Geo Fix's page

@ MichaelSandar,

One of the PC's was given a back-story where her formerly noble family had been brought low a couple of hundred years previously by a vampire (the Blood Mage although that wasn't revealed to the character, they had to figure it out as things progressed) and she'd tracked his servants (in this case the hobgoblins from G5) to the Camp. The party later encountered some in the desolation and learned that they lived in Tsar.

Mama Grimm was also quite friendly toward the party, explaining about her sisters and her desire for their heads. She also suggested that it was a place with a fair bit of magic around and I kept the amount of magic very low to increase its lure.

One other character - an Inquisitor - was given a backstory that involved the search for a lost goddess and Saint Harul's Hold. He's spent some time searching through documents in old monasteries finding that Tsar was built over Saint Harul's Hold.

The group's paladin was naturally keen on entering, defeating and disinfecting.

Encounters with Dread Ravens (as long as your group isn't trigger-happy) offers a chance to interact. I played the Dread Ravens like the Great Raven Crone from the Malazan series so they were tricksters that the party could get some info and hints from but still wily enough that the party never felt they could trust them.

Demons encountered in The Desolation are from Tsar and they've been gated onto the Prime Material Plane. The first time they killed a demon I made a point of mentioning that it's corpse doesn't vanish like a summoned creature's corpse would.

@ Chaoseffect

In order to prevent the party performing all sorts of hit & run raids I've messed with all teleporting into Tsar:
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Standard Teleport:
Familiarity ]On Target / Off Target/ Similar Area / Mishap
Very familiar] 01–97 / 98–99 / 100 —
Studied carefully] 01–94 / 95–97 / 98–99 / 100
Seen casually] 01–88 / 89–94 / 95–98 / 99–100
Viewed once] 01–76 / 77–88 / 89–96 / 97–100
False destination] — / — / 81–92 / 93–100

Teleporting into or within Tsar

Familiarity] On Target ' Elsewhere* ' Mishap
Very familiar] 01–75 ' 76-90 ' 91-100
Studied carefully] 01–50 ' 51-80 ' 81–100
Seen casually] 01–25 ' 26-70 ' 71–100
Viewed once] 01–10 ' 11–60 ' 61–100
False destination] — ' 01-50 ' 51-100

* 50% random location in Tsar 50% dangerous, unexplored encounter in The Desolation (GM's choice).
(sorry - can't do anything with the formatting)

I consider it to be part of the Pall (denizens of Tsar are unaffected) and it's worked quite well so far.

And if you want to increase the nastiness outside I'd suggest using a increasing the count of Flailing Dreadnoughts. Since they are CN and an aberration they slide around a lot of the buffing characters usually do. (Although your group may be an exception.)

@ Zach

Have a procession of the more evil opponents from Tsar appear in spectral form creating a line of foes well spaced and stretching into the darkness. The first announces it's name and steps forward becoming solid and attacking the cleric. If the cleric wins then the second will step forward.

If anyone else in the party joins in the fight an additional foe steps forward and attacks.

I'd suggest starting with 1 of each type of the siege undead including the centaur like ones then the Seneschal from Kirash Durgaut, then General Myac (around page 181) then a flailing dreadnaught (page 166)then Malerix and so on. Describe the figures down to Malerix and let them see or sense that there are more besides those.

Keep going until the cleric is killed and then have all the apparitions vanish.

I agree with chaos effect about the opponents represented not having an idea about the party - this is entirely a Dweller at the Crossroads thing - but I don't think you need to explain it with simulacrums. In fact I'd say you shouldn't explain it at all so as to keep things weird and creepy and WTF-like.

Oy - I've been misreading wraiths for years.....2d6 HP not 2d6 levels.....oops

We just need someone to set up an autodialler to call the number on his phone once every 15 seconds

I think the point that's being made is this:

If you are a small publisher, and you run a kickstarter, add 12 months to the expected delivery date.

Seriously.

No one will complain if you are early.

That type of worst-case thinking is the way to proceed.

The issues being discussed here are not unique to gaming by any means. I work in project management for an industrial controls company and we have to guard against similar issues with people who are working 40 hours a week, not doing something as a side project.

Little Red Goblin Games seems like they have it right - minimize the variables and then go. That one post should be the bible for small independent publishers preparing a KS.

We have two paladins as well - as suggested I think I'll put the onus on them to ensure that 'the right thing' is done. It will give them an opportunity to up their role play skills.

I gave the cleric the XP bonus for going against the party (most of whom were suffering from sleeping in Tsar at the time) and agree with brvheart that giving out XP for destruction of evil items in general isn't the way to go.

I'm also going to steal KaiserDM's idea of some sort of credit/recognition from the churches. My group is a bit slow on the information gathering so I might have the churches give them details on Tsar's history.

Thanks All
Geo

@KaiserDM

I think one of the reasons my players are sticking with it is that it is more difficult and it doesn't apologize for killing you. They've also started to suspect that Orcus has a purpose for Tsar and it won't be easy to sort out but I think, at this point, it's still more a matter of the deadly nature of the place.

@ Chuck

How about some "My friends went to Tsar and all that survived is this t-shirt." t-shirts?

I've had two players suffer plane-shifts. One from prismatic spray and one from plane shift. Prismatic spray is the more awkward to deal with because it's a random plane. The plane shift came about from a Lich and he sent the player (Druid) to the Abyss.

