tammerhawk totally wasted that guy’s dumb ass in short order and magiced up a swarm of rats to eat the body. He said that was what he got for running his rathole. Haw haw haw!

There’s been some turf changes on the streets lately. I hear Avery Slyeg is totally Croamarcky’s b&!~@ now and they’re consolidating and looking to squeeze competitors out of the gambling biz.

The completely false St. Casperian rumor is what caused them to go all SWAT team on the mission last session. Although their minds are going overtime, and they mentioned that "planting a rumor like that would be a good way to get someone to go in and kill of a rival gang..."

Anyway, they head out to the Trail's End villa and get a lot more than they bargained for - besides Faje and his men, there's Asmodean cultists, Marcello Marcellano (the Chelish son of Ox's former owner from "Water Stop"), and a bunch of raiding Shoanti braves. They actually carve through the guards OK, but when the Asmodeans start summoning freaky demons from the mirror Faje is selling them, they decide to bail (over Serpent's objections, who really really wants to kill Faje and everyone else, despite Saul instructing them not to kill him.)

The PCs for some reason thought they had done poorly, I guess because of the default D&D expectation that the only success is found in killing everything in sight and looting it. But Saul praised them - they killed everyone but Faje and one of his goons, who had to ride into town two to one horse. The Asmodeans got the mirror without paying for it. So Clegg is out like 8 guys, a bunch of horses, and the mirror with nothing to show for it, and Faje did NOT get killed and bring the wrath of Zincher and potentially other crime lords down on the Gold Goblin. The PCs kinda wanted to murder the Asmodeans, Marcellano, and the Shoanti (which Saul couldn't care less about) and Faje (which would have pissed him off mightily).

But before they got back... They happened upon the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy ritual. Or, at least, Tommy snuck up onto something that might have been it and promptly got chased off by a manticore!

I was prepared to run an actual chase scene here, with the mounted PCs fleeing from the manticore, using chase rules from Adamant Entertainment's Tome of Secrets for Pathfinder. It was not to be, however, as the usual D&D group problem emerged of one guy refusing to run and that making the rest of the party stand with him. We then had a weird start-and-stop chase as Sindawe stopped to fight. But when the manticore dropped his horse in one shot, he thought better of that and hid in the underbrush. But of course Wogan and Serpent had stopped to help him... They got away by popping obscuring mist and letting the manticore eat all their horses. Ah well, all's well that ends well.

Once they got back, they went with the guy that they let live from the Splithog Pauper's gang, Madrat, to hit one of Avery Slyeg's couriers. Of course, Madrat was a mole working for Slyeg. So we left off with the PCs facing down a dozen crossbowmen and a crime lord in a warehouse. Will they sleep with the fishes? Find out next time, in Reavers on the Seas of Fate: Death in Freeport!

Our heroes (?) continue in their shenanigans in Riddleport in Reavers on the Seas of Fate: Death in Riddleport, Part I. I've been borrowing from Green Ronin's excellent Freeport setting to flesh out the pirate haven of Riddleport and here's where we kick into their classic adventure, Death in Freeport, but adapted to Riddleport and generally getting beefed up.

Seventh Session (14 page pdf), "Death in Riddleport, Part I" - Crimelord Avery Slyeg makes the PCs an offer they can't refuse, so they hunt down the Splithog Pauper (the leader of the criminal gang from "St. Casperian's Salvation"). And they look for their kidnapped friend Vincenz - rubbing elbows with Cyphermages requires them to clean up a bit. The practical and moral dilemmas get harder as they work to rescue their friend.

I was pretty happy with this session. The trick to a good campaign is having interesting NPCs that the PCs believe in enough to deal with realistically, and this session was all about that. Man, the Splithog Pauper has gone from a side sub-boss with no real personality - less backstory than the average Paizo NPC, really - to a major player. The first time he escaped, the PCs found his disguise kit and decided he was a master of disguise - to the point that as they were walking out right after the fight, they interrogated a legless homeless guy to ensure he wasn't the Pauper in disguise. This time, he lived up to their expectations by being disguised as a peg-legged pirate captain. Once they caught him and took him back for interrogation, he managed to talk his way out by trading the location of his hidden treasure for his life, and after they let him go, he told them the treasure was in the artificial leg from his disguise they already had in hand. They were all impressed and like "Damn, he totally conned us! That took balls of steel!" Now they're convinced he's Golarion's answer to James Bond. DM pro tip: every time the PCs decide an NPC is really bad ass, give them a level. Ding!

And besides the Pauper, the interactions with Avery Slyeg, Samaritha, and Iesha are all going well. When the PCs are taking NPCs as or more seriously than fights or loot then you can get some real stories going.

Other things I was proud of - I don't like when NPCs know things they shouldn't; I hate the "hivemind complex." So the Pauper had a signal arranged - if he started singing "What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor," that meant trouble, and his new rent-a-goons should come downstairs shooting. Well, the PCs were spread all over the bar doing various things and the goons had never seen them before, so they just started drive-by style random shooting at anyone that looked dangerous. And in turn, that galvanized the PCs much more to immediate action than a standard thug attack.

During this session I made use of two of my custom rulesets - the gather information/random encounter/rumor combo I discuss in Life in the Big City - Gather Information, and the chase rules I lay out in Life In The Big City - Chase Rules. Both chases (the Pauper and Enzo) went well; I think after another use or two the chase rules will be nice and solid. The trick is to not make them too much of a "separate minigame" that causes problems with interactions with all the skills/feats/spells/etc of 3.5e play.

Next session - some shockingly brutal fights!

Eighth Session (14 page pdf), “Death in Riddleport, Part II” – The PCs find a hidden temple under an abandoned house and engage in vicious combat with serpent men! “Sorry, Vincenz, but that’s too tough!” they conclude after a couple runs at it.

The adventure was a beefed up version of Green Ronin’s “Death in Freeport.” (Spoilers for that adventure ensue). Did I beef it up too much? The weakest part of the Freeport Trilogy, I thought, was that the great legendary serpent men were 1 HD (and 3.0 HD are like worth 1/2 a Pathfinder HD) pieces of crap. Paizo printed some more “real” serpentfolk in their 3.5e Into the Darklands supplement. I had to do the degenerate-statting and conversion to Pathfinder myself, but was left with some nice CR4 brute types. I didn’t think that would be a horrible problem – these PCs are Pathfinder and pretty optimized, and have pretty much happily rolled over all the other fights so far.

Well, they got tromped by two of them. There were a couple reasons why. One, they were down a PC because Blacktoes wasn’t here, which means they were only four men against an unknown foe.

But shouldn’t a party of 4 second level PCs be able to take (though have it be tough) 2 CR4s? Well, secondly, they’re pretty tough even for CR4s, I think, and I made a mistake in not nerfing their poison more (I converted from 3.5e to Pathfinder poison on the fly and the latter procs each round for 6 rounds, so needs a much lower penalty value).

But also some of it, the third part, was the PCs I think. I’m trying to get them to think more tactically as part of a “gritter” campaign, but I’m afraid they still default to “screw it, let’s run around like butt monkeys.” The villa assault in Three Days to Kill was a good example; they started in decent SpecOps style but then all started running round solo (and still did well – I tried to scare them some but I guess they may have gotten the lesson that that’s OK…).

Although maybe it worked out kinda decently in the end. Samaritha went with them and they fought ten skeletons and three serpentfolk at once! (You don’t hit a dungeon, leave, and return after two days without them getting a good reaction plan in place. Sorry.) And once the players got scared into really thinking hard, they did a good fighting withdrawl that they converted to a hasty ambush and took the enemy all out (albeit with using all their remaining action and Infamy points). Which would have been fine, but that fight demoralized them enough that they bailed – not even to come back after healing, but just “bah, maybe after we level.” I made it crystal clear that they were leaving Vincenz to his death, but that didn’t impress them. They figured any more of those serpentfolk and they were meat.

Ironically, they had killed all of them off and just had the boss to fight – he’s tough but not as tough CR-wise as e.g. two serpentfolk. But they didn’t know that and I don’t like giving metagame info; courage isn’t real courage if you are told the risk was low, so they walked away and I didn’t do much to stop them (except having the voice of an NPC speak as a conscience. “You’re gonna leave your friend to die?”). They pushed me to get a level at the end of the session. Perhaps I’m cussed, but I didn’t want to reward failure with a level (and have them think on some level that I gave it to them so they can go back and succeed). Not like they’re going to hang around awaiting the PCs’ leisure; I’m not big on static dungeons or villains that don’t respond to stuff like that.

