theRPGenius.com is back up and will remain so while a few of us collaborate to migrate the content to a new format. If you think you'd like to help, let me know by emailing koramado (at) therpgenius (dot) com
Best regards,
Koramado
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I'm going to turn the old site back on for the time being while we work on setting up the archive on a new wiki. Give me til tomorrow night to do it and you'll be able to grab what you need. Best regards,
Are you interested in helping to organize the material and get a PBwiki setup?I've got a little bit of experience with pbwiki and could help with the setup if that's the direction we want to go. Sure, I've created an account for therpgenius.pbwiki.com and another person has contacted me about collaborating on setup as well. Go ahead and drop me an email DMFTodd and I'll send you the discussion that we've begun. koramado (at) therpgenius (dot) com Best regards,
No offense taken, DMFTodd. That's exactly the kind of feedback I am asking for. I did look at the Pathfinder Wiki and it's a wonderful resource. I would welcome that option, but this thread from their forum is relevant and suggests that they are not looking to support community created game additions for Pathfinder, let alone the three Greyhawk based APs. PBwiki is a fine solution to suggest. My ignorance of the service is to blame for not coming up with that idea myself. At the free level it should be able to support the archive just fine, without any fancy features or styling, though some of the security settings are unavailable. Are you interested in helping to organize the material and get a PBwiki setup? Best regards,
Thanks for all the kind words. Thanks to all of the contributors as well! I've gone ahead and installed MediaWiki to the domain and am currently playing around with how to use it effectively. I'd appreciate anyone with wiki experience that would be willing to help me organize things. Once it is rolling better, then everyone will be able to be a contributor and edit pages, upload files, etc. Email me if you want to lend a hand.
Best regards,
Don't worry, Sean. The files will be available in one way or another and I'll be sure to post here at Paizo as soon as they are. Koramado
Hi guys, Yeah, I decided to bring down theRPGenius site at least temporarily because it was getting to be a problem for me as far as managing the spam. I definitely want to keep the files that everyone submitted available to whoever wants them. I also agree that the site was a pain, but it was the best I could do at the time. I'm totally in favor of a wiki or whatever can be more useful to anyone interested in the resources that have been contributed over the years. Anyone want to collaborate on turning theRPGenius.com into a wiki? Or is someone already on the way toward launching something else? Putting an end to theRPGenius and letting someone else take over isn't the end of the world, but I'd be just as happy to keep it rolling and see some new life breathed into it. If not, I'm also happy to support whatever someone else may have in development by sending over all of the files that have been submitted to date. It's still all about helping people improve their campaigns. Again, anyone interested in seeing theRPGenius.com turned into a wiki? I'm happy to install an open source package and assign some roles to a group of interested people. Let me know what you all think. I'm available at koramado (at) therpgenius (dot) com, or right here on the messageboard. I'm excited to check this thread later for your thoughts. Best regards,
(Delvesdeep - I'm a couple chapters into the Savage Tide AP and collecting Pathfinder for the distant future. lol ) Perhaps the Vanderboren family, with relatives in Sasserine, at some point found themselves out of Cauldron during the local Demonskar Ball. Being noble and privileged, they couldn't stand to miss out on the notoreity and threw one of their own in Sasserine with the local notables. Thus, the celebration spreads to Sasserine and possibly further over time.
