Thank you, I still did not read it but it looks well done. A quick question: does the pdf summarize all the changes dudemeister did in this thread or are they an addition to the original posts?
Awesome! Thanks!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In other news, my group has finally finished VV and all the backlashes and aftermath.
They took out the Carrion Crow and dismantled the Linnorm Colossus, made their way to the Valley of the Dead, battled through nasty Mythic Great Cyclopes Dread Zombies and Ghoulified Winged Dread Corbies (who made no hesitation to use their superior numbers, decent stealth, and paralyzing touches to gang-rush the party and surround and overwhelm anyone who got separated from the other PCs on numerous occasions), and bit, clawed, and blazed their way through Vordakai's lair to take out the lich at the bottom. Sadly V had relocated his phylactery to somewhere safer, making it impossible - for now - for the Lords of Iomrall to finish him off.
They then took the Varnholders home, made it quite clear that their strife with the Nomen was to cease right this minute, and arranged to return in a couple of months - they had to run back home and deal with an incoming invasion headed by the Ruler's estranged father, which is a story in and of itself, including the spymistress letting Perlivash and the rest of Za-Forest Guard loose on the poor soldiers with only telling them "be imaginative and don't get killed", hiding in the enemy camp for several days undetected while poisoning the Ruler's father with Insanity Mist, and when the battered army finally reached Iomrall and the leaders of both groups sat down to parley the Ruler rolling a whopping 60 on Diplomacy in a passionate and well-articulated speech explaining not only why the invasion should be cancelled but why the young lord in charge of the army should march right back home and deliver to his father (the giver of the colony's charter) a letter explaining in equally eloquent terms why they should be granted independence.
After that they headed back to Varnhold, arranged to annex their floundering colony and its territory, negotiated peaceful relations with the Nomen and accepted them as vassals, and then finally retired back to Iomrall to take a long, well-deserved break.
In that break, a whole bunch of stuff happened, including the Magister getting his memories back from the fey princess he'd bartered them to (thanks to the Spymistress and Ruler doing some fast behind-the-scenes negotiating with both the Winter Queen and the Puck), their charter lord sending his response granting Iomrall's independence and not-so-subtly hinting that their alliance should be sealed by marrying off his wayward son to the Ruler (which was a complex in and of itself, AND THEN the actual wedding itself was an enormous circus which got tons of faces both familiar and new visiting, as well as sending invitations to all three Courts of the Fey in an effort to avoid getting Maleficented), the Ruler doing research regarding the rings the party keeps finding on notable bad guys after picking up a third one from Vordakai's pocket (filched off Willas Gundarson's corpse), and FINALLY getting around to hallowing and anchoring Candlemere and earning themselves a quick glimpse of none other than Ilthuliak in the process, peeking at them across the border between the Material and the Fey realm.
After all that, at long last, it's time to move on to Book 4.
What a ride.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thank you, I still did not read it but it looks well done. A quick question: does the pdf summarize all the changes Dudemeister did in this thread or are they an addition to the original posts?
I included every change mentioned.
I also moved the information snippets into the Trust Scores descriptions (since it made more sense to find them all together) and tweaked the order of the Areas and events of the Climbing of the Talon Peak so they were ordered into an ascending Climb DC.I also changed the name of "Scaling Talon Peak" into "Climbing Talon Peak" so not to confuse it with the "Scaling the adventure" terminology.
Finally, I added the legalese so it was "Paizo Inc. Community Use Policy" compliant. I'm quite sure it was properly done (the OGL was a bit more difficult to implement).
