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I am very much intrigued by Reign of Winter and might even run it this winter. But I don't like the Golarion setting and especially the idea of visiting other planets and Russia in world war one.
While this one might look a bit tougher to adept to another setting, looking up the descriptions and reviews, it might not actually be such a huge undertaking.
So what would I really need to have in a world, to make Reign of Winter work?
I think Baba Yaga might actually be quite easily replaced with just some demigoddess of winter and cold, who likes to visit the lands covered in snow during winter.
She also needs to have semi-immortal daughters, who rule over a decently sized, but not neccessarily big domain somewhere in the subarctic regions.
For the Planet of Ice, the PCs could simply be transported to the north pole, which is normally unreachable and unexplored by people of their homeland.
How to make Rasputins base and troops normal fantasy fare depends on how they will make an appearance in the not yet released adventure. But I think it could just be another continent on the opposite hemisphere of the planet, that is unknown to characters living in the setting.
That probably leaves the hut. Is the fact, that it has legs, actually relevant? I think of just making it a normal hut that appears and disappears during violent snow storms in any place that is below freezing. People will enter the hut, conjure a snowstorm, and after the storm calms down after an hour, the world outside is a completely different one. If the hut actually gets to fight anything, it could get some kind of guardian spirit instead, I would assume, making the rest of the plot work as well.
Since it's still a nature deity, the Winter Spirit would want winter to happen according to the natural cycles of the year, and some upstart witch trying to steal that control and have heir way with this power is as unacceptible to the spirit as it is to the PCs.
Are there any problems with that approach, or any other things that need to be present, to run the AP in an existing setting?
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Trying to take Baba Yaga out of the Baba Yaga AP? Huh.
Well, what you're after sounds like fishing the carrots out of a stew and then throwing the stew out.
Books 1 and 2 would need the least retooling. Do keep in mind that the Winter Witches of Irrisen are rather psychotic, and you'll need to keep that in mind when detailing the generic winter spirit that founded the kingdom in Baba Yaga's place.
Book 3 is able to exploring a dungeon made by the Mother of Witches. You'd need to retool the dungeon to reflect the generic winter spirit and maybe phases of winter, and probably need to retool both the themes of the hut itself and the back stories of the various NPCs.
Book 4... Aside from again needing to retool the hut, your planet also needs to have a pretty whacked out north pole to substitute for Triaxus, where a monstrous army belonging to an evil dragon is trying to take down a mountain fortress to push through to the lands beyond. And you'll radically change the feel of the adventure if you're tossing out the Triaxians and their Dragonkin allies.
Book 5. Well, the Hut itself is very much about how it belongs to the Mother of Witches, and you'll need to completely redo it to strip Baba Yaga out of it. I guess you could just make Rasputin and his soldiers some sort of generic mad prophet and his unnaturally advanced legions on another continent. You'll also want to change what the generic winter spirit's prison is.
Incidentally, Rasputin's the one actually trying to seize Baba Yaga's power. Queen Elvanna just wants Baba Yaga out of the way.
Book 6 isn't out yet, but takes place entirely within the extra dimensional spaces of the Hut.
The PCs can actually steer the Hut with a DC 30 Use Magic Device check; Book 3 is the only time they're guaranteed to see the Hut actually fight.
Baba Yaga isn't inherent to Golarion.
She's a character in Earth mythology and faerie tales.
My own campaign started out in my own world. I used the Winter Gate to move it to Golarion... but it could easily be a country in my own world.
So just don't call these countries in Golarion. Make up names for your world. When you go to AP 4, you're on a different planet anyway, and 5 and 6 likewise take place elsewhere.
I am very much intrigued by Reign of Winter and might even run it this winter. But I don't like the Golarion setting and especially the idea of visiting other planets and Russia in world war one.
While this one might look a bit tougher to adept to another setting, looking up the descriptions and reviews, it might not actually be such a huge undertaking.So what would I really need to have in a world, to make Reign of Winter work?
