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I've been reading about the brutality of this module but since I bought it and it looks cool I'm going to run it anyway. However, I only have three players that can commit, and I refuse to run an NPC. So are there any things that those of you more familiar with the module think I could change, either character-wise or module tweaks?

I considered upping their level to 4 or maybe granting more points for stats. Or maybe just leaving it as is and making them deal with it. lol

Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

First off, I apologize if this thread is in the wrong place. It didn't seem to have a home in the PFS forums.

I have read that a metaplot runs through each of the PFS seasons so I'm wondering if people who know these adventures could identify which scenarios tell the metaplot for each season. I read the descriptions but I couldn't make much of a connection aside from some vague generalities.

I am starting a regular PFRPG game and want to run some short but loosely connected adventures to make up the campaign and I thought PFS scenarios might be a good fit, with some conversion obviously. Since I also am also planning on submitting scenarios I will be purchasing some to read and dissect anyway. If I can run them for my players all the better.

Any help in stringing the metaplot together would be greatly appreciated. I'm more interested in Season 1 and 2 scenarios at this point because Season 3 is still underway.

I am going to be running this series and after examining the XP it looks like it is designed for the fast advancement. Is the treasure distribution also designed for the same advancement track?

I did a forum search and saw this question posted many times but they were all quite old posts. So I ask the developers again, might we be seeing Psionics appearing in Pathfinder any time soon?

I have been running games since about 1990 so I've pretty much got GMing down. However, I just made the update from 3.5 to Pathfinder (I know, finally, right?) after a brief intermission with 4E but we won't discuss that.

Well now I have the opportunity to dive in with a whole new group of players I have never had the pleasure of playing with before (experienced roleplayers, however) and I want to put together a little set of adventures for them. I'd like to run an AP but I'm not going to make that level of commitment to a group of players I have never gamed with before and may grow irksome or flaky. In addition I have never run nor have they ever played Pathfinder though we are all VERY familiar with 3.5 so that shouldn't be much of an issue.

I considered the Falcon's Hollow adventures as I ran Hollow's Last Hope as the kick-off of my last campaign but I don't want to bother with converting over to Pathfinder if I don't have to.

I read a bit about the Crypt of the Everflame > Masks of the Living God > City of Golden Death series but it just wasn't grabbing me as it seems a tad too dungeoncrawly for my tastes.

I'd like to start with Master of the Fallen Fortress because it seems like a basic yet decent introduction to the game for newbies and a simple run at that. The modules that are jumping out at me right now are Feast of Ravenmoor and Carrion Hill and I think I'd like to build this path with them included.

So I'd like some input for you fine folks that are more familiar than I about these modules. What should I put in to the beginning? Godsmouth Heresy perhaps? Maybe something 3.5? Are there mergeable characters or groups or themes I might make use of? Pitfalls that may crop up if not planned for? I'd like to maintain a tone similar to those presented in the two modules I mentioned above.

I run games in my own homebrew world so locations in Golarion are unimportant and I'm probably going to group everything into the same location anyway. I'm just looking for something fun and easy that tells a bit of a larger story than just the stand-alone modules.

I'm looking for an adventure that is suitable for or scalable to levels 13-14. I'm looking for something that is kind of a spiritual sequel to Speaker in Dreams. So I'm thinking urban based with a kind of mystery and shadow organization or somesuch. I scoured my back issues of Dungeon and I thought about Vampires of Waterdeep but they look a little too dungeon crawl for what I really want.

I thought I'd present this to the forums here in hopes of getting some feedback. The adventure can be from anything 3.0, 3.5, or Pathfinder. I am willing to track something down if need be. I want something that will take characters through levels 13 and 14, but again, if I have to scale a little that is okay. I have all of the Paizo adventure paths so pulling from one of those is fine too as long as it's easy enough to play on its own. I'll even take stuff that covers a wider range if it's easily shrinkable.