Anyway, Dudemeister is the actual author; he has veto power over any modification/addition/edition included. I really like his approach, ideas and systems :)))
Coming late to the party here (as always)... alex_van_d, your illustrated chase pages for the Kankerata Run are now missing. Did you delete the document from Drive? Did anyone else grab a copy they can put up somewhere?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I also made a set of chase cards for the Kankerata Run, using images I pillaged from the internet all by myself.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16299287/Kingmaker/KankerataRun.pdf
The locations where the competitors need to mark a column with a bloody handprint are marked with... a bloody handprint :) For the locations where special events happen (such as Kankerata spring-attacking), I made a GM-only key page rather than marking the locations with cryptic symbols, because the players would probably figure out what the symbols meant after a few rounds.
Hopefully they will be of use to someone else!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Very nicely done. Thanks for the work.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My group is close to starting VV in the next few weeks, i look forwards to your additions, Dude. It was neat reading everyone's summaries of play also!
|
I also made a set of chase cards for the Kankerata Run, using images I pillaged from the internet all by myself.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16299287/Kingmaker/KankerataRun.pdf
The locations where the competitors need to mark a column with a bloody handprint are marked with... a bloody handprint :) For the locations where special events happen (such as Kankerata spring-attacking), I made a GM-only key page rather than marking the locations with cryptic symbols, because the players would probably figure out what the symbols meant after a few rounds.
Hopefully they will be of use to someone else!
Fabulous work RobRendell!
I'm always blown away when people do cool stuff with my old ideas.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I also made a set of chase cards for the Kankerata Run, using images I pillaged from the internet all by myself.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16299287/Kingmaker/KankerataRun.pdf
The locations where the competitors need to mark a column with a bloody handprint are marked with... a bloody handprint :) For the locations where special events happen (such as Kankerata spring-attacking), I made a GM-only key page rather than marking the locations with cryptic symbols, because the players would probably figure out what the symbols meant after a few rounds.
Hopefully they will be of use to someone else!
I'm about to run this and though this would be a great resource (we had to move my game up a couple of weeks and I'm short on prep time) but drobox says this is either private or deleted. Any chance you could repost these?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my game I swapped out Centaurs for Goliaths. I'm not really a fan of Centaurs and have been wanting to introduce Goliaths into my game for a while. I wrote up a bit of a story about them having had a city in the mountains on one of the spurs leading to the Valley of the Dead. When the Taldan army came across the mountains 3000 years ago, they clashed. The goliath civilization was destroyed excepting a few that escaped the sacking of the city and those who lived on the plains raising horses, although the Taldan army was mortally wounded as well.
The goliaths became a nomadic people for a few generations (they have lifespans similar to dwarves in my game) before establishing a semi-permanent camp near the only mountain on the plains. The goliaths had worshiped their ancestors, but many family shrines had been lost or destroyed when their city fell (they weren't able to recover those that might still be there due to monsters that settled in the ruins, including a tribe of ogres.) With their shrines scattered, rupturing many of their conduits with their ancestor spirits, many took to worshiping elemental spirits, although some families were able to save their ancestral shrines. They re-established those in a cave in the mountains.
The others revered Kankerata as an earth spirit. Unfortunately, my PCs killed it on the way to the Nomen camp. This doesn't bode well for them, but they have a chance to redeem themselves if they use the scroll of raise dead they found in Varnhold. This could cost them later, but it will be an interesting choice. I think them raising Kankerata is the only way forward here. The PCs will be escorted from the plains and told not to return or there will be war. They will have to search the mountains to get find Vodakai's tomb and they won't even have any info on him to go off of since they didn't make the knowledge (history) check when the found the notes in the village.
Side note: I also made the ogre tribe into a bigger threat for the future. They hadn't been much more than a nuisance for many generations, but that changed a decade or so ago. A smaller tribe of Skullcrusher ogres (also from 3.5) lead by an Ogre Mage took over and started making trouble for the goliaths. A couple of years prior, a Skullcrusher anti-paladin killed the goliath warmaster and stole stole his weapon: a Legacy weapon goliath greathammer that had been passed down to each warleader after the fall. It's one of their greatest remaining relics from their era of glory. That's for the future, however. Probably after this adventure is finished.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm about to run this and though this would be a great resource (we had to move my game up a couple of weeks and I'm short on prep time) but drobox says this is either private or deleted. Any chance you could repost these?
