We had our first session of the Haunting of Harrowstone last night. Ithought it might be interesting to collect my thoughts on the evening while letting folks know what the PCs did. Let's call it a session report. Warning this'll be verbose!
MUSIC:
I took Riptide777's lead FROM THIS THREAD and put together those songs into a Youtube channel, or at least, the ones we would get to last night. You Youtube channel
IS HERE.
The music went well, but I'm not sure it really added anything to the event. I need to speak more with my PCs about this.
ARTS and CRAFTS!:
I went a bit over the top and did some craft work for this session. Each PC had a storyline customized to their character based on the character backstories. Each had a private note to them which was sealed with sealing wax inside of the will case. I even sealed the will. For a thoroughly silly set of over the top photos - CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS HERE. I picked up a set of sealing wax, with some seals, for about $11 from Hobby Lobby. I considered doing some aging of the pages but decided the will was not intended to be old and weathered, and that of course saved me effort.
I also had lots of handouts for folks. I handed out maps from the PDF, images of NPCs, things of that nature. This is the first time our group has done this. We normally play entirely from the imagination but this time I thought I'd experiment with trying to use these bits that the Paizo folks had created to really bring in the players. The players each got a map of the town (without the letters on it) and as they explored the town I would draw their attention to where they were. It seemed to really help flesh out the town more than normal. Several players commented that afterwards they felt that they experienced the town more than a "normal" campaign.
The players seemed to like these touches.
THE PCs:
In case you were wondering, we have 6 PCs.
- A human, dwarven raised, battle cleric of Gorum.
- A human, dwarven raised, life oracle.
- A human ninja from Cheliax. This character is lawful evil but is hiding her evil for the time being. Her character believes that the government oc Cheliax has implanted a demon within her and is exploring whether this is real or not and whether the evil she does is because of the demon or her own choices.
- A human magus whose mother was convicted and put to death on charges of necromancy. This character hates dark magic. So of course . . . my goal is to tempt him here.
- A human witch who we made the bastard child of Petros from earlier in his life.
- A gnome bard, student of the professor's who has never been on an adventure before. This gnome is interested in gunsmithing so that he can make his own firearm and, being a gnome crafter, use it without needing to have proficiency in firearms.
The two dwarven raised characters did not talk about their character design so it was a nice surprise when the session started and folks were introducing themselves. The PCs bound over some local "liquid ghosts" ale from the Laughing Demon and got to complain together this was nothing like dwarven ale.
THE STORY:
We started with handing out a Harrow Card to each player. They are excited about these.
So last night the PCs introduced themselves as they were caught in a bad storm that was passing through Canterwall and all ended up (how fortuitous!) waiting on a coach to Ravengro.
When they got to Ravengro, they had the funeral. It went OK. The PCs were careful with the thugs but one of the thugs tried to flee and our ninja from above took an attack of opportunity, critted, and killed the thug dead-dead. This makes it really hard on me, because the story is clear that this is -6 to trust. I played this up, of course not letting on the trust calculation yet. Father Grimburrow scolded the PCs, though the ninja was obviously cool about this - "he attacked me". The other thugs were routed, scolded, and sent home.
I've been playing up this murder of the farmer. The PCs tried to goto the temple later and I had the acolytes chase everyone off, saying that Grimburrow was in town "trying to console the family of the farmer you murdered". Right now my intention is to let the -6 trust stand and provide ways for the PCs to dig their way out - probably through more events.
The PCs enjoyed sitting around the fire telling stories about Petros. It was great to listen to my players ad lib this, they were having a great time.
The dwarven-raised PCs went to find a tavern. I took this opportunity to run Event 2, the skipping song. The PCs were pretty freaked out by the lyrics/words but failed a diplomacy check by 6 (>5) and sent the kids screaming.
That first night I played out the "V" letter of Event 1. The next morning the PCs found out about this as the young boy was posting signs about town, he let them know what had happened. They went down there to investigate and asked some great questions. They learned a little about Harrowstone.