A distant voice calls out... Bring the Demonskar Ball back as a regional holiday in your campaign and it will never die. I imagine it wouldn't be a big stretch to think that the surrounding lands would eventually become aware of the near-apocalypse that took place at Cauldron and the heroic efforts that saved them all. I haven't been keeping up, but I sure hope you're still writing, Delvesdeep. :) Best Regards,
Hey, delvesdeep! Now I need to figure out how to insert this into my next campaign or re-run the SCAP someday. If I ever get to your shores, I'm going to find you and sit in on your campaign. As someone said above, you've become an SCAP celebrity! Best regards,
The most recent set (Blood Wars) has a Solar Angel. That would be a good choice. Agreed, that is a great mini. And if you had two, you could paint one to match Adimarchus' darker form. Exactly what I did. I used acrylic paints, too, so they washed off easily and I didn't permanently alter a rare mini. They turned out quite awesome and I'm sorry i don't have a pic to post. I'd be interested in info on custom minis, too! Regards,
Wow! Excellent work, Robert. I can imagine the number of hours you've been working on that. Are you creating it as a shareable location for the vault or will you be adding adventure content to the whole thing as well? I'd love to lend a hand once I get a few more things off of my plate. Again, great job! Regards,
I haven't added sections for the new Pathfinder adventures at theRPGenius.com, yet, but I am planning to. Would you like to share your maps in that archive as well? I've been hosting dozens of DM created resources for the first three APs. Regards,
Age of Worms Koramado? COuldn't you convince your new Dm to run you through the Savage Tide instead? Don't worry. I'll be DMing Savage Tide while I'm playing in Age of Worms. With all of the practice I've gained through running the Shackled City, it will be another memorable campaign as well. Spoiler: We're not quite done yet. I kept my players on the run from Vhalantru for 5 hours because they decided to split up for the evening and weren't expecting a return visit from him, of course. His DC 32 eye attacks were very hard on them, but they managed to regroup and recover after several setbacks. It was quite fun toying with them for that long and I know they'll think twice about ever splitting up again.
I began running the Shackled City AP in August of 2005. Two years later we have reached the final act. It is both exciting and sad that I will begin the last chapter of the campaign tomorrow. It has surely been one of the most challenging and satisfying games in which I have ever participated. I began with a group of 8 players and managed to keep 6 through the whole campaign. I'm grateful to them all for the experience. I hope they have enjoyed the time as well, even though they were made to suffer on occasion at the hands of their mischevious DM. Now it will be my turn to squirm as I become a player and we move on to the Age of Worms. So, a whole world of thanks goes out to everyone that helped to inspire and contribute to my Shackled City campaign. That pretty much includes everyone on this board and theRPGenius.com, the swell folks at Paizo, and my supportive wife. Best Regards,
Nice job, Shawn. I like the treatment on the images and the logo for Cauldron in the top right corner is excellent. This post just made me realise. The only thing TheRPGenius is missing is deep links. Is there any way you could include those the next time you update the site? Suggestion noted, Chef. I've been toying with some update ideas lately and am waiting for a work lull to make it happen.
If you haven't already read through them, there are a whole bunch of Cauldron Herald and other newsletters available on theRPGenius.com that are really great. Consider sharing your own newsletters there as well. Regards,
That sounds great, Robert. Enjoy your vacation! Koramado
Hi Robert, I've done a little NWN modding in the past and I'd be really excited to take a look at what you've done. I know what you mean about the learning curve for scripting. You can reach me through the contact form at theRPGenius.com. Hope to hear from you.
Thanks for sharing this at theRPGenius.com, too. I'll be starting the STAP with my campaign group in a couple more months. It's time to start gathering resources! Regards,
I agree. I've been running the SCAP for going on two years now with 6 gestalt characters. As they approach the conclusion of the adventure, they are a very capable group of PCs. But it hasn't been necessary to gestalt everything along the way to make the encounters challenging for them. Locke1520's suggestion of increasing the size of an encounter is very effective.
On their way to Shatterhorn, the wizard in my party tried to talk to anyone and everyone so that he could get a clear description of its location from a reliable source and use greater teleport to avoid travel time and cost. I placed Shatterhorn on an island just off the coast of Turmish in the Forgotten Realms, so the most reliable source he could find was a sea captain that had sailed past the island on several occasions. When the wizard asked him to draw out the island, the captain generously provided a rough sketch of the coastline and a general indication of the island location. But this didn't satisfy the wizard's desire to be exact in his spell preparations, so he asked the captain to sketch a picture of the island with the rock spire atop. I had fun raising my eyebrows and telling him in my best sailor's brogue that a sea captain does not necessarrily an artist make. So, next the wizard tried to ask more specific questions regarding the captains visual perceptions of the island, thinking that he could draw out just a little more from the old salt. He asked, "What does the island look like and how tall is the rock spire?" He finally gave up and the rest of the group broke into long laughter when I held up my fingers about an inch apart and said, "Well, m'boy, as I see it from deckside the island is pretty much a mountain poking up from the waters and that rock a'way up on top stands just about thiiiiis high." They traveled by boat to Shatterhorn.