They got some of the disappointment out of their system by going and beating the crap out of Braddikar Faje. Second Darkness has some badly balanced encounters; as if a third level NPC fighter with some goons is going to be a credible threat to a whole party of PCs. I had built up his street cred enough that they took him seriously, at least, but he couldn’t damage them worth a darn.

Now I have to figure out what’ll happen next. I pretty much run things from a simulationist point of view during a session (what would logically happen next) but from a story point of view during sesssion prep (it might be interesting if person X goes and does Y…). I reckon trouble will start coming to them; my hope is that they snap and become the ruthless pirates they are destined to be…

This group of players is a little of a challenge as I found out when they hated my Mutants & Masterminds campaign. They really don’t like being bested, even if it’s nonfatal or dramatically good. I guess we’ll see if this demoralizes them or what.

Ninth Session (15 page pdf), "Holiday In The Sun/Flat On Rat Street" - The characters help Saul celebrate Swagfest in the streets of Riddleport, and there's a startling amount of violence. Then, they go to a local moneylender to find out what happened to the bar's floor manager... and there's a startling amount of violence.

First, I ran "Holiday in the Sun", an interstitial Freeport adventure from the Freeport Trilogy. There's a big street festival, like Riddleport's answer to Mardi Gras. They got to have some random fun, choosing costumes, drinking, that kind of thing. An assassin tried to take out Saul, and though the PCs stopped her, she totally took out Tommy in one shot. He didn't take that well; he took her back to the animal cages and tortured the crap out of her. Explicitly enough that it took the other players aback. And when they came back and she was missing, he really got scared. Mmmwah hah haaaa!

Then they participated in various festival games. Sindawe had a bad turn when he ran off solo and stumbled into the lair of an ettercap and some dream spiders! In the original adventure it was a rogue aranea; in this one I decided it made sense for one of the crime lords to have an ettercap working for him as tender for the dream spiders, whose valuable venom is used to make a drug named shiver. He got bitten repeatedly by the spiders till he was tripping his balls off, and then he got webbed up. Bruce (Ox) spent an Infamy Point to have him rescued by the Splithog Pauper. Funnily enough, when the rest of the PCs found him in an alley with a note from the Pauper, their reaction was "We told that guy to leave town! We hate him!"

Then, the Yellow Shields organize a hit on the PCs, which they get out of without a lot of trouble. After, when Tommy's back at the Gold Goblin, he complains to Saul that they're all pretty beaten up and don't want to go back to the festival. He tells him, not unkindly, to "Sack up and get back out there."

Next, it's "The Flat On Rat Street," from Shadow In The Sky (the first chapter of the Second Darkness adventure path, which I am somewhat using for inspiration). Saul tells the PCs that the floor manager, Larur Feldin, went to make a payment to a moneylender named Lymas Smeed and hasn't come back. The PCs go, bust in, kill his baboon, and beat him with a phone book for some time.

This scene really frustrated Sindawe's player particularly (he was already a little ill-humored about the spider thing). He was convinced that he just wasn't beating the guy hard enough or searching good enough to find the answer, and it just wasn't appearing - that they must just be doing something wrong. He got pretty upset about it (not till debrief afterwards did I fully understand what was going on). Of course, in this particular scene, there is absolutely no way to figure out what really happened from within the scene; you have to move on and find out from other sources.

I blame training from bad D&D modules for twisting players' expectations. Too many D&D scenarios wrap everything up nice and cozy. Whenever you kill a bad guy, he always has a long note on him detailing his G$+-d$$ned life story. It's from the same playbook that states "monsters" fight to the death, et cetera. There's always a convenient self-contained answer to the problem in the dungeon - the "silver weapon when there's lycanthropes coming" syndrome. Real mystery, intrigue, or complication is rare. I try to run things very "realistically" - meaning if something in the game world doesn't make sense to a reasonable person, it's not because Gary Gygax decided that "weather is magical" or other such b%#+~%~%, but instead because yeah, there is something wrong here. Afterwards, I told the frustrated player that really he was more on the right track than everyone else - that yes, it doesn't make any sense that a common moneylender would let himself be tortured to death rather than give up the info they wanted, and that it shouldn't be a source of frustration, but instead an opportunity to use that correct first step to re-engage with the game world and find out the next step. We got things back on track, but I think it's so unfortunate that there's so much crappy D&D that trains people to not trust their own senses because the answer's always "GM fiat" or "that's just what the module said" or whatnot. In my mind, the acme of achievement (in a simulation-focused game) is to get it to where everyone feels like they can engage completely in the game world, without having to second-guess about what metagame stuff is going on. Metagaming is for pussies. Yes, you can quote me on that.

Tenth Session (11 page pdf), "Death in Riddleport, Part III" - Samaritha's gone missing, and the PCs track her to - yes, you guessed it - the serpent temple. Along with a new friend, they hit the place hard, and there's no retreating this time.

Sadly, Bruce (Ox), our usual session scribe, moved to Dallas and no one else brought a laptop, so this isn't one of our traditional session summaries. I took some notes while running the session and have written it up in a more short story kind of format. I think it turned out pretty well, and hope you all enjoy it.

As a bonus, I've started a "Monsters and NPCs" page where you can check out the full character sheets for Salvadora Beckett and Milos the cultist. Salvadora was an example of a new class, the Inquisitor, that Paizo is having an open playtest for as part of their upcoming Advanced Player's Guide. There's also updated character sheets for many of the PCs on the Characters page.

The session went really well. We finally finished Death in Freeport! Now that they're third level, the serpentfolk weren't an insurmountable obstacle, though even when the PCs prepared with antitoxins they definitely took some damage at their hands.

There were a bunch of really great moments this session. My favorites:

* When Lixy asked Wogan, the chaste cleric of Gozreh, "exactly" what his religion prohibits as she cozied up to him. I could virtually see the word balloon with "Gulp!" in it appear over Patrick's head.
* When Wogan went to pull his pistol in the ensuing combat and it wasn't there. That's one of those moments GMs live for. "What do you mean it's not... Oh... Crap." <sound of weapon cocking behind him> I wanted to giggle and hop up and down clapping my hands like a little girl. Then her tossing it towards the latrine as a diversion rather than trying to shoot him - what can I say, I was very proud of myself. The possibility of getting shot didn't scare the player, but the thought of his 500 gp masterwork pistol getting flushed- that got to him. That whole scene was totally movie-worthy.
* When Milos created his fast zombies! I was reading the new Bestiary and it not only detailed some variant zombies but was specific about how to create them - in this case, remove paralysis as part of the animate dead makes "28 Days Later" style fast zombies. Wogan was actually using Spellcraft to figure out what was being cast and the remove paralysis really confused him, he figured he had some big paralyzed monster he was letting loose or something.
* When Sindawe broke through all the undead blockers and dealt out double crits to Milos. We are using the Paizo "Critical Hit Cards" and they said he busted his kneecap and then spun him around, rendering him flat-footed. It let Tommy get in a sneak attack sling stone shot that put him down (while standing upside down on the ceiling, thanks to spider climb) - a three hit boss kill!
* When Sindawe hugged Salvadora unexpectedly after they cleared the serpent temple. The rest of the players really did give him the hairy eyeball, and he really did say "What?!? She saved my life like twice!"

There were fun little bits besides that, like trying to convince the apothecary they really needed something to counteract snake poison and not VD, and carrying out that big teak desk past the crowd of gendarmes. I think the party started to really fire on all cylinders this session, and everyone got a chance to really pitch in.

Just had to drop in and recommend this to absolutely everyone!
How these guys get any playing done with a straight face I'll never know!

So there we go. And now it's back to the proofreading, eh Ernest? :-)

Eleventh Session (10 page pdf), “Mansion of Shadows, Part I” – After the PCs kill Jasker Gant, one of crime lord Boss Croat’s lieutenants, they decide to go on the lam for a while. They get “loaned out” by Saul to Captain Clap of the pirate ship Wandering Dagger, who has a little job for them. Also, the triumphal return of Thalios Dondrel, son of Mordekai! [Reavers on the Seas of Fate Home]

Mansion of Shadows is a Green Ronin "Bleeding Edge" adventure from back in the day. I liked the line, they were all pretty good.