So what are your favorite adventures that fall into that range? I'd rather avoid a dungeon crawl as the campaign I'm putting together is already pretty dungeon heavy but if it's awesome I'll consider it.

I bounced around about what I was going to run next and, after some careful consideration, I have decided to run Rise of the Runelords. I've been a little intimidated by this AP for some reason I can't really identify, I ran Shackled City with fantastic results.

So, I'd appreciate some advice from folks that have run this AP so I can know what to expect. I searched for other threads that were along similar veins, but I couldn't find anything specific. I've read through the adventures and have scoured the boards for advice and such, but any potential hazards, plot holes, suggestions etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some of the problems I have seen mentioned and how I plan on addressing them. I have seen some warnings of potential TPK moments and a general steep difficulty in the AP. To combat this I plan on allowing gestalt characters. I did this in Shackled City and it worked quite well. In addition my party will only be 3 PCs so this should help balance the party. I have also seen advice to foreshadow Foxglove and Ironbriar sooner so I will be doing just this, allowing the PCs to interact extensively with them early on.

Some problems I see and would like some advice on include the following. I don't like the fact that the game leaves Sandpoint for so long. I plan on moving the entire Magnimar section to Sandpoint, perhaps redesigning the city a bit to make it larger. I run in a homebrew world so redesign isn't an issue. Also the entirety of Chapter 3 will be placed considerably closer to Sandpoint, perhaps even replacing Turtleback Ferry with Sandpoint.

Perhaps I am not reading it correctly, but Chapter 4 slightly confuses me. The way it looks to me is that the campaign has a deep horror theme and then suddenly drops it in favor of a massive dungeon crawl with some giants. The theme and tone seems to shift suddenly. After that there is what looks like another massive dungeon crawl in Chapter 5. I'm not in favor of big dungeon crawls so any advice on combating this issue would be fantastic. I'm thinking of removing the entire Jorgenfist fortress but keeping the battle of Sandpoint, and just placing another chapter in the AP. Suggestions from Dungeon Magazine? The Styes perhaps?

So, big changes include gestalt characters and placing everything closer to Sandpoint to maintain focus. Any advice folks could give me would be great.

There has been lots of discussion about converting 3E era material to 4E, but I'm wondering how easy it is to convert the other way. Has anyone tried this?

I've been looking at the core 4E path of Keep on the Shadowfell to Prince of Undeath and for the most part I'm digging what I'm reading but I am not a fan of 4E mechanics. From the looks of it converting backwards shouldn't be too difficult but I'm wondering if there are any potential pitfalls that others have noticed in doing this.

2 obvious issues are the level range and experience awards. I would not be attempting a 1-30 level progression in 3.5 as 30 is the new 20, so to speak. So once I drop the level range to 20 levels the number of encounters per level is not equal, requiring more encounter to span all the levels, 300 level appropriate encounters in 4E opposed to approximately 260 in 3.5. So I will be dropping XP awards and just handing out levels at even intervals.

As well, if anyone is familiar with pitfalls or total dead spots in the story I wouldn't mind some heads up in that regard.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I am currently running Shackled City and my party is hurtling toward the end and will be hungry for another game right away. Naturally, I have been waiting with baited breath to run Age of Worms as a followup. However, yesterday, a wonderful idea came to me. My group of players are not hard core D&D fans, they like some variety, so my mind fell on Call of Cthulhu d20. I did a thorough read through of the AoW Overload synopsis and made some preliminary conversion notes. I merged Diamond Lake, the Free City and Alhaster into a single location and placed the setting in the 1920s in an isolated city of my own creation.

My question then, is if I run a fairly literal adaptation of this campaign, are there any major issues that may crop up? I know CoC characters are underpowered compared to D&D characters but given a little buff and edge they shouldn't die more than most CoC characters. But are there story elements that might come up that work great in D&D but wouldn't fit in CoC? Anything that will require major rewriting?