At that point of the campaign, the adventurers should be able to negotiate the acquisition of House Rhiavadi without too much trouble. Their fame and value to the city is escalating. It would be fair to offer a purchase price of some kind to the city, as the amount of land available within the city is limited. Also, the opportunity to play up the city taxes exists in this scenario. However, note on the post-eruption map that House Rhiavadi is significantly damaged during Foundations of Flame, as are quite a few structures in town. In fact, the building lies along the edge of the fissure created in the southeast corner of the city and half of the house falls away into the chasm. Their mother may not fare well during the tremors and eruptions! Of course, this is excellent fodder to inspire the PCs to action against the Cagewrights. Being an evil organization bent on unleashing demonic hordes on the Prime Material plane is one thing, but don't mess with Mom!
Looking back I remembered a possible resource for just such an occasion as this. You can download "Crime and Punishment in Cauldron" on theRPGenius.com. It is a nice document shared by steev42 with some ideas on Cauldron nobility, crime and punishments. I have to say, I wouldn't be too keen on the idea that killing someone is somehow a lesser crime just because the magic to restore life exists. Especially when the victim is of the elite nobility. Circumstances should be taken into account, of course, hence a trial which will provide some great roleplaying fun. I could settle for the argument that punishments may be lessened provided there is some compensation to the Vanderboren family to offset their expenses in raising Todd. But I would think that the city itself has an interest in making an example of the PC as well, through community service and/or imprisonment, so that all citizens are reminded of the consequences of such actions within the city. And regardless of how the scenario plays out between the PCs and the Vanderboren family and other high level NPCs in town, the general populace will have their own reactions to this event. I imagine that there would be varying levels of fear, disdain, indifference, and support. All of these could play into PC interactions in Cauldron throughout the campaign as the PCs continue to heroically save the townsfolk and improve their sullied reputation. Anyway, I thought the document linked above might be of some interest. Enough for now. :) Regards,
I'm not sure I can see what interest Vhalantru has in saving the PCs from themselves at this point. He's been keeping his eye on them so that they don't cause him any trouble, but knows that they will have to be eliminated if they should prove to be a nuissance in the future. So, if they should manage to eliminate themselves from the scene before they become a problem for Vhalantru, all the better for him. I'd be sure that the punishments are separated among the PCs according to the severity of their individual actions. For the PC who dealt the killing blow to Todd (Oh, how my group would have loved to do that!), he should most definitely spend some time in Skellerang's jail. The others could be handled with fines and community service (I like the Festival Guards idea from Delvesdeep.). For the murderer, I'd say stage a trial! Those can be quite a lot of fun and provide a ton of role-playing opportunities. Bring in several NPCs to share what they saw the night of the incident, carefully craft some indignant statemnents for the remaining Stormblades describing their innocence in the matter, and call each of your PCs to the stands to testify to their actions (What alignments are you working with?) For the PC stuck in jail, you could give him an opportunity for escape when the Last Laugh comes to break out several of their members. The PC could become the renegade party member, whatever that entails. Maybe you could give him an opportunity to make up for his actions when he overhears some captured Last Laughers whispering about a plot to rob the Vanderboren estate. There are really a whole lot of possibilities there. How exciting! Regards,
Rats! You've uncovered my plot to subvert the DMs of the world and become known as the Dungeon Master Master, inserting subliminal messages into campaigns and creating an army of gamers! Mua ha ha! No, no, credit is there, but you have to click on the "Details" link in order to see who submitted the file. I am merely the humble librarian to the many illustrious authors in the archive. Perhaps I need to take a few moments to modify the display code so that the author shows up front. You know I'm always happy to help. Spoiler:
And...for the umpteenth time...the Demonskar Ball is inspired genius. There, I said it. Regards,
So, now I gotta move to some parish in Jersey! I'm glad to say I know many cool priests, but that's absolutely awesome.
