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Woohoo! My long-awaited campaign has finally begun. Back in '05, I ran Shackled City to completion, and a while ago I decided I wanted to run it again. However, my old gaming group is scattered all over now, so that was easier said than done.
We decided to use maptools, and thanks to all the fine folks in the community, I managed to find a bunch of cool maps, side trek ideas, etc., so I know this time around will be even more fun than the first. Of course, it still took months before we finally got around to starting this bad boy.
The best part of maptools, imo, is that it can be saved for posterity. I decided to share our first session here.
If you see a map you made, then know that you have my sincerest gratitude for your fine work!
There are only two players in this campaign, and one of them wasn't available for the first session. However, I'm letting them fill out their party with iconics (they chose Lini and Seoni). I gave Lini and Seoni slightly different attitudes than prescribed in their pregen stats, but I guess that's the GM's prerogative. ;)
The player's character is a human swashbuckler (from Tome of Secrets), and he was a pirate until he was caught by authorities near Sasserine (I transplanted all of the necessary locations from Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide into Golarion). After torture and watching his captain hanged, he decided to head inland for a time. After arriving in Cauldron, he met Lini and Seoni, who were on a mission to get to the bottom of the mysterious kidnappings...
Had to insert Lini's hawk all "Order of the Stick"-style, since I had completely forgotten about it last time. The second player couldn't make it again, but he should be joining next time. In the meantime, Shackled City is proving to be just as deadly as I remember...
Had to alter Orbius & Kazmojen's relationship to avoid a TPK (though in truth no one actually died, mostly thanks to the new Pathfinder rule of allowing characters to live until negative Con). Second player manage to show up halfway through the session. We finished Chapter One, and they've already cleared out the first level of Drakthar's lair.
Also, one of the players truly learned to hate Valeros, since I played him like someone who has a Wisdom of 8. He traded him out for Lini once he had enough gold to raise her, vowing to never allow the boorish and foolishly impetuous fighter adventure with them again.
In addition, I instituted Fate Points, altered slightly from the Conan D20 system. Gaining 1 per session, a Fate Point can be spent as a free action to auto confirm a crit, do max dmg for a successful hit, or immediately grant 25 hps. (One of the player's character would have died at the claws of a worg in Drakthar's Way had he not spent a Fate Point.)
Cool! I am glad to see that you all are having fun with this.
Heck yeah! I'm officially a fan of MapTools. In fact, I don't know if I want to go back to tabletop.
@Fate Points: Yeah, my group really needs them. I tend to run dynamic dungeons, so once they start making a lot of noise (easy to do, since one of the PCs has a frickin' gun), it ends up being one massive battle.
Got through the Demonskar Ball, though I changed it a bit. Not so much a "ball" as a gathering before the Flood Festival began. Just a chance to meet all the nobles and named NPCs, really. Also, I threw in a bunch of the Shackleborn, because I like to set things up like that. ;)
They also played some poker, so I've included some quick rules I made to handle that (it went over pretty well).
Next session isn't until the 13th, but we might be getting another player or two...
Hi HW!
Could you perhaps tell us a bit more about a gaming session, like how many hours are you on, how much is edited in the session report before you upload it, it online combat tedious or can you keep pace with tabletop gaming?
Hi SoEgern!
We typically play 4-5 hours, though we've went over a couple times. This last session was for just under 5 hours. I edit out probably 80% of the chatlog, since some is off-topic chatter and a lot is simply dice rolls. Online combat, though, goes much smoother, I've found, and the group stays on track and in character far more than when we play in person. There seems to be a much higher immersion factor because of the visuals.
My campaigns tend to be deadly, because I can't run a static dungon. If the PCs are making a lot of noise, I can't help but send the rest of the critters running (you should see one of the earlier synopses where they invaded Drakthar's Way--the first level turned into one giant battle, thanks to one of the PC's gun).
The first time I ran SCAP with another group of PCs, they split up when they got to the Lucky Monkey, deciding to attack from the front and the rear simultaneously. That was a lot of fun for me. =) The group in the front got swamped by the thugs, and the group in the back was ambushed by the two dinosaurs, and then ran straight into Tongueeater and the baboons. I can't remember how many died, but that campaign was really lethal. I also don't believe in hiding rolls. I see all of their rolls (obviously), but they also see all of mine (obviously I don't believe in fudging rolls, either).
This time around, I offered my PCs a one-time hp bonus equal to their Con scores and 1 Fate Point per session. That may sound like overkill, but we've narrowly avoided TPKs like three times already.
The group I have now is pretty clever, though, with a good grasp of tactics. The assault on the Kopru ruins should be interesting, but after that, I'm taking them on an old 1st-edition adventure (updated to PF, of course) that involves taking on an entire army while defending a keep (The Gauntlet), which I've been setting up since Chapter One. The player of Dallen went on this when I last GMed it... about 19 years ago (we were 12). It was pretty memorable, and I'm looking forward to it!
Well, the holidays threw us all for a loop. We only managed 1 session since December. Still on Chapter Three...
I have a feeling we'll be on hiatus for a while. But that's the main reason for these session synopses: I know my group well. We tend to start a new campaign, play quite frequently for a few months, lose motivation and start playing something else (video games, board games, another RPG, etc.), until the our hobbies bring us full circle and we want to play D&D/Pathfinder again.