We role-played the first one off-line and agreed 'he don't come back' for the second.

I've also had the party lose ALL of their loot @ 9th level when captured by troglodytes. They escaped with nothing, not even the hair on their heads (shaved in preparation for sacrifice, it was especially bad for the intelligent ape character)and that escape plus the capers they pulled to retrieve a portion of their loot were the highlight of the campaign.

Moral of the rambling - there are no spells off limits for everyone. Know your players and make certain that they know you and play accordingly.

@ Dark Sasha,

My group seems to really enjoy that aspect of Tsar. The last campaign we played survival was not really in doubt unless they did something very foolish. Now they have to play smarter to survive and they're enjoying it.

Rough calcs:

Terminal velocity for a human is about 120 mph ~ 176 feet per second.

Gravity accelerates you at about 32 feet per second so you hit terminal velocity after ~ 5.5 seconds.

Assuming you've started at a speed of zero you'd have an average speed of 88 feet per second which means you would have travelled about 440 feet.

You can easily argue that the max damage for a human is 44d6

Dwarves = 20d6 due to the drag caused by their beards.

Chefs with a chicken on their shoulder require an offset based on the bird's lifting capacity.

@James B Cline,

When I started planning for this adventure I looked at the scaled distances on the maps versus what is stated on page 35 in the Desolation Primer section:

"The Desolation stretches roughly 70 miles east and west and 50 miles
north to south. Its southern boundary, marked by the tiny refuge known
as the Camp, gradually rises to the stony hills that mark the northern edge of the civilized kingdoms."

I felt that the size of The Desolation shown on the maps was just too small. I revised the scale so that it took 3 days travel to reach the crossroads. They are now down in the Chaos Rift and almost out of supplies which means their cleric has to burn a 3rd level spell everyday to keep them and the horses fed and they are very conscious of being far far far from help.

At the top of this thread you mention the desire for more NPC's for them to interact with. Some possiblities include a wandering survivor from a caravan or a full blown caravan heading south to The Camp, creatures/NPCs turned to stone, and always the possiblity of opponents that they encounter asking for quarter instead of fighting to the death. (My group took out Gurg but then stabalized him and ended up with him acting as an unpaid guide for a few days - out of shame. They've also parlayed with a Wyvern)

The only thing that stops me from 3pp stuff is volume & time. There is alot of it and I don't have the time to sort through it.

These boards are helpful. I picked up Slumbering Tsar based on what folks have posted and it's worked out well.

And yes, 90% is stuff is crap because only 10% of stuff is Scottish. Simple math:p

My group played SFSS ages ago. We had one experienced player taken by the chupacabra on the first night and that set the 'oh no' tone.

I also remember the goats were a comic/horror highlight. Play up the goats, make them mean, have them follow the party and act like wolves stalking prey and it will add to the weirdness of the place.

Re: "After reading the adventure background for the first module of Reign of Winter, I must say that I am more than a bit conflicted about the role Baba Yaga will actually play in this AP."

I'm running the Serpent's Skull right now and there were a number of aspects I didn't like. So I changed them.

I'm planning on running the Reign of Winter next and if it looks like my players are keen on going after Baba Yaga then I'll modify that setting as needed (or not if not). I think that as the GM, taking overall 'control' of the adventure is the best way to get what you want.

I think I'll run through and roll the # of Serpent Folk in each room in advance and see how close it comes to the magic '100'.

I might also place a couple of ancient Azlanti anti-telepathy items in the crypts with the portal crystals.

Thanks for letting us know how this is going Jenner. It's a great advantage for my planning.

Geo

A few sessions ago the group I GM for ended up being captured and rendered unconsious by a group of trogs. It took a goodly number of bad dice roles but they pulled it off.

The woke up naked and shaved with with scales painted on their bodies in prepartation for being sacrificed. By they time they escaped they had nothing more than a couple of clubs and javenlins between them and were glad for it.

I didn't get any complaints and the group is able to look at the entire experience with humour. I'd say the players matter just as much as the GM.

That the witch referenced in the original post didn't see that the logic options are: All your stuff is gone or a total party kill seems odd to me.

um...."I find the maps to be the least useful part of the AP Player's Guides"

(blasphemy)

This adventure path feels quite low in treasure and the half submerged treasury looks like a very good place to rectify that problem and put in some underwater style Indiana Jones encounters.

Some trap ideas I'm toying with:

1) A pit trap - not very effective underwater but good for a laugh.

2) A cieling pit trap with reverse gravity - still effective

3) Boulder trap, not too deadly underwater but still difficult to get out of the way of and it can lock someone in underwater.

4) Electicity & cold glyphs - effective

5) Fire Glyphs - just produce some bubbles & steam

Creatures

Electic eels, modelled on shocker lizards (small but in numbers they can really hurt)

Gelatinous Cube (Do they disolve in water?)

Shadows

I know that there a plenty of devious minds on these boards, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Geo

The group I'm running has signed on with the Pathfinders and also allied themselves with the Mwangi's against the Colonials. To play things up I've added a liberation theme to the whole SS path and right now Kalabuto is in flames with a large train of refugees following the party's path. (They left arcane marks at regular intervals for folks in the know.)

I want to do some Kingmaker style settlement building in the CoSS (so that the party has a strong reason to check out the threats from the underground) and I was wondering which Kingmaker module would provide the rules (or rules that could be tweaked) to suit this purpose. Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Geo