I think I'm playing this up well because the PCs were asking questions that were so stupid "what is this memorial" and "what is this Harrow Stone?" that I played it like the locals were insulted by their questions. Regardless, they got little bits of information and I gave them the first (DC10) Harrowstone check. I also dolled out one of the rumors from the table while two of the PCs were having a pint of ale.
It was interesting watching those two PCs at the tavern deal with the strange names of the food there. That worked out really well.
I awarded the PCs each a little treasure. Things that they cannot use yet but will have fun working to figure out. Some of them are relatively powerful, but I left them as broken so that they will have to figure out how to repair it. I also gave the one from Cheliax a Chelish Crux, basically a box of holding. Not too powerful, but he doesn't know what it is or how to open it (it has runes on it that you must trace in a certain order - like the game of Simon - to open). I find the group I play with responds really well to treasure (that's probably true for all groups). So even if it seems powerful, I try and tone it down to keep it within reason. Also the group is very good at role playing so I don't have fear of them munchkining to max/min the situation.
Overall the session went great, and they have lots of threads hanging. For one, they haven't conducted any research yet and they haven't gone to find these ghost tools in the Restlands. The PCs didn't miss those hints, they even talked to me afterwards about them.
Great job Paizo. And thanks to this forum community for helping me craft ideas over these past few weeks.
Love the effort you put into making the campaign abit more visceral!!!
Congrats on what sounds like a game that is not only fun to play but fun to run!
I will be starting this Path in the weeks to come and I troll these threads for tips.
Needless to say you have offered quite a bit! Keep them coming!
OMG! This is awesome! So is the YouTube channel!!! And the letters!!!!! Totally keep this up, and keep posting more!
!!!!!!!!
Very interesting and very inspiring. Keep it up!
+1
There is a lot of coolness here.
I love that the players were making up stories of old times with Petros - quality players.
I love that the players were making up stories of old times with Petros - quality players.
One of the players took the trait that they were a student of the professor and he's also a gnomish bard. He was excited about the will because "humans often leave people treasure and charge people with adventures!"
Around the fireplace the players put together in the professor's library, while drinking some sherry (the dwarven raised humans had gone off in search of ale), the bard retold stories of the many adventures he had been on with the professor. After a few of these descriptions you realized that what he was calling "adventures" were really school "field trips". :)
It was all very fun and very clever. I'm fortunate to have good role players.
Thanks for the positive words.
Thanks for this write up. I too love the youtube channel idea. Could you tell us more about the treasure (magic items?) you gave your players and how they are "broken" and can be repaired? I think the module is a little skimpy on magic items (other than ones specific for fighting the creatures in the story) and am contemplating handing out some magic just for fun. Did you have these items as part of the will? How did you play that out? Were they written in the will?
Thanks!
Thanks for this write up. I too love the youtube channel idea. Could you tell us more about the treasure (magic items?) you gave your players and how they are "broken" and can be repaired? I think the module is a little skimpy on magic items (other than ones specific for fighting the creatures in the story) and am contemplating handing out some magic just for fun. Did you have these items as part of the will? How did you play that out? Were they written in the will?
Thanks!
On the whole I thought treasure allocation for Harrowstone was about right, Trial of the Beasts is a bit low, and poorly placed (unless stealing from the home of the man you intend to rescue is consistent with your party ethos), but Harrowstone felt about right for 1-4. The only changes I really made were I changed weapon types (like dagger to short sword etc) to better suit the party. I'd rather go ahead and give them a weapon they want then something I know will just end up as trade bait for an equivalent they have feats for.
Thanks for this write up. I too love the youtube channel idea. Could you tell us more about the treasure (magic items?) you gave your players and how they are "broken" and can be repaired? I think the module is a little skimpy on magic items (other than ones specific for fighting the creatures in the story) and am contemplating handing out some magic just for fun. Did you have these items as part of the will? How did you play that out? Were they written in the will?