I think Baba Yaga might actually be quite easily replaced with just some demigoddess of winter and cold, who likes to visit the lands covered in snow during winter.
She also needs to have semi-immortal daughters, who rule over a decently sized, but not neccessarily big domain somewhere in the subarctic regions.
For the Planet of Ice, the PCs could simply be transported to the north pole, which is normally unreachable and unexplored by people of their homeland.
How to make Rasputins base and troops normal fantasy fare depends on how they will make an appearance in the not yet released adventure. But I think it could just be another continent on the opposite hemisphere of the planet, that is unknown to characters living in the setting.That probably leaves the hut. Is the fact, that it has legs, actually relevant? I think of just making it a normal hut that appears and disappears during violent snow storms in any place that is below freezing. People will enter the hut, conjure a snowstorm, and after the storm calms down after an hour, the world outside is a completely different one. If the hut actually gets to fight anything, it could get some kind of guardian spirit instead, I would assume, making the rest of the plot work as well.
Since it's still a nature deity, the Winter Spirit would want winter to happen according to the natural cycles of the year, and some upstart witch trying to steal that control and have heir way with this power is as unacceptible to the spirit as it is to the PCs.
Are there any problems with that approach, or any other things that need to...
I think the first two volumes would be easy to adapt. But having read through the AP's, I think stripping Triaxus/Baba Yaga/Rasputin/the nature of the hut from the AP would basically deprive the AP of the flavor that makes it so awesome and perhaps interesting for players. I think overall it would be less work and more fun just to run another AP.
This. Oh so very much.
If you're gonna take out the planetary travel, Baba Yaga, Earth, World War I, and Rasputin, what's the point of playing Reign of Winter?
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It's still a story about trying to find and save an evil supernatural being, because her half-mortal offspring are going to do something a lot worse, and you are visiting a couple of different sub-arctic cultures by using a magic demi-plane that connects to many locations in the world.
Sounds pretty cool to me.
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You're left with a cliched plot (really, the "Bad Guy gets offed by his minion, surprise surprise, the minion turns out to be a Worse Guy" was done to death dozens of times). What makes this AP fun is: Irrisen, Earth, Triaxus and Baba Yaga, the storyline itself is no China Meville or Neil Gaiman.
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Seems like a lot of work to make it fit your criteria. Plus, like some others have said, you'd be taking all the good stuff out and replacing it with a mediocre, forced, substitute.
Baba Yaga is not only a real world mythic figure, but also (at least to me) an iconic immortal in fantasy rpgs. Why would you want to replace her with some no-name clone?
The Hut is Baba Yaga's means of planet/plane hopping. To limit it to simply a teleportation device to travel around the globe stinks, but then again, I'm just a tad disappointed all the AP's locales are on the Prime Material Plane...
The fact that you "don't like Golarion" really doesn't seem to me to be that big a deal. Only half the books take place there, and the story is pretty streamlined that any parts of Golarion you don't like can be ignored with the exception of Irrisen/Whitethrone and Iobaria.
Worst case? Find a suitable sub for Whitethrone and the White Witches, and run it as is... Just call places by your preferred names. Triaxus and Earth can still be played the way they are, because they aren't Golarion anyway.
That's my 2 cp. But idk, it's your game, as long as you have fun that's all that matters.
Nope, sorry. I hate the setting and putting adventures in the real world. I don't run any Pathfinder adventures in Golarion.
And it really doesn't look like a lot of work to me. It really comes down to just changing some names and changing the description of the weapons and soldiers in part 5. I really don't see why this would be such a huge issue.
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Nope, sorry. I hate the setting and putting adventures in the real world. I don't run any Pathfinder adventures in Golarion.
And it really doesn't look like a lot of work to me. It really comes down to just changing some names and changing the description of the weapons and soldiers in part 5. I really don't see why this would be such a huge issue.