Using this adventure illustrates two important principles useful for everyone running a pirate campaign (the best kind of campaign).

1. It's easy to take any adventure location and make it an island. When 3e was new, my gaming group and I (rotating DMs) ran a pirate campaign. I bought all the initial wave of third party d20 adventures and handed them out. Since most of them try to be "generic" by placing themselves in some semi isolated location that doesn't have too much relation to the surrounding world, you can usually wave your magic wand and call it an island with zero additional work. One of them I remember had a map that was a huge field of mountains, with one road leading in, and the town/adventure location right there in the middle of it! Might as well have been an island in the first place. This one is no exception - the town of Staufendorf is largely encircled by rivers. A wave of my lasso tool in GIMP and oh look it's an island.

2. It's easy to take any adventure and make it suitable for evil (or neutral-piratey) characters. A lot of adventures - and Paizo and Green Ronin's are frequently examples - have several factions of bad guys for you to play off each other. Paladin-heavy parties have angst about that but piratey parties sure don't. Frankly most adventures have a fairly simplistic view of good - "go kill the bad guys and take their stuff!" Well, that's as rousing a battle cry for bad PCs - good sticks together, but evil is happy to cannibalize itself.

Behind the Scenes

The party totally did not want to go help the slaves, but Ox (now in NPC form since Bruce moved) wasn't to be persuaded to leave them behind. So it was the worst of all worlds, in that only Ox and Sindawe were there for the fight! No worries, however - Jasker Gant rolled totally crappy and Ox got a megacrit on him and then on one of the goons in short order. The party's general conclusion was "Oh sure, now he becomes effective!"

I knew they wouldn't be able to resist killing another crime lord's capp ("made man"/lieutenant) for long. They barely refrained from killing Braddikar Faje earlier, and this time they didn't even worry about it. (Tommy's player Kevin was playing Ox for the encounter).

Anyway, they went and wangled themselves a gig with a pirate ship to go raid a Chelaxian manor house. After the pirates put them on board a pleasure yacht, I rolled two random encounters. The first, a wyvern, was pretty tough. The second was a dire shark!!! I'm not a big believer in "level appropriate" when it comes to wilderness encounters. But I had mercy - they killed the wyvern and had it on a tow rope, so when the shark showed up it just ate the wyvern. Seeing a 60 foot shark go by caused a real brown pants moment.

Then they wandered around Staufendorf a while. Everyone they talked to, they tried to get at "why are there crucified commoners about?" but everyone would just say in a loud voice, pretty much verbatim, "Staufendorf is a lovely place to live, full of honest and hard-working folk. It's a great place to raise a family!" It got the point across, heh heh heh.

So now they're infiltrating the nobles' mansion, trying to figure out how to weaken it enough that 30 pirates can take the place. They're kinda worried about it since it's very well defended. I'm not sure how they're going to do it, but I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Twelfth Session (12 page pdf), "Mansion of Shadows, Part II" - The PCs hang out with a Chelish noble family for a while, and witness depths of degeneration that make even hardened criminals from Riddleport uncomfortable. After a long night of sneaking around the mansion and fleeing from horrid things, they lure the eldest son out to the forest and whack him.

[Note: spoilers for Mansion of Shadows, a Green Ronin d20 adventure]

Our Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, continues in good spirits as our fledgling pirates continue their infiltration of the Staufen family manor. I haven't had to change the adventure a whole lot from the Green Ronin original; "demented devil worshipping noble family" drops right into Golarion's Cheliax without a second thought. In fact, the players are already speculating on both the Asmodeus worship and "seven sins" ancient Thassilonian elements, both of which came along in the original!

The players definitely found the mansion super creepy. The best parts were:

* The hugely fat naked freak eating nonstop in the kitchen. My impression of it picking up its battleaxe and giving them the hairy eyeball even as it continued to munch on a leg of mutton, and that later when it was sleeping it was sleep-gnawing on the same mutton, made quite an impression. But they were most disturbed when they found out it was female (Leanor Staufen).

* Serpent being too nosy and ending up running around Three Stooges style fleeing from one devil after another in the mansion at night, even tossing himself down a staircase to escape more quickly. "Woowoowoowoowoo!"

* Sindawe seducing Amalinda Staufen in the catacombs under the temple to Asmodeus, and after she put out the candle, he started to realize that her cadaverous body was horribly similar to a lot of the preserved corpses in the room. He got so nervous that he lit a sunrod and passed it off as "Oh, I just wanted to be able to look at you."

Rules note, Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to stop Jack from getting away. The PCs didn't really coordinate ahead of time and so when Serpent decided to attack Erich it caused enough confusion that Jack rode off on his horse, which would have been pretty much a scenario-derailer - if they couldn't find a way back into the mansion then the pirate attack would pretty much be a non-starter. But Serpent coughed up an Infamy Point so I rolled a random encounter and said "His horse got disabled by a... dire badger... so you're able to catch up to him." So in the end it worked out fine.

Next time in Mansion of Shadows, Part III - both a mass combat and a naval battle! I'm working on rules for both to make them fun and not onerous.

Thirteenth Session (16 page pdf), "Mansion of Shadows, Part III" - The inevitable holocaust of violence descends on Staufen Manor. At the Asmodean funeral for the eldest son, the PCs decide it's time to wipe out the whole family - but the priest is ready for them with summoned devils. Simultaneously, the pirates assault the island! The fledgling pirates carefully decide who to rape and kill and who to protect from the raping and killing. Who gets it? Read and find out!

This was a super-sized session, we went for about 8 hours, which was good because the players just had so much fun intriguing with the Staufens that it took us a while to get to the violence. Every time I'd try to advance the timeline they'd run off and do something else in some dark corner of the keep. Fair enough!

Then the fight in the chapel went pretty fast. The priest was 7th level but Sindawe used an Infamy Point to do him in - he pulled the mirror down on him and spent a point and we decided that it happened just as he was channeling to summon more critters and he went through the gate the other way, ending up in Hell! And there was much chortling.

They were happy to see most of the Staufens meet their brutal ends. Then, they kept complaining that I wouldn't let them loot all the bodies with a bunch of Staufen guards standing around. "Surely they will leave us alone to molest the body of their dead lord soon!" Sigh.

We used my new Quickie Mass Combat Rules to handle the pirate attack. It went pretty fast and smooth. It seems like it lends itself well to handing out index cards with units on them to the players to have them pick up some of the slack too. The PCs were thinking fast, I was proud. Wogan laid a fog cloud on the parapet to disrupt the orc crossbowmen, which was good because they were going to get free attacks on the pirates till that gate got open. Then once the battle was joined, they even remembered about the other door in the inner wall and used it to flank the guards - that's the kind of things PCs love to just forget about. And then Wogan used one of his Infamy Points to bullseye Jack from across the battle. "Yo ho ho, b~&$&!" he shouted as Jack crumpled. The other players really liked that.

I'm going to have to tighten up on the use of Infamy Points to autokill enemy leaders once I start getting some I want to stay around longer. These guys are just mooks so if they die, great; if they live I'll level them and bring them back for later torment.

The looting sequence was fun; the PCs got to run rampant over all the color text they had seen before. They were sad that a) they weren't supposed to keep whatever they looted, the pirates do fair shares and b) that the halfling alchemist wasn't retarded, and when pirates attacked right after weirdo visitors paid her about a thousand gold for every weaponizable product she had, she took the money and ran. They were bemused but entertained by the huge pumpkin that they took as loot. My personal theory is that pirate (and orc) looting pretty much operates according to the Redneck Principle, which is that things are taken based on how good it feels to hold them up and scream "WOOOOOOOO!!!!!" at the top of your lungs. Some of that is gold and jewels - and in this case, some of it is 70 pound pumpkins and inn signs.

Next time, back to Riddleport. But first... <cue Mars, the Bringer of War>

Fourteenth Session (11 page pdf), “Booty in Riddleport” – Naval combat! The PCs’ pirate ship takes on a Chelish navy vessel. They escape, and take a nice plump merchant ship as a prize, and make their way back to Riddleport. The next couple weeks are a blur of loot, booze, hookers, drugs, and recreational violence.

It wouldn't be a pirate outing without some naval combat. The Chelaxian ship from Session Summary 3, the Raptor (Captain Vix Charlo, commanding), appeared as the PCs' ship, the Wandering Dagger, was leaving the sacked Staufendorf Island. Wogan immediately had the brilliant idea of loosing their new eversmoking bottle on the stern, which combined with clever maneuvering kept them almost unharmed by the navy ship's chase gun. It was back and forth - the Raptor nearly overtook them before they got up to speed, but then they got a lead, but then the Chelish nearly caught up, but in the end they escaped without a full battle. And that darn Thalios Dondrel made his Will save.

