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The title may seem strange but here is what I mean:
I want to know what you think of The Slumbering Tsar Saga including its strengths and weaknesses. Based on this I will decide if it is a good purchase for my group and I or not.
Here is some backstory: I love the idea of a 'first edition feel' because I had some great fun back in 1/2E and for this reason picked up Rappan Athuk. However, it didn't scratch that itch and we all quickly got bored with the megadungeon. The encounters were exciting and interesting but the lack of story lead it to be just a series of fights with nothing to tie it all together.
A few days ago I had the opportunity to thumb through a couple of the installments of Slumbering Tsar and it looks like the design is a collection of interesting adventuring locations with little connecting them. While this may be interesting for a time it may grow boring and the campaign may fizzle out.
So here are my questions: Is the campaign more than a series of unconnected (aside from geography) adventuring locations? How long does it take to play compared to Paizo APs (Paizo APs take about 150-200 hours to complete)? Given the opinions of Rappan Athuk above, do you think this would be a good fit and worth the hefty price (the ST bundle ends up being about the same price as a Paizo AP)?
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I am interested what those of you who have played/run this think and will gladly clarify any of my above statements in the efforts of having a meaningful dialogue about the merits and flaws of the product.
As an aside, I got the idea of putting together a larger adventuring area and letting my players loose. This would encompass Rappan Athuk (I want to get my money's worth out of it), Slumbering Tsar, and Stoneheart Valley. I might consider the Bard's Gate .pdf for this campaign as well if I go this route though maybe not since it never got updated from 3.0.
If I ended up with the above sandbox as opposed to just running ST are there quests and hooks that would send the party out into the hostile wilderness or would they just go out for exploration's sake?
I really should have called this thread 'Slumbering Tsar - Merits and Flaws.'
Well, what some people see as a merit, others will identify as a flaw. I'm quite happy with a series of encounters - I don't have the time to create my own dungeon environments, but what I do enjoy is creating the story to fit in around that, with plenty of rp and plots / conspiracies tied in. The Frog God / Necromancer modules give me exactly that.
I'd recommend reading through 'The Slumbering Tsar - Starting, DM Set up, Questions, and Advice' thread since this features lots of recaps of play sessions and will give you some idea as to whether this is for your or your group. On the whole, however, if you like something that is strongly 'story flavoured', with set chapters of events and lots of interaction in an ongoing narrative, I'm not certain Tsar is going to be for your. Personally, I love both this and Rappan Athuk, although Tsar probably has the edge for me in terms of the actual setting and backstory. RA suffices more as somewhere to repeatedly venture into, whereas Tsar is more of an epic quest.
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Hej Joshua!
Expect MUCH more playtime from ST than from e.g. a Paizo-AP. It's huge.
Now as to your question - it's a matter of preference. Rappan Athuk is very much a dungeon crawl, ST is not, at least not exclusively: There is a lot going on in the wilderness and temple-city, including boss monster, many small tragedies and small stories to find, much wonder to be unearthed. That being said, it is very much player-driven.
What does this mean? One of the downsides of APs is that their story is rather railroady - which is great and keeps them exciting, but can also stifle player-desires to e.g. expand settlements. Think about Part #4 and #5 of CotCT or the amount of groups that didn't want to leave Cauldron, Diamond Lake or Sandpoint. Slumbering Tsar is the opposite - it's very much up to your players to decide what to do and when to do it. While there is a general 3-part structure, within the parts themselves, they are rather flexible. This means that it offers a lot of freedom - for better and worse. Without players acting on their own and curiously engaging in the environment, you'll have issues.
Perhaps an easier analogue would be the Dark Souls/Demon Souls-games - subdued storytelling by showing, by small tones, by hints - Slumbering Tsar is, to me, the equivalent of Dark Souls - no holding hands, lethal as all hell, but also full of terror and wonder. Players have to get into that kind of storytelling and if they do, ST will work for you. If they want their story spelled out to them, then ST will probably disappoint you, though its story is in my opinion more concise than Rappan Athuk's: There simply is more variety in exploring the setting than just going down more levels.