To each their own I suppose. What I'm guessing here is that people who love pizza with the works can't understand why someone would bother to order a pizza with the works and then painstakingly scrape off all the topping. If such is the measure of your pizza palate, go for it and eat with gusto - I don't believe there is a wrong way to eat pizza.
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
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If it's such a big deal... why bother running the AP at all? Seems to be a lot of work and money just to rewrite everything.
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Nope, sorry. I hate the setting and putting adventures in the real world. I don't run any Pathfinder adventures in Golarion.
And it really doesn't look like a lot of work to me. It really comes down to just changing some names and changing the description of the weapons and soldiers in part 5. I really don't see why this would be such a huge issue.
Yora, it seems you have already established what you'd like to do and have at least a basic idea of how to do it.
My recent experience in this RoW section of the boards tells me that most everyone here favors this AP and is really excited to run it as is. There have been a few naysayers that have mentioned their disdain for going to Earth, but they are minimal.
You may have more luck getting the input you're looking for in the Homebrew section of the boards (if you haven't already).
Good luck putting your stamp on it! And again, as long as you have fun, you're doing it right ;)
It seems rather dismissive of the adventures to say that there is no point in running them at all, if you don't use the background story for Baba Yaga. I feel the writers are doing a lot more work when it comes to story, location design, encounter design, and so on, than just doing some Golarion fanservice.
I believe many of the Paizo adventures are very good in their own right, not because they use names from the Golarion setting.
Have you tried using Golarion as your campaign setting?, have you tried an AP as is?
i love the adventures myself and the campaign setting (then again im a fan of most campaign settings)
i agree that nobody does a complete campaign like paizo, the reason i discovered pathfinder was it was impossible to find a decent first level adventure, much less one that continues past.
anyway the clerk at my friendly neighborhood game store pointed me towards Stolen Lands and it is awesome, right away got the CRB then the bestiary and campaign setting
what i'm trying to say is for almost no effort i was able to run a campaign for my wife and kids. now if you want to put the effort in, change everything and what not, go ahead. however if all you wanted to do was carpet bag the setting and elements of it, (while being dismissive of the kind people putting in the effort to do it) then people are going to get riled up. personally i think your ideas are WAY worse then the AP as written, just my opinion.
i guess i'm fed up with people that come on the boards asking people how they would do change this or that then spend the rest of the time complaining about it. either use the adventure or not but don't go on the message boards just to tell us how much you hate this or that about it. thats what reviews are for. suck it up write a 1-2 star review, try to recoup the $ you lost or listen to the advice with an open mind
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It seems rather dismissive of the adventures to say that there is no point in running them at all, if you don't use the background story for Baba Yaga. I feel the writers are doing a lot more work when it comes to story, location design, encounter design, and so on, than just doing some Golarion fanservice.
I believe many of the Paizo adventures are very good in their own right, not because they use names from the Golarion setting.
I think what the general consensus here is "Why would you want to take Baba Yaga out of the 'Baba Yaga AP'?"
Even if not set in Golarion, I would still want Baba Yaga to be a central figure in the AP. There really doesn't seem to be any reason not to use her as is, even if set in a home-brew world.
Then again, this may be the first time some people have ever heard of the Queen of Witches... For some of us though, we are very familiar with her and her hut from previous incarnations in other games/systems/settings. I for one was sold on this AP the moment I heard about it, if for nothing else than nostalgia's sake.
Baba Yaga is a fairy tale character, and personally I don't think those should make appearances in a world that is supposedly a distinct universe. Which I presume Golarian is not supposed to be.
It's a kind of crossover, and that's something I generally don't like in fiction. But I see no harm in changing her name and backstory, and leaving everything else in the adventures as it is.