Thanks!
Yeah I'm happy to.
I was hesitant to do it because I didn't want to get into arguments that I had given my players things that are too powerful. I am comfortable as a GM in adjusting the encounters to deal with mistakes I may have made in that regard. My players are all really good at role playing as well and every one of them took feats, spells, and put points into skills that aren't going to be super useful in this campaign just because it fit well for their character.
Here's what I gave them with some description of what I'm intending with the items and where the genesis for the item came from:
First off, some of these are from The Magic Items DB. I downloaded and imported it into google docs and sorted it by caster level, gold value, and played around for a bit trying to find them items that weren't too powerful or too expensive. I also used this to search for keywords I was interested related to my characters. I found a lot of keywords that caught my eye and helped me in my searches.
- WITCH: I gave the witch a Pearl of Power, Level 1. This is only valued at 1,000gp. I wrapped this item up as a crystal dragon egg. This character had a backstory that she had a little dragon familiar that was given to her by the professor when she was a kid (she is the bastard child of the professor from one of his travels earlier in life). The dragon egg hatched, familiar for a while, dragon eventually died (we didn't want it due to power reasons). But the character is very interested in getting another one of these later.
WHY? This gives the player a small (imo) treasure but it's also a treasure that means something sentimentally to this particular player. I left the treasure in the professor's house, in the private note I gave her (see the photos! she was the one with the 'kiss' seal, lol), as nothing more than a piece of art. The egg was literally on a glass stand in the foyer of the house. Kendra fetched it for the player. Also in the note I told her who to talk to in Lepistadt, a fellow professor of Petros' who could help her learn where the egg came from. This gives me a plot hook I can dig into later - but don't have to worry about now, and it gives the player something to look forward to, to hope for.
- MAGUS: The Magus character has a nasty relationship with what he called "dark magic" in his backstory, which I interpreted as necromantic magic, clearly. His mother was accused, found guilty, and put to death for using it. As such, he stays away from it. So what did I do? I left him (1) a spell book with necromatic spells in it and (2) some necromatic wands.
WHY? The spell book has spells in it he cannot cast. He can simply sell it. I left him instructions much like the others in the story about how the book in the wrong hands could set a bad message as to the professor's affiliations. So he is to take care, because he would know how dangerous this could be in the wrong hands. This gives the player something he doesn't WANT, but maybe he'll be tempted by. Will this PC multiclass into wizard and start learning necro spells? Maybe! And that'd be a fun plot item!
I also left him 3 low level necro wands. These were Wand of Chill Touch (20 charges), Wand of Disrupt Undead (10 charges), and Wand of Vampiric Touch (50 charges). Before we go all crazy yelling at me for these overpowered wands, I'd like to let you know that the Vamp Touch wand is cursed. Whenever he uses it, it drains charisma from him for 1 day. He'll figure this out when he uses it. But, maybe it's worth it. The other two I've left hooks open in the description that gives me leeway to maybe make them also cursed if I find they are too powerful.
- CLERIC: I left him two things. One (1) is I left him a piece of information that his heritage (this player is a human, raised by dwarves) appears to be tied to Harrowstone. (2) is I left him a simple ring that gives him +1 channel positive energies per day. But this ring is kept by Father Grimburrow and if you've been reading above, currently the father is very pissed at this party (-6 Trust) for slaughtering a farmer in cold blood.
WHY? (1) Once this player goes to research this in the Town Hall (which, by the way, he can't yet because of Trust issues - but he desperately wants to WHICH IS REALLY GOOD FOR THE STORY!) he will find that his ancestor was a guard who died in the fire. That will help draw him into the prison. I might add his ghost down there or have some special item down there for him to find. I'll figure that out when we get towards that and feel out what he needs. (2) It will take this PC a bit to get close enough to the father to get this ring. Also the particular type of cleric he is playing, a battle cleric, is a bit light in the channel department AND with all the Haunts in this adventure I felt it useful to add a mere +1 to one of the holy folk.