If you require further guidance, drop me a line via my hp Endzeitgeist.com and I'll do my best to help you. :)
Cheers!
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Hm, great talking points guys, thanks for the feedback.
On the railroady/story driven bits of the APs, I'm actually getting tired of that kind of adventure. Also, the current APs are solid and focused so I don't have the chance to really get in and tinker with them the way I like to do. I wouldn't mind something I can tinker with and let the party run free. However, with Rappan Athuk I had a hard time creating quests/delves because the hooks in the material were kind of weak. How does Slumbering Tsar deal with plot and story hooks?
I picked up Serpent's Skull during the Golem Sale in December and I'm actually excited to get to run it for my Thursday group because it's sandboxy and I can really get in there and tinker but the story and hooks really keep the party focused and motivated.
I have some players that get overwhelmed and lost in a wide open sandbox so I really want something with strong hooks to give them a direction but open enough to allow for the wandering and exploring that other players enjoy. I keep thinking of Fallout 3 and really want something like that. It's wide open and you have the option of exploring and discovering but there are quests to give you direction and story if you want it. I don't mind creating those quests but without decent hooks its really difficult.
I skimmed the thread 'The Slumbering Tsar - Starting, DM Set up, Questions, and Advice' but I will go and read a little closer. I also read all the reviews I could find to try and get an idea of what the campaign was like but nothing really answered the questions I had.
I'm certainly going to think on it more before I drop $150 but I'm wondering if it's worth getting this instead of Mummy's Mask. I would love to have some good Egyptian themed adventures, though.
What about the idea of combining ST, RA, and Stoneheart Valley (also maybe Bard's Gate since it's not terribly expensive) for a big sandbox to play in? Are the products interconnected enough to make it fun and engaging to wander about exploring and discovering with enough hooks to give purpose and direction to the wandering?
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Alternatively, I did get a free .pdf of The Temple of Elemental Evil for participating in the D&D Next playtest so I could always just run that and convert it as I go.
EDIT: Convert to Pathfinder, I mean. I'm not doing anything with D&D Next until I actually see the rulebooks and determine its not crap.
What about the idea of combining ST, RA, and Stoneheart Valley (also maybe Bard's Gate since it's not terribly expensive) for a big sandbox to play in? Are the products interconnected enough to...
Joshua, as one of the DMs currently running ST I can answer a few of your questions. I have also run all of Stoneheart Valley in 3.0 and until a few weeks ago was running RA along side ST as a separate session for the 4th or 5th time. Yes, you have to take a break from RA once in awhile. A constant dungeon crawl can get tedious after awhile. Tsar, on the other hand is multi-dimensional. We have so far made it through part one and it has taken one year to give a time reference playing every other week. The players are actually more excited now than when we first began and are now playing two days in a row merging the two games. I am also using Bard's Gate as the city for them to base from and retire to when they need protracted time off. Combining the four will be a huge sandbox! One thing that is lacking is the tie ins that put it all together, but that is coming with Sword of Air. Right now we only have the Lone Goldfish map to guide us. As I said we have just completed part one and are about 100 hours in so I am guessing 300-400 hours to complete this so about double an AP.
As for overriding story arc, it is about fighting the followers of Orcus and then finally Orcus himself in RA. If your players cannot be motivated with the old 1E good vs evil track then they may not like this. There is plenty of story arc for me at least. More than I could ever share with the players. There are lots of sub plots and bosses to fight along the way. It is not for the timid, that is for sure!
For me, Slumbering Tsar is the perfect adventure product.
The plot can be as heavy or (more importantly) as light as you want. PCs can come and go as they please. For the GM, the level of detail is phenomenal. It's the easiest adventure I've ever run because I don't have to invent anything (yet if I want to it's easy to do). Player's *can't* do something that will mess up the adventure "plot".
Players can adventure for a while in the area, then go back to town (or even back to a big city) and very little (if anything) needs to be changed.
There are lots of detailed, varied, and unique encounters. A lot of thought seems to have been put into each one. Players overly familiar with the Monster Manuals of D&D or the Pathfinder Bestiaries will still find unexpected foes because monsters from other sources are peppered throughout the adventure.
