Skinsaw Murders Continuity

[KanedaX321]

There might be an answer on the board already, but:

My group is nearing the end of Chapter 1, gonna take down Malfeshnekor next session, and im looking ahead to the Skinsaw Murders. After reading through the first few parts, I'm trying to figure out the right order to present to my party.

Specifically I'm looking at the farmland section, with the scarecrows. It's listed as Part 3, but with the Foxglove Manor reveal in Part 2 I see no reason why the party would want to NOT head straight to the Manor. Pushing them to fight some scarecrows seems like extreme railroading, even in an adventure path built on railroading.

The text mentions the farmer arriving in Sandpoint one day after the adventure begins. Should I insert the farm between parts 1 and 2? Introduce it after the sawmill investigation?

Any suggestions or experience would be greatly appreciated.

[Latrecis]

First, not to be that guy, but this needs spoiler tags, either in the thread title or in the body of the text or the post should be in the Skinsaw Murder GM Reference sticky thread.

Second,

Spoiler:

Not quite sure what you're referring to. Part 2 is the Sanitorium which is different from the Foxglove Manor. Part 3 is the ghouls at the farm. It's the clues the pc's get from Grayst in the Sanitorium in Part 2 and the ghast (Rogors Craesby) in Part 3 that lead them to the Manor (Part 4.)

On the railroading front, Parts 2 and 3 do not need to be done in numerical order. The "typical" path (?) might be that while investigating the murders they visit Habe's and the morning after they return to Sandpoint, Maester Grump stumbles in with his horrific news from the farmlands. But depending on how the pc's spend their time investigating in Sandpoint and the GM's interest in keeping things moving/interesting, the ghoul attack on the farms could come first.

[CorvusMask]

Yup, there is no assumption that players do both of them. They are both paths that can take players to Misgivings, though players might want to do both of them anyway(espicially if they are into saving civilians from undead xP)

[Stepchild of the Sun]

I had my players literally pass the farmlands on the way to Misgivings, each more quiet and deserted and unsettling than the last before they reached Hambley Farm. A sort of literal railroad, you might say.

I described several farms to them in detail. The first had several people working the fields in a tight circle at least half of which were armed and wearing haphazard armor. The second was eerily quiet, with the front door hanging open and a meal rotting on the dining room table and cows lying dead in the field. The doors and windows of the last farm were locked up tight and as the PCs got closer I had them roll perception checks. Those who got highest spotted a child in the hayloft with a sling and an older man with a crossbow in an upstairs window.

After that sort of imagery and talking with the npcs at at least a few of the farms, an attack by one little scarecrow was enough to convince my party to investigate.

[Callum]

Spoiler:

The 'Foxglove Manor reveal' at the sanatorium isn't a slam-dunk - it's only Grayst referring to the Misgivings. I made it even less obvious than that, by having Grayst say only "...if you came to misgivings..." so that the interpretation was left open.

As Stepchild of the Sun notes, the route from the sanatorium to Foxglove Manor goes past several farms, so it should by easy enough to lure the PCs in. I'd also recommend having farmer Grump meet the PCs on the Lost Coast Road (whether they're heading back to Sandpoint from the santorium or on to Foxglove Manor) - it's much better for him to tell his story to the PCs directly, rather than have Sheriff Hemlock call them in once again.