I had my doubts about the whole tournament thing but I decided to turn it into a kind of underground bloodsport competition run by mafia types. I'm still not sure about the smoothness of conversion for the whole Champion's Belt chapter.

The campaign has everything a great CoC campaign should have. A dark cult, a dead god returning, ancient alien ruins, remote archeological sites, bizzare creatures, vampires, possible destruction of the world, etc. The Lovecraftian elements of AoW is what drew me to the three Dungeon APs to begin with and I really can't wait to run this series. Any suggestions or words of warning from those who have run it would be greatly appreciated.

I inserted this little series of encounters into The Demonskar Legacy to make finding Alakast a little more interesting. It's not much but I thought some folks might get some use out of it.

In my campaign the party has encountered rabid animals in the jungles outside the city occasionally since the campaign began. I look at this as an unintentional manifestation of Admiarchus' will on the countryside. This side trek has one such encounter.

As well I used delvedeep's Adimarchus & The Cagewrights document for alternate foreshadowing. At the beginning of The Demonskar legacy I used the Necrocaunt encounter detailed in that document. This side trek assumes that this event occurred but could easily be used without it. This side trek also does not repeat the statistics of the Necrocaunts as they already appear in delvesdeep's document.

This event occurs as the party is preparing to depart Redgorge on the trail of Sir Alek. I moved the later encounter with Nidrama to springboard this little side trek so it need not occur later.

This was taken from my notes, modified slightly, so it is a little thin on flavor detail. I tend to describe things as they occur and so my notes can sometimes be little lacking. This is intended for a party of four 8th level characters.

My party is just now beginning Test of the Smoking Eye and I have been thinking that the template seems a little weak. I considered increasing it to reflect the power level displayed by other +1 templates. I was looking for some suggestions, or perhaps logic, for either making it a bit more powerful or why +1 is appropriate.

I downloaded the variant Smoking Eye template from theRPGenius.com but it is not quite what I would like. Input anyone?

When my players cannot all meet for Shackled City the rest of us play a side game. The game has been lots of fun and the party has raised to 13th level now. I began the game with a modified version of the Eberron adventure path and followed it up with Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. We finished that one a couple of months ago but I had already planned on what the next story arc would be.

There was something about the dark tone and creepy, Lovecraftian style to Greg A. Vaughan's Istivin: City of Shadows series of adventures (Dungeon issues 117-119). I did some simple conversions to my homebrew, like changing the name of the city, altering the history to coincide with the recent drow invasion in the last story arc, and redrew the hinterland map to reflect my homebrew world. Other changes were minor, such as in the end the party will be given control of the barony and become nobility.

We sat down and played through the first chapter Touch of the Abyss and it became one of the most memorable experiences we have had in a game in a long time. The party made their way through the city encounters quickly while making quite the display of themselves in the process. Soon most of the city was talking about the heroes that had come to the city and perhaps they would end the pall that had fallen since the drow left.

Before long the party was descending into the Deep Dungeons of Krelont Keep and the memorable scenes began. The first encounter the party saw the gargoyle statues and were convinced that they were monsters. The Reekmurk (advanced via the scaling the adventure suggestions) fell to the party's concentrated attacks fairly quickly. The party got thoroughly foul, except for the rouge with spider climb, attempting to get across the cesspit but eventually moved on. They then spent some time cleaning themselves so the stench would not betray their position to any guards later.

The party then walked straight to the Marquis and knocked him unconscious in only two rounds while making short work of the shadows. The party then, while lugging around an unconscious Quechard, walked right to the hezrou and made quick work of him as well. they scanned the rest of the dungeon quickly for treasure and made to leave, congratulating themselves for a job well done.

It was then they got hit with a surprise.

Back in the first room they were ambushed by advanced Malgothian Gargoyles as they crossed the cesspit. They took no precautions after being proven that the gargoyles were not monsters before. What ensued was a toughly disgusting battle royale with the "sh*t gargoyles".