Sorry about that - Dropbox had a policy change which changed basic users' Public folders into private folders, invalidating any links to files in those folders.
Here's a new link to the same file (in the same place, but now shared as accessible to anyone with this link): https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zk413ifsrao3lb/KankerataRun.pdf?dl=0
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sorry about that - Dropbox had a policy change which changed basic users' Public folders into private folders, invalidating any links to files in those folders.
Here's a new link to the same file (in the same place, but now shared as accessible to anyone with this link): https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zk413ifsrao3lb/KankerataRun.pdf?dl=0
Thank you!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As always, this thread is pure gold.
Thank you DM and everyone else who has contributed. Much to borrow from here and I am sure I'll have some follow up questions as my group gets closer (they will likely tackle Staggy next weekend).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My players got to Varnhold last Sunday. They were a bit spooked out by the dead Fellnight spriggan in the inn but the most memorable encounter (so far) was Thorn Jill. I didn't have the Thornjacks ambush the pcs (they are mythic and would have easily smoked the Thornjacks) on the way over to the cemetery but instead, I had the Thornjacks guard the entrance, stating that the pcs have not done anything to secure an audience with the Queen. Now, my players had some prior dealings with fey nobility so they were cautious and assumed Jill was a powerful fey.
Cue some not-quite-lying Diplomacy from the paladin Ruler and they got granted an audience. I showed them a picture of Jill, who had more of a humanoid look, quite child-like, and even that did not deter them initially from showing respect due to a high-ranking fey noble. The look on their faces as soon as I starting talking in a high-pitched and low class, oh so low class, manner, they were completely flummoxed.
One of the best parts was where she tried first to seduce the paladin Ruler, who politely declined stating that he was married, and had 4 kids. Her response? "Oh, dats not a problem, just stick a fork in her an' she done, yeah? I mean, a marriage is until death, right? I would do it for ya, cause dats totally shows to everyone how committed I would be to ya, but I feel like dats something really personal ya gotta do herself, yeah? Although I could help ya shop for the right fork - it will be our first date!"
She finally relents and agrees to tell them everything she knows if they bring her a guy. They look at each other and starts offering one by one the rest of the males in the party. She likes that but keeps insisting none of them are a guy, which they start to wonder if she is insane or if they are stuck in another illusion again.
Finally, the alchemist in the group figures it out: "Oh, she doesn't mean a guy, she means Agai!" They laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the entire encounter; I had her even do the "talking under her breath" bit but she keeps underestimating how loud her voice is so the party hears everything she "mutters."
It was a fun role-playing session and now they are looking forward to attacking the Fort and capture Agai. Heh.
Thanks for inventing Thorn Jill and the Thornjacks, DM Dudemeister! :)
CB
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Tomorrow I will be running the session where the player characters are invading (via the underground water tunnel that leads to the well inside the fort) to defeat the Fellnight spriggans and capture Agai. That being said, I want to add a few creatures to the spirggans' group to surprise the players (their characters are mythic (3rd tier), with access to low-magic, with only a hunter and an alchemist for spellcasters).
So far I have decided on a pair of fey wolves (wolves with the fey animal template), with the advanced simple template added, to be hiding in the stables. I thought about adding a pugwampi, but not sure about that. Can anyone recommend some tactically useful fey, animal, plant, or magical beast that the Fellnight spriggans could reasonably have with them?
Since the Fellnight spriggans were part of a military unit from the invasion force of the Fellnight Realm when they got cut off, these guys should be a bit more prepared (I will add some more traps in the fort) for anyone to drive them away from the fort.
I also changed the layout of the fort to reflect the ego and paranoia of the ruling council of Varnhold - it is a massive castle/fortress (about 6 floors total) that was only achieved with a staggering amount of loans from other investors (they too took advantage of cementing political deals with others in the A Venture Capital mod). However, they never got the chance to ready fill the place up with a lot furnishings - most of the rooms are empty.