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everything in a fantasy RPG is from real world fairy tales and mythology. elves, dragons, wizards, ALL is based off mythology and fairy tales, so your argument has as many holes in it as the plot for any James cameron movies :) also most "fiction" is also based on them in some way.
i'm impressed that Paizo has been able to reflect those fairy tales as close to their origins as they have, that to me is what gives the Pathfinder RPG its old school flavor. a little cross over never hurt anyone
if you wanted the discussion to end a better point would've been to say you just don't like it rather then continue to make arguments that just aren't there
and there is no harm to change the backstory, do what you want, paizo got your money so they don't care what you do with it.
the thing that gets people going huh? is that this AP has such a rich and awesome backstory that is integral to the adventures. thats where the sticking point seems to be
also if you wanted to change it why get on the message boards to announce your plans, just change it. but you didn't want to JUST change it, you wanted to get people riled up by being purposely contrary to everything everyone pointed out. listen to people instead of shooting them down :)
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Actually I suppose this is no different than the people adapting this to Eberron.
I'm not sure as to the point of removing Baba Yaga from the AP though. That's why I bought it. But to each their own.
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While Baba Yaga is awesome, it's really not hard to reskin any story and set it elsewhere.
For example, to go with a fictional universe that people are familiar with, let's go with Doctor Who.
Irrisen, rather being another country in Golarion, is another planet or maybe a frozen moon. Whitethrone is still Whitethrone, Queen Elvanna is still Queen Elvanna, but Baba Yaga is instead the Ranee and the Dancing Hut is her TARDIS. All the magic is replaced with suitably advanced technology.
Or you want magic, just not Golarion magic? Fine. We go with Narnia as the baseline for our magic since there was already lots of world-hopping to earth going on in that series. Baba Yaga is swapped out for Queen Jadis, the White Witch. Queen Elvanna becomes the lady of the green kirtle from The Silver Chair. The Dancing Hut becomes the Wardrobe. You can have rapier-wielding mice and spellcasting beavers run off to Russia to stop Rasputin.
Or we go with Oz as our cosmology. Baba Yaga becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. Queen Elvanna becomes the sorceress Mombi who has used the Gnome King's Magic Belt to restore her powers and vanquish Glinda, Ozma, Dorothy and any other possible threat to her power and she now seeks to take over the world. The Dancing Hut is still there, but it's been brought to life with Dr. Pipt's Powder of Life the same as the Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, the Glass Cat, the Patchwork Girl, and Vic the phonograph. It was formerly a chicken coop which is why it thinks its a chicken. Rasputin is also not very far off from the original Oz timeline so there's really no trouble with the time.
There, all easily reskinned. Same adventure, different universes.
Baba Yaga is a fairy tale character, and personally I don't think those should make appearances in a world that is supposedly a distinct universe. Which I presume Golarian is not supposed to be.
It's a kind of crossover, and that's something I generally don't like in fiction. But I see no harm in changing her name and backstory, and leaving everything else in the adventures as it is.
How much of the Pathfinder books do you read?
I don't mean to be rude, but it seems a little arbitrarily skeptical to say that Baba Yaga doesn't belong in a setting with the Jabberwocky and Cthulhu Mythos in it (atop the usual Greco-Roman, Norse, English, Germanic mythologies and Tolkien-esque influences).
No, I said Baba Yaga does not belong in a setting that is a distinct and self-contained world. And I also said that Golarion is not such a world.
Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Orcs?
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It's her game, she can do what she wants with it. What's the big deal?
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I said I don't like Golarion. That's blasphemous. ^^
Not Blasphemous, just Heretical.
...There aren't any Warhammer fans around here, are there? (looks around shiftily).
No, I said Baba Yaga does not belong in a setting that is a distinct and self-contained world. And I also said that Golarion is not such a world.
I should clarify. If your world has Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Giants, Dragons, Gnomes, Harpies, Sphinxes, and other races and creatures from various Earth Mythologies, or other Role-Playing games, it's not very self-contained, either.
Of course, it's entire possible (if somewhat unlikely) that you really did excise all that from your campaign setting. In which case I say just file off the serial numbers and be done with it (so to speak).
But then again, I also say that the connections to Earth are part of what makes this AP so special.
