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Our little group of three completed the final battle and a satisfying wrap-up late last night. Ameiko is empress, all of the characters (NPCs included) found love, *eye-roll* and Minkai is saved. It took us seven months in real time and two years in-game, but we finally made it!
To everyone involved in putting together this AP and getting it into our hot little hands: Thank You. A million times, Thank You.
This adventure (which we started with We Be Goblins) was my first time behind the GM screen, our whole group's introduction to Pathfinder, and only the second tabletop campaign my DH and I have ever played. I have little to compare it to, obviously, but this has been an absolute blast.
Good luck to everyone else as ya'll make the trip over the Crown of the World! We're off to be pirates, now ;).
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We went back and forth between every weekend and every other weekend, depending on one of the player's schedules (I'm self-employed, and my DH's schedule makes him mostly free on weekends, so it was pretty much down to the other guy as to which weeks we would play).
We've just gone to a Friday Night + Saturday schedule, but before that it was a Saturday + Sunday schedule...probably 12-16 hours a "gaming" weekend, total? We have really early church services and no social lives, lol, so we had lots of free time on our hands :).
Wow. 12-16 hours game time on weekends? That'd be awesome. We're lucky to clock in 3-4 per week per campaign (3 different APs in total with 2 in the wings).
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Wow. 12-16 hours game time on weekends? That'd be awesome. We're lucky to clock in 3-4 per week per campaign (3 different APs in total with 2 in the wings).
Wow, that's a lot of APs at once! I bet it never gets boring, though :).
Dedicating whole weekends to gaming is *mostly* really awesome. It was a LOT of work to prep that much material beforehand, especially since I'm new to all of this. I loved GMing and will definitely do it again, but it was exhausting and I'm glad we've agreed to a rotating schedule.
Also, a fair bit of that time was eaten up by things like rule checking and discussing mechanics. Now that we're more familiar with the game, I don't think that will be a problem, but trying to learn everything that goes into high level play under the time crunch of The Empty Throne really wore me out. I'm ready to sit back and just play!
I'd love to read a review of what you liked and disliked about the AP. :)
And congratulations!
DH?
DH?
I'm guessing either 'Dear Husband' or 'Designated Hitter'...
DH?I'm guessing either 'Dear Husband' or 'Designated Hitter'...
I misread that as 'Designated Hitler'.
Clearly it's time for sleep.
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Hehe...yep. He's SOOO my "Designated Hitler" from now on ;). Actually, the way he GMs, that's not far from the truth :/.
Anyhoo, yeah..."Dear Husband." Sorry; I forget that not every corner of the internet is filled with Mommy Bloggers and/or house-wives.
I don't really feel like I'm qualified to offer a review, since I have nothing to compare the experience to. But off the top of my head:
The Brinewall Legacy - All of it. If I were to do the whole thing over again, I'd incorporate some of the awesome ideas I've seen posted here on the boards, but as a whole we really enjoyed it.
The NPCs - Again, I wish I'd done more...but as I got a feel for the whole GMing thing, the NPCs really came to life. Both the "main four" and the supporting NPCs were great fun. I loved having them there.
Plot Hooks and Tension the PCs were roped in early, and given plenty of reason to allow themselves to be pulled along by the story. The tension built well, ramping up nicely right at the end.
The Reward - it's hard to find a more satisfying conclusion than going from ordinary shmucks to nobility.
The caravan combat system - I think that's kind of a given for most of us, but...yeah. Once we got to The Hungry Storm, I started rolling up encounters ahead of time and making them standard combat encounters. I LOVED the idea of the caravan, but it didn't work in practice.
The Hungry Storm - The adventure itself was solid, but it was hampered by the caravan and seemed disconnected from the rest of the story. This was the first place I deviated from the adventure as written.
The number of times we walked in on things that made us go o.O Seriously...as written, it *seems* like you walk in on people going at it with multiple partners no less than three times. Maybe I was reading it wrong, and just have a dirty mind, but...um...it seemed like there was a lot of "entertaining" going on in private bedchambers. Once was enough, thanks.
Pacing Most of the time, it was great. But The Hungry Storm dragged, and The Empty Throne was over in two weekends. I think I especially had a love/hate relationship with that last book...it made sense that we were on a tight deadline and needed to ramp up the pace, but Kasai was so beautifully detailed and the situation so interesting that we all wished we'd had more time to explore it before the end.
7 months to complete an AP? that's got to be a record. How often and how long did your group play?
6 years to finish Age of Worms AP! Which was a huge slog!
Well... there's always continuing with the adventure :p Time for Kingmaker: Kensai you say?
The number of times we walked in on things that made us go o.O Seriously...as written, it *seems* like you walk in on people going at it with multiple partners no less than three times. Maybe I was reading it wrong, and just have a dirty mind, but...um...it seemed like there was a lot of "entertaining" going on in private bedchambers. Once was enough, thanks.
Hmm, let's see... There's Asvig Longthews and his wife, as well as a warrior and a thrall (1), three groups of mated yeti pairs (4), Ichirou and two sisters of the broken path (5), Amatatsu Maemi and her two Erinyes; Miu and Ume (depending on GM interpretation of how her 'playthings' attend to her every whim) (6).
So, 5 to 6 times in the whole adventure, from the looks of it.
WOAH MAN! SPOILERS! DX
Shoot, my bad. I forgot that this wasn't an already spoiler-tagged thread.
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I replaced the Yeti caves, and had Maemi not currently engaged when we arrived. But you missed a couple in NoFS ;)
Two soldiers and a thrall are occupying the pantry at Asvig's Farm, and Kimandatsu seems to be engaging in relatively vanilla entertainment with a "favored servitor" in her lair.
So...7 or 8 times, altogether?
They have to occupy themselves with something in between adventurer parties. :)
7 months to complete an AP? that's got to be a record. How often and how long did your group play?
No we did 2nd darkness when it first came out in 5 months (the first two were already out before we started so had to order those) by the time we finished the first two the third came in on subscription as normal. We played two to three times a week from around 6pm until 1 or 2am and saturdays were usually 13 hour events.
About the last module
Congratulations on finishing the AP! My friend was running this for us, but RL issues deep-sixed that game, sadly. Also, we were getting frustrated around book 2. I'm curious though: what happens to Ameiko's tavern now that she's the Empress of Minkai? Will they be updating the material on Sandpoint? She was the last Kaijutsu in Sandpoint, wasn't she?