I won't post my naval rules here yet because I submitted them for the Fire As She Bears competition from Lou Agresta and Sinister Adventures, but they'll be OGL so you'll get your paws on them one way or another soon enough. Hint, I combined my already field-tested OGL cannon rules, chase rules, and mass combat rules (along with a bunch of new stuff) to put it together.

Then they get to be predator, not prey, when they take a merchant ship. The PCs were initally concerned about the ten gun-ports on the thing, but Captain Clap just roared, "I said, RUN OUT THE GUNS!!!!" Turns out the gunports were fake and he knew about it. Being a pirate isn't all about kicking ass; living long is about being wily is the lesson to take away.

Then back to Riddleport and a taste of the rock star lifestyle that pirates flush with loot enjoy there! The PCs entertained themselves for the rest of their session, with such stirring quotes as "Hey let's go double up on a tiefling hooker," "I can milk anything with nipples," and "Now we'll rip off the local drug suppliers and go into the narcotics business!" I don't know, I think I might should change their alignments from Lawful Good, what do you think?

By the way, here's where an iPhone with Google access is bad ass. The PCs say, "We want to go kidnap some spiders! What can we get that'll keep spiders off us?" Rather than say "No!" or "Uh, anti-spider herbs?" I did a quick search on "repel spiders" and BAM! Hedge apples! (aka horse apples, aka osage-oranges.) I know some people have given up on the roots of D&D as a vector to research weird information, but not me baby!

Just had to drop in and recommend this to absolutely everyone!

How these guys get any playing done with a straight face I'll never know!

So there we go. And now it's back to the proofreading, eh Ernest? :-)

The summaries themselves are all kinds of fun.

Also, the "pirate adventurers group" is complete hilarity.

carborundum wrote:

Just had to drop in and recommend this to absolutely everyone!

How these guys get any playing done with a straight face I'll never know!

So there we go. And now it's back to the proofreading, eh Ernest? :-)

The summaries themselves are all kinds of fun.

Also, the "pirate adventurers group" is complete hilarity.

Glad you enjoy them! And yeah, "pirates" is one of the best adventurer group conceits. I don't believe in the semi-traditional "PCs run around like butt monkeys while the DM madly tries to give them some reason to stick together" problem. Set up a reason for them to be a coherent group and/or make it their problem.

Fifteenth Session (10 page pdf), “Terror in Riddleport” – The PCs get led into a deathtrap, the serpent temple is back in business, Avery Slyeg gets assassinated, the PCs get framed for it, the Gold Goblin is attacked, and Sindawe beats up Bojask for kicks! It’s an action packed session where death lurks around every corner.

My mashing up of the classic Freeport Trilogy and the first chapters of the Second Darkness Adventure Path hits full stride in this session. I was somewhat surprised, but my old gaming group in Memphis cited the deathtrap in Terror in Freeport (the second Freeport adventure) as one of their most vivid memories. I had been tempted to ax it, as I'm not a big trap guy, but I ran it pretty much as written instead, and had the assassination they happen upon afterwards be crimelord Avery Slyeg's. Jesswin (the assassin who tried to kill Saul, and then got tortured by Tommy) is both the lure to the trap and the hitter, and the Splithog Pauper in there too!

Then, both in Terror and in Shadow in the Sky (the first adventure in Second Darkness), the next part is defending a friendly building against a large scale assault - in this case the Gold Goblin. A whole load more of previously-encountered NPCs show up for the fight - Braddikar Faje, Angvar, and Thuvalia. Probably the most entertaining part of the assault was the hard fight against the raging orc barbarian, who got greased and reduced and otherwise tampered with for a long time before he went down. Anyway, they give them all a good killing.

Sixteenth Session (13 page pdf) - "The Sitdown" - A meeting of all Riddleport's crimelords is held and Saul and the PCs are invited. Saul is given Avery Slyeg's empty seat at the table and they engage in negotiations with Riddleport's other "serious people" and their demented minions. It seems like things go well, except when they get sent on a simple message-delivery mission afterward, it's a trap! Business as usual in this sixteenth game session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

This was a role-play heavy session, which I enjoy. The big crime lord sit-down was inspired by like very Mafia movie ever made. It was an adaptation of the opening scene of Madness in Freeport, the third module in the Freeport Trilogy - but in that one, the Freeport Captain's Council holds a ball. A ball? Jeez, this is Riddleport. So instead we have a standard "goons around a table" meeting. It served a couple purposes. One was to give the PCs a glimpse into the larger power dynamics of Riddleport and also to meet personally all the movers and shakers now that they're a respectable level (character level and level of Infamy they've gained). Another is to help set up explanations for what's about to happen. In the Second Darkness Adventure Path as written, there's this whole 'the drow are behind it' subplot that I'm not using a bit of, instead going for more of a motivation/plot from Freeport using the location and NPCs of Riddleport - although the perceptive will notice some Freeport originals making their way in (Milos, Anton Mescher, Karl the Kraken...) .

Running it all this way has let me use recurring characters a lot more. If you just run Freeport as written, there's a lot of "who the heck is this new guy" syndrome. But here, when Avery Slyeg (Riddleport's answer to Councilor Verlaine) is assassinated, it's two people the PCs are familiar with doing it. When they go to this crime lord sitdown, some of the people are new to them, but they know a lot of them. In fact the PCs were gratified to see that Clegg Zincher had to fill his third accompanying-minion slot with some low level goon since they took out his capp Braddikar Faje earlier. I worked in people they knew from earlier and tried to throw in other NPCs they'll be dealing with in the future like Captain Grudge.

One of my general rules of GMing is "use the same NPC when you can!" It's analagous to the theory of Chekov's Gun. That's the one place where I felt like the original Freeport trilogy kinda fell down - it kept putting in new hapless guys to rescue (Lucius, Egil, Thuron) and so I've collapsed all three of them into one character (Samaritha). Well, I had Vincenz standing on for Lucius but he got offed.

So now the PCs realize they're Marked for Death (tm)! They're not sure what to do. "Bust in and kill Saul" is one of the leading options under discussion, but I'm worried that's because two of the players know "that's what's supposed to happen next" in Second Darkness. Like I said, I'm using NPCs and encounters from SD but have pretty much already totally left its plot behind. But I guess we'll find out - tomorrow!

I recently discovered this Campaign Journal and I think it's awesome! I've read the entire journal this past week, and I'm hoping there'll be another update soon. :)

I recently discovered this Campaign Journal and I think it's awesome! I've read the entire journal this past week, and I'm hoping there'll be another update soon. :)

You're in luck, we have a backlog! Here comes a double session summary now.

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Sessions (14 page pdf) – “Fleeing Riddleport” and “Beyond the Towers” – In this special double summary, the PCs flee Riddleport with shadows, gendarmes, and half-orc enforcers on their heels. Samaritha suddenly comes out with a whole bunch of information about how they need to go to an ancient ruin deep inland in Varisia called Viperwall. They are suspicious, but go anyway. The trip is pleasant, and an old voodoo mambo living in the swamp gives them some aid. Then, it’s into the ancient trap-infested ruins of a lost culture!

Seventeen

Sadly, Session Seventeen's original writeup was lost in an untoward laptop OS reinstall incident. We put it back together as best as we could, but of course it is a bit more brief. The PCs fled Riddleport after discovering all the crime lords voted to have them whacked. The group disagreed as to how guilty Saul was in all this. Some felt that he had betrayed them and should die; others felt that he was stuck in a situation where he had no choice and did the best he could.

The trip, though reasonably uneventful, was fun. There are two things that PCs can't get enough of - shopping and goblins. I had the new Adventurer's Armory book and threw in some random weird stuff for them to find - naturally, they bought about everything. I think their favorite was Sindawe's purchase of a set of cold iron brass knuckles crudely engraved with "Elf Puncher" - ELFPU on one hand and NCHER on the other.

I don't let PCs buy just anything they want; common equipment is readily available but if you're looking for people to have unusual stuff (especially magic) "on hand" then there's a lot of random chance involved. You can commission things, if you plan to be around and not be dead or in jail in a week or so, which is a sadly uncommon state for player characters.