Look. It's her campaign. She can do what she wants. I might consider excising Baba Yaga from the AP about her to be unusual... but is it any different than altering what magic items are in the game, or shifting the setting itself from Golarion to your own campaign world?
nah...I just found it amusing is all.
No one is going to show up at Yora's house an arrest her for excising Baba Yaga from the Baba Yaga AP. I think some of our original points though are simply that cutting out Baba Yaga/Triaxus/Rasputin/ etc might result in a very boring generic winter themed AP.
I would personally just run the first three volumes and end it there, and rework the bad guy. Have the evil centaur in book three or the hag coven be the big bad. Book one can largely be run in any setting, Book two is Irrisen focused but could be altered to fit any icy evil empire. Book three takes place in a maiden-mother-crone dungeon. That could be left as is but it depends on whether the GM likes the theme.
Book 4 I haven't had much time to read yet, but it's heavily focused on a fantasy dragon warlord, and his clash with dragon-riding good guys. Without the Baba Yaga thread it would probably come off as random and hard to fit in.
Book 5 is just too tied into Rasputin/World War 1/Russian Revolution. I don't see how it can be remotely adapted without basically starting from scratch
Book 6 hasn't been realized yet but completely takes place within the magical hutt. I am guessing there just will be too much Baba Yaga and hutt weirdness to be easily adapted.
So that is hopefully a more helpful response than my prior one. I think if you want to go beyond the 3rd AP, you would be better off not worrying about adapting an just writing from scratch.
My original question was, how much of the Baba Yaga background story is actually crucial to the adventures. And as far as I see it, it's a). being practically immortal, b.) having daughters who rule over a region for 100 years before they are replaced, and c.) having a magical hut that can teleport to pretty much any place that is cold.
If these three traits are met, the specific character can be replaced without touching anything about the rest of the adventures. Irisien could just as well be an isolated mountain valey or a big island in the northern oceans. Baba Yaga could be a demigoddes of winter. The culture of Irisien can be just copied over and the relationship to the witch-daughters could be identical.
The Winter World from the fourth adventure wouldn't be a problem either. It could just be a country at the South Pole, a different material plane, or another planet as it is.
With Rasputin Must Die, I think it basically comes down to being another winter country somewhere in the world or another, where the queen of Irisien allied herself with one of her half-brothers to steal the power of their mother. Again, I see no need for 20th century technology or that place being called Russia.
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My original question was, how much of the Baba Yaga background story is actually crucial to the adventures. And as far as I see it, it's a). being practically immortal, b.) having daughters who rule over a region for 100 years before they are replaced, and c.) having a magical hut that can teleport to pretty much any place that is cold.
If these three traits are met, the specific character can be replaced without touching anything about the rest of the adventures.
This seems like an over-hasty judgement to me. The Hut's layouts in Rasputin Must Die reflect specific Russian/Slavic folktales, and it was hinted that The Witch-Queen's Revenge will be tied explicitly to Baba Yaga's personal story. In general, Baba Yaga and the things people say about her in folklore (as opposed to the things people at TSR or Paizo made up about her) seem to get more focus the farther you progress in the AP.
My original question was, how much of the Baba Yaga background story is actually crucial to the adventures. And as far as I see it, it's a). being practically immortal, b.) having daughters who rule over a region for 100 years before they are replaced, and c.) having a magical hut that can teleport to pretty much any place that is cold.
If these three traits are met, the specific character can be replaced without touching anything about the rest of the adventures. Irisien could just as well be an isolated mountain valey or a big island in the northern oceans. Baba Yaga could be a demigoddes of winter. The culture of Irisien can be just copied over and the relationship to the witch-daughters could be identical.The Winter World from the fourth adventure wouldn't be a problem either. It could just be a country at the South Pole, a different material plane, or another planet as it is.
With Rasputin Must Die, I think it basically comes down to being another winter country somewhere in the world or another, where the queen of Irisien allied herself with one of her half-brothers to steal the power of their mother. Again, I see no need for 20th century technology or that place being called Russia.