You can substitute any another NPC during for the Brass Monkey rescue. Yup, that's just as good, too.
That's mostly up to you. The party should probably develop some degree of trust with Fario and Fellian and/or their boss Tyro Amberhelm. This is easy to do, since the rescue of Shensen fromt he Lucky Monkey gives them a point of contact with Tyro. In a later chapter, Lords of Oblivion, the party is asked to rescue Fario from the Last Laugh and the information he has is important for the PCs to believe so that they will next go to the home of Thifrane and the encounters there. If the party does not have at least some rapport with Amberhelm and his group, then you may have to work a little harder to get the party there. The degree to which the PCs interact with them is open ended.
Fario and Fellian can be really useful in divulging bits of information as the campaign progresses. In your instance, they can easily become allies of the party and provide an introduction to their leader Tyro Amberhelm who would be very interested in any of the PCs activities. They are directly responsible for providing reconaissance information and motivation for the party later Lords of Oblivion, but Tyro Amberhelm is trying to work under the radar himself, so would probably not give everything away until later chapters, after the PCs have proved themselves further. Until then, I'd have Fario and Fellian continue to run missions for Tyro and his purposes and let the PCs encounter them in passing, as social encounters where you might drop hints for coming events as needed.
I ran my group through the Sons of Gruumsh module prior to Flood Season, though I did use it to introduce the Stormblades by first running Event 6 - Meet the Competition. In the module, a young adventuring group made up of the children of local nobles is missing. The PCs are recruited to seek them out and bring them back. In my game, the reward was open to any seekers and both the Stormblades and PCs were privately asked to join the search. However, the noble offering the reward made the proviso that the return of his son was required. So, as the PCs prepared to leave town they learned, to their dismay, that the Stormblades were also on the same trail. And after some discussion, they opted to team up for the duration of the search and share the reward, though the detail of shares was a bit sketchy. The Stormblades, having nobles within their ranks, knew the other group of adventurers and were helpful in getting off in the right direction. But after the initial meeting in the tavern from Event 6, there was a lot of tension between the groups. During the fight through the orc temple, the Stormblades were combat helpful, but continued to do just the right things to annoy my players. Finally, I managed a bit of careful manipulation and arranged the attack plans for the last battle to allow the Stormblades first access to the nobles held hostage, minus the son of the noble offering the reward. When the opportunity presented itself, I ran the Stormblades in to grab the other nobles and had them flee the combat to escape to the surface with their friends and back to town. The PCs were left short-handed to fight the battle and discover the deception. Their paladin went down and the rest were getting desperate before it all came to an end. They recovered the final noble, the son who mattered, and returned to Cauldron as well. Now, the fun thing I added was to have the Stormblades face the PCs as they came to return the noble son for their reward. The Stormblades claimed their share of the reward, though they had abandoned him and did not escort him back to Cauldron. The PCs were naturally unwilling to go along with this and it developed into a fight. The noble offering the reward called for the town guard who broke up the fight and brought them all before the mayor and Vhalantru to arbitrate the matter. Long enough story short, the PCs and Stormblades were each allowed to make their arguments to the mayor and the way things went the PCs had to settle for less than they had expected. They were wholly justified in their anger and the Stormblades became an immediate thorn. Without going into further detail, it was lovely! My players have enjoyed taking the Stormblades on at every opportunity, especially the Demonskar Ball that followed shortly after all of this took place. I've been meaning to get back to my notes to write up the idea for theRPGenius.com and now is as good a time as any. Thanks for the kickstart, Robert.