They then had a pretty calm trip upriver. So calm that they were getting a little stir crazy, when a batch of goblins appeared. They were all stuffed into a washtub they were using as a boat to tow a bloated cow corpse somewhere. There was a fire going in the tub for unspecified reasons. This captured the PCs' imagination like no one's business, and they ended up betting on who could shoot the most goblins. There was zero danger in this encounter; goblins are incompetent in general and they only had a couple bows between the lot of them. Good old redneck style fun.

Everyone really enjoyed the session. I find that to often be the case - shopping and travel and the other "mundane" parts of life bring out the role-playing and world immersion in folks, and they really get into it. It never fails to surprise me, but in previous campaigns as well I've had PCs have a great time going through bazaars and shops finding random stuff to buy. It's a popular recreation in real life too, I reckon.

Eighteen

I had a little fun with this one. After the previous session, I remembered the other thing besides shopping and goblin abuse that groups always love - and that's hating gnomes. Nilbog the trapper is the typical crazy gnome, and I borrowed liberally from various movies to spice it up.

Nilbog's Trapper Song was taken from the awesome Cannibal: The Musical (Trey Parker's first feature length film). Watch it to get the full experience! (I replaced "Eskimo" with "Wendigo" to make it more Golarion friendly but otherwise it was usable as written!)

Watch the Trapper Song

And his crazed raccoon and trunk full of rabbits in his boat was taken from another great movie, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges). Start watching about 4 minutes in.

And to be honest some of this adventure was inspired by the Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog." The voodoo mambo who was living in the boat in the tree was inspired by Mama Odie, and Glapion is inspired by Doctor Faciler (at least in part).

I combined two adventures as part of the dungeon - Beyond the Towers, a Green Ronin adventure, which served as the layout for the swamp and the human temple of Viperwall, and Madness in Freeport, which gave us the serpent temple. And replaced the lizard guys in the swamp in BtT with boggards, the classic Varisian marsh threat.

More next time!

Double session summary was well worth the wait. What I like most about your campaign journal is you do a great job at balancing writing an entertaining narrative and still giving a good feel as to what actually happened at the game table. Hearing things like "Summon a snorkel of dolphins to..." immediately makes me chuckle as it's the sort of crazy quote I'd hear around my table. Looking forward to the further adventures of your crew.

Double session summary was well worth the wait. What I like most about your campaign journal is you do a great job at balancing writing an entertaining narrative and still giving a good feel as to what actually happened at the game table. Hearing things like "Summon a snorkel of dolphins to..." immediately makes me chuckle as it's the sort of crazy quote I'd hear around my table. Looking forward to the further adventures of your crew.

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy them. It's a long held tradition in our gaming group. It serves as "what happened previously" notes for us, entertainment for the public, and writing practice/staying awake duty for the scribe.

And you're in luck; session 19 is up and we've already played session 20 and just await its writeup to be complete!

Nineteenth Session (10 page pdf) – “Viperwall” – The ancient human ruins of Viperwall give way to even more ancient serpentfolk ruins beneath. And a shadow-cursed high priest of that race asks Serpent for help! Traps, shadows, demons, and ancient artifacts abound, but there is nothing more dangerous than another PC. Check out the hot PvP action in this installment.

This episode is a good example of how to successfully weave together published scenarios into a campaign. I combined two adventures as part of the dungeon - Beyond the Towers, a Green Ronin adventure, which served as the layout for the swamp and the human temple of Viperwall, and Madness in Freeport, which gave us the subterranean serpent temple. (I'm doing the same thing with Second Darkness in general... Riddleport yay, meteor and drow nonsense boo).

Where they have elements that support your themes - like the shadows in the serpent temple - you keep it. Where they have elements that don't - like the lizardy guys BtT placed in the swamp - you change it (to boggards, the classic Varisian swamp threat, in my case). The players were surprised to find out that the upper/human temple and the lower/serpent temple were taken from completely different adventures, and that's the way you want it.

The PCs faced some decent fights this session, but the biggest one was when Wogan got dominated by a statue magic trap thingy and unloaded on the party. He wasn't going to kill anyone, but they had to be careful with hurting their priest, and he was blowing valuable spells and channels on them.

Next time, the dungeon crawl reaches its conclusion! I am not really a huge dungeon fan, truth be told, but they're good as one element in a complete mix.

Twentieth Session (10 page pdf) - "The Lower Temple" - As the party continues to wind deeper into the ancient serpentfolk temple beneath Viperwall, there's investigation, puzzles, and loads of undead threat. Then the group faces the avatar of the semi-dead god Ydersius. Death looms near for our favorite Ulfen snake lover... All in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Beware, there are plenty of spoilers for Green Ronin's Madness in Freeport adventure, from which the serpent temple was taken. And you may want to brush up on the previous couple summaries; there's a lot in here that ties in with previous events but it's not expanded on in the summary all the time.

After many levels of the "Upper Temple," what was the human area of Viperwall, the Reavers have made it down into the "Lower Temple," of ancient serpentfolk provenance. And it's big. Last time they hit four of its levels, and each one gets larger as they descend. This time, it's levels five and six.

I think it was a bit unexpected to the PCs that the shadows (which usually attack them) of the serpent men (which usually attack them) were only sometimes hostile; mostly they were caught in their own mildly crazed, shade-trapped existence and the group talked with some of them, ignored some of them, and fought some of them. It was a lot more interesting than a "kill a billion shadows" dungeon crawl.

Here's one weakness I have though - I'm terrible at riddles. I knew the riddle in the scenario sucked, but I couldn't think a better one up (and had been off the plane from California for only like 8 hours when I had to run the session and hadn't had prep time to search something out). And it was made worse by Wogan legitimately guessing "egg!" even before Sseth spouted his riddle (fricking Gollum...). Ah well, an easy win for Wogan.

The group finally released the high priestess trapped in the mirror. She's from thousands of years ago. In traditional adventurer style they went through fits of just wanting to kill her and take her stuff despite her not being overly hostile (she wasn't overly friendly either - last time she knew she was high priestess of a huge civilization, and now suddenly she's among a bunch of scruffy nerf herders in skull makeup looting the place). They settled for beating her down and taking her stuff. Things were going OK with only threats of violence until Serpent rolled a 1 on his Diplomacy roll trying to convince her of the situation; that made her decide they were just tomb robbers. Her high level spells are gone since her god is mostly-dead (they nearly crapped themselves when they realized she tried to cast dictum on them) but her low-level ones and her serpent style kung fu made a decent showing of it.

I am up for suggestions here actually - so far she's still with them, and I'd like to depict well someone who is from a wildly different, ancient culture. She only speaks Aklo of course, so communication is only via Samaritha (and Serpent, in this chapter) - I'm trying to come up with less verbal stuff for her to do - I don't know, weird habits, eating rituals, smacking people for weird stuff - to help depict that she's very different.

The snake fight is short in the summary but the thing did horrific amounts of damage to people - bite, grab, and constrict and away go the hit points. Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to not die (he wanted to get a lot more out of it, but he waited until he had taken enough damage to go past -10, so an emergency save is all it got him). I think Sindawe might have spent one too. Well, that's what they're for.

In the end, they broke the curse, freed the shades of the serpent priests, collapsed the temple, and got the idol! Wictory! So now with idol and priestess in tow, and a delay poison wand to get them safely past the poison gas the ruin weeps outside, they're heading out to return to Riddleport and prevent the arcane nastiness! But it's not going to be that simple...

Ancient snake style kung-fu eh?

One way you can play up her cultural differences is as a female version of the ancient master. The kind that believes their culture, race and gender are superior. She's not afraid to show it and live it - think Remo Williams ancient master, or the ancient master from Kill Bill.

The language barrier could stay in place. Don't be afraid to pull a 13th Warrior scene as the XPs pile up and she gains a level. She riffs off a well-timed culturally-biased insult in Common / Varisian / whatever language the characters talk between themselves in with the attendant explanation.

I would consider that she would undertake efforts to requisition pertinent divine spell scrolls (resurrection can reach back a dozen or more centuries depending upon how many 'thousands' of years are involved) by crook or by hook if she determines that is an achievable goal. Since the mad shades are target-able ... and her Gawd is only 'mostly' dead ... well, she has at least two major long-term goals to work towards.

Ancient snake style kung-fu eh?

