In addition to what Doug listed, this is from a list of stuff I plan on using for the speech I am typing up. It’s from things that Pathfinders have been assigned to do during missions, or I have seen or heard them do during the course of scenarios (though some of these are presented at a slant by Ouidda). I did a similar list when I ran this a few weeks ago, and I’m trying to recreate it for Gen Con.
-Bribing officials.
-Murdered lawful authorities in towns and cities.
-Attacked and killed town guards.
-Unprovokedly murdered the entire crews of ships and then stealing the vessel.
-Committed assassinations.
-Stolen valuable artifacts from museums.
-Brought back dangerous artifacts back from places such as the Mwangi Expanse and elsewhere that have resulted in many deaths.
-Burned down numerous inns and other honest establishments.
-Killed many exotic or rare beasts.
-Dealing with nefarious criminal organizations and individuals.
-Involvement in the black market.
-Smuggling.
-Aiding illegal cults.
-Involved in the raising of undead.
-Initiated illegal, and usually fatal, duels.
-Participated and furthered the slave trade.
-Assisted a false and mad claimant to the non-existent throne of Augustana.
-Stolen the bodies from graves.
-Assisted pirates and bandits.
-Worked and allied with dangerous criminals and terrorists.
-Broken dangerous prisoners out of high security prisons.
-Have worked with dangerous fey who have attacked Andorans invaluable lumber trade.
-The Pathfinders are made up of many dangerous devil worshipers and summoners.
-The Society aids and works with dangerous enemies of Andoran such as Cheliax and Taldor.
That’s everything I can think of off the top of my head.
I'm basically running Ghennet Manor Gauntlet and You Only Die Twice. I will be getting my 5th star sometime in there, along with TwilightKnight :)
I'm so jealous of your schedule.
/I'm currently 13 sessions away from my third star. I'm trying really hard to ge it at GenCon.
Just a note that we'll be awarding GM credit for a full slot's worth of delve tables. You can spread those over the full 4 days as needed. Email Liz if you want to try to get more slots under your belt.
What exactly do the Delve Tables entail? I'm guessing they are back up tables in the event more players show up then expected, or something happens to one of the scheduled GMs? What scenarios would we need to prepare for those?
Hmm, it is true I have nothing scheduled for Sunday at the moment...
I'm going to be running this three times at Gen Con. So I'm hoping it will be a blast. I'll see about writing a review after running it and getting a good impression of it.
Oh I agree. This is an excellently written scenario (conclusion included), and I would highly recommend it to everyone who plays PFS. This is just one nitpick in what is otherwise a very satisfying conclusion to the Eyes of Ten. Spicing that encounter with an additional challenge along the lines you stated to save her I think would have made the encounter a bit more satisfying. But it is what it is, and it far from ruins what is an excellently flavored and exciting scenario. Far, far more was done right then wrong.
She does strike me as someone who has just decided to throw in the towel if it gets to the plot point in question. She has one of the greatest resources a Wizard could ever hope for, foresight on what is coming next, and time to prepare for it. And she refuses to act on that information for her own self defense. I could understand if she was caught by surprise, and what happens was a very sudden development. But it was not. Even if she is not combat oriented, and there isn’t much reason for her to be so, it would have to pay to have at least a couple emergency measures in place just in case. Especially when things do go as horribly wrong as they do in Eyes of Ten.
She has to know the stakes if the Big Bad should win. And it struck me as kind of sad that she just rolled over and waited for the death blow. The lack of confidence in the PCs is a bit disappointing. Though a bit ironic that it is the potential cause of her death given past behavior of her kind.
I highly recommend the Eye of Ten series to players and GMs when they reach this plateau of PFS play.
I also plan to write reviews for all the Eyes of Ten scenarios here soon once I can get some time to type them up.
Spoiler:
I was a bit frustrated with how I could not save the subject in question by simply taking her to a place of safety (what with my fancy wizardly tricks). I thought I had a very solid plan to get her to someplace where the Big Bad could not get her, but I was stopped because she basically would not let me save her life and just seemed resigned to death.
I agree with Joe about the Society seeming to suffer from incompetence from the top down. Given the Decemvirate’s sketchy ways, and their apparent incompetence throughout the series, I would be extremely tempted to have just tried to take over the entire Society if it was a home game right there on the spot. AH was a monster though given all of his actions, he probably would just have turned the Society into his personal play thing if given the opportunity and have done horrible things if his previous actions were any indication.
But really, this was an excellent adventure, and a ton of fun. Skyreach was excellently fleshed out in this scenario, and it was very exciting to play through.
I have to say, I’m warming to this twist in how the Shadow Lodge is being portrayed. Seems like a good way to make them a faction in my opinion, and gives them a bit more depth. I was initially reluctant about them becoming a faction after I had spent My Entire Career in PFS killing or GMing over the slaying of these guys. But after playing through Mantis Prey and Eyes of Ten, I’m beginning to question the Decemvirate’s increasingly sketchy ways, aloofness, and gross incompetence at times.
I’m actually starting to consider making a character in the Shadow Lodge.
