6-99 True Dragoons of Absalom at Gen Con *potential spoiler*

[JamesH]

I have one question about this scenario for Gen Con. Are we judges expected to bring the iconics with us to the convention, or will the convention provide them?

[Eric Clingenpeel]

B&W pregens will be provided. Personally, I printed out copies in color and on cardstock for my players' enjoyment.

[UndeadMitch]

What Eric said. I also printed out the pregens in color to give out to my players to keep, and I was even able to find six different kobold minis for the people at my table to use for the scenario.

[TetsujinOni]

Noting the chronicle item: bring something you expect to give away.

[Pirate Rob]

Btw I added a doc with printable trap tokens to pfsprep.com

[JamesH]

Now, if only somebody would print the map for me for the convention. I do not have the time to get a proper map made (and my skills are lacking). I'd cover the cost of doing it for me (or maybe one dinner during the convention). *sigh*

[Rycaut]

Anyone else a bit worried about the time for this scenario? I'm really really looking forward to running it - but I'm worried that folks who get too into the roleplaying (and really who won't get into the role playing) will miss some of the amazingly fun parts of the later bits.

I've noticed a few scenarios where there seems to be a lot of early encounters which won't be particularly troubling (very low CR encounters) but which may take time - I'll try to keep people on track through the early stuff to get to later scenarios but I also want to let people enjoy a unique opportunity...

(I'm also worried that I'll run out of printer ink trying to get all of my scenarios, handouts and maps printed before my flight early Wed morning)

[TetsujinOni]

Time management is a skill that comes with practice, Rycaut. (This *is* the new 5 star exclusive after the show, after all).

This doesn't look as crunched on time as Serpent's Rise, though.

[Rycaut]

I have a tendency to run long anyway - between running a lot of my home game and preferring to run modules. But going to try to stay on time... not running Serpent's Rise alas (which also sounds like it will be a lot of fun for players - kinda sorry I'm not running or playing that actually). I'll be pretty close to my 4th star after GenCon though may be a while before I get my 5th star (toddler at home so don't get to run weekly like i used to)

[Thurston Hillman]

I admit, timing was a HUGE concern of mine when writing this scenario.

Some minor spoilery "behind the curtain" details below:

Spoiler:

So, John and I knew that this scenario needed to have some kind of trap building element to truly encapsulate what it means to be a kobold. So a lot of emphasis is put on the first section with the PCs claiming territory from the intruders and then trapping it up to handle enemy waves. This will probably be a good portion of the scenario time, or go very quickly depending on the skill of the group and how well their traps turn out.

For RP-centric groups, I think the start of the scenario will prove to offer a lot of good RP opportunities. Hats is specifically designed to be a memorable NPC, and someone the PCs can interact with, beyond their convenient Venture-Captain.

The second half of the adventure is a veritable smorgasbord of off the rails goodness. Given the location, I wanted to put a lot of detail into making this place somewhere the players (not characters) would be interested in coming back to. I for one, have some invested interest in coming back to this particular location... for REASONS(tm).

BIG props to Todd Stewart for helping me nail down a feel for the location of the scenario's second half. As the person who created the location, it was great to bounce ideas off him to get a good tone for it.

Also, BIG props to Linda, who kept my 'reminder Easter Egg' scene. The one involving a certain NPC that players who played Traitor's Lodge needed to be reminded about... :)

All this being said, if time is running short, there's a lot the GM can do to 'fast forward' this second-half section of the scenario, as there's only two fights that need to take place after the trap portion is complete.

Gah, I hope that is somewhat useful information!

[Rycaut]

So some feedback. I posted this to another thread (Painlord's bloggery thread) but here goes another try. Hopefully without too many auto correct fails.

Before I start some context - my table for the special had one player who had never played a role playing game before, some former 3.5 players who had never played pathfinder before (or who had only played earlier this con) and a few players with very slight pathfinder and pfs experience (perhaps one or two more games).

So needless to say not a typical table.

Game report and suggestions:

I had to narrate the results of the second wave to give them enough time to enjoy the rest of the scenario and had to skip the optional encounter and narrate scenes in the shadow plane.