One way you can play up her cultural differences is as a female version of the ancient master. The kind that believes their culture, race and gender are superior. She's not afraid to show it and live it - think Remo Williams ancient master, or the ancient master from Kill Bill.

Good idea. The trick will be balancing that with Serpent's desire to just up and kill her. More on that next time...

Twenty-first Session (9 page pdf) - "Voodoo Man" - As the party departs the ruins of Viperwall, the voodoo bokor Glapion catches up with them. He summons forces from the spirit world to destroy them; in an epic battle they defeat him by main force and a little voodoo of their own. Then it's back to Magnimar where they meet up with some old friends!

The fight with Glapion took about three hours. He kept summoning shadows and shadow creatures, and the players fought and fought. It was an excellent endurance fight. I did some voodoo research to prepare for the big event; he invoked various Petro loas during the battle (like Kalfou, Samedi, and various Simbi loa) to trigger appropriate powers.

Here's Glapion's character sheet. I wanted him to be able to summon shadow spirits, as that's one of the themes of the campaign, so I made him an Oracle of Bones (from the Paizo Advanced Player's Guide preview) with levels in the 3.5e prestige class "Master of Shrouds."

I think he came off very well. Even though the spark of inspiration, I will admit, was from seeing Disney's "Princess and the Frog" with my daughter, this is how he appeared (the art is from a comic called Doctor Voodoo). Reskinning foes is so easy, you can find the core of an idea and then hang whatever visuals you want on it. I made him very exotic, from his hunga munga to his gunpowder-infused bottle of rum.

Once he reached the end of his powers and the shadow demon came into play, things got hairy. It magic jarred Tommy and started to telekinetically toss around other PCs. That was entertaining.

Then the rest of the session was travel and roleplay. They went back to the interracial-friendly town of Nybor and interacted with their semi-insane gnomish swamp guide, then went back to Magnimar where they met their good old buddy, Thalios Dondrel, son of Mordekai!

There was also an important development with Sindawe. He had an Angel Heart-esque sexual encounter (walls bleeding, snakes writhing, etc.) with a kava store clerk who turned out to be Mama Watanna, the "old voodoo mambo" from the ship in the tree at the beginning of their foray into Viperwall. This is also courtesy of my research; Mama Watanna is effectively a Golarion-ized aspect of Mami Wata, well-known African water deity. Mami Wata is known to take lovers, and give them good luck in exchange for their fidelity; that's basically what happened to Sindawe.

Sindawe is Mwangi (Golarion's Africa) and venerates Shimye-Magalla, a janiform deity that is also partially goddess of the water, but he hasn't put 2 and 2 together on that yet.

You know, there's a lot of people out there apparently, grown adults, that don't do any kind of adult themes or "icky sex" in their games. And that's their huge loss. The vast majority of real world myth, fiction, etc. strongly incorporates sex/love/romance, human frailties, the horrors that men do, etc. - that's what gives them their impact. I mean, if you just want to "play casual" and kick down doors and kill orcs, fine, but I got over that after my first ten years of playing RPGs...

Anyway, the session went really well - hardcore combat, hardcore roleplay. Can you believe it's 21 sessions? We're nearly at a year. As I keep telling them, "you'll be done with the first chapter of Second Darkness any session now..."

Another exceellent write-up of piratesque adventure. The showdown with Glapion was great. And "We all go get tattoos ..." was a very fitting way to end the session :)

Another exceellent write-up of piratesque adventure. The showdown with Glapion was great. And "We all go get tattoos ..." was a very fitting way to end the session :)

Thanks man! And yeah, I like when people start getting into their characters enough they start doing the "little things" that real people would do. You'll get that in spades in the next installment, where a visit to an inn becomes Frat Party Gone Bad in pretty short order.

Twenty-second Session (12 page pdf) – “A Dreadful Dawn” – After a daring and violent escape from Magnimar and the Hellknights, the party goes to find the cursed son of a dead pirate to get the secret to entering the smuggler’s caves under the Riddleport Light. When they find him running an inn near Korvosa, however, they have to contend with a squad of cultists conducting a nighttime slaughter off the staff and patrons! If only they weren’t all so drunk…

The first part of the session was inspired by Chris (Sindawe) telling me how much he enjoyed the pirate movie "Nate and Hayes" and described a running land/sea fight with the heroes running around under bombardment. So I set out to reproduce that feel with the send-off the Wandering Dagger got in Magnimar from the Hellknights!

I was half afraid that the PCs would go after the Paralictor himself, but they correctly divined that a Hellknight in bizarre armor with an enchanted adamantine halberd is probably more than, say, twice their level. They avoided that pier and headed down the other one to try to catch up with the Dagger - at first, they planned to commandeer a fishing boat but after a bit they saw there was no way they'd get it out in time so they fought their way onto a Magnimarian Navy ship that was firing on the Dagger and then boarded the Dagger from there. Very awesome!

The funniest part was when Tommy first leapt into the fishing boat and asked me, "Is there anyone in it?" As a DM, that is a cue to toss a random encounter into the mix, and rolled a fierce guard dog. This took Tommy aback, but Serpent jumped aboard and murdered the dog with a single shot. After that, the cries of "AND, they even KILLED the DOG!!!" were incessant.

So then they wanted to go back to the Riddleport Light to stop the evil deeds happening there, which I'm mixing together from Madness in Freeport, the third installment in Green Ronin's Freeport trilogy, and Shadow In The Sky, the first chapter in Paizo's Second Darkness Adventure Path. But I wanted them to have to work for it (and I needed more time to work up the grand finale) so Captain Clap sent them on the track of the man who could get them into the smuggler's caves under the Light - Jaren the Jinx.

There's all kinds of weird synergies in RPG products that make them entertaining to remix. In Freeport, the sea caves are Black Dog's Caves, named after a dead pirate. In the Pathfinder NPC Guide, there's a cursed pirate named Jaren the Jinx whose father is a dead pirate named Black Dog. Cha-ching! I decided he was trying to retire from pirating and was running an inn. I wanted to walk a narrow line with him - a bit of a sad sack that does have bad luck and some bad judgment (hence Thalios Dondrel's explanation of "Because he's a dumb a&@+*~$, that's why!" to all queries about Jaren) but is also a, say, sixth level pirate who's the son of a really famous pirate. I think it came off OK. Also, I made it where Jaren was missing his arm, not only because it adds to the pathetic aspect but also because I'm using him as a hook to run the Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure "Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper" next time!

The whole serial killer thing in the inn is from the Atlas Games module A Dreadful Dawn (on sale for $2 on paizo.com!). They were basically there at the behest of a minion of the Shark God - something I'm using to bridge Jaren's backstory (a pirate called the Shark Lord was Black Dog's nemesis) and the upcoming Sinister Games release Razor Coast (if it ever actually releases). It wasn't intended to be too difficult, which is good because the PCs decided to drink themselves into abject stupors beforehand.

That whole thing was really entertaining. It wasn't a surprise - the bartender said "sip it!" and they quickly realized that drinking Grandma's Secret Recipe required continually escalating Fort saves with decent INT damage and being sickened for each one you miss - but they didn't care. Sindawe and Thalios quit and staggered away, INT-drained and vomiting, but Serpent and Wogan were determined to get to the bottom of the jar of moonshine or die trying, and they both drank themselves to 0 INT. This caused quite a stir at the bar, since basically four guys walked up to the bar, grabbed big jars of turpentine, and just slammed them and were vomiting and/or unconscious in less than a minute. And then, rather than be concerned about the pretty good likelihood that they'd die of alcohol poisoning, Thalios and Sindawe haul the two upstairs, strip them, put them in bed together, and scrawl things like "I Like Cock" on their faces. Pirates really are the medieval equivalent of frat boys. Luckily that was early afternoon, so by 2 AM when the killing started they were up to 2 INT and could stagger around and try to fight people.

In the end, Jaren's girlfriend, staff, and some of his patrons were killed. Ah well, all's well that ends well! Next time, and old school dungeon crawl extraordinaire!

Aught to have them doing the dungeon crawl at a 2 or 3 INT ... ^_^

Hopefully the doors won't outsmart them.

Hopefully the doors won't outsmart them.

I ran the next session this last Sunday - sadly, at least one door did outsmart them. And they militantly refuse to invest in Knowledge skills (even though I make a point of asking for them all the time) so a low INT doesn't make them much worse at it really!