Hopefully somebody got some neat ideas that I could borrow. In the meantime, I will be trawling through all of the bestiaries, pathfinder books, and 3rd-party materials I have to find the right flavour of enemies for the pcs to fight. :)
Cheers! Oh, and Happy Canada's Day! :)
CB
EDIT: Also, I changed Agai's statistics (he's still a Fellnight spriggan) to be a 5th level unchained fighter (crossbowman archetype) with a bonus feat (I give all of the important named-npcs an extra feat because I did that for the players since it's a low-magic campaign). So he does significantly more damage with the crossbow (hence why he does not bother with Skybolt) and prefers to do sniping (which is easier in the larger castle I place in lieu of the small fort described in the book).
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2mcqs?Mixing-Fellnight-Queen-with-Varnhold#1
My thread from June 2011, specifically my notes on mixing Varnhold with Fellknight :)
Probably too late for you Bakka, wish i saw this thread earlier.
Thanks, Sunderstone, I appreciate the link.
I finally got back to continue running my Kingmaker campaign (life was quite unkind this summer as I needed surgery), and I liked Orthos' idea of having Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Trials. For the most part, it is easy enough to crib from the History of Ashes from Curse of the Crimson Throne but it is the Water Trial that I am skeptical about. I would like to keep the Havero (it sounds wicked) but the adventure itself needs to be a little bit more challenging than swimming deep underwater to fight a Havero. The adventure part of History of Ashes that introduces the Havero seems o.k. but it feels a bit too short.
That being said, can anyone recommend a good underwater adventure that combines exploration and overcoming traps/hazards?
For my campaign, the trials represent a specific trait or quality necessary to both survive and to achieve a spiritual balance with nature: Courage/Willpower (Fire), Endurance/Strength (Earth), Thought/Creativity (Air), and Acceptance/Wisdom (Water).
If anyone has suggestions, please share - I hope to have the trials all sorted out and set up online on Roll20 before next Sunday, ;).
Cheers!
CB
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
CB, Hell's Rebels spoilers:
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Probably too late CB. AP #56 Raiders of the Fever Sea (Skull and Shackles 2).
Specifically Mancatcher Cove and the Sahuagin Tunnels (Areas C and D.
Actually, it is not too late, folks, as the last couple of opportunities to game fell through with my group so I have yet to run the "water shrine.". I thank you for your suggestions and will be examining them.
I think that I will need to use an actual puzzle at the beginning for them to figure out, which incorporates a subtle hint about the havero.
Cheers!
CB
Dot
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Finished (for the most part) the Climb to Talon Peaks + the Observatory mod that Dudemeister made (they just have to get down and they are doing so via jumping down and using levitate as needed).
They fought the ghost, defeated her (her rejuvenation will take 5 days) and they defeated the Elder Things. The problem is that the leader of the group, the paladin, checked to see if the Elder Things were evil (they're not, they're LN) so he had their wounds bandaged and he brought one of them conscious. Since the party was the first one to attack and the Elder Things only attempted to defend themselves, it successfully convinced the paladin that they were forced against their will to arrive on the planet and had been trapped for years (technically true). Cue some more Diplomacy and roleplaying, the paladin AGREED to let them go if they agreed to leave the planet (they have interstellar flight) and not personally return to enact revenge against the people of the kingdom.
So the question becomes "Do the Elder Things ever return back in time during the pcs' lifetime to matter in-game?" I do not know enough about the Elder Things, beyond that they are a rigid society that relies on eventual conquest and subjugation of other species. So should I bother with maybe bringing the Elder Things back at the end of the campaign (Book 5 or 6) for war?
Also, how does this affect the ghost? Technically speaking, she wanted them off the planet but she meant using magic to force them out, not them leaving under their own power. Is it enough to end her torment?