The group really got into the scenario and after a too long initial combat where half the table got initially panicked (sending one player running through tunnels only to trigger the second encounter at the same time (in time to see the disguise self spells being cast)

It may have been a good thing for the new player that she was initially panicked so she got to watch a few rounds of live combat without having to immediately figure it out (she played the trap maker)

The laying down of traps went really well - they all got into it and they got creative (made some unique traps like camouflage to cover their tunnels in the hallway above the scaffolding to let that be their killing field. I let them pick where the triggers for the traps were which I think worked really nicely. They also wanted to make some traps that they could activate remotely (via Mage hands - they missed that the trap maker could do that as well) so I allowed that. They also made a rock fall traps by the old sewer line which they disguised as natural events not traps. (I let them do this as a modified pit trap)

In short they laid traps down well. Missed a few abilities more experienced players might have caught (magic spell traps or more than a single bomb trap) but they did pretty well.

However the time it then took to resolve wave 1 was considerable - even after they trapped one gaurd in a pit and others were nauseated from the pool. It just took a lot of time to whittle through hp. Wave 2 could have easily taken another hour plus to resolve (largely because a combat with 14 plus minis moving around a large map takes time.

They didn't have Hats with them which would have helped shorten the time considerably.

They did very well with the other encounters and resolved them quickly and efficiently.

My suggestions / feedback:

Though it worked out an initial combat that likely will leave one or more pcs panicked and out of the fight and which will almost certainly trigger a second combat at the same time isn't a particularly fun way to start the main part of the story. I would either get rid of all of these encounters (starting immediately on the trapping). Or I would at least simplify the combat to take less time (reduce the number of fetchlings or use something else that would be fewer minis.

I would then also combine the two waves into one larger wave. The first wave doesn't have RP hooks to the same degree as the more detailed second wave - but my table missed out on that.

In the shadow plane instead of pages of background material most gms may not get to use while running I would suggest expanding one of the encounters into a more detailed scene (perhaps make it optional to flex time). My vote would be the group of adventurers which could serve as a guide for future adventures for when the players use their boon.

[TetsujinOni]

Your experience and mine with the running of this varied widely, Rycaut....

The one hit die fetchlings die nearly D&D4 minion fast to 4th level pcs.

This game is a gem of DungeonKeeper: Kobolds shenanigans with massive amounts of roleplay-oriented hooks to hang things that engage your particular skills and the sorts of extemporizing from interesting bits in Shadow Absalom that if you aren't sucking on two menthol drops at a time to be able to talk at all, let you tailor your part 2 experience to your table's particular mix of skills and preferences.

Also, the optional encounter is entirely optional if the trapmaster is as paranoid as a kobold should be...

We were done with about an hour left in the slot, and while I felt like I had glossed a little in favor of my lungs, didn't feel any pressure related to the part one combats.

I'll respectfully disagree with each and all of the suggestions you made.

[Cirithiel]

This seems like a good thread to ask: do any of the more experienced GMs have any concrete tips on how to better manage the game pace?

While I had a rollicking good time running this, and I believe my players had at least as much fun, we ended up in a veritable sprint through Shadow Absalom as they did not enter the portal until there was 45(30?) minutes left in the slot.

At my table, the slow down in play seemed to be in the second wave of Blackrose people hitting the traps. The kobolds all waited on the far side of the sewer tunnels, so only a couple players ended up taking actions while waiting for the traps and the otyugh in his "swimming pool" to kill the humans. A few players were waiting for the humans to get into melee range, which they were not doing very quickly. I tried to keep everyone engaged by having them roll the trap damage and so on, but at times this section felt..... slow.

[Jayson MF Kip]

My table (mad props if you're reading along) did an excellent job of tower-defending the groups into a killbox of spiketraps and otyughs, so I "blocktexted" (with a zany Home Alone-style montage) wave 2 and had them roll initiative for wave 3 after it became clear that the only way anyone was getting through was filling pit traps with bodies to walk across.

Even without running the gauntlet and invisible, 2 level 3 players are no match for the PCs. To top it off, the only one that the players managed to flank was Pethjun, in her 20-some AC steel cocoon.