The ranger was very nearly disemboweled by one gargoyle and managed to grapple with it for the remainder of the combat, while at a mere 4hp. We all feared the mighty Rowsdower might die... again.

The rouge battled one gargoyle on the wall and was finally knocked into the cesspit by the beast's breath attack. The thing dive bombed her as she swam for safety and missed. They then tumbled into the outflow tube and battled further, the gargoyle knocking the little rouge down to 11hp before falling dead finally.

However, it was the fighter that was really beaten on. Two gargoyles teamed up on her while her friends were occupied. One bull rushed her with it's breath and knocked her into the 'water' while the other pounced on her and attempted to drown her. She wrestled with the both of them under 'water' all while blind and holding her breath. Several times they nearly managed to knock her out and coup-de-grace her, which was their plan. Finally one was killed by the ranger and she was able to wrestle the other one back to a standing position where she could breathe and the ranger took it out with a volley of arrows.

Disgusted, filthy, but invigorated the party departed, still toting around an unconscious, Quechard (the fighter provoked two AOPs when she was forced to wade through the muck and set him down somewhere safely before joining the combat).

Thank you Mr. Vaughan for that encounter and a session that will live on in everyone's memory for years to come.

I read the thread about the fire elementals in Demonskar Legacy and I got to thinking about the session I played with my group today.

For clarification, here is my party, all gestalt:
Zilanya: NE drow lvl 4 rogue/sorcerer
Ragnarok: NG dwarf lvl 5 monk/barbarian
Grunt Meatshield: NE ogre lvl 4 barbarian/ranger
Brynna: NG elf lvl 5 paladin/druid

We are in the midst of FLood Season and the party arrived at the kopru ruins, which I turned into drow ruins to trick everyone into thinking there is a drow threat in the game. They debated for hours about how to get across the ravine after Grunt busted the winch and ended up just using the cage. They entered the ruins via the door in room 42 and mixed it up with some Alleybashers inside.

They then made their way directly to the treasury, for anyone without the map handy that is through rooms 45 and 46, both empty and into room 51, trapped, and into room 50 before turning left into room 52, the treasury. In room 50 there are six large monstrous spider zombies and this is where I noticed a possible issue.

The party after level adjustments and gestalt is the equivalent of EL 6 or so. The encounter is EL 5 and they got their butts whupped. I am running this from the magazines so it is designed for a party of four. They are where they should be for level, 5, and are also gestalt so they figure higher by a bit. From everything I've read I heard the difficult ramped up in the campaign but I was under the impression it wasn't until after Zenith Trajectory or so.

Judging by the ELs of the later encounters in the ruins am I in for a possible TPK later on? A simple encounter really kicked the crap out of them so will the specific encounters be more dangerous? Did anyone else have trouble with this dungeon? Am I in store for even more challenges later on?

My secondary group is currently running through Expedition to the Demonweb Pits and I ran across something that made me pause and wonder. There is a passing reference that says that Graz'zt, among his many titles, is the "Warden of Adimarchus".

Is this some 1st Ed reference I'm not getting? Did Adimarchus appear somewhere before Shackled City? I looked and the authors, Wolfgang Baur and Gwendolyn F.M. Kestral, are not any of the Paizo regulars as far as I'm aware so I'm wondering where this reference came from. Perhaps the authors were just Shackled City fans and wanted to make the reference?

Can anyone shine some light on this for me if there is more to the story?

I have been prepping Expedition to the Demonweb Pits for a secondary game to run when all the players from my Shackled City game can't make it. I am a DM that likes to assign set places for everyone to level up instead of awarding experience points and so I'd like some advice from people who have played or ran this adventure.

Due to the layout of the adventure I'm not clear on what levels are intended at given times. I am clear on the intended flow of the adventure and understand when players will be where in the book but I'm not sure what level they will be at any given time. In a more linear adventure layout it's easier to judge.