I have some ideas about it all but I am curious to hear people's perspectives on the situation.
Cheers!
CB
If the elder things go back to their home I'd consider that enough to set Felcedra at peace. You're the GM so you can decide what she needs done so, in the end, it's up to you. (Maybe she just needed them off the planet so was showing the PCs the best way she knew how to achieve it.)
As to if they come back or not, that depends... there's nothing to stop them from breaking their word. But that kind of feels like punishing the players for showing mercy. The elder things wouldn't be able to get too far as they still only have a fly speed of 20 and, unless you've modified them, move at that speed even in space.
The fact that the elder things were defeated and held for so long may be a good enough reason for them to either not want to return or to take the ridiculously long amount of time it will take them to get home then marshal an attack force... but I can't see that happening in the timeline of the campaign.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I thought more about it while at work and the Elder Things are not really relevant to the overall plot so there is no need to bring them back into the campaign. I am considering running the Iron Gods AP after the Kingmaker one so I can tie them in to that one.
I got enough modifications to the AP as it is. ;)
CB
|
|
Yeah, I thought more about it while at work and the Elder Things are not really relevant to the overall plot so there is no need to bring them back into the campaign. I am considering running the Iron Gods AP after the Kingmaker one so I can tie them in to that one.
I got enough modifications to the AP as it is. ;)
CB
Moving at a speed of 20 ft./round through space. Maybe they should show up in your next Starfinder Campaign, really annoyed by the time they met up with the Dark Tapestry and came back, Golarion had already gone missing. ;)
Moving at a speed of 20 ft./round through space. Maybe they should show up in your next Starfinder Campaign, really annoyed by the time they met up with the Dark Tapestry and came back, Golarion had already gone missing. ;)
40' per round. They can double move ;)
Moving at a speed of 20 ft./round through space. Maybe they should show up in your next Starfinder Campaign, really annoyed by the time they met up with the Dark Tapestry and came back, Golarion had already gone missing. ;)40' per round. They can double move ;)
Might even be able to "run" every so often. :)
More to the point though, it would be pretty cool if you ran a future campaign in the same world and had them come back to torment the kingdom and have the new PCs deal with them -- even if the Kingdom is not the focal point of the next campaign. Just one of those things to remind your players of their past exploits.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Moving at a speed of 20 ft./round through space. Maybe they should show up in your next Starfinder Campaign, really annoyed by the time they met up with the Dark Tapestry and came back, Golarion had already gone missing. ;)40' per round. They can double move ;)Might even be able to "run" every so often. :)
More to the point though, it would be pretty cool if you ran a future campaign in the same world and had them come back to torment the kingdom and have the new PCs deal with them -- even if the Kingdom is not the focal point of the next campaign. Just one of those things to remind your players of their past exploits.
I intend to do just that for the next campaign. :)
It amuses me though, if we enforced completely real-world physics and the laws of gravity for this particular scene of flying through space, the Elder Things could not actually achieve escape velocity even if they "run" (4 x 20 = 80 feet per round). Fortunately, this is a fantasy game. ;)
CB
Yeah I always like it when my players complain that something isn't "realistic". I mean, which part of you waving your fingers around and generating a massive fireball is realistic? :)
So the goal this weekend is to run the Trial of Water (as part of the inclusion of A History of Ashes [thanks to Orthos for the inspiration], this is taking place in that underground segment that featured a havero). I intend to have the soul eater attack the party during their first night camping on the shores of Lake Silverstep. I want to make it a real threat to them and a solitary soul eater seems too weak. Any suggestions for how to effectively support a soul eater? My players are 9th level, mythic tier 3, paladin, monk/hunter, barbarian/unchained fighter, rogue, and ranger/alchemist.
I don't want to present an unbeatable challenge, just a significant challenge that is thematically appropriate with a soul eater.
Thoughts?
Skelephants? This is the first time I ever heard of such a thing. (Lol.)