My group has been playing it for almost 2 years now. I've loved every minute of it.
If you like story and background you will like ST because it is all about the story. It has piles of background. Further as stated above it is a combination adventure with a lot of wilderness exploration before the main event begins. The are a lot of small vignets in the adventure each with their own backstory. If you like the "you start in a small village at first level, explore the countryside for a few levels before heading off to confront horrible ancient evil" approach youu will like ST.
Stoneheart Valley would be perfect for the start at 1st level as it introduces the characters and players to the area and the campaign. To say nothing of good adventures.
@DaveMage How is the game going? We haven't heard from you in awhile?
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Well you guys have given me a lot to think about and are really making me think that I should make the investment in Slumbering Tsar. It seems more like the kind of thing I have been looking for in that I can let my players loose in a big sandbox with quests that will keep it interesting.
I'd still love to hear from anyone with an opinion on ST or the related products.
Tsar does have a plot, but it's sort of more a reason. There are things going on and if the players are paying attention the overall journey should end up a rewarding one.
That said, it has a lot of aspects of megadungeon to it. There are whole vast swaths of the book that are basically areas the PCs explore room by room and just deal with what's there. Yes, there are inter-room politics and relationships because it's an ecosystem, but there's little plot in those areas.
As such it's a very good environment adventure. As a DM you could insert as much additional goings-on as you like... there's lots of room. It plays well as it is, but has nowhere near the density of plot that a Paizo AP has, by design.
Stoneheart Valley would be perfect for the start at 1st level as it introduces the characters and players to the area and the campaign. To say nothing of good adventures.
@DaveMage How is the game going? We haven't heard from you in awhile?
Going great! My players are exploring the second tier of Tsar. They are about 1/2 way done with it.
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The lack of plot density is really what is drawing me to the campaign. I enjoy narratively driven games but it's all I've been playing for a while now and I'm getting kind of tired of it. Rappan Athuk however was too lacking in narrative and it fizzled quickly. Having a reason and purpose to keep the characters moving forward is what I was hoping for. However, if they decide to shoot off in a random direction because something looked interesting they should be able to do that.
Of course, knowing my players they would probably ignore exploration and just head straight to Tsar to get their asses bitent off.
You might want to set up some plot hook that involves exploration of The Desolation, finding out what happened to a lost caravan, for instance. Perhaps the PCs are hired to do this, perhaps they personally know the missing persons, all kinds of possibilities here.
Heading straight into Tsar would be fatal, guaranteed. It's not at all ashamed to admit that it is entirely possible to be overwhelmed.
Here's a summary of what you're "supposed" to do... minor structural spoilers included.
1} Greg Vaughan wrote the Desolation area first. It's four huge areas outside of Tsar that contain mostly random encounters, but also have specific events/places that lightly unveil a plot. They meet ghosts and the like which create hooks, giving PCs specific interesting mysteries and goals to eventually seek out.
2} Next Greg created Tsar itself. If you haven't gained the roughly four or five levels the Desolation will give you, you will get your butt handed to you. 7th level isn't going to handle CR13-14 encounters. Here, you explore the actual city, and discover it's far from empty. Yes, there's a lot of area for a DM to insert almost anything, but there's plenty of specific encounters and plots going on here. There are several "factions" who have relationships. Nothing massive plot-wise, but enough that every named NPC has a reason to be where it is. Tsar is double the size of the Desolation in page-count and therefore encounter-count.
3} If you explore Tsar well enough, you gain the ability to bring forth Greg's final creation, a hidden citadel. This has double the page-count of Tsar proper, with something like 500 or so specific rooms. It's huge. My group has been on one level of it for I think five or six sessions, each about 6 hours long. Here, you deal with an area that has been cut off from the rest of the world for hundreds of years, and the residents trapped therein. Finally if you explore and interact enough, you learn What It's All About and have a sort of end-game area/situation to deal with.
It's largely about exploration, but that's over a framework of purpose. There isn't the classic dungeon with random monsters that make no sense being side by side. WHY are there rooms full of devil-monkeys next door to werewolves? None of that silliness. Everything has its place.