The beginning of the adventure also seems off to me where it talks about levels. The party begins at level 9 but it says that by the end the party will only advance to about 12. That doesn't seem right to me considering all of things the party does. It seems, awarding experience points a party will advance more than that, closer to level 18 than 12.

Without doing all the math out myself and studying ELs through the adventure can anyone tell me what level people were by the end? Also, if you remember, roughly what level you were at at various parts of the adventure. It would help me out a lot. Thanks.

-Josh

So I have decided to add a bit to my game. I want to use some side treks to tie into each of my character's backgrounds, as well as a quest for Alkhast in the Haunted Village.

I'd like to pull something from Dungeon Magazine or use one of the free adventures on wizards.com but I'd like some suggestions. Can anyone tell me of some mid level adventures that could flesh out the second act of Shackled City and have the same type of theme? I have Dungeon #102, #106-#128, #130-#133, and #135-#150 easily accessible as well as all of the issues #151-#153 content downloaded.

I want to have one adventure that centers on each of the PCs so they each have an opportunity to shine and tell their own story. I want to figure out what to use now so I can tie them in appropriately for later. I will adapt the adventures to mesh with the backgrounds everyone provided and fit the world though the story does not need to mesh with that of the main arc. The quest for Alkhast, redesigned for my game, will take place during Demonskar Legacy before the party heads out for the Demonskar.

I'm thinking this might give me an excuse to run The Styes but I'm not sure how well it would work out. Any suggestions on just great adventures that folks have played an enjoyed would be good to know of. The magazines have a lot of information and I have not read or even skimmed most of it. I'm working on getting all of the Paizo era issues but it's a lot of work to compile the collection.

There is a similar thread in the Savage Tide forum and I'd like to start one here too.

As a DM who has recently gotten underway on Shackled City I'd like to discuss some of the best moments you and your group had during the campaign. Feel free to share moments or encounters that you had a blast running or playing and will live on for years as stories told around the table of past games.

My party is wrapping up Jzadirune right now so they haven't had any such defining moments in the last three sessions but I'm sure they will come. Tell me about yours.

I made an extensive player's guide for my now running SCAP game and there has been a little interest in getting a copy of it. The file is too large to upload to an email server so I'm wondering if anyone that might be interested would have an alternative. Perhaps a posting on theRPGenius.com? I dunno.

I'll tell everyone a little about what is in my player's guide to maybe help you decide if looking at it is even worthwhile. I used extensive amounts of information from other guides and resources on theRPGenius so I don't claim full authorship. I did, however, modify the information to make it mesh as well as wrote a bunch of my own stuff.

I have made extensive modifications to the campaign and setting to fit a feel that I felt was more in keeping with what I wanted and what my players might enjoy. I created the tropical region The North Coast and plopped it down in my homebrew as a location for this AP. As well I removed Cauldron and replaced it with a heavily modified but thematically the same city called Caldera. I felt that Cauldron the way it was presented stretched the suspension of disbelief a little too much. But I also want to mention that I didn't change what made the city a compelling and interesting place to adventure in.

For more on my homebrew check out the incomplete Campaign Setting I have posted online.
~World Of Brandes~

If the player's guide ends up being of interest to people I will gladly share my chapter by chapter conversion notes to adapt the campaign to my homebrew. For example, the changes I made to the first chapter include starting in Redgorge with a modified version of The Burning Plague free adventure and moving the Malachite Fortress from an underground dungeon to a dockside warehouse complex.

I'm presenting this to give prospective DMs the opportunity, if desired, to do something a little different with the campaign without changing what makes it so great. Or, if desired, some idea for alternatives that can be picked and chosen as desired.

I chose to put this thread here because I am currently running Shackled City.

I created this site as a means of putting all of the information for my world in a place that was easily accessible to my players. I chose to format it in a manner similar to the campaign setting books released for 3.0/3.5 D&D.

