Introducing the Curtain Call Player’s Guide

Mostly immigration from folks who have escaped Cheliax. There's growth throughout Ravounel as a result of that.

Interesting. What parts of Ravounel are growing the most -- the large cities, the large towns, or the countryside/hamlets/villages?

Relatedly, do people tend to arrive by ship or overland (or, more esoterically, through Dreamgate)?

Would it be OK to play a hellknight in this campaign? Does the Order of the Torrent still dabble in devilry?

James Jacobs wrote:

Mostly immigration from folks who have escaped Cheliax. There's growth throughout Ravounel as a result of that.

Interesting. What parts of Ravounel are growing the most -- the large cities, the large towns, or the countryside/hamlets/villages?

Relatedly, do people tend to arrive by ship or overland (or, more esoterically, through Dreamgate)?

None of that is really relevant to the plot of Curtain Call at all, so we don't really discuss it in the adventure at all. If/when we do a bigger book or product about the lore of Ravounel and don't have to pick and choose what we talk about in a very tiny amount of words (such as we had to do for ALL locations in the Lost Omens World Guide), we'll go into further detail.

If you are looking for "official" insight, I suggest asking the Lore team and Luis Loza; again, since it wasn't an important part of Curtain Call's story, I didn't bother figuring that out or working with the Lore team for answers.

The reason I increased the population of Kintargo is simply because Ravounel is a new nation on the rise with a less tyrranical and violent government than before, and that makes Ravounel a healthier and more attractive nation for folks to come to, and thus the capital city would logically start increasing in population as newcomers settle there, there's less oppression and excruciation/execution of non-Thrune-abiding citizens, and so on.

In my head, Kintargo's always been an important trade hub, and that's becoming even more of a big deal as the city builds greater trade relations with Varisia and other lands to the north, as well as increased trade with Arcadia and various locations/settlements/colonies in Azlant's ruins. I'd say that Kintargo is the one that's growing the most in Ravounel, but there's lesser growth throughout the nation, and that most folks arrive by ship. Those who arrive overland are likely refugees escaping from Nidal or Cheliax and seeking asylum or the like, but more folks overall are coming via ship, be it fleeing Cheliax or simply the natural result of Ravounel becoming a much more attractive and friendly and open port now that it's not weighed down by the Thrunes.

Dreamgate is not a significant trade route at this time, but we'll see where that goes.

Would it be OK to play a hellknight in this campaign? Does the Order of the Torrent still dabble in devilry?

It'd be fine. The hellgnights and the Order of the Torrent don't really have any role in the story at all—thematically, hellknights aren't really a great match for whimsical opera shenanigans. There's not going to be much thematic hellknight stuff for you to specifically do, but some plot points in the campaign will be pretty easy for your GM to adjust to make it so for the Order of the Torrent.

But again, as written, the Order of the Torrent and hellknights just don't have a big presence in Curtain Call.

AKA: Chat with your GM. If I were your GM, I'd suggest setting a hellknight PC idea aside for a different campaign and to come up with a PC who's more social-themed and/or skill based or the like. Combat (which is where the hellknights generally shine) happens in Curtain Call but there's long swaths and in some cases entire chapters where you can succeed gloriously without ever rolling initiative.

James Jacobs wrote:

Mostly immigration from folks who have escaped Cheliax. There's growth throughout Ravounel as a result of that.

Interesting. What parts of Ravounel are growing the most -- the large cities, the large towns, or the countryside/hamlets/villages?

Relatedly, do people tend to arrive by ship or overland (or, more esoterically, through Dreamgate)?

And to double down on my previous answer in less words: Ravounel's political growth and all of that isn't really the point of Curtain Call, so it's not something that we directly discuss in the Adventure Path. Hints and suggestions may pop up here and there, but developing Ravounel as a post-Cheliax nation from the political side of things was not the goal of this Adventure Path, so further questions about this topic are going to have to have equally vague answers from me.

I suspect at some point we'll do more with Cheliax and Ravounel and all that, but Curtain Call wasn't the place to do so.

Laclale♪ wrote:

There's still no explanation of Dirty Trick (Player Core 2 229)

What it does?

I would check page 229 of Player Core 2 for that. Can't get it yet? Well, you can't get Stage Fright either, since it releases on the same day as Player Core 2.

We also don't know what the Champion causes of liberation, grandeur, or redemption are or do, so generally I would recommend reading Player Core 2 before finalizing characters for Curtain Call.

Yup. Curtain Call's Player's Guide is forward-compatable with Player Core 2 (as is the adventure), so that when that book's out, the options mentioned here will make more sense. But a player's guide is NOT the right place to drop those rules "early." It would bloat the size of the player's guide and complicate it's purpose, and then a few weeks later when Player Core 2 is out, it would feel weirdly repetitive and strange going forward.

Sorry for the tease factor for these things; that wasn't the intent of including those suggestions in here. It will all become clear sooooon.

I wonder how easy or difficult would it be for the players to also be part of the troupe performing the production instead of just producing it.

I wonder how easy or difficult would it be for the players to also be part of the troupe performing the production instead of just producing it.

That element is covered in the Adventure Path, be it a case of one PC playing themselves on stage to the whole party. The more PCs who want to play themselves, the fewer NPC interactions your group will have with potential actors playing them, which is a big part of some of the whimsy and fun of certain plots. Also, it might make it a bit complicated if your PC has to attend rehersals a lot more; that might take a bite out of their availability to do other important downtime stuff or even go on encounter mode adventures. And at the end, splitting your roles between actor and producer WILL make those PCs face higher DC checks at critical points during the premiere as they essentially have to do multiple jobs at once.

But it can be done, and we do offer advice for GMs who have players who want to do this.

REQUEST TO ALL CURTAIN CALL GMS:

If you'd like to ask about how to set up Curtain Call as a follow-up to other Adventure Paths, or even advice on using campaigns of your own design, I think that this thread isn't the right place to ask them. I'm going to flag previous posts that do so to be removed to preserve potential spoilers.

In the future, if you do have questions from the GM side of things for this Adventure Path, please start a new thread in the Curtain Call forum and I'll try to answer them there as quickly as I can.

Thanks!

Ok, I removed all the posts talking about Season of Ghosts. Let's get those off to their own thread, shall we? Thanks, everyone!