The only real comment I have that's negative is that the random encounters in the Desolation are brutally frequent and massively repetitive. Seriously, you're going to roll on that table multiple times an in-game day, and it's going to take in-game months to explore this area, making for a couple hundred rolls. And there's nowhere near enough on the table to keep things interesting. Thank Ghu my party got wind walk and started cruising around at high speed before I went insane.
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It is incredibly huge and very open. Nothing stops you moving into areas well above your capability. Tsar is an epic adventure in every sense of the word. EZG's comparison to dark souls is spot on, if you've ever played that game then Tsar conjurs the same feeling but with a party of adventurers. You have some huge areas to explore (anguish is no where near exaggerating), hints as to where and what to do next and the freedom to approach things however you wish.
Encounters are incredibly varied and the whole adventure site functions like it owns little world, with feuding factions, potential (if risky) allies, vastly different terrains. The hidden citadel is a bit of a massive dungeon crawl.
I wouldn't recommend it to a novice DM, there is a lot going on and a lot of interactions to keep track of. I've never played through the whole thing - I estimate it would require 2-3 years for us (we meet once a fortnight for 6 hours), but what I run has been thoroughly enjoyable.
I estimate it would require 2-3 years for us (we meet once a fortnight for 6 hours), but what I run has been thoroughly enjoyable.
We're at... 18 months now. That's weekly sessions of about 6 hours. We've missed a few due to holidays or work or whatnot but it's still a huge amount of time spent.
We've exhausted a little over half of the book's adventure content. As in, if you ignore the pagecount from the maps and handouts and monsters and magic items and stuff and only count the adventure pages, we're about 60% done that.
As an aside, would rolling Rappan Athuk and Stoneheart Valley into the mix create a sandbox that is too big?
I own RA but I haven't actually read it... only the summaries. It isn't that the sandbox would be too big, it's that it'd be too pointless. There'd be no reason for anyone to explore Tsar while exploring RA. Also you'd have a huge XP problem to cope with. More encounters means more XP means faster leveling. Twice as much content in the same level range doesn't work.
Also, there's a bit of a plot problem. With Tsar, it's know that this huge war happened 300 years ago just outside Tsar and the two sides of the war vanished. Fact is they were transported outside RA. If you start playing Tsar and discover RA, that becomes the more interesting/modern thing to explore.
I don't know about Stoneheart Valley so I can't offer comments there. What I would recommend would be reasonable would be to insert as many semi-random encounters as you'd like into Tsar. Stat up as many bad guys as you want and just slip them in whenever and wherever you want. Also, you can easily slip prepared modules in. I just wouldn't do a whole megadungeon merger.
We actually took a side-jaunt to the moon and played The Moonscar. Just for a break.
There's plenty of room for inserting anything you'd like in reasonable chunks. There's NO hurry; this place has been dormant for 300 years, so taking in-game months off to craft or pursue personal quests/goals works just fine.
Just saw Slumbering Tsar on sale now on d20pfsrd.
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Just saw Slumbering Tsar on sale now on d20pfsrd.
It looks like it's $15 off the cover price for the print/.pdf bundle, which is a nice deal depending on what they charge for shipping. On here, since I get the Pathfinder Advantage as an AP subscriber it's $127.50 before shipping. Without the PF Advantage, it's not a bad deal.
All told it will cost me $131.41 with shipping to order it on here. However, I run a game shop so I want to make sure I can't get it through our distributors at cost before I order it.
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I own RA but I haven't actually read it... only the summaries. It isn't that the sandbox would be too big, it's that it'd be too pointless. There'd be no reason for anyone to explore Tsar while exploring RA. Also you'd have a huge XP problem to cope with. More encounters means more XP means faster leveling. Twice as much content in the same level range doesn't work.
I wasn't sure how focused the campaign was in regards to following the story and leveling and whatnot. My thought was, since Rappan Athuk says
I wasn't sure how tightly connected everything was and more options for exploration would prevent any one part from getting too stale. I'm not concerned about party wealth but from what you're saying levels could get tricky. RA has material for parties from levels 1-20+ while, from what I gather, ST goes from 7-20. Stoneheart Valley, if I am understanding the product descriptions correctly, collects some 3.0 material about the Orcus/Tsathogga conflict and provides material appropriate for levels 1-6. Would running on the slow XP track maybe correct this and allow for more exploration?