This time, however, we'll be able to pick up where we left off rather than start something new (that's the idea, anyway).
Right now we're talking about taking a break and playing The Gauntlet module with pregen characters, which I've set up for MapTools and converted to PF. Should be fun!
After 7 sessions, I've decided to un-nerf a couple characters:
First, I'm raising the damage from Drace's pistol from 1d6 (exploding) to 2d6 (exploding). Second, one of Dallen's abilities from Swashbuckler (from the Tome of Secrets) is called Thrust, and it is basically like Sneak Attack, but it only works with piercing weapons. I'm giving him that damage on any hit he makes with a piercing weapon.
After 7 sessions of many combats, I decided they were just not putting out enough damage for their levels. While they managed to survive (thanks to Fate Points), it really slllooooowwwwwssss combat down to the point of making it feel redundant.
This should help even things out, especially since, as I mentioned, I play unstatic dungeons, and with that loud-ass gun, every first battle always ends up turning into ONE battle (them vs. the entire dungeon).
;)
We finally played again!
But why?
Why didn't you play for that long and why lose players and most important, why change it from Golarion to FR?
I'm just curious. :D
We didn't play for so long because we get easily distracted like that. ;)
We lost a player because our new gaming schedule changed from Sunday afternoons to early Sundays, and he likes to sleep in. But that's okay, because we gained two new players (old-school gamer buddies).
As for the FR switch: We've been getting nostalgic for the old days and decided to play AD&D 2nd Edition after the Shackled City campaign. We decided on FR. In preparation, I began stripping the maps from the Forgotten Realms Atlas program and putting them in MapTools and placing tokens throughout referring to which 2nd edition sourcebook contains info on that particular area.
Next, and the *really* ambitious part, I will place all 1st & 2nd edition adventures (including those from Dungeon Magazine) on the maps (i.e., I will place tokens that only I can see that state the name of the adventure, such as "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, lvls 1-3").
When we finally play, it will be the ultimate sandbox campaign. When the players move into a new area, any adventure that is their group level or lower will be open to them. So if they move into Waterdeep, there will be a token referring me to any and all Waterdeep sourcebooks, and additional tokens in the various areas of the city for any and all adventures possible there.
It will take a long time to complete, but Shackled City still has a loooong way to go, and these are the kinds of hobbies I like to do on my spare time anyway. ;)
Of course, I'm also adding other things to the Realms, too (like Thunder Rift and associated adventures and Greyhawk stuff, including the Free City, and Hommlet, and so on).
No deaths this time! What a miracle.
After four months and as many sessions, we finally finished James Jacobs's Flood Season! Now we started our first side adventure, The Gauntlet!
They have no idea what's in store for them...
Synopsis available here:
The next session isn't until the 22nd, but one of my players (the player of Dallen) gave me his character's history, so I thought I'd post it here along with the synopses for posterity:
Had five players this time! A record for this campaign (so far):
Now they are staying to defend the keep from the approaching fire giant and his large army!
Next session, the Siege of Adlerweg!!!
The siege has begun! They took out about 10% on the way in, held the breach briefly, and now are in a very desperate struggle. Two of the NPCs were killed (so far):
This adventure will most likely be finished next session (one way or another), then it's onto Chapter Four, The Zenith Trajectory!
Unfortuneatly I cannot figure out how to read your synopsis'. It asks me to download them, then requires me to sign up for something. It's late and seems to be a pain.
My groupp will be starting chapter 2 on Sunday. I do not know if you have this link, but I have found alot of invaluable info here
http://therpgenius.pbworks.com/Shackled-City-main-page
I wish I could have played this campaign, since I already ran Age of Worms, which was legendary.
I wish you guys all the fun you can stand.
Pat
" I like my Jack Daniels black, and my girls blonde"
Unfortuneatly I cannot figure out how to read your synopsis'. It asks me to download them, then requires me to sign up for something. It's late and seems to be a pain.
Yeah, that's really weird; some people tell me the same thing about 4shared, while others can download without a problem. I should probably find a better place to host anyway and compile them... I'll try that today and post up a link.
Okay, here is a compilation of session 1-11 on a new hosting site:
The party is currently between Chapters Three and Four, on a side adventure that was tied into the campaign (an updated and tweaked version of an old AD&D 1st Edition module called The Gauntlet).
I posted Session One up on Obsidian Portal! Takes a little time to get everything converted so I don't lose formatting, so it will be a while before they are all up:
Session Twelve! And our Obsidian Portal page is all up to speed now.
Special in-between-sessions synopsis!
My PCs made a stronghold, which allows them to make Aliases. This is a short little synopsis introducing the stronghold and the Alias mechanic.
Been on a break; we're going to start an in-person Conan/Earthdawn 3rd ED mashup campaign next weekend! This one has been on hold. Our next (tentative) session (Session 18) is scheduled for March 15th!
Obsidian Portal Link:
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/shackled-city-with-maptools
Info on our ED/Hyboria mashup:
http://www.redbrick-limited.com/cms/forum/index.php?topic=7699.0
Session Eighteen!
Obsidian Portal Link:
Session Nineteen will begin with Chapter 5!
I'm also going to add up a campaign on Obsidian Portal to cover our Game of Thrones Strategy Wargame using MapTools; we have 8 players, with all Houses accounted for except House Tully!