I am guessing you mean either elephant skeletons or dragon skulls (but as elephant skulls visually). Hrm, Lake Silverstep is kind of far away from the boneyard buuut, Vordakai could animate some and send them to go patrol the shores of Lake Silverstep to attack any humanoid living creatures to prevent them from finding the shrine of water.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I just ran a modified version of Kankerata's Run, at the end of which my PCs finally got the Nomen centaurs to tell them where to look for Vordakai. The Run was an absolute blast, my players loved it as a fun change of pace with a lighthearted competition, with their own hilarious pratfalls the most memorable parts.
To do this, I kept Dudemeister's description mostly intact, but I added some rule complexity, because the basic Chase rules felt a little too flat for me. I added mechanisms to count the runners' time and tiredness, as well as more degrees of success for the skill checks. Also, the centaurs had a rule against the use of magic that could be circumvented with a little bit of guile, and there were a few more options to allow the use of a broader skill set. I The result was great!
My thanks go to Dudemeister for his superb additions to the Kingmaker experience, and this great idea in particular.
|
|
I just ran a modified version of Kankerata's Run, at the end of which my PCs finally got the Nomen centaurs to tell them where to look for Vordakai. The Run was an absolute blast, my players loved it as a fun change of pace with a lighthearted competition, with their own hilarious pratfalls the most memorable parts.
To do this, I kept Dudemeister's description mostly intact, but I added some rule complexity, because the basic Chase rules felt a little too flat for me. I added mechanisms to count the runners' time and tiredness, as well as more degrees of success for the skill checks. Also, the centaurs had a rule against the use of magic that could be circumvented with a little bit of guile, and there were a few more options to allow the use of a broader skill set. I The result was great!
My thanks go to Dudemeister for his superb additions to the Kingmaker experience, and this great idea in particular.
Glad your players had a good time. Always enjoy seeing people get some use out of my old notes :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My players were reminiscing about Kingmaker the other day (due to them playing through the CRPG right now and having all finished Varnhold Vanishing in it). All of them were saddened by the fact that the centaurs weren't in the game because this book is one of the most memorable ones for them due to the inclusion of the centaurs. They were talking about how much more sense it made to get the roc egg and the manticore quills for the centaurs rather than why it's done in the CRPG, and how much fun they had with the race to gain the respect of the centaur tribe.
Nearly two years on, and some of the changes you made, Dudemeister, are the most memorable things to my group.
I can't thank you enough for everything you've done for Kingmaker and for how helpful and patient you were in talking me through different parts of it.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I’ve been implementing your changes and a few other changes of my own design (for example, moving the emerald spire into the greenbelt) and we’re almost done with RRR, having just taken out The troll fortress
My party loves your changes
I’m planning to have Marger Varn’s daughter potentially act as a love interest to our new Duke (formerly Barron) and be used to signal the sudden disappearance of her home
But I’m stuck on designing her stats and personality
To be honest, you probably do not need to worry about her stats too much, there really isn't a lot of reason for her to go into combat per se, or to the extent that she does, you can always just sort of hand wave her actions. Have her occasionally fire a bow/sling/etc., do a bit of damage, etc., maybe take a little damage. The main thing is you want to keep the focus on the party anyway, so statting her up isn't really necessary.
As for personality . . . well, there's really no limit there as to what you can do, its just sort of up to personal taste. You could make her the prototypical damsel in distress of course, but that's a bit cliché. You could make her a determined and dedicated daughter of a noble who hopes to one day take over her father's estate, etc. Really there's no confines, what would mesh well with regard to the other NPCs your party has befriended? Does the Duke appear to have a "type"? Do you need a contrasting personality?
|
|
I designed Holly Varn as a Ranger, she's a frontierswoman at heart, more comfortable riding out on the range than dealing with political complexities. She is a wise leader, and loved by her people. She was a voice of reason trying to end the war with the centaurs, but unable to break through her father's pride.