I wasn't sure how focused the campaign was in regards to following the story and leveling and whatnot. My thought was, since Rappan Athuk says ** spoiler omitted ** that I could let the players run free and they could explore both sides of the story.
They could, but I doubt they would. Tsar is effectively either a prequel or a sequel. The idea behind Tsar is what you quoted in the spoiler tag. In my campaign, nobody knows about RA yet but of course Tsar is historic knowledge. It's in the middle of a "hot zone", so nobody's really been able to explore it in 300 years. It's only just now becoming marginally within reasonable. The PCs go in.
Finding RA would sort of negate the interest in Tsar. "Oh, who cares about that... we now know what happened to the two sides. Let's see if we can find survivors."
I wasn't sure how tightly connected everything was and more options for exploration would prevent any one part from getting too stale. I'm not concerned about party wealth but from what you're saying levels could get tricky. RA has material for parties from levels 1-20+ while, from what I gather, ST goes from 7-20. Stoneheart Valley, if I am understanding the product descriptions correctly, collects some 3.0 material about the Orcus/Tsathogga conflict and provides material appropriate for levels 1-6. Would running on the slow XP track maybe correct this and allow for more exploration?
There really isn't much connection, just chronological inspiration. There's zero going on in RA that's referenced in Tsar or vice-versa.
Dropping 33 levels of material into a campaign and slowing the XP progression may seriously frustrate your players. My group levels up about every 4 to 5 sessions as it is. Making them wait 8 to 10 sessions, that'd be upwards of 60 hours of playing the same level. They'd go mad.
Really, the way to do this IMHO is to run one or the other, then have the (spiritual or physical) descendents of the first party move on to explore the other. Knowing gramps cleaned out RA might inspire a person to explore Tsar, wondering "WHY did the forces of Tsar leave?"
That's just my opinion... you're obviously free to do what you want but I think you'll find that 600+ pages of Tsar is plenty material enough. I'd still recommend breaking it up with completely different style modules if you want to complicate things.
Let me chime in again as a DM that has been running RA and SA at the same time in two different sessions. First my players ran through RA for levels 1-6, then they split with half of them going to ST, now at level 10 they have combined again with all of them in Tsar. It IS doable. And there IS a connection between the two. Once you finish Tsar it leads the party back to RA around level 14. I would not personally go with slow progression, but that is up to you. They can be run at that if both are played, it just will be a LOT of work. Remember they are around 400+ miles apart at least with Bard's Gate near the center.
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Hm, you guys have given me some good things to consider about this hypothetical game. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be buying Tsar, I'm just still brainstorming about the best way to implement it.
What about starting with a party about 10th level? Will it matter if they jump in 3 levels ahead of the intended average? I can always just tell those guys to make new characters and I can do the sandbox thing from 1st level.
Let me chime in again as a DM that has been running RA and SA at the same time in two different sessions. First my players ran through RA for levels 1-6, then they split with half of them going to ST, now at level 10 they have combined again with all of them in Tsar. It IS doable. And there IS a connection between the two. Once you finish Tsar it leads the party back to RA around level 14. I would not personally go with slow progression, but that is up to you. They can be run at that if both are played, it just will be a LOT of work. Remember they are around 400+ miles apart at least with Bard's Gate near the center.
I don't understand. Tsar isn't "finished" at 14th. My group is going to be somewhere in the low 20s, with only one module inserted in the middle. How do you finish a megadungeon designed for 7th-20th at least six levels early?
I do know the plot "connection", it's just not live. It's sequential, meaning there's no impetus to jump back and forth. That's all I meant.
Sorry, that is level 14 of RA, not character level. As I understand Tsar is meant to take characters to level 16-18.
Oh, okay. Sorry, I misunderstood. My players are a} a group of three and b} very, very thorough, so they're soaking up pretty much every point of XP to be had here.