That said, smiles all around, and more time to try on hats.

[TetsujinOni]

Jayson MF Kip wrote:

My table (mad props if you're reading along) did an excellent job of tower-defending the groups into a killbox of spiketraps and otyughs, so I "blocktexted" (with a zany Home Alone-style montage) wave 2 and had them roll initiative for wave 3 after it became clear that the only way anyone was getting through was filling pit traps with bodies to walk across.

Even without running the gauntlet and invisible, 2 level 3 players are no match for the PCs. To top it off, the only one that the players managed to flank was Pethjun, in her 20-some AC steel cocoon.

That said, smiles all around, and more time to try on hats.

This, and my table decided that wave 2 deserved the panic button scroll... Boom.

And they didn't have Hats.

[Rycaut]

A few further things:

The fetchlings did go down quickly - it is just that if half the table spends their first few turns running that isn't a particularly fun game experience to start. And a combat with 13 participants (no hats on my table or it would be 14) isn't particularly fast

I think there was a dramatically different experience in terms of speed if hats joined the party. His presence likely meant that he alone killed one or two of the wave each round.

Also at a large public special the game has to accommodate players of all skills I had a table of players some of whom had never played an rpg before the rest had played 3.5 but weren't familiar with pathfinder or pfs. The fact that we finished I take as a sign I did something right but to do that I did have to hand wave Wave 2 a bit more than I would have liked (and frankly I would have preferred to have done that for wave 1 as wave 2 was more flavorful

[Chris Mortika]

Rycaut, I also had a table with 5 out of my 6 players unfamiliar with Golarion lore. Not much of this scenario made sense to them.

The problem, I think, is that the Gen-Con Special is seen by many people as a good gateway to the game. People purchase tickets to that, because it's big and expensive and sure to be a great time. But this year, too many of the specials assumed a level of background knowledge that new players don't have. None of them had heard of the Blackros Museum, for example.

(I should add a caveat: one player did, but he was playing a character who didn't know much about Golarion, and he kept quiet.)

In this case, the pre-gens require a level of rules-fu that the players didn't have, either. My players asked questions during the first half-hour, but then decided to get moving with the adventure and were still using their PDAs to look up things like "what's a pearl of power? " "What does the spell bomber's eye do?" "How do lighting conditions affect concealment, when we all see in the dark?"

Next year, I would ask that the Specials need to be much simpler and more accommodating to new players.

--

Could someone fix the spelling in the title of this thread, please?

[Iammars]

Chris Mortika wrote:

In this case, the pre-gens require a level of rules-fu that the players didn't have, either. My players asked questions during the first half-hour, but then decided to get moving with the adventure and were still using their PDAs to look up things like "what's a pearl of power? " "What does the spell bomber's eye do?" "How do lighting conditions affect concealment, when we all see in the dark?"

Yeah, I was considering making a cheat sheet for each of the pregens in this one, but I ran out of time before GenCon. I plan on having one available soon, once I finish some other projects that got neglected for GenCon.

[Rycaut]

cheat sheets for ALL preens should (I think) be part of the development of those scenarios. Even a very experienced player when given a pre gen will likely have abilities, items or spells that none of their characters use - having a cheat sheet which spells out even seemingly basic items reduces the need to look things up and is a godsend if you have either an entirely new player or someone unfamiliar with Pathfinder (say a former 3.5 player like the ones on my table who were convinced that Haste still took a year of your life).

As a GM if I have a lot of time to prep (hard with a full time job and a toddler) I try to look up every spell, feat, monster special ability etc with which i'm less than familiar - but the less of that i have to do the better (especially for pre gens which frankly I spend less time preparing when I'm running someone to minimize my metagaming. Even things like pre-calculating likely combos from monsters would be helpful (easy example - calculating Power Attack for every attack of a given monster adjusting ahead of time for which attacks are two-handed or STR x 1.5 attacks and which are secondary attacks at STR x0.5 and how they are each adjusted for Power attack...

Remember as well that any event noted as a "special" with pre-gens provided will appear more new player friendly than events that indicate characters are needed.