Having finally read the installment in question, I have to vehemently disagree to that last paragraph. If only because of the "holy crap, they went straight-up Dieselpunk on us" factor. Also, he's kinda intregal to the story.
Seriously, the entire plot is kicked off by Rasputin's "death" as recorded in history. It turns out, the vision of the Virgin Mary he once claimed to have seen was actually Elvanna (she's been setting this up for years). They figured that his coming back was going to get Baba's attention, so they readied a trap (that I won't be spoiling) to snare her.
Rasputin's forces includes not only soldiers, but the infamous Tsar Tank, MK IV tanks controlled by hardwired brains, Mustard Gas spirits, Daemons, Undead snipers, Nosferatu, and a three-headed dragon.
Oh, and Anastasia is there too. And as Rasputin's daughter, she has a legitimate claim to Irrisen's throne. (which all but confirms my suspicions that you're gonna get to royally screw over Elvanna and Baba in Part Six).
Seriously, Part Five is fundamentally Russian. The author really did some homework on this. Baba Yaga is a big part of the story, as the devs themselves say:
As we started outlining the Adventure Path, it soon became clear that Reign of Winter would be "the Baba Yaga Adventure Path," not "the Irrisen Adventure Path." After all, Baba Yaga's Dancin9 Hut can take her anywhere in the universe, from other planets to other planes, and it would be something of a disservice to the Great Crone to limit her to just Irrisen.
So yeah, the story is more than just cold witches. It's Baba Yaga, and taking a trip to the furthest reaches of the Avistan frontier, to the cold frontiers of the outer Solar System, to Earth and back. Hell the cold is probably the one thing that, if removed, would change the campaign the least.
So to fully answer your question: Yes. Baba Yaga is a big part of the Adventure path, and gets bigger the further you go. I'm with MMCJawa on this one: past part three, you're just going to have to go into some straight-up worldbuilding to match the feel of this AP. That, and probably move part Five to Khardor.
You could keep part 5 as-is, but change the race of all the foes to dwarf. Or gnome. A gnome world at war! Both absolutely hilarious and horrific at the same time! This could even be true for Rasputin and his daughter. Imagine the PCs coming back to put a gnomish girl on the throne! =^-^=
Sadly, those tanks would probably fit right in with warring gnomes...
Yeah...if technology is the problem with chapter 5, than you basically will need to scrap most of the encounters (the Nosferatu, Gorynch (sp?) and daemons can probably remain). As others have stated, the main enemies are world war one infantry with advanced firearms, grenades, and flame-throwers. As well as undead snipers with advanced weapons, tanks, "cyborg" tanks, and evil trench gas that animates troops (which is adaptable, but is mostly cued into World War 1 horror imagery).
I suppose there might be some way of adapting the troops to traditional fantasy fare...haven't read the AP since it first came out so I can't remember how easy it would be to do so.
Just have the technology be gnomish inventions or gnomish magic. It could even be stuff that only works for gnomes from this world or region.
I assumed from Yora's comment she didn't want the guns at all...even if they were gnomish weapons or something simulated by magic
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Which like we said, at that point you're going over into world-building territory. Who are these Gnomes, why are they fighting/developing this technology? Who is the wizard making this stuff?
I'm not saying he can't or shouldn't do this (although admittedly, I'm kinda thinking the latter), but he wanted to know what it entailed. And a little of how much IMO he should do and where to do it.
I mean yes, you could file off all the names and just go from "Cold Place A" to "Cold Place B" to "Cold Place C" to "Cold Place D", but that doesn't have the same magic as "Witch conquered nation Magically-trapped-in Winter to "Northern frontiers of the Continent" to "Alien World" to "Motherfrakkin' WWI-era Mother Russia". The names "Baba Yaga", "Tiraxus", "Earth", "Russia", "Nikolai Tesla", and "Grigori Rasputin" all carry varying levels of weight and history, which are lost if you simply replace them with just another set of words.
Filing off the names is all well and good, but what have you got to replace them with?