- NINJA: I left the ninja two things as well. (1) I charged him with the book The Umbral Leaves. I removed it from the chest and instead told him it was his private responsibility to deliver it in Lepistadt. (2) I gave him a Chelish Crux. This item is from the database I outlined above.
WHY? (1) This particular character is lawful evil but is hiding it. (S)he's a bit of a scout who believes has a devil inside of her. She's from Cheliax. The professor clearly outlines in his will and journal that he is researching evil so that he can better inform those how to fight it. Well, this character happens to be on a mission from the Chelish government to acquire information. So the question now remains - is this book something she wants to get into the hands of the "fighters of evil" in Lepistadt? I dunno! But it's great for the story! This player has already talked to me several times over the past few days about how torn he (she) is about this. Awesome!
(2) The Chelish Crux is basically nothing more than a bag of holding that is pretty. It has some pretty well defined rules for how to open it. My intention here is that the PC will spend several sessions trying to figure out how to get into it. She'll probably have to interact with the magical characters in the party as well, something she's not really inclined to do too much. Once inside, I put an Eye of the Mantis. This is outlined in the database as well but doesn't appear to have a direct link. Basically it's a scouting tool. I think it's a bit powerful, so I'm hoping this time it takes to open the box will form a type of 'gating' to get this item.
- BARD: The bard character is a gnome interested in firearms and has quite a lot of points in gunsmithing. Basically he's going after the gnomish trait where they are proficient with any item they have personally crafted - so he doesn't need proficiency in firearms if he crafts it himself. So I gave him a Hellfire, which is a modification of the link there, detailed below.
WHY? There's a couple things going on here. I wanted to give him a pistol, but I wanted it to be a special pistol. As you can tell, this pistol is very valuable - CL15 and a price of 32k gold. OMG so expensive! Well, frankly, it's basically a double barrel pistol that does fire damage instead of normal damage. Nothing game breaking in my book. I've taken away the everloading aspects of it, making him have to craft the bullets for it. I'm going to leave in the +2 I think. Here's the kicker - (1) I left this pistol in the hands of Hearthmount and (2) I left it broken. (1) This gave me the ability to draw out the PC (and the party, as it was) to the site of Hearthmount's house, which I made him not there but instead dealing with the Event #1 - "V" placement. So the PCs were then drawn to the Harrowstone Memorial. He ended up getting Hellfire (broken), but not without seeing more of the town and giving me a way to tie in Event #1 easily. (2) it's broken. I've come up with a set of rules for him to "fix" it and ruled that this complicated, lengthy project of fixing it amounts to crafting in my sense so he will be proficient with it due to the time he is spending fixing/crafting it. I won't get into the rules here, but basically it takes 5 game days on the good side with lots of average rolls. Bad rolls will add a day, really stellar rolls will take a day off. This gives this PC something special to work towards but, again, gates their access to something that is clearly powerful.
- ORACLE: I left the Oracle two things. (1) I left him a bit of information vaguely talking about the Warden as the key to this and encouraging him to research it a bit more, I tied this in with his character story (I'd go into it, but I'm already boring people with this tome here). (2) I left him something I found (again, in that database) called Litheria Blooms.
WHY: He's a life Oracle, interested in Nature, and I tied in the flowers (2) in with his story. These flowers aren't super powerful and I only gave him 5. Furthermore, I made him make some rolls to figure out what they were. He failed but did them with Kendra and it gave me a chance to roll play up that Kendra is a diviner. She identified them for him. These flowers basically give you the benefits of a death ward and deathwatch spells each time you inhale the pollen. But they are 1time use (so 5 in total for him) and only last 10 minutes. (1) This gives him a plot point and something special to do. So far, he hasn't revealed this to the other characters.
Let's remember. You (I) are the DM. If you think things are out of control just take them away from the PC. Have them break, have them turn out to be cursed, have some NPC confiscate them. We don't have to get all bent-up about rules lawyering here.