[UndeadMitch]

A few thoughts/notes after running this:

-The tower defense style wave combat with the traps started off good, but started to feel a bit clunky, but the players I had seemed to enjoy massacring the guys, so all was good. This encounter is the heart of the scenario, so GM's really need to get the party to buy into the trap building. I had players leading the enemies into traps and chasing back into spear traps that had just reset, so the party had fun with it.

-The players at my table didn't seem to care that much about SA. I did two of the RP encounters (the kytons and then the adventuring party) and the PC's didn't really buy into it, and the bard seemed like he was just kind of doodling on the back of the pregen not really caring. At that point, I moved them on to encountering the NPC and got them moving on to the tower and everything was good again.

-The tower base was basically a non-encounter, as the rogue was keeping his eyes open and spotted and disabled the trap, which I'm guessing was a fairly common occurrence.

-The tower summit and the interaction with Shadrixis was pure gold. As it turns out, the bard at my table wasn't just doodling, but preparing a speech that took up a chunk of space on the back side of his character sheet. As soon as he saw the dragon, he immediately prostrated himself before it and went into his speech. The other kobolds followed his lead and asked the dragon to be their god, and the diplomacy check they made was close to 40 before the bonus I gave him for his speech. They then asked Shadrixis to come back to Absalom, where they were going to overthrow Yiddlepode and be new chiefs with their all-powerful god. Seeing as how they were telling this small dragon he was going to be the most powerful thing in Absalom, I had them roll a bluff, which they got into the mid-30's. So, Shadrixis followed them back through the portal, still holding onto the scale. They emerge into the sewers, where Dreng and the Pathfinders and Yiddlepode and her Sewer Dragons are waiting, when the portal shorts out behind them. Hilarity ensued as the party announced their new god, and they would be the new chiefs. Yiddlepode and Dreng looked at each other, and the Pathfinder contingent cut down Shadrixis. At this point all seven of us are laughing nearly to the point of tears. On e we all calmed down, the two leaders looked at each other again shrugged and congratulated the PC's on an excellent job of closing the portal and Dreng offered them all field commissions.

There were some rough spots during the scenario, but the payout is deifinitely worth it. From the people I had talked to, there was a pretty wide variety of ways the scenario ended.

[John Compton]

Regarding the pregenerated characters, we made a development decision to leave explanations of any Core Rulebook components off of these characters. Not only was this because the Core Rulebook is part of the Core Assumption, but also it allowed us to keep all but one character to one sheet (more approachable, based on my experiences when I played it on Saturday) and allowed us to focus our development hours on the adventure itself.

[Chris Mortika]

John,

That seems reasonable, but as I say it was hard for the very beginning players.

If something like this happens next year, I'll try to prepare a solid "Core mechanics cheat sheet" for any pre-gens, so the new players at my table can follow along better. I'll also try to have the characters presented in HeroLab format. (The five-block format is great for GMs, but it's alien to a lot of players who don't also run games.)

With enough lead time, I'll try to make that available through the usual GM resources.

[MeriDoc-]

We murderated the waves, it was the best game I played or ran at Gencon (and the siege was a close 2nd). Note after 4x 2's on using my bow I broke it to kindling and added it to the BBQ pit.

Fiz (Trap Master Rogue), Master of Hair, Sewer Dragon Pathfinder local 493 - E Pluribus Sewem.

[Rycaut]

I"m hoping that either I get to 5 stars or True Dragons is made available to 4 stars eventually (I'm just a few games away from my 4th star) as I would dearly love to run it again for more groups - I think it is a scenario I could see running many times and never having the same experience. Might be a good candidate for a GM star replay also when/if i ever get the chance to play it more than once (I suspect playing it multiple times would be as fun as running it multiple times).

[Korolan]

Thread Necromancy for a Clarification on the boon!

Boon Clarification:

The 'Hey, you can play a level 4 Kobold!' instead of another pregen isn't limited to this character, right? For example, if my -1 earned this chronicle sheet, could I play my Kobold in a scenario that my -2 is getting credit for?

[Woran]

Quinn Shannon wrote:

Thread Necromancy for a Clarification on the boon!

** spoiler omitted **

I always saw it that way. Otherwise you can barely use it.