Twenty-third Session (10 page pdf) – “The Baneful Depths” – Jaren the Jinx wants his arm back, so the party accompanies him to a dungeon his pirate father sometimes used to stash treasure. Random encounter chart – 01-25: serpent chickens; 26-50: rape bugs; 51-75: bad dogs; 76-00 women!

We’re closing in on the finale of the first plot arc of the Reavers on the Seas of Fate campaign. I comboed up three major things for this session. First, the cultists, including the halfling riding the easy-chair-headed zombie, were from the adventure I used last time, Green Ronin’s “A Dreadful Dawn,” from their Bleeding Edge line of d20 adventures. Then for the “arm recovery” plot, I was using Goodman Games’ “Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper,” from their Wicked Fantasy Factory line. Finally, for the meat of the dungeon, I used a randomly generated dungeon, courtesy of Dizzy Dragon Games’ awesome online Adventure Generator.

I really enjoyed using the random dungeon generator. The process of taking a completely random dungeon and turning it into something that seems ‘real’ is something I’ll post about separately because it’s a big topic, but I was very happy how it did most of the heavy lifting for me, and I just had to edit it and come up with the whys and wherefores. It turned into a pretty organic interconnected area, and since it was super old and all the doors had fallen down and everything, there was an interesting effect; instead of the “open a door, deal with that threat, open another door, deal with that threat” syndrome, there were a lot of locations with critters that could detect or be detected by the PCs at varying ranges. The hell hound mass rush, the rust monsters attacking when the PCs were investigating a pit, the rust monsters attacking while the group was ambushing some more hell hounds, and Sindawe running across the women adventurers while chasing a hell hound all contributed to a very free-roaming and dynamic environment. It was unlike an organized force, though, like attacking a castle where all the guards and stuff communicate and come after you with coherence. So, for example, the hell hounds ended up attacking some of the rust monsters as well.

The illusion of the adventuring party was entertaining. I use picture printouts clipped to my DM screen as visual aids for many NPCs and critters. For this one, I removed all the printouts and indicated the big raft of iconics that adorn the screen itself – Valeros, Seoni, Merisel, et cetera. it kinda tipped Sindawe off that the whole thing was an illusion, but the players’ initial reaction of “Really?!?” was worth it.

Twenty-fourth Session (9 page pdf) – “Throwdown With the Arm-Ripper” – The party works their way through the ruined complex to an ancient druidic shrine, only to meet two of Jaren’s old friends – a witch and the Arm-Ripper! Is Jaren’s missing arm a coincidence? Hint: no!

We finished up with my randomly generated dungeon and kicked into Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper. I have a soft spot for those Wicked Fantasy Factory adventures – they need work, but they shine in the setpieces.

Before that, they ran across a sleeping cave bear. “We’ll sneak up on it and kill it,” they declared. I took a look at the dire bear stats and shuddered. Even with the sleeping perception penalty, there was a real good chance that with three PCs sneaking up, one of them would be heard, and if that thing woke up in close quarters with the three PCs, someone was going to get ripped to bits. But they all snuck up successfully and all executed coup de graces. The bear was tough, and it rolled TWO natural 20s on its Fort saves – but luckily, it failed its third.

The interaction with Gilmy the ettin was entertaining. They thought he was maybe some druidic guardian, and that his forehead scars were maybe lobotomy scars – they weren’t, they were a plot point, and he had been turned from a human into a mutated ettin by Mythra and the altar (also used the same way to make the Arm-Ripper).

And then it was The Big Fight. A freaky altar! An Arm-Ripper! A witch (druid, really)! A wolf! The Arm-Ripper and Mythra weren’t all that hard per se, but the altar goes nuts when there’s violence and strong emotions going on and it kept affecting the environment, raising and/or animating dead foes, etc.

In the end, it resurrected Mythra but everyone else was dead and she didn’t have the starch to keep fighting. She surrendered and helped them regrow Jaren’s arm and make the dragon helm (it’s probably for the best that they didn’t have to rely on their Knowledge skills).

So, mission successful! Now it’s back to Riddleport for the grand finale of the first main plot arc.

Twenty-fifth Session (8 page pdf) – “Return to Madness” – First, a bunch of goblins attacks our brave heroes’ genital regions. Then, they sail back to Riddleport, where the re-dedication of the Riddleport Light is set to begin. It’s into Black Dog’s caves and thence to the lighthouse! But as you’d suspect, it’s not going to be that easy. Thrill to this, the twenty-fifth session of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

The “Junk-Kicker” tribe is from the Goodman Games/Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper. Strangely, in that adventure, they don’t actually kick anyone in the balls. This is a significant oversight in my opinion, so I rectified it. And a quick Google search for “goblins with big iron boots” got an image I used for their chief, Krik Junk-Kick [pdf character sheet].

His tribe surrounded the PCs like the natives surrounded Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark; then half of them shrieked fiercely and kicked the other half in the balls as a show of force. This made a big impression on the PCs. And itheir “junk-kicking” attack even has a simple in-game implementation, the new “Dirty Trick” maneuver from the new Advanced Player’s Guide! Yay Pathfinder!

(Careful readers will note that I foreshadowed this with the story the two doppleganger “girls” told the PCs when they met them in the dungeon, that all the men of their village were too scared to fight the Junk-Kicker goblins so they had to go.)

You’d think 30 goblins would be a challenge, but I know my PCs. Sure, they’re fourth level, but I had confidence that it would be a pretty easy fight. The most dangerous part, really, was that one goblin tried to run off with Sindawe’s thrown magic spear during the battle. Threaten their gear, that’ll get them motivated! And this encounter threatened their gear in several different ways, if you get my meaning.

After that, they sailed back to Riddleport. I did up some random encounters on the way there using some of the tables in the also-new GameMastery Guide, including the stranded “Heartbreak” Hinsin, who immediately started to compete with Thalios Dondrel for the favor of Hatshepsut. She didn’t really groove on either one, but was more favorable towards Thalios. Although there’s a little episode that didn’t get into the summary; Thalios and Hatshepsut went ashore in Roderick’s Cove and he put some moves on her and she didn’t like it; she went back to the ship upset and Sindawe tried to figure out what was wrong and comfort her, in his own somewhat clumsy way.

Then they get into Black Dog’s Caves! More about that next time, but they fight a tojanida, which just about takes out Sindawe – Hatshepsut comes to his rescue and lifeguards him to shore – and then a dread allip comes for them.

It ended with them finding the fake treasure room. The dialogue there isn’t made up; when Sindawe and Tommy scouted ahead and saw all those treasure chests, Sindawe immediately started shouting, “Don’t come in here! We’re having gay sex! Really gay sex! We’ll be out in a while!” Of course, that caused the rest of them to come running.

Next time – Reavers turns one year old!

Whoops, and by "Thalios Dondrel" I mean "Jaren the Jinx."

Twenty-sixth Session (8 page pdf) – “Black Dog’s Caves” – The haunting is thick in the sea caves used by infamous pirate Black Dog to hide his treasure. Last time, the group fought Redlegs his first mate (now a dread allip); this time they face the ghost of Black Dog himself! And huge chests of loot hang in the balance! It’s the anniversary installment of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

You know how in Ghostbusters, Egon describes the increase in ghost activity in Twinkie terms? “Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning’s sample, it would be a Twinkie… thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.” Well, it’s becoming clear to our heroes (and I use the term loosely) that they are in Big Twinkie territory.

I didn’t actually expect them to fight the ghost of Black Dog, and when they did, I didn’t really expect them to win, as he was like a twelfth level guy as a ghost… But they did! Good on them. They got a huge amount of loot out of it. On the other hand, I knew exactly who was going to respond to Black Dog’s geas – “WHICH ONE OF YE WANTS TO BE A PIRATE THEY WILL SING SONGS ABOUT AFTER HE’S DEAD?!?” has Tommy Blacktoes written all over it. They’re all violent psychopaths (well, maybe not Wogan) and Sindawe has emerged as the group’s leader, but Tommy is the one who is balls out on board with being a pirate.

Here’s Black Dog’s ghost courtesy of one of my Google image searches; I think it’s from one of the Monkey Island games or something.

I may have mentioned it before, but it is fascinating to me how Black Dog has emerged in my game. In the Madness in Freeport adventure, these sea caves are referred to as “Black Dog’s caves” but it doesn’t go into that much. But then, in the Pathfinder NPC Guide supplement, the pirate “Jaren the Jinx” has a backstory where his father was “the infamous pirate Black Dog.” That tells me that fate is at work. As a result, it let me foreshadow Black Dog via Jaren for months now, which gives his appearance more impact, and now his geas makes him an ongoing part of the game. Woot DMing!