The world offers a slight variation on conventional high fantasy but remains similar enough that fans of the genre will not feel left behind. It is a setting that embraces espionage and is stepped with secrets and mysteries. There are no dragons still alive after a massive war, now more than 1000 years in the past, that destroyed the world's society and history.

I hope someone can get some enjoyment out of the material I'm posting. Right now the site is still under construction so it's not very complete. I'm hoping it will get more complete and more refined as more information is translated from my notes to an understandable format.

World of Brandes

Today is the day that Shackled City gets underway.

The group consists of three characters, all gestalt. The party is a dwarven barbarian/monk, elven paladin/druid, and a drow rogue/sorcerer. The two elves became close as orphans and developed into thunder twins, the good twin and the evil twin.

This group, obviously, breaks the rules a little. I removed the racial restriction on the thunder twin feat and allowed the girls to take it because I thought it would be cool even though they are not biological sisters. The barbarian/monk and paladin/druid bend the alignment restrictions but both are close as neutral good, the drow is lawful evil. I have another player joining us next week, hopefully, but I don't know what he will be playing, probably some big, mean warrior type.

I'm nervous and excited at the same time. I got my group all juiced up for it and they are rearing to go. We just finished our last campaign, last night. It ended on a high note and everyone wanted to get started right away on the new game.

I have prepared extensively with a big player's guide and lots of prep work on the low level part of the campaign, the beginning. I hope I'm ready.

In preparing for my upcoming Shackled City game I am readying the low-level (1-5) adventures, Life's Bazaar and Flood Season. I am running from the magazines so I have the first two chapters ready to go for the game start in a few weeks.

I have pulled lots of information from theRPGenius.com (thanks bunches everyone for all the awesome content) and this includes Skaven's Diary. However, in converting it to my homebrew I noticed an overt mention of Vhalantru by name.

"15 – Unicorn – 1013
Today Vhalantru paid us a visit and asked about our progress with the cages. It must be of some importance if they send such an important messenger. We better get our things done properly."

The party will be finding this toward the end of Flood Season. Is this too early for the party to start pointing accusing fingers at Vhalantru? Should I remove this reference and just call him 'the Demon' (I changed Vhalantru to a glabrezu) or something? Or is it okay for the party to start suspecting him of wrongdoing by the beginning of Zenith Trajectory?

My last campaign was an epic Shadowrun game that ran 16 missions and had an epic plot about an urban war in a cyberpunk Boston. The game was a lot of fun and I quite enjoyed the story that came out of it.

Would anyone be interested in such a thing? If there is interest I will put the work into making my notes playable missions and I can post them on RPG Archive or something. Post here if you would be interested in such a thing.

There have been plenty of conversations about the big adventure paths so I'm not as interested in people's opinions of those. I already know they all rock. :D I'm more interested in the shorter paths that have appeared in Dungeon over the years.

There have also been discussions on favorite issues of Dungeon and favorite adventures. Now I'd like to start a slightly different discussion and get input from folks that have more experience with these magazines than I do.

I have been quite impressed with the Istivin: City of Shadows (#116-118). I also have the issues that include Shards of Eberron (#123-#125), Vampires of Waterdeep (#126-#128) and Seeds of Sheehan (#145-#147) though I have not had the time to dedicate to reading them in detail yet.

So far, Istivin has been may favorite as I like the dark urban tone they offer. What does everyone else think? Any suggestions of paths I should track down? What were the strengths, weaknesses or highlights of the paths you played or read?

This doesn't need to be specific paths and could just be adventures that had sequels in non-consecutive issues. I'm interested to hear what people think.

Perhaps I am either blind, stupid or both but I cannot find the web enhancements for these magazines anywhere on the site. I want to get the ones for the issues I own but I can't seem to find them. I've looked through the store and performed searches but I'm still not getting anything.

With Wizards of the Coast taking control have the extras been taken down? I found a thread that said that content wouldn't be removed but that was from back in May.

Can someone help me with this?

