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I've been reading over some of the online topics, and I noticed that some people aren't in love with chapters 4 and 5. I've heard two could use some logic fixes, and three might need to be more cohesive (Both challenges I'll happily mend as I go), but I heard that book 4 is just a rail-roaded quest chain for the shoanti, and that 5 is just eldritch horror after horror?
I've only just completed book 1 with my group, albeit quickly, and getting started on two, but I'm wondering ahead of time if there are any adaptions I can make to better manage those books. I'm open to smaller changes to more drastic ones, such as perhaps combining the important parts of book 4 and 5, and then perhaps having the 'new' 5 be focused on a more drawn out rebellion. Buuut, as I've yet to read them in detail yet, I'm just fishing for some preliminary advice.
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Personal opinion: I really like Scarwall, but A History of Ashes is way more expendable.
First, some basic questions.
What changes have you made to the Path thus far?
What XP rate are you using?
What would your players especially enjoy?
What would best suit their characters' story?
The more I know, the more I can help. ^_^
Book 4 is quite rail-roady but that's never been a problem for my players, you have to expect a certain level of railroad with APs. The only changes I intend to make when I get there is to have assassination attempts from the Red Mantis more frequent.
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I ran both books over four years ago so my recollection may be a bit hazy.
With that being said, here are some key notes from those sessions:
BOOK IV:
BOOK V
In my campaign, Kazavon was the charismatic leader of a mercenary band. Ambitious and amoral, he orchestrated his rise to power by provoking the orc hordes into attacking the nearby kingdom of Belkzen. With the kingdom being in danger of being overrun, Kazavon swooped in and and conducted a brutally efficient campaign to drive the orcs back into the mountains. For his role in saving the kingdom, Kazavon was granted a lordship and a castle: Scarwall. However, Kazavon and his most trusted captain: a Shoanti brave named Mandravius, had a falling out over Mandravius' newfound faith in Iomedae and his remorse over the deeds committed in his boss' name. It didn't help that Mandravius had fallen in love with a fellow captain: Deionara (who happened to be the niece of the King of Belkzen) and both expressed a desire to quit the mercenary band in order to live quietly in Deionara's ancestral estate.
The loss of his two most trusted subordinates hit him hard. Kazavon was an exceptionally possessive and jealous individual who viewed his subordinates as property. He lashed out by hosting a wedding banquet in Scarwall Keep for the two unsuspecting lovers, and in a scene reminiscent of G.R.R. Martin's Red Wedding, ordered the death of the couple, their families, and the soldiers loyal to them. Deionara was killed and Mandravius barely escaped from Scarwall with his life. Vowing revenge, Mandravius gained the immediate support of the King of Belkzen, who was furious at the death of his grand-niece and her family. Mandravius spent the following months traveling far and wide, galvanizing the Shoanti and the Church of Iomedae to march on the vile madman who murdered his guests at their own wedding. Mandravius' army marched on Scarwall and laid siege to the castle for many months. Cut off from any means of resupply, the defenders of the keep starved, and eventually resorted to cannibalism to survive. When the attackers finally managed to open a breach after months of attrition, they thought victory was at hand.
Instead, they walked into a nightmare. With the end drawing near, Kazavon sacrificed his remaining loyal soldiers on a grisly alter to Zon-Kuthon in return for the dark god's blessing. Zon-Kuthon transformed Kazavon into a blue dragon -- a creature that epitomized the mercenary leader's capacity for evil and selfishness. His sacrificed soldiers transformed into horrific devils and undead monstrosities (the boss monsters in the book), and the spirit of Deionara rose as chained spirit -- forever cursed to haunt the site of her death. Kazavon's newfound power and his newly risen minions devastated the unsuspecting attackers. When all seemed lost, Iomedae herself intervened by pouring a small portion of her power into Mandravius' blade. Strengthened by his enchanted blade Serithiel, Mandravius smote the vile dragon and ended his reign of terror...
...or so he thought. No sooner had Mandravius struck Kazavon down when the dragon's bones began to reattach and his flesh began to knit together. Instead of giving way to despair, the indomitable Shoanti paladin clove his adversary's body into multiple pieces and gave them to his most trusted advisors and allies. These individuals were instructed to carry the body parts as far away as they could to prevent them from ever coming together. With this final task complete, Mandravius expired. With their leaders dead, the remnants of both armies retreated, and the Tale of Scarwall Castle faded into myth.
If you are interested in hearing more about what I did with Ileosa, the Red Mantis, Kazavon, etc. let me know and I'll start up a new thread detailing my changes.
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Most of my change so far have been incidental or personally flair- Having played through the first book before as a player, I was more or less mostly aware of how the adventure plays out, and did my best to stay true to the source material. That said, things have a way of coming out differently.
Firstly, I play my campaign online on Roll20, so there's been some shuffling of players as we went on. Only one person left has been in the group that killed Gaedren Lamm. Because of this, Zellara is only known to exist to her. This has left me to ask myself whether I wanna expand her influence to the whole group, or have her remain a mystic advisor to the single player. Other changes I've made are greater efforts to play the Queen as innocent and naive, and discourage assumptions that she's mad, evil, or especially selfish. She DID end up causing the demise of one of my PCs though. Going to the Castle alone, demanding a private audience with the Queen, ignoring guards saying they couldn't let her through, would've been what I describe as rail-roading too much. So, I let her have dinner with the Queen. Unfortunately, their character was female, had a charisma of 16, and took a trait describing them as "An unmatched beauty." So when the Queen asked her to join her in her personal chambers for a private discussion on art (Trinia's painting specifically), they had taken too many turns in my opinion for them to survive. Flatly put, I had the Queen murder them, though I made sure to have the death, a magical one, be too vague for them to decipher who did the deed. This, I know is something I could've avoided by just not letting them see the Queen, but was something that DEFINITELY deepened the plot. (And made sure the PC was alright with their death before finalizing it.)
