Hey guys,
I'm finally going to run Rise of the Runelords with my group. This will be our 4th Adventure Path.
Could anyone point me to some specific advice/tips/pitfalls of this much played adventure?
More importantly, is there anything extraneous in this AP that could afford to be cut, as far as story purposes go?
Thanks in advance!
This isn't your group's first rodeo, so you'll probably be okay re: challenge level--there are definitely more difficult adventure paths.
Book Three (I think?) has a section where a pixie leads the party to an undead nymph because reasons--it feels a bit tacked on and isn't very fleshed out. If possible, I intend to develop it into something more complex when/if my players reach that point; otherwise, I'mma cut it completely.
The other challenge I'm already coming up against is making sure the players feel a connection to Sandpoint itself over the course. None of my characters are natives, and only one has a built-in reason to stick around the area before "because adventure/loot/goodness" takes over. I'm planning out a few extra interactions with the locals that will hopefully generate sufficient interest in both protecting the place and caring about its denizens.
I guess it seems to me that The Skinsaw Murders seems to sidetrack from the main plot and doesn't do a whole lot to advance the main story. Something I'm missing here?
James Jacobs would be a better person to answer this, seeing as he wrote it. : ) Here's my understanding of the relevance of Book 2.
The Skinsaw Murders is the first real establishment of the concept of the Big Bad's plan--cultivating greed in the souls of mortals, then extracting that greed through the sihedron ritual and the Runewell of Greed. A large portion of that power is gathered via the murders referred to in Book 2, via X's "quantity" plan in Magnimar and L's "quality" plan in Turtleback Ferry. The rest comes from the Big Bad's own marked minions dying and from the explicit sacrifice of particularly greedy souls, such as the captured dragons referred to in Book 5 (I think? Maybe Book 4).
In short, The Skinsaw Murders directly links the events of Book 1 to the plan for the Big Bad to escape his Sealed Evil in a Can, and whether they realize it or not, discovering and/or upsetting that plan is the PCs' goal at that point.
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James Jacobs would be a better person to answer this, seeing as he wrote it. : ) Here's my understanding of the relevance of Book 2.
The Skinsaw Murders is the first real establishment of the concept of the Big Bad's plan--cultivating greed in the souls of mortals, then extracting that greed through the sihedron ritual and the Runewell of Greed. A large portion of that power is gathered via the murders referred to in Book 2, via X's "quantity" plan in Magnimar and L's "quality" plan in Turtleback Ferry. The rest comes from the Big Bad's own marked minions dying and from the explicit sacrifice of particularly greedy souls, such as the captured dragons referred to in Book 5 (I think? Maybe Book 4).
In short, The Skinsaw Murders directly links the events of Book 1 to the plan for the Big Bad to escape his Sealed Evil in a Can, and whether they realize it or not, discovering and/or upsetting that plan is the PCs' goal at that point.
Mostly right - except X's plan in Magnimar is about the quality of greed (example: the Mayor) and L's plan is about quantity - the large number of people in TBF that have tattoos. X is the BBEG of Book 2, L is sort of the BBEG of Book 3. There are also plenty of minions of the BBEG of Book 4 with tattoos/markings, including dragons. In the latter case, the pc's themselves fuel the BBEG of the AP by killing said minions.
I'd phrase it in terms of "harvesting" vs "cultivation", rather than "quality" vs "quantity". Xanesha just wants to harvest existing greedy souls, whereas Lucretia wants to actively cultivate greed in folk that might have otherwise been relatively virtuous.
Thanks, RumpinRufus--your description is definitely more on-the nose than mine.
Ok, fair enough.
Anything specific anyone would do differently if they were to run it all over again?
There's a thread on this very forum titled: "Things you changed and things you should have." I'm too lazy to post a link to it here but it should be easy to find, just scroll down on the Runelords forum. There are 314 posts in the thread - plenty to read there. I also might suggest reading all 6 of the GM Reference threads as well as the Community Created Content thread.
Yeah, I started to, but with 900+ on just the first book, and most of the first 100 being fixed with the Anniversary edition release, it seemed a bit much.
I did see the other post though. That one is a pretty good read.