Then, Samaritha kisses Serpent! And ghost bat swarms nearly kill him! And tentacle monsters attack! You know, a day in the life.

Finally they reach the Riddleport Light and head into it, only to be accosted by a five-headed hydra sporting a Tiamat color scheme. More on the lighthouse next time… Enjoy the session summary!

Twenty-seventh Session (11 page pdf) – “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” – It’s a mixed field of angels, demons, and ghosts as the PCs sweep and clear the Riddleport Light looking for an evil ritual. I mean, an evil ritual besides the ones they are performing. That’s a big Twinkie. Welcome to the one year anniversary of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

As my adaptation of Madness in Freeport progresses, I used the Goodman Games/Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” to flesh out the lighthouse. In MiF it’s just a boring new lighthouse, but the Riddleport Light is old and was the hangout of a demon summoning sorcerer. Which calls for some “zazz!”

May I note that a lot of the Goodman stuff is on super-sale at Paizo.com, the WFF adventures are currently $2 a pop – go get them! They’re good stuff.

Anyway, there’s all kinds of weirdness going on. Time is speeding up and slowing down. Everyone that has ever died in the zip code seems to be coming back as a ghost. Every weird little altar seems to have a direct line to Deity Central. Who ya gonna call? The Reavers!

First we had a big setpiece fight with a mess of Riddleport gendarmes guarding the inside of the tower, which was fun. Then they find the Naughty Box. I don’t even remember which movie I saw this scene in; I remember an iron box in a big room simply surrounded with crosses and stuff. Here, it was surrounded with all kinds of evil stuff. They freed an angel from it but it was a little crazy. Wogan did a good job of wrangling it; Tommy and Sindawe are evil after all so it tended to shoot at them when in doubt. Then when the imp showed up, it made for some good roleplaying. Sindawe made the call to give the succubus to the imp after having her kill the angel. Wogan wasn’t all that happy with it but everyone defers to Sindawe. Even if he is a little demon-possessed and crazy.

Then they talk down the ghost of Gebediah Crix and meet their two cop friends. I wanted to throw in a familiar face to reassert that they are in Riddleport and not just some remote dungeon location. Next time, it’s the big finale! They’re prepared to bust through the door and take on Elias Tammerhawk. Will it be that simple? Hint: no! Mmmmwah hah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Twenty-eighth Session (13 page pdf) - "Madness in Riddleport" - The PCs confront Elias Tammerhawk and his evil ritual in an epic battle atop the Riddleport Light. But that's nothing compared to the secrets they uncover after they are sucked into the spirit world! Will Riddleport, and our Reavers, survive? Find out in the grand finale of the first season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Go read the summary first, there's surprises a-plenty, and you don't want to find them out from my behind the scenes commentary here.

No really, read the summary first.

Back? OK! I mashed up a bunch of stuff for this finale. The boss fight itself combines the Green Ronin classic Madness in Freeport, where it's a serpent man posing as the Sea Lord in the lighthouse conducting a Cthulhuoid ritual to drive everyone in Freeport crazy, with the first chapter of Paizo's Second Darkness Adventure Path, where it's a drow using the Cyphergate to bring down a meteor and cause an incidental tsunami. "Which one should I use?" is a question only suckers ask. A hardcore GM says, "Both, b$#@~, and here's a third thing too!"

In this case, my third thing was the PCs' jaunt into the spirit world. Whatever you want to call it - shadow Riddleport, the ghostlands, the spirit realm - it's what has been tying together the shadows and voodoo stuff going on in the campaign. And in terms of good places to go into the shadowlands, Riddleport is one of those places with a lot of restless souls per capita. In fact, the PCs sent a lot of them there.

It was inspired by two things. In Denizens of Freeport, there is an NPC, a crazy elven vampire named Lord Bonewrack, who reigns over a shadow Freeport. Tammerhawk just being dead is lame, but being the vampiric overlord of an alternate Riddleport is cool. And then also the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away inspired some of the visuals and experiences in the city. (My daughter wanted the tasty food stand from the movie to be in the adventure; she was disappointed that Wogan resisted its lure and thus didn't get attacked by the "fire-barfing piggies." Those who have seen the movie know about the food stand and the pigs, but she added in the "fire-barfing" part to kick it up a notch. A girl after her father's heart.

The shadow Riddleport scene served several important purposes. Sure, it gave them some valuable intel on Tammerhawk. But it was also an opportunity to reinforce important story elements, especially past successes and failures and how past choices and experience have shaped the PCs' lives.

They talked about going into the Gold Goblin's basement but thought better of it when they remembered that was where the fighting pit was. Which was good thinking, because just going down there and seeing the ghostly horror resulting from that would have been a 1d4 Wis loss!

Then they got to meet the "real" Elias Tammerhawk. I'm glad they didn't attack him, that could have been messy.Facing the dead assassin Jesswin (who was technically a "blast shadow," a new Pathfinder monster) was lively - Tommy had to spend an Infamy Point to not die under her flaming claws. (A lot of Infamy Points got spent - Wogan used one to knock the serpent head out of the column of light, for example.)

And then bang, right back into the fight! I liked the "You're in the middle of a huge combat and... Now you're somewhere weird. NOW YOU'RE BACK GO!" The time dilation of the spirit world meant I didn't need to worry about their buffs expiring or whatnot.

Here's a funny game table moment - when Thorgrim shattered the glass of the lighthouse letting the storm in, Wogan did proclaim the power of Gozreh was unleashed.

Paul, thinking this was a result of some actual game mechanic effect, asked Patrick "Oh, cool, what power do you get as a cleric of Gozreh when you're in a storm?"

Patrick replied, "I get wet."

The revelation of both the fake Tammerhawk and Samaritha worked out well. Serpent (well, his player) suspected it, but the rest of the guys didn't. They did catch on really quick that she wasn't in cahoots with Tammerhawk though. She fled in shame, Hatshepsut couldn't bring herself to attack a serpent person, Zincher bailed out to "go get reinforcements", and Thorgrim was convinced that the man he thought he was supposed to be protecting was really an impersonating monster freak! Sindawe and Wogan managed to rejoin it idol and the seven glyphs worth of charge in the Cyphergate shot out in a bolt of energy (in my mind, somewhat resembling the gravity-lens superweapons from the anime Super Atragon, if anyone has seen that) boiling the ocean as it streaked to the south.

It wasn't mandated that Tammerhawk get away - I actually thought they might pursue him down and do a chase across the Cyphergate, but then it turned out no one had any spider climb or feather fall or anything to do that. I was a little surprised; Tommy is always buying spider climb potions but I reckon he was out. And then their gendarme friend Salvadora showed up.

Interestingly enough it was Sindawe who chased down Samaritha to talk to her - sure, he's twice as fast as Serpent, but it didn't seem to even occur to Serpent. We'll see how it goes with him - she can run off, stay with the party, or do anything in between based on how things develop.

Tammerhawk's escape was a little bit of a letdown to the PCs, but the expected denouement didn't happen - instead, a tsunami came! Paul (Serpent) and Patrick (Wogan) knew what it means when the tide goes out like that, but Serpent made a poor Knowledge:Nature check and figured it was normal. Poor portly Wogan just about didn't make it to the top of the lighthouse. I actually thought they'd flee into the city instead, but they reckoned the lighthouse was far up enough on the bluff that it'd make it through.

So in the end of the first "season" of Reavers, they've succeeded but at a high cost - both personal (friends lost) and practical (Riddleport is in a very post-Katrina state at the moment).

And that's the end of my first big plot arc. Based on what's happened and what the PCs intend to do next will determine where I go with it. Piracy on the high seas, with Razor Coast and maybe Sunken Empires? Off to the Mwangi coast and head into the Serpent's Skull AP? Do more around Riddleport and use Freeport and Second Darkness adventures? We'll see, but I know what I'm doing next time - our next game day is on Halloween, so be prepared for a Very Special Episode (tm) of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Whoops, that last session summary link went bad when I updated the PDF. Here's the new one: http://mxyzplk.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/session_summary_10-17-2010.pdf

I've started a new thread for Season Two - follow along here!

Awesome wrap-up to the Season 1 storyline. Now that I offically have enough free time to regularly peruse the boards I'm going to dive in to Season 2.