It is in part why I introduced the political marriage stuff in a later update, so that the PCs could help her navigate those complexities.
|
|
To be honest, you probably do not need to worry about her stats too much, there really isn't a lot of reason for her to go into combat per se, or to the extent that she does, you can always just sort of hand wave her actions. Have her occasionally fire a bow/sling/etc., do a bit of damage, etc., maybe take a little damage. The main thing is you want to keep the focus on the party anyway, so statting her up isn't really necessary.
As for personality . . . well, there's really no limit there as to what you can do, its just sort of up to personal taste. You could make her the prototypical damsel in distress of course, but that's a bit cliché. You could make her a determined and dedicated daughter of a noble who hopes to one day take over her father's estate, etc. Really there's no confines, what would mesh well with regard to the other NPCs your party has befriended? Does the Duke appear to have a "type"? Do you need a contrasting personality?
stats do matter because she could be given a kingdom role, from ruler (#2) to consort to taking over for Oleg with the treasurer role to warden
Also thanks Dudemeister
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My party has finally made it into VV after running through Realm of the Fellnight Queen (real life gets in the way of so many sessions sigh).
Anyway, I ran Varnhold pretty much as is, though my party decided to negotiate with Agai and the spriggans in an effort to determine what happened to the Varnholders. Agai let two of them come into the stronghold and search it, and after they didn't find anything of note they decided to leave and seek out the Nomen.
We just ran the first part of the Nomen and completed the Kankerata run this weekend. All in all I think it went well, though my players are not particularly up for a very lengthy series of negotiations, diplomacy, etc. On the plus side though 4 of the 7 PCs did complete the Run, including one winning it, so they got a bunch of trust points from that. I will probably reduce the trust tiers a bit to allow them to more quickly gain the trust they need to put the pieces together.
As for the run, I felt it worked pretty well, though some of the DCs can be pretty rough. The paladin had to bow out early because he couldn't make either the Acrobatics or Perception check needed (in second or third stage, don't recall). I did allow them to take 20 with the caveat that it would then take two turns to move to the next stage. I also set each stage as an hour, with the explanation that the Run represented a very long, overland challenge with specific obstacles along the way.
As for Kankerata, hoo boy, he can be brutal. He landed two crits in a row on the party, the first one taking out the cleric (who was already down a bunch of hit points from bleed -- I did the 1d6 someone proposed upthread given the length of the stages). Fortunately he was able to be brought back quickly though. I also allowed healing magic to not count against the "no magic" portion of the test. I did this mainly because I saw even before the crits that Kankerata could be pretty deadly if the PCs got in a tussle.
All in all I think the players had a fun time, though were maybe a bit frustrated by a couple of the DCs -- that said, I actually think the DCs were fine, it was just that in a couple of areas a few of the PCs were not kitted out right for the particular challenges while others were able to breeze through them, which is fair enough in my book.
Next up: More negotiations followed by probably the Manticores and Talon Peak. Hopefully those will go just as well! As always, thank you to everyone, especially DM, for all the ideas on here. All these threads have really enhanced our campaign imho.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Quick update:
Party is making friends with the Centaurs and has dispatched the manticores. Then also went to visit the linnorm grave and planned to go to the grotto after that but decided to go around the mountains rather than over them. That is until they started to pass by Talon Peak anyway and found the watchtower.
Great job on the tower. They found it suitably creepy. Only thing I realized too late is that the Captain should have died of dehydration rather than starvation (that only takes about 3 days as opposed to about 3 weeks) but fortunately none of my players noticed it. Party is about halfway up the peak now, though they had yet to receive all the hooks for it. Mainly, they know that the spirit of air resides there but did not know about the eggs. I had one of the mephits mention "valuable eggs" on the peak so they might continue to progress. The bear was a fun encounter, though I upped it a bit into a Giant Advanced Dire Bear (CR 10). Made for a fun and challenging encounter but one that was still very manageable. One thing to point out though, if your party only really sends one guy up front to hold off the big bad while everyone else peppers from range, it could get real ugly real fast with my version of the bear. My party had three (plus an animal companion) up there, so it worked out well as I had the bear swing at anything damaging it (Int 2, so not the best tactician).
