I'm going to be starting Foundations of Flame tomorrow night, and I'm wondering how much info about the mechanics of evacuation points I should give?
Part of me doesn't like the idea of them knowing the city is broken into 5 parts and they have to earn enough points in each part to consider the city evacuated. Another part wants to explain it all, so they're in on the "mini-game".
An idea that is forming right now is to have Jenya explain that if they visit 5 major locations, and working with those as "hubs" do everything they can in the areas surrounding them, that should be enough. The five locations would be the Lantern Street Orphanage, Blue Crader Academy, The Cusp of Sunrise, the Docks, and Town Hall. They never made a big deal of learning the layout of the city when it came to specific building locations, so it's easy enough say that those sites are roughly equidistant from each other. That way, rather than arbitrality saying they are in the NW quadrant of the city, we could say they are evacuating the area around the academy, and once they have done all they can with all 5 area, the city is as completely evacuated as they can get it.
I'd to hear critiques of that, as well as any other ideas anyone has.
Thanks!
Bulette
I drew up a outline for this event. I even added a couple more events so the ones listed would not need to be repeated. I can email it if you want.
Send me a request at: ogre_bane(at)hotmail(dot)com
I found that a simple fly and resist fire made most of the non-combat events easy. I would increase the needed points in each area to actually make this a challenge.
I'm going to be starting Foundations of Flame tomorrow night, and I'm wondering how much info about the mechanics of evacuation points I should give?
Bulette
Good point, I would normally withhold the mini-game idea from my players but I have seen from the Flood Festival that they really need to know what they are shooting for and whats the OOC goal. I will take your advice with the 5 centers, but I will also have to give a few ground rules before the game starts.
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?
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I divided city into 5 sections and had preplanned which events and occurences happened in each section. During heavy earthquakes , the pc's on their own had gone to see Jenya and the town guard to see if the city should be evacuated.....[made it easy for me]. They were already in process of dividing party into 2 groups to warn more people about the dangers coming. so at that point, i showed pc's map i printed with dividing lines and the like. [they didnt know what was in store for them though, they only thought it was gonna be an easy XP 'role play' night.....not]. 1 group went clockwise and the other went counter clockwise, clearing out city and trying to survive all hazards....they met at last section just as we were winding down for night..so we take up from last section next session.....with the morkoth encounter and soon after, hookface....but they had minimal casualties in party and quite a lot of civilians died....nothing they coul do.[i did this to show importance of doing things in timely manner].. oh well....
I kept the mini-game mechanics behind the screen, and although the players later said they enjoyed the chapter, I can't help wondering if I made the wrong choice.
The PCs immediately understood that the earthquake/volcano was related to the Cagewrights' ritual, and so they concluded their top priority was stopping the ritual. Since one PC has just been elected mayor, he was able to issue a series of delegatory orders to the guards and the churches: divide the city into four, help evacuate, discourage looting, etc. At that point, as far as they were concerned, their job in Cauldron was done.
I still threw a number of events & encounters at them as they scurried about the city collecting their magic items in anticipation of a dungeon-crawl...but they rarely thought of these encounters as evacuation-focused, and they only saved a handful of lives directly. They were underground and gunning for the Cagewrights before I could toss either the Morkoth or Hookface at them.
The most frustrating part is: they were ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Without the pass-or-fail evacuation rules established by the mini-game, it makes WAY more sense for the heroes to leave the evacuation to trusted NPCs, and take the fight to the Cagewrights as quickly as possible.
What did I do wrong? Should I have downplayed the Cagewrights' involvement? Or somehow made it impossible for them to go underground until the city was completely empty?
In short, I didn't think the evacuation point game added much. I thought it was neat, but I thought I could wing it and not bother. I assumed basically 2 encounters per quadrant and 2 encounters in the lake area (one was the Morkoth). My group volunteered to aid in the evacuation in the most dangerous areas so it was easy to motivate them. From there, I had 10 planned encounters/situations and I had a visible checkmark list for them to see (even though I didn't actually say there were 2 encounters per area).
They enjoyed it and I gave experience based on the EL or CR of the encounter (depending on the situation).
I will say I was disappointed by how little the named NPCs featured in this adventure. I purposefully introduced several more and the players like it.
I also made the Hookface encounter a big set piece encounter outside the guard barracks. You'll need to have a big area anyways, so I took the opportunity to draw a generous section of city with lots of buildings and extra details. For example, on the off chance the PCs got creative, I noted what each building contained (olive oil press, blacksmith, tailor, etc.). I also included several crevices and lava areas as well as rubble and general destruction.
Good luck with it. My players said it was their favorite adventure so far.
I'm entering this chapter in a few days, and I love the idea of divvying up the city. I'll definitely do that. Setting up the big scale encounter with Hookface is also a great tip. I'll be busy drawing tomorrow!
I don't plan on telling my players that there is a "minigame". However, they will likely not have lots of direct political sway either. They are establishing themselves as heroes of the city so when the quake hits they will likely be drawn into the evacuation events. If they go the method of running off after the Cagewrights then I will just be sure to point out all the lives that were lost on the surface afterward. Of course, the evil characters probably won't care. The paladin however...