Beyond that, most of the core story has remained intact. The more I read ahead however, the more I feel inclined make changes. I'm comfortable with the base foundation the first book has provided, but I'm not sure about the path for the future. There alot I'm looking at in terms of character progression and plot premise that I'm thinking over on how I can do it to make more cohesive and coherent.
And please, feel free to tell more Cesare.
Absolutely Cesare. Writing about your own changes to the AP seems to be the in-thing these days. >>
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I've been reading over some of the online topics, and I noticed that some people aren't in love with chapters 4 and 5. I've heard two could use some logic fixes, and three might need to be more cohesive (Both challenges I'll happily mend as I go), but I heard that book 4 is just a rail-roaded quest chain for the shoanti, and that 5 is just eldritch horror after horror?
I've only just completed book 1 with my group, albeit quickly, and getting started on two, but I'm wondering ahead of time if there are any adaptions I can make to better manage those books. I'm open to smaller changes to more drastic ones, such as perhaps combining the important parts of book 4 and 5, and then perhaps having the 'new' 5 be focused on a more drawn out rebellion. Buuut, as I've yet to read them in detail yet, I'm just fishing for some preliminary advice.
Having just finished running A History of Ashes, I can honestly say that it was a ton of fun. Sure, there are railroads built into the plot of the adventures, but if anything, the players were eager to follow the chained quest.
The adventure is great in many ways - fantastic NPCs in Krujan and the brotherhood of bones and some awesome villains in the red mantis and the cinderlander. Great setting in the cinderlands with its fiery storms, barbaric tribes and distinct geology. I liked all of it.
As for part 5 - it's a giant dungeon crawl. I think it is a *really* cool and atmospheric one, what with the chained spirit, the haunts, and the rest of that jezz, but in gameplay it is going to be wondering from room to room and fighting monsters for the most part. Luckily that is easily adjustable as fights can simply be ommited during actual gameplay. I'd recommend making Skeletons of Scarwall shorter and expanding on Crown of Fangs, because part #6 really needs to be bigger than it is. I don't think giving up on Skeletons is wise, though. If nothing else, Scarwall is a fantastic location to explore.
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I moved things around a bit such that in order to be accepted as a Shoanti, each character had to pass a trail - each one from a different tribe. So instead of having to do X after Y after Z my players could choose in which order to visit the different tribes and pass their trials, which made the adventure feel more open. I also expanded on the dungeon crawl with the Havero, and switched out the one with the red render with a head on base assault against a stone giant colony to retrieve a sacred totem pole.
Those changes are actually quite nifty to tackle the problems of this module. First of all you got rid of the X-Y-Z order. But I especially like your take on the stone giant colony. One of my problems with the quests in the book was that they felt so non-Shoanti. A quest to retrieve a sacred Shoanti totem totally fixes that problem. I like it!
I know this is a little late, but for posterity: I turned the Cinderlands into a giant sandbox for my players.
They had a couple goals, but the trials themselves weren't the real challenges so much as the fact that up until then they had been built for city adventures and were suddenly thrust into an extremely hostile environment. I upped the ante on environmental effects and nasty random encounters, and the group was extremely reliant on the one character that had taken ranks in Survival. Having an enormous fiery hurricane between them and their goal was a fun setpiece, and they encountered a red dragon in there (random encounter, ouch!) that was one of the more memorable moments in the campaign.
What's also good is to try and instill the sense that the Red Mantis are really, genuinely hunting the party. At first the players think they got away, but when they're ambushed at the Havero the attacks should step up more and more. The Cinderlander, rerolled as a nastier ranger, was able to do some serious damage just sniping at the party, and rerolled Red Mantis Assassins as full Slayers worked out well. Cindermaw is also a great setpiece, and this was a nice opportunity for the fighter character who was just sort of the muscle in the city to shine. He pretty much became a Shoanti legend.
So book 4, I think, works really well if you make the trite tasks actually sort of feel kind of like bothersome errands, with the real adventure being just trying to survive the Cinderlands. It lends itself well to some big, awesome scenes, and playing up the hostile environment worked really well for me.
Book 5, on the other hand, I had to skip a lot of content. Scarwall is just enormous, and there's sooooooo much going on in there. Playing on Roll20 you could probably improve the atmosphere with the line of sight tool, but for me on a tabletop suspense was kind of hard to pull off with just the mat. It was fun, and I like that it once again gets the party out of its element. 4 and 5 seem to get criticized because they aren't a city adventure like the other books, but I think I like them more because of that. The party (characters, not players) was uncomfortable almost the whole time since there weren't many things to diplomance, their social perks and abilities meant squat, and they were suddenly doing things a normal adventurer would do simply because they would get ambushed and fried if they went back to Korvosa. Not to mention the constant threat of the Red Mantis looming over them.
Play up what they are, I suppose, and don't try to turn them into something they aren't. Crank up the difficulty, since you're doing some conversions already, and let ever-present danger and hostile environments do their work. Really emphasize that, yeah; your characters aren't built for this, but if you want to save the city you've got to suck it up and keep on trucking.