Way to go, Frozen! I've got a bit to go still. I get to broil my group in Foundation of Flame at our next session. But Age of Worms is coming soon and I get to sit back and enjoy the ride as a player, too. Be sure to introduce your new DM to these boards and theRPGenius.com so he can get all the same mischevious, make that brilliant, assistance that you did. Raise a frothy mug!
For any who may not have heard of theRPGenius.com, it is a resource archive for DM created files used to enhance your adventure path campaigns. I think those of us that have been contributing are still in the midst of our Shackled City campaigns. I'll admit that I haven't been providing much publicity to draw more contributors to the site. Hopefully, as DMs move through the AP series, those that have helped us improve our Shackled City experience so much will be joined by new contributors and continue to add to our campaigns. With the onset of Pathfinder, I hope that the community of sharing can continue to thrive and collaborate to create great gaming. If it should come to pass that theRPGenius.com fails to capture the favor of DMs in other adventure paths, I will be satisfied that it at least made a difference for Shackled City campaigns. The resource archive became much more than was ever expected of it. It still continues to grow and remains a solid support to the help available here on these messageboards. Best Regards,
In a less creative vein, you could simply Photoshop the hue and, voila, another lovely kobold portrait in the color of your choice appears. Otherwise, I am satisfied with the options already expressed. Cheers!
I like those thoughts, evilash. Especially the taint concept. I don't know how it is done in Heroes of Horror, but is it based on the frequency with which a spellcaster uses a given school of magic? This is what comes to my mind as I speculate. If a caster significantly favors one school over others, they develop specialization/taint in that form of Sin Magic. If they show no particular inclination in their casting, they are not specialized. Tracking their use of spells through the campaign, they may develop a taint along the way or even switch to another altogether. These taints provide some moderate benefit in regard to the particular school of magic and a caster may only possess one taint at a time. If a caster favors two schools equally beyond the others, they do not qualify for specialization. It is a fun concept to consider, but I'm interested to see what the writers come up with first. No sense changing things before we've even got them in hand. There's plenty of time for that later. ;)
I'm going to be running FoF for my group in one more week (better wrap up my prep!) and I'm considering overlapping some of the events to give a greater sense of urgency to them. It will force the players to delegate who handles which task and require them to enlist more civilians to succeed. Certain events are clearly better suited to some PCs while others can be handled en masse. Has anyone else done this and what suggestions might you make?
No, they're normal gauntlets of ogre power. That's my opinion, at least. I've never heard of gauntlets of ogre power +4, +6 or +8 for that matter. Perhaps it says +2 as an attempt to help remind the reader of the bonus granted without refering to the DMs Guide. Regards,
Just a quick note to say that I got your email and this file is up on theRPGenius.com now, too. Excellent work as usual and thanks! Regards,
That would be theRPGenius.com and thanks in advance for sharing. :) Regards,
Bah, I wish I could save y'all the trouble and just host it on dmtools.org. :( Heh, I know what you mean. ;)
Though there may not be specific price lists to use, there are several files that should be helpful for you on theRPGenius.com. Go to the downloads section and look in the General Resources for the Shackled City. Look for the Cauldron Almanac files, Skie's Treasury, and Cauldron Coins to name a few. Regards,
Talk about right on time, too! My players are meeting Kaurophon and heading to Occipitus this Saturday. Thanks for sharing this on theRPGenius.com, too. Regards,
Please add my humble second to Ikor's request. Regards,
Unrelated to the stellar contributions of this discussion... I've played with these guys for the past seven years (though not as DM), and one of the group's major problems is that they don't back down. Ever. And I'd hate to have to kill them all off... Sad as it might be, consider it lesson learned if it should come to that. I will also add that I agree wholeheartedly that the AP is significantly lacking in information and motivation for the PCs, especially where the Cagewrights are concerned. What would we do if these great ideas couldn't be shared! Synergy, man, yeah synergy! Koramado
Nice play, DMFTodd. That sounds like a good way to bring Terrem and Orbius back into the thick of it. I might still be able to pull that off myself. Koramado