I have seen that there is a bit of a lack of magic items available in Shackled City. I have also seen here on the boards that others have noticed this as well so I thought I would post my fix for this.

I began thinking that, knowing my players, they will take what they can buy in Cauldron or pillage from their victims, er, fallen foes. It is unlikely they will take the time to travel to Sasserine to purchase more powerful or expensive items so I had to think of a logical way to get them items for higher levels of power without blowing the game balance.

The solution I came up with is to use Legacy Items. For anyone who does not own Weapons of Legacy, simply, Legacy items are super bada*s magic items that start basic and get better as the characters advance in level but they need to unlock the powers of the items through certain, often expensive, rituals. These items balance with comparable cost items and will fill the needs in my game.

I have added a side trek to the game after Zenith Trajectory that will send the party to an ancient tomb to recover the treasure of a legendary group of adventurers. I'm using the updated Tomb of Horrors for this, scaling back the adventure from level 9 to level 7 or 8, and putting some custom, tailored to the party, legacy items as the final treasure.

To tie it together I am going to say that the adventuring party fought in some ancient demon war and Adimarchus, before his fall, was part of the party. His fallen friends' spirits want to see him redeemed and will give the items to the party knowing what fate holds in store for them. So, one of the party will be wielding Adimarchus' sword. This will also allow the party to learn, in bits and pieces as they research the items, Adimarchus' story and will allow for some more foreshadowing.

I thought I'd throw this idea out there for anyone who has been trying to think of a way to correct this problem without frequent party trips to Sasserine. If there is enough interest in this idea I can post something a little more structured for the side trek.

I have been taking considerable steps at prepping this adventure path for my group and have made extensive use of the fine work put forth by the folks here and at theRPGenius. However, I am running from the original Dragon articles and there seems to be some information in the hardcover that adds a lot to the game.

Can someone give me a list of the traits and any feats, prestige classes etc. that's exclusive to the hardcover? I have all of the issues plus the web enhancements but there still seems to be substantial info I'm missing. For example the added adventure material makes extensive mention of a dream trait, but that's not anywhere in the non-hardcover material.

Can I get some help?

I posted something a little while back asking for input on the AP series and someone posted a great thing about 'outs'. I liked the concept quite a bit and now I plan on doing outs in all my campaigns.

To put it simply an out is a place that a DM could end a game and have a certain amount of satisfaction and closure to the story. Places where the story resolves some major plot thread or shifts focus that things could be tied up easily and the campaign doesn't feel abandoned. Sure there may be more untold but the immediate threads are resolved. An out should be able to occur every six sessions or so. With 11 chapters in this path an out should occur every two or three chapters though I don't know if that's feasible.

I have been adapting Shackled City but have only completed Life's Bazaar (I've moved a lot of stuff around). There is an obvious out at the end of Chapter 1 but I was wondering what everyone else thought would be good places to call it quits if the game is dragging or going downhill.

For folks who have played or know the whole story shoot me some pointers.

-Josh

I have recently acquired a number of back issues of Dungeon and Dragon magazine and I have all of both the Shackled City and the Age of Worms adventure paths as well as several installments of Savage Tide.

I googled all three and have seen that reviews have been mixed. I don't want to invest the time and energy in a campaign that is going to bog and perhaps loose the attention of my group.

We all enjoy a lot of action, adventure and intrigue but extensive and tedious dungeon crawls get boring and will kill a campaign quicker than anything else. For example, the most successful and entertaining epic campaign I ran was the Dragonlance Chronicles. Those adventures had a great balance of what my group enjoys. On the flip side were the 3rd Ed module series. The site based adventures, read dungeon crawls, were entertaining at first but got tedious quickly and nearly killed the campaign.

As with everything I will be adapting this to my own world.

For folks who may play in the games please use a spoiler space if you include story elements. I'd like to hear from both DMs and players to know what your experiences and opinions of the campaigns were so I can decide if I should bother to try and run them. I especially want to hear from people who played them to completion.

-Josh