The peak is turning out great so far though. Party loved the journal even if they don't realize its drawbacks yet. They are now thinking that something on the peak might be the cause of the Varnholders disappearance, but are confused because nothing they have encountered yet would explain what they found in the village.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Completed Talon Peak this weekend. Party loved the Challenge of Air. They were thinking they were going to have to fight the giant, black bird that alighted on the top of the ruined observatory until it spoke mentally to them (in all the languages they knew). They had a fun time trying to hang onto the bird as it flew and banked and dove. Two of them ultimately fell but each had Boots of the Cat so the damage was manageable. I did change up the Spirit of Air and the eggs a bit:
The party came back through Varnhold on their way to the Nomen after descending the peak. Thus when they conducted the ritual they got not only some history of the observatory, but could also see the townspeople all get up and walk south at once. For the observatory, I kept it as originally elven but had it eventually inhabited by the Cyclopes wherein they were studying the Dark Tapestry. I ran the version of Candlemere that someone had posted that had hints of Yog-Sothoth cultists, etc. there in the past as part of a Haunted Candlemere, so this is tying into that. Ultimately, in my game, the Cyclopes were fighting the horrors of the Dark Tapestry and Nyrissa in an attempt to gain her freedom and more power ended up joining the Great Old Ones. The Great Old Ones, with some help from N, were ultimately able to more or less wipe out the Cyclopes, but at a great personal cost (they too were more or less banished). Vordakai was the lone survivor and grew extremely . . . vigilant in his efforts against the Old Ones, and views any that would interfere as enemies. I plan to do a vignette for the party at some point where they see much of this play out.
Finally I showed images of Varnhold in battle. First with the centaurs but then a later battle comprised mostly of humans on both sides as a hint that there may be future struggles in Varn (reading ahead to the Brevic Betrothal in DM's Blood for Blood) or just potential fallout from the coming Civil War.
All in all this was a great addition to the module and I am extremely thankful once again for all your contributions DM and everyone else!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My group still hasn't got to VV. We has several different campaigns running in time-slices (with rotating GMs), playing an "episode" of multiple sessions in each one and then moving on, and sometimes we get stuck on one for longer than planned. Our last Kingmaker session was in 2017.
That said, I'm looking at doing more VV prep, and I wanted to share something which I think will be a nice detail. I've decided that the root cause of the disagreements between the Nomen and Varnhold was how differently the Nomen think of agreements.
The Nomen are not at all legalistic in their negotiations (in that they don't try to pin down precise definitions, and don't care whether the words of the agreement matches their intended spirit). As a result, Nomen agreements usually have a lot of unspoken assumptions, but to accommodate that, they are organic and remain open-ended - the initial negotiations up to a point of agreement only set the starting point, but frequent re-hashing is common. Since they live in a relatively small tribal society, they are in constant contact with one another, and such clarifying of past agreements is a part of their life.
The Nomens also haven’t discovered the great truth of “never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence/ignorance”.
So, the Varnholders made agreements/treaties with the Nomen when they first arrived in their territory, and then did things they thought were legitimate without any re-negotiation, which the Centaurs considered to be breaking the spirit of the agreement. Since the two sides weren’t in constant daily contact, the usual re-hashing didn’t occur, and so the Nomen came to view the two-legs as untrustworthy oath-breakers, while the Varnholders came to believe the Nomen to be belligerent fantasists who kept claiming they'd agreed on things that were never mentioned.
An additional information reward for the PCs reaching a Trust Score of 21 through living with the Nomen is the understanding of how Nomen agreements work, and thus they can start to understand where it all went wrong.