Custom Adventure: Wrath of the Archduke


Homebrew and House Rules


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Good day! So, for quite some time I have been intensely working on a personalized adventure centering between the Sodden Lands and the Shackles. A "non-canon" area of my own design called the Republic of Etria and its surrounding lands is nestled somewhere along the mountainous coast to the northwest of the Sodden Lands.

I'm not sure if there will be any interest from the general public in this. Right now I am making it solely for my own enjoyment, but will make it available to anybody who wants to try it out.

Here's the pitch:

The reviled Archduke Lievan of Etria has gone missing, and the factions of the Republic are vying for power. The players are sent by enemies of the Duke to deliver a message to a Vizier Adelard who is in hiding in the remote mountain town of Zidan.

Once joined, Adelard will take you through the swamps toward the Shackles, where Prince Aysen, an official heir to the throne that the Duke had banished long ago, is slaving away on a plantation for the Rakshasa.

The players must return Aysen and Adelard to the court of Etria, where they will try to save the Republic from total civil war. They will also discover an ominous secret about the true nature of the Duke's reign...

What's in the Adventure:

The adventure spans 6 scenarios. It is advised that it be played by characters that have finished
5-10 scenarios already. It functions as a level 1 adventure, but further playtesting may change that.

Currently there are 13 new locations, 4 new villains, 2 new henchman, and 4 new allies.
As playtesting unfolds, this may change; cards may be added or dropped.

New Variants

Wrath of the Archduke introduces two new variants: Escort missions and faction joining.

Throughout the adventure, the players must ensure that neither Prince Aysen nor Vizilier Adelard are buried or banished. This means the players chosen to escort them will likely try to discard or recharge them so as to "keep them away from the front lines," however, both allies provide substantial bonuses, so tough choices will have to be made.

In the 3rd scenario, players may choose to ally with the Ruffians or the Bandits, who are rioting over the leadership vacuum left by the Duke's disappearance. The henchmen cards are displayed by the character who "wins them," and they provide bonuses to the scenario's checks. However, both cannot be displayed in the same location at once, or else the players immediately encounter them (they figure out that they're being conned and try to kill the players for fooling them). In the following scenario, the surviving henchmen are displayed again, and may be banished for further bonuses.

What You Will Need to Play

You will need both the Rise of the Runelords and Skulls & Shackles base sets to play Wrath of the Archduke.

For locations, obviously you can just print the cards out, since they don't need to be shuffled into the game.

If you have opaque sleeved sets (I do), your life will be much easier. You can just slip the printed card with an unused card into the sleeve. It looks fine and is undetectable in a stack.

Other than actually making the cards yourselves, you can use substitutions of official cards that I will provide in the actual documentation for your convenience. It won't be as pretty, but if you really feel like playing, it's an option.

Finally...

I've worked really hard on this adventure, and have had a lot of fun doing it. I hope there will be some interest in the PACG community. Thanks a bunch!

This adventure uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo's Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This adventure is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo's Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.


I am putting drafts of the cards from this adventure on my new Boardgame Geek gallery if you want to check it out.


Tonight I playtest the first 2 scenarios, it's pretty cool to see them printed out.


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This is pretty awesome. I'll have to give it a go once my group has some more free time. One thing though; I noticed you used "ship damage" on the Daunting Narrows. It should be structural damage.


Mechalibur wrote:
This is pretty awesome. I'll have to give it a go once my group has some more free time. One thing though; I noticed you used "ship damage" on the Daunting Narrows. It should be structural damage.

Ah yes, thank you. I have a little notepad and I'm writing down the typos, syntactical weirdnesses, and blatantly stupid ideas I come across. For some reason, you tend not to notice things until they are actually physically in front of you.


A few new variants I am loosely considering for adventure 2:

- Curses: Blessings that stay displayed throughout an adventure unless cured with a certain spell, location ability, encounter etc. Curses change the behavior of a single player in a dramatic way; for instance, bloodlust, greed for boons, skill mutations, lycanthropy... Use your imaginations as to how evil\interesting this could be. Just a way to liven things up.