Or at least that's how I DM. It works for us.
Hope this gives you some inspiration.
On the whole I thought treasure allocation for Harrowstone was about right, Trial of the Beasts is a bit low, and poorly placed (unless stealing from the home of the man you intend to rescue is consistent with your party ethos), but Harrowstone felt about right for 1-4. The only changes I really made were I changed weapon types (like dagger to short sword etc) to better suit the party. I'd rather go ahead and give them a weapon they want then something I know will just end up as trade bait for an equivalent they have feats for.Thanks for this write up. I too love the youtube channel idea. Could you tell us more about the treasure (magic items?) you gave your players and how they are "broken" and can be repaired? I think the module is a little skimpy on magic items (other than ones specific for fighting the creatures in the story) and am contemplating handing out some magic just for fun. Did you have these items as part of the will? How did you play that out? Were they written in the will?
Thanks!
It's been my experience both as a player and DM that players like things. The group I play with definitely gets their rocks off of things they have. As such, we are always tossing around wonderous items. I find wonderous items awesome as they, in my opinion, are rarely game breakers and they often add a ton to the storyline. For instance, the Campfire Bead and Glowing Glove both came out in a previous campaign and were totally fun from a role playing perspective. What really does it matter if a PC can leave glowing handprints of where they went? It becomes hugely awesome for the campaign with the PC uses this to role play with the local rubes at the bar, in hopes to catch the eye of a pretty girl, while leaving fingerprints on the table.
Once we had a PC throw the campfire bead into a group of NPCs that were sleeping and then he cast Firefall from the APG that explodes a natural fire. Was awesome fun. :)
Ullapool, I think that is all seriously awesome. I'm only giving my players 15 stat points, in part thinking that I can sprinkle more magic items, which I think are more fun than just a super statted up party.
I love how you incorporated the items into the story. I'm considering giving the characters Legendary Weapons/Items, which are described in a 3rd party source. I love the idea of weapons/items that grow with a character, and they aren't all that powerful at low levels (mostly just a +1 weapon or something). I may need to consider their abilities down the road (not until after this first module is done), but I can hold off on disclosing the abilities to the players, so I can adjust as I see fit.
My general plan thought is that Lorrimor identified the player characters as important to the coming struggle in Ustlav, and bequeathed them each one of these legendary items/weapons he gathered in his travels. If you want to try out the legendary items/weapons route, you really need to do it from the get go.
Basically, my motivation is that, like you, players like cool magic treasures. But I should, like you, think how to better work it into the storyline.
Any thoughts on the legendary items/weapons idea?
Ullapool, I think that is all seriously awesome. I'm only giving my players 15 stat points, in part thinking that I can sprinkle more magic items, which I think are more fun than just a super statted up party.
I love how you incorporated the items into the story. I'm considering giving the characters Legendary Weapons/Items, which are described in a 3rd party source. I love the idea of weapons/items that grow with a character, and they aren't all that powerful at low levels (mostly just a +1 weapon or something). I may need to consider their abilities down the road (not until after this first module is done), but I can hold off on disclosing the abilities to the players, so I can adjust as I see fit.
My general plan thought is that Lorrimor identified the player characters as important to the coming struggle in Ustlav, and bequeathed them each one of these legendary items/weapons he gathered in his travels. If you want to try out the legendary items/weapons route, you really need to do it from the get go.
Basically, my motivation is that, like you, players like cool magic treasures. But I should, like you, think how to better work it into the storyline.
Any thoughts on the legendary items/weapons idea?
I don't have that source book. Can you link to it? Maybe I'll buy it. As to how they tie into the story, I'll give a worthless answer like "it depends" on the items themselves and the character design.