With the inclusion of the five new factions, it seems we have a ton more diversity in factions to choose from, and a greater variety in goals now. Something I definitely like. Now in addition to national interests with Andoran, Cheliax, Taldor, Osirion, and Qadira, I now have the option to work directly with the Grand Lodge if I just want to act like a Pathfinder and just that. Or show my frustrations with the Decemvirate with the Shadow Lodge. Have a new option to act good with the Silver Crusade. Work with some mafia dons for more criminally inclined criminals. Still not sure what to make of the Lantern Lodge though.
Wow, we changed the special's title from From Ashes of Iron months ago. Anyone confused by the legacy name showing up in your schedule should know that you will be running Blood Under Absalom instead.
Well that would explain why none of my searches to find out a little more about the special did not turn anything up. Good to know.
Seems I'm going to be spending a lot of time GMing under Absalom at Gen Con. PFS takes us to such nice places.
Thursday
8-1: #3-02: Sewer Dragons of Absalom
1-6: #3-02: Sewer Dragons of Absalom
7-12: #3-02: Sewer Dragons of Absalom
Friday
8-1: #2-24: Shadow's Last Stand, Part II—Web of Corruption
1-6: #2-23: Shadow's Last Stand, Part I—At Shadow's Door
7-12: Gen Con Special: From Ashes of Iron
Saturday
1-6: #2-23: Shadow's Last Stand, Part I—At Shadow's Door
7-12: #2-19:Shades of Ice, Part III—Keep of the Huskarl King
All Sewers, All Thursday! I’m sure hope that is a good scenario.
I also get to GM one of my favorite activities, knocking off Shadow Lodge members :p.
I have volunteered to be a Tier 1 GM at Gen Con, and I’m a subscriber to the Roleplaying Game subscription line. One of the perks for being a Tier 1 GM is that you get a free Ultimate Combat. Considering I do not particularly need two copies of the same book I was wondering what would be the best type of arrangement I could make given this somewhat unusual situation. Especially considering money is a bit tight due to having to save for Gen Con and all the books coming out in July.
I figure I could cancel my subscription for the main line of books for just Ultimate Combat, though naturally I consider the PDFs to be one of the big attractions for maintaining a subscription.
Good to know more about the Lantern Lodge, which I had no idea what it was going to be like. I’m still curious about what type of Faction missions they will be doing. At this point it looks like they are going to be replacing Taldor as the faction that has the completely random faction missions.
I think missions are a big thing for me. I like to feel like something is on the line, that what I am doing is important, and I am doing something fun and exciting. In a lot of scenarios, I feel little more than an errant boy. Specifically with the “go there and fetch artifact X” missions. In many instances I have no idea why the artifact is important, why I should care, and it has no long term impact. I am just collecting a random object to be shoved into the Grand Lodge archive where it will never see the light of the sun again. But in other scenarios I have ran or played, I have seen fun, inventive, and interesting missions like work to save other Pathfinders in dire situations, solved murder mysteries, gone to exotic locations, and fought nefarious foes.
I also like it when I get legitimate choices with how to deal with encounters and situations within the scenario. I really like it when I can try and be creative in my solutions, or see my social skills actually come into use (plus it can be fun to see a particularly dense group of players get into trouble when they don’t think a situation through, and use their swords instead of their heads, and the disastrous consequences. Have to get them to learn somehow.).
Very much can roleplaying NPCs make things memorable. Many of my favorite moments have been either running interesting NPCs, or interacting with them as a player. NPCs can make a world come alive, and can make me care about what I am doing in the scenario. I can remember many times interesting NPCs with unique traits, plights, problems, and encounter issues. I often find the scenarios where I don’t get to react with NPCs to be the most boring for me. As then it usually just dissolved into a four to five hour slugfest against monsters.
I love to see reoccurring NPCs that I can grow attached to. Such as some of the Venture-Captains like Dreng and Osprey, and Grandmaster Torch. It’s always good to see a couple familiar faces.
Villains for me can really help to make a scenario. When you have a good villain that the PCs can hate, or maybe even sympathize with, and they can hang with the part for a good few rounds and give them a good run around, it can really help to make the scenario end with a memorable bang. A good villain can really help drive the plot of a scenario.
I like to see at least one good encounter each scenario. One that can really push a party, and force them to really try hard or risk suffering some casualties. If every battle is a cakewalk, the scenario can be a bit of a letdown to me. The encounters I usually remember are the ones that really pushed me as a player, or as a GM I could push the party to give it their all. Either because of unique environments and/or the NPCs or monsters involved used good or interesting tactics, and had the stats to threaten the party.
For faction missions, I like to see missions that fit the actual theme of the faction in question, don’t feel just tacked on in order to fill that requirement for PFS play. I want them to be something that is fun to accomplish rather than just a fetch quest chore I have to complete along the way to get my precious PA.
I can get more specific on some of these points, such as pointing out specific scenarios, if you like Kyle.
Given you are an orphan, how did you come to receive your name? At least from what I can tell it still sounds pretty elvish despite you coming from a predominantly human city.