@Joshua Goudreau - The Slumbering Tsar adventure is meant for experienced players and starting them out at level 10 is fine, but they will loose a lot of the challenge of the first 150 pages or so. I say that because at level 7 they have a limited amount of gold and other resources and will be struggling to survive. Every few encounters there will be either a near death, a serious debilitating effect, or you will see the party turning back because of the attrition against their spells. At level 10 they will be able to push further and keep all of the big treasure finds and there are some huge ones.
ST has more than enough story and content to run a full sandbox game, I've mentioned Rappan Athuk to my party a few times, but there's always more stuff to find in the Desolation. The Midnight Peddler and the Dweller at the Crossroads always make them second guess themselves.
My group is just now breaching the gates of the city and it has cost them 14 characters to do it, they are just now hitting 11th level. If you follow my thread The Slumbering Tsar - Starting, DM setup, and Advice you can listen to my players talk about the game in the podcasts and I also have a review on youtube if you search Slumbering Tsar Review.
I started my group out at level 6. You might want to have them play two characters each if you only have three players as Tsar is meant for six characters. It can be very deadly even with six. I have had eight deaths at around the same point as James. My party is just short of level 11 and are just about to go into the city. I have a total of 8 characters over two days with six each day. Two only play one day or the other.
My Friday group is playing some Dungeon Magazine adventures that will put them about level 10 in a couple of sessions and delving into Slumbering Tsar might be a good fit for them. I don't think they would mind rolling their characters back to 7 if need be.
What you could do there is basically let them fast-forward through the Desolation. By then they'll have wind walk which allows them to cover several squares of the map every day. Also it allows them to avoid random encounters that will definitely be below their level. The important context-building encounters are notable areas. As in, they'd see most of it from the air.
I started my group out at level 6. You might want to have them play two characters each if you only have three players as Tsar is meant for six characters. It can be very deadly even with six. I have had eight deaths at around the same point as James. My party is just short of level 11 and are just about to go into the city. I have a total of 8 characters over two days with six each day. Two only play one day or the other.
This is the normal experience. My group has exhausted half of the book and the only fatality was a DMPC (two players, running three characters between the two of them so I ran an underpowered NPC with class levels, mostly to give me an in-character voice). Of course, the players are very, very system-savvy and their characters are in no way weak.
Joshua: I think you are already going to buy both, but whoever purchases this I do strongly recommend the print/pdf combo as I use my iPad to display certain things (mainly maps) to my players throughout the game.
I like to use d20Pro to display the maps on the big screen TV. It allows me to use fog of war.
Oh absolutely what DaveMage says. I rely heavily on the PDF for extracting stuff from maps to handouts to copy & pasting spellbooks or unique magic items to e-mail my players.
The difference is Necromancer had White Wolf for its distribution chain while Frog God does not. They are doing it direct and through Paizo.
Question: is there any clear reason why the PC's would explore the desolation if they know where Tsar is? I'm thinking especially of the areas of the desolation not directly between the starting camp and Tsar. I know you could always tell them "well, if you go to Tsar first you'll be underpowered", but I'm hoping there is some reason baked into the plot such that they explore the desolation.
I planted the following hook for the PCs: the Desolation is where the Army of Light laid siege to the city. It's likely that some powerful magic of good can still be found there.
That's all they needed.
My players have learned to have a healthy respect for things that can kick their butt! A couple of Gugs in RA did the trick for that! A few random encounters along the way increasing in difficulty my give them a clue. There are also rumors they can pick up in the camp.
I started with a group of five players (coming over from another campaign), and the levels were 9,9,9,9,10. We've only just started, but because attendance is spotty and they're not super optimized, it seemed fair.
After the first encounter in the camp, I had a character at 3hp. Which means if we had started at 7th level, he would have died.
That's part of Greg's design, to have a higher body count than a usual Paizo AP, but it won't fly well with my players.
Probably why new players don't stay long. They are not used to the body count.
The Frogs are on vacation. It might be a bit till you get a hold of them. Last I checked, they do provide dealer discounts if you purchase over a certain amount of books from them direct.