Here is the, slightly edited, introductory e-mail sent out to the prospective roster (of I believe 7 total players) for Crew 2 of the Savage Tide campaign that begins Saturday 1st December '07.
Here's the low-down for "Crew 2". 3 of you have already played through the first 2 chapters (more or less) of the "original" script while still in Crew 1, so we'll go with "The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde" to get everyone from 1st - 5th and heading into Chapter 3 of the Savage Tide Adventure Path.
Everyone starts of with "Book Standard" PHB 1st level characters. 4d6, best 3 dice, roll a stack of 6 and assign them as you see fit. No monster races, no templates, no level adjustment PC races (unless you want your characters to die real bad for some reason). Standard starting gold for your class - your choice of the starting 'kit' or throwing random dice as deliniated in the Equipment section of the PHB.
Books to reference for the campaign are as follows: PHB and PHB 2, Complete Warrior, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, Complete Adventurer, Complete Scoundrel, Unearthed Arcana (for class variants mainly, as well as Flaws and Traits). Keep in mind that the long-term campaign - while starting in a mountainous vale - heads onto the high seas and into ... unpleasant places thereafter, so a nautical capability is not a bad thing in the long run.
Prohibited: Leadership (unless the group 'boils down' to 4 players), Ur-Priest, class variants other than those in the books above, 'playable' races not in the PHB. I am discarding most of the 'house rules' that Crew 1 is dealing with, since we have enough players in Crew 2 with firing neurons to make a good game without them.
I advise generating 3 characters each to start with, at least in terms of race/ability scores/class selection - 2 as back up to the one you'll start the game with.
Be advised, I will be posting a blog/campaign journal from the GM's perspective on the campaign as it progresses. Do not fear, I never use a player's real name, although I do come up with a moniker/handle for each player that should carry through the entire campaign. If the players are interested, they are of course welcome to post a "player's perspective" blog/journal on the same forum. Ideally, such a moniker is inspired at the table. <g>
The basic gist of where the PCs are coming from is this:
You're all minor scions of whatever families you choose from Sasserine (at least 2 of the players on the roster have Player's Guides to the Savage Tide), sent packing to the northern mountainous hinterlands to avoid embarrassing one's families without getting too terribly close to the desolate wastelands on the other side of said mountains. (Or anything vaguely similar.) Naturally, such a band of childhood chums buddies up in the new place and attempts to make a name for themselves. Your secondary characters are also of a similar persuasion - thier exact physical location (unless your primary is brought back from beyond the veil) will be dependant upon where your primary buys a plot. If any are pushing up daises in the Vale, your secondary is in that area. If your primary gets all the way back to Sasserine with something to slap the old man around with, your secondaries are involved in Sasserine in some form or fashion.
The "Big Cities" are Cauldron and Sasserine - the Free City (among others) was extirpated about 2 years ago in an orgy of Writhing Doom. About the time your characters hope to return is just ~after~ the annual Wormfood Gathering (this is the second one), wherein all the seriously undesirable elements of the area that still live are rounded up from the outlying settlements of Cauldron and Sasserine as tribute to the Things to the far north/northeast and forcibly marched over those northern mountains into no-man's land, to be devoured alive or worse...
Exile is a serious punishment indeed for most ... far worse than the executioner's mace awaiting them at a headsman's block, or perhaps the mercifully quick death of a good length of rope and a gallows.
In the area your characters hail from, cults of Kyuss and Tharizdun, if discovered, are ruthlessly persecuted by ALL the other religious affiliations that survived the Age of Worms - you are not familiar with the gruesome details. In the wake of two major gawds throwing down with the rest of the pantheon, Kyuss and Tharizdun were sent packing, albiet at great
cost to the rest of the pantheon. The only gawds known to have survived (at least in your area) are the ones in the PHB, most of which are substantially diminished in divine stature and power as compared to just over 2 years ago.
Amongst the organizations of mortals however, the most notable to survive the aftermath is the infamous Scarlet Brotherhood, a band of human supremicists of Suel descent. Thier star is waxing in ascendance once again ... although they are not what they were in days gone by, they are formidable. Sasserine and Cauldron remain independant of thier overlordship from the Greyhawk Wars of less than a generation past, the losses of said war releasing such city-states as Cauldron and Sasserine from the clutches of the Suloise Overlords. The Scarlet Brotherhood is known for both long-term planning and short-term striking power. With the loss of the Circle of Eight and many other famous [read: high-level] heroes who were devoured alive in the attempted defense of the Free City or other locations of perceived great political importance at the time, no one has come forth since then that can truly claim such lofty titles as Archmage, Hierophant, Lord and Marshall of the Grand Army or any other similar nomenclature.
Now the question is - what is your doom? Weal, or Woe?
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