How much of this stuff did you worry about in the beginning? Can most of it be tossed?
But at a minimum, I'd recommend focusing on the major backstory plot points. Find ways to let the players discover Nualia's backstory as well as the Kaijitsu's. They can learn some things about Nualia's background from Father Zantus and Hannah, for example. Depending on how she's handled, Nualia makes for a terrific sympathetic villain. To a lesser extent, Tsuto does as well. My party loved to hate him. Plus, if the players are aware of the Stoot/Chopper history, it can really add to the ambiance, make Sandpoint a little more exotic/mysterious.
If you can give a character some sort of tie to Nualia, all the better, though that's not necessary by any means. Maybe a character had a crush on her once upon a time but hasn't seen her since she "died", for example. Just makes the big reveal that much better, IMO.
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How much of this stuff did you worry about in the beginning? Can most of it be tossed?** spoiler omitted **
also, there is enough downtime in between, I would do a bulletpoint list of the shops dtailed in town - with one paragraph descriptions, or even just categories (shops - taverns - entertainment - religion - ect) so that they can pick where to go in thier downtime
Hi Orzreth.
When I started, I used these forums and the pathfinder wiki to help flesh-out Sandpoint. I made up a web page about the merchants, maps of locations, etc. and filled in descriptions and specific places (with back stories) as the PCs became interested, or stayed somewhere a few times.
In the beginning, I just had the table and some very rough notes about the town. Like: who ran things, and who would the party be dealing with according to the module.
Details, as shown on my site, came later.
Link
Butting in to say that I've been using your campaign journal/art/wiki for my own game for some time now. Thanks so much for sharing.
My advice? Most of the enemy NPCs are going to be one-scene wonders. If, say, Orik is recruited, you can flesh him out accordingly, but its best to just get an idea of his personality and maybe a few lines for them to throw out. (Scouring through campaign journals and PbP isn't a bad idea if you want some good ones.)
In short, worry about personalities and cinematics. Decide how you want to play your villains and what they say. 75% of the flavour text in Burnt Offerings is pure fluff. It's there for GMs to draw on, not to scare them off. You can easily run the module without a glance at the sandpoint and background text. You've read over them once, and the adventure text will give you some idea of what you need to establish.
However, I found I wished I'd done a better job encouraging my players to explore the town. When the "Sherlock Holmesing" of Skinsaw Murders rolled in, my players clung to the same old NPCs (Ameiko and Belor Hemlock) for help and didnt do any investigative work on their own. Your mileage may vary, but having a half a session of dicking around in town might help establish things a bit better for both you and your players. Might I suggest a pub crawl?
Creative Director
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Yup; the majority of the NPC encounters are gonna be 3 to 6 round fights in which case their backstories don't matter.
We include the detailed backstories for NPCs for basically 2 reasons:
1) To make the adventures more fun to read—an adventure that's not fun to read is MUCH less likely to ever get run, since if it bores the GM he's not gonna want to play it.
2) On the off chance that one of the NPCs ends up being charmed or redeemed or rescued or captured or whatever by the PCs—this allows the GM to portray that NPC beyond their generic role in combat. As a result, you as the GM can then go back between sessions to study up on that one NPC's backstory so that in sessions to come as that NPC becomes more and more a part of the group, you have the info you need to make the NPC seem like a well-rounded character and not just an optimized-for-one-combat speed bump in the storyline. There's no real need to be super familiar with all of their backstories before this point, though... simply reading the adventure should do the trick for what will probably just be plain old fights. But since we as the adventure writers/designers/developers/editors can never know which NPCs will become more important to any one particular group out of the thousands and thousands of groups that'll play that encounter... we generally take the approach of providing full backstories for as many NPCs as we can.
I, for one, really appreciate that.
In this game with a near infinite-number of variables, I never know what my players are going to do.
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Yup; the majority of the NPC encounters are gonna be 3 to 6 round fights in which case their backstories don't matter.
We include the detailed backstories for NPCs for basically 2 reasons:
1) To make the adventures more fun to read—an adventure that's not fun to read is MUCH less likely to ever get run, since if it bores the GM he's not gonna want to play it.
2) On the off chance that one of the NPCs ends up being charmed or redeemed or rescued or captured or whatever by the PCs—this allows the GM to portray that NPC beyond their generic role in combat. As a result, you as the GM can then go back between sessions to study up on that one NPC's backstory so that in sessions to come as that NPC becomes more and more a part of the group, you have the info you need to make the NPC seem like a well-rounded character and not just an optimized-for-one-combat speed bump in the storyline. There's no real need to be super familiar with all of their backstories before this point, though... simply reading the adventure should do the trick for what will probably just be plain old fights. But since we as the adventure writers/designers/developers/editors can never know which NPCs will become more important to any one particular group out of the thousands and thousands of groups that'll play that encounter... we generally take the approach of providing full backstories for as many NPCs as we can.
Another big thanks for all of the detailed backstories! My party latched on to Ameiko, Sheriff Hemlock, Brother Zantus, Shalelu, Brodert Quint, Headmaster Gandethus of the Academy, and Katrine Vindler. [Yes, I know the sage's name is "Quink" as published.] They also have some rapport with a couple of the Sandpoint guardsmen that I wrote up.
Arnwyn: You're totally right about never knowing what the players will do next. We spent a full session on the party exploring the Old Light, especially after I ad-libbed a throwaway line about "a couple of kids went missing while exploring it several years ago," which I said to scare them away from the tower, but only served to intrigue them. I had them find a partially-collapsed room with Thassilonian runes that hinted about the nature of the province of Bakrakhan and its Runelord Alaznist, to spare them the frustration of not finding anything at all.
--Hal
My party latched on to Ameiko, Sheriff Hemlock, Brother Zantus, Shalelu, Brodert Quint, Headmaster Gandethus of the Academy, and Katrine Vindler. [Yes, I know the sage's name is "Quink" as published.] They also have some rapport with a couple of the Sandpoint guardsmen that I wrote up.
Sounds pretty sweet. Glad it went well