Generically, Paizo left us with lots of cool threads to play with in Ravengro. Consider the retired singer, the strange food at the tavern, the dwarf who abandoned her military unit, the town councilman who is a retired militaryman, and of course probably the most interesting to me- the potion mixing alchemist. Jon Kines (I think it was him) in another thread detailed some really cool things he was thinking of with the alchemist being quite evil trying to convert the populace into a strange type of undead originally explained in Ravenloft.
If you don't have it yet, you might consider getting the recent Paizo release on the Rule of Fear. It outlines all of the major settlements and counties of Ustalav and has some great plot-hooks in there. So many in there I want to run, and might have to if my large party causes them to be low on experience.
Do you have more specific info on what items you are considering? Might could they connect in with the 5 major baddies in Harrowstone (splatter, lopper, mosswater, charlatan, umm... piper I think was the 5th)? Maybe the PCs don't realize their connection until later in the adventure. Maybe the professor never did?
I've got a feeling this adventure path is going to go heavily into the "secret society" aspects of the Palantine Eye and the Whispering Way. Always great tie-ins there.
that pistol is worth 32k gold! yikes!
Sorry I was so vague -- I needed to run out the door.
The 3rd party material I'm referring to are downloads by Purple Duck Games. There are 3, including Legendary Blades, Legendary Weapons, and Legendary Items. They are $3 downloads. Here is a link to Legendary Weapons, and the others are easy to find on the site: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=87107
The general concept is described as follows: "We have all heard tales of the heroic young adventurer who picks up a magical sword from a time long for- gotten and grows in power and acclaim alongside the weapon until both reach their full potential." Of course, it can apply to all weapons, magical bags, spellbooks, etc.
The weapon or idea advancement idea is as follows:
"• All weapons have a base legendary weapon level that is usually a +1 weapon.
• The legendary weapons listed have requirements required to attune them to the wielder.
• If by 4th level, the wielder of the legendary weapon has met the requirements to attune the weapon, it increases in power to its second weapon level.
• For every two levels of experience the wielder gains while using the legendary weapon, the weapon’s power level will increase by one level.
• Any spell-like abilities gained through the use of this legendary weapon are based on the wielder’s highest mental characteristic (Int, Wis, or Cha).
• The caster level required for any effects of the leg- endary weapon are based on the wielder’s total Hit Dice."
So, you can see that it isn't until 4th level that the character can even attain a greater weapon or item ability, and even then it isn't anything hugely powerful. I like the notion of a player having a special weapon or item that they have a real commitment to, and it can be the same weapon they can use at 10th level or beyond, when normally the early magic items might have been tossed aside. Mostly I think this will be something the players are excited about.
The Purple Duck write-ups seem thoughtful and creative. I'll probably customize most or all, but it gives a good framework for thinking through. I'm tempted to bequeath a falchion to a barbarian (and, later, Oracle); a rapier to a swashbuckling half orc rogue; a spellbook to a wizard; a short-sword to a two-handed fighting style ranger; and another item to a cleric. I don't know about linking them to the ghosts, since they won't have much relevance outside Harrowstone, but I should try to get creative about making the players work to attune themselves to the items.
I'm also trying to think about how Prof. Lorrimor would bequeath the items. I'm thinking in notes separate from the will, and then I need to figure out where the items would be. I've been assuming Lorrimor is a member of the Order of the Palatine Eye, but I think this would be a gift from Lorrimor outside the auspices or knowledge of the Order -- basically, based on his personal judgment regarding the potential of the players he obtained these items to help them fulfill their destiny.
I'd definitely be interested in any thoughts anyone has. And thanks for reminding me I need to get Rule of Fear.
that pistol is worth 32k gold! yikes!
I think you miss(ed) the point. (1) it's not worth 32k gold if I remove the everloading aspects of it. (2) I said I might further remove the +2 aspects of it. (3) and most importantly, I said I have the power and am comfortable wielding it to just remove it. Ooops, it backfired. Now take 1d4. See? I guess I'm just comfortable bending the rules to suit my needs. To me, that's DMing but perhaps that's because I am so used to playing other role playing systems like The Burning Wheel.