There isn't a specific heading for it, but you can find information on the origin of the Carcerian Sign on pages 7 and 8 of the hardcover. It gives the origin of the birthmark and hints at how the Shackleborn might be used by the Cagewrights. I would be relatively stingy about the details of the ceremony, don't want to give it all away too soon, but providing information about the history and origin of the Carcerian Sign is harmless. Actually, I don't believe Terrem is abducted again, but I do think te text is a little unclear as to what Orbius does with Terrem. It could be that Orbius was lying about returning Terrem to the orphanage in Cauldron and that he is instead taken to the Cagewrights as one of the thirteen Shackleborn needed. But, if you ran it so that Orbius did truthfully return Terrem to the orphanage, then I'd just leave him there without a later abduction. When Zenith Splintershield is snatched from the PCs, he fills the last spot. I left Terrem alone after he was returned, but he lost his memories of his experience with the slavers and Orbius, so he wasnt much help. One of my players became a benefactor of the orphanage and they were able to discover Terrem's birthmark later. It helped them understand why he was saved by Orbius, but they always wondered why he was not abducted again later. They were always wary of that happening. Hope that helps. Regards,
theRPGenius.com is back up. There was a temporary server issue that is now resolved. Thank goodness! Regards,
I'd only suggest that you have Jenya in attendance at the Demonskar Ball. She is representing her temple in Sarcem's absence at a major civic event. If I remember the writeup correctly, even Ruphus made it to the Ball. So, that could make for a dramatic moment when Jenya receives the sending from Sarcem while he is holding out in the basement of the Lucky Monkey. You could make a show of Jenya frantically seeking out something to write with at the party. You might even consider having the Stormblades step in to offer their assistance to the overwrought priestess. Why would Jenya pick the PCs over the Stormblades for the rescue? Rescuing Sarcem would be more important than playing favorites. Sounds fun! Koramado
I ran the PCs through Flood Season first, before the Demonskar Ball. The Flood Festival was just getting rolling as the PCs were sent after Sarcem at the Lucky Monkey and the hard rains that began to fall as they returned with the bad news put a damper on things. Heavy rains are not good for street fairs and festivities, not to mention the threat of flooding. So, after the PCs returned from the Kopru Ruins with 7 of the 8 wands of water control recovered, they helped ward off the flooding and the rains subsided, thankfully. This allowed the Flood Festival to get back underway with renewed excitement. The Demonskar Ball was the finale of the Flood Festival, the main social event concluding the festivities. I gave the PCs roughly 2 weeks from the time the flood was averted to the Ball. During that time, they were able to participate in Flood Festival activities and run their errands in preparation for the Ball, with dance and ettiquete lessons and all. My players loved the whole thing. We sat around for 8 (maybe it was 10) hours of zero combat fun! Then following the Demonskar Ball, the PCs were enjoying their recently earned celebrity when, all of a sudden, their charmed life was interrupted by the umber hulk attack at the start of Demonskar Legacy. In the "Starting the Chapter" section of Demonskar Legacy, it says that many weeks have passed since the flooding and Winter has turned to Spring. I allowed 8 weeks of time to pass between the Demonskar Ball and the umber hulk attack. Plenty of time for the PCs to do just about anything they might want between adventures. Regards,
Just to let you know, I've been hosting a site for files such as this for the first two APs and have added a section for Savage Tide now as well. It's at http://theRPGenius.com. I'm still in the middle of running the Shackled City from the hardcover, so I don't have much to contribute to the Savage Tide as of yet. But there was a request to add a section for AP3 and I have obeyed. Check out the SCAP and AWAP archives to get an idea of the level of participation among the Adventure Path community. I've been impressed with the amount and quality of ideas out there that people are willing to share. To date, many have been able to enhance their campaigns by using the archived files there, even some of our Paizo friends (as rumor has it). I would welcome your stat block documents as an upload for others to share and benefit from. (Stepping down from the soapbox...) Thanks for listening. Hope you'll share. :) Best Regards,
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