- Major Arcana: spells with "ingredients." Something to do with all those items you find but don't need. A major arcana spell pairs with a banished boon to do something major. An example might be "Purify the Land," which allows you to look at the top card of every location deck and replace every non-villain\henchman monster with an ally card. Various role powers could be mimicked with these powerful spells, such as Darago's necromancer ability. In the brainstorming stages right now...

- Money! Cards depicting bags of copper, silver and gold that can be kept to the side for each player and used to buy things from certain locations or encounters.


The 2nd scenario kicked my arse three times in a row, with time running out once and two corpses the other times, prompting me to nerf it a little. I used S&S Lem and Valeros with Lini, since this adventure rewards skill diversity and non-combat checks. Testing takes a whole lot of time! I've won a lot more respect for folks who do this for a living. This will definitely be an adventure for characters that have completed at least 5 scenarios and have some good inventory and a feat or two, unless they want a more serious challenge.

Going to set up the next two scenarios over the weekend and will post some more pics.


Jonah G wrote:
- Money! Cards depicting bags of copper, silver and gold that can be kept to the side for each player and used to buy things from certain locations or encounters.

banish for bonuses on charisma checks?


I just wanted to say, that even though I've not posted any response to your work. I am following along and when I have time I will be taking a much more detailed look at it.

Thanks for taking the time and being creative enough to make this.


Jonah G wrote:


- Money! Cards depicting bags of copper, silver and gold that can be kept to the side for each player and used to buy things from certain locations or encounters.

I think this would be an awesome feature to add, such as using your money cards to buy cards that would be banished from a closed location.


Quote:
banish for bonuses on charisma checks?

I think you are suggesting some kind of haggling rule when using the money cards? That would be interesting. A bit far away atm, but there's been some interest in money cards over on BGG as well.

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

I just wanted to say, that even though I've not posted any response to your work. I am following along and when I have time I will be taking a much more detailed look at it.

Thanks for taking the time and being creative enough to make this.

Thank you Hawkmoon, coming from you, that means a lot.

I've had a great deal of fun playing it and hope some others will get a kick out of trying it when it's done.

Quote:
I think this would be an awesome feature to add, such as using your money cards to buy cards that would be banished from a closed location.

Yes! The mind reels at the kinds of house rules. Paying pirates or bandits to evade, encountering merchant allies and drawing a few random cards, triggering a shop feature from certain locations like Apothecary or General Store, giving money to sages or scouts in exchange for a service such as examining location decks, donating money to religious locations/shrine cards/cleric-type allies in exchange for blessings, and so on. What about a new barrier called a shrine that offers a new curse card (or some other baneful result) if a sacrifice or offering of money isn't made?


Seeing as "Wrath of the Righteous" is being released, I will change the name of this adventure to something less wrathful. ;)

Almost done testing, then I will make it look nice, port the fonts over to inkscape so they are smooth, alter the art to look more arty, write the docs/backstory, and post as a pdf.


It's done!

I'm waiting for approval from BGG admin to host my files there, but for now I've dumped them on a file hoster.

Some changes:

The adventure is now called An Heir to Hell's Throne.
The adventure path is now called The Death Cults of the Black Ibis. Because Wrath of the Righteous is coming out, I wanted to change the adventure from a demon/hell theme to... something else.

You can download the 12-page PDF of the adventure here. (~3mb)

You can download high-res, printable card contact sheets for the adventure here. (~25mb)

Based on everything I can gather, I have not broken any Paizo community use policy rules. If for some reason anybody feels I should change something, if there's errors or if you have any suggestions about how to make this adventure better, please let me know.

This adventure path is outlined to be a 3-adventure path, but depending on how much time I have or interest in the project there is, it may be longer. This was a challenge and a learning experience, and I'm looking forward to the next one. Thanks!


I've moved the card pack to a safe dropbox account, sorry about that:

Dropbox Link to Printable Card Pack 25mb

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