Also do you suffer the usual problem many elves have in humans lands with humans having trouble pronouncing your name (what with all the tendency to have multiple syllables)?
As a traveling cleric, do you ever go out and preach to the masses, run or assist with services to Sarenrae in the local church/shrine/cathedral/etc, or anything of the like?
So I was reading through the paladin codes in Faiths of Purity, and ran across this line in the book:
“The best battle is a battle I win. If I die, I can no longer fight. I will fight fairly when the fight is fair, and I will strike quickly and without mercy when it is not.”
Naturally there are differences in the restrictions on clerics and paladins. But I was curious as to what you considered to be a fair fight, or if fair fights are just fiction to you.
So how seriously do you take Merisiel unceasing advances towards you? Given you are a regular companion of hers, I figure you would have a better idea if she is just joking with you, or is actually serious about her attempts to, ah-hem, make your relationship more friendly then it currently is.
Merisiel is Merisiel. Her advances, serious or in fun, are just a part of her way of relating to me. I honestly believe she does this merely because she enjoys my retorts and rebuffs, my eye-rolling, or my sighs of exasperation. That said, I would suspect that her intentions are a little of both, actually; a dose of jesting, with the hopes that one day I may take her advances more seriously.
Your first question is something a bit more involved, and unfortunately I must leave to address some more pressing matters. I will give it some thought, and share my experiences with you at a later time.
especially since you answered this query.... why not mine?
I asked it in a respectful and thoughtout manner of course. If I just asked "So do you think Merisiel really wants to have wild and crazy sex with you, and do you think you are going to say yes someday?" I don't think she would likely have responded. Wording is important for inquiries.
I’m curious about how it was determined that you showed promise to be a priestess of the Dawnflower, and also what your training was like. I was wondering how training and selection might be different from my own homeland.
So how seriously do you take Merisiel unceasing advances towards you? Given you are a regular companion of hers, I figure you would have a better idea if she is just joking with you, or is actually serious about her attempts to, ah-hem, make your relationship more friendly then it currently is.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to answer our questions Priestess of Sarenrae. You are an inspiration to all those around you.
As a fellow worshiper of the Dawnflower, I have oftentimes came across irredeemable evils that were beyond my companion and I’s abilities to deal with in the most satisfactory manner (by that I mean burn them to a crisp with the holy fire of Sarenrae). What is your approach to dealing with such evils that are too dangerous to at least deal with immediately?
What would you consider to be your proudest moment?
What is the greatest evil you have vanquished (or helped at any rate. I know I oftentimes spend much a battle just trying to keep my companions in one piece with my healing rather then directly fighting in the melee)?
I think great villains almost always increase the fun of a game. I would like to see more of some of the Pathfinders traditional enemies like the Aspis Consortium and the Red Mantis Assassins. Possibly in a more competing role in some scenarios. I also find the evil religion organizations make for fun scenarios. Possibly have a cult of a Rovagug threaten to destroy an artifact the Society is trying to protect. It might also be nice to see some new enemies the Pathfinder’s have not really tackled such as the Hellknights, the Old Cults, the Church of Ramirz, Golarion has a wealth of potentially hostile factions and enemies players can grow to hate, and GMs to love to run. Why not use them?
I think it would be cool to have the Pathfinder Society go up against a significant and massive new menace that is starting to threaten Golarion such as some malevolent force from the Dark Tapestry, Leng, the Whispering Tyrant, another rising Runelord, some Azlanti lord reawakened and trying to take back the Inner Sea, or some other similar threat. Something that would help showcase the Pathfinder’s abilities at discovery, exploration, research, combat, magical aptitude, and other important skills the Society has available. The Pathfinders can discover this newly awakening threat, research it, gather artifacts to fight it, and take the fight to it (and of course reporting all along the way).
I would also like to see some of the achievements we have, the artifacts and knowledge we collect, and the missions we complete successfully have a visible effect. Maybe artifacts the PCs collect on missions get added to their Chronicle sheets, and can be used in a later scenario to deal with the big threat of that season. Or possibly some kind of bonus to skills, saves, or attack checks.
Also chances for Pathfinders to prove how great and exceptional they are is always great. In some of the scenarios I have ran or GMed, there doesn’t seem to be much urgency in succeeding or not. Many times it does not seem to be a big deal or not if the Pathfinders succeed or not in collecting the MacGuffin as it is never hear, spoken, or seen of again. There is oftentimes a blurp in the conclusion about how the Pathfinder’s succeeded improve relations with some group, or how a bad guy was put away in jail, or some threat was ended. But it does not really feel concrete to me. A lot of times, the scenario seems to feel like to end like this:
PCs: Drendle Dreng! We risked life and limb securing the Letter Opener of Krushion!
Dreng: Oh… *Takes the Letter Opener.* Umm, good job I guess.
PCs: So umm, that’s it?
Dreng: Well, here’s some tier appropriate gold. *Throws Letter Opener onto the growing pile of trinkets behind his desk.* Now get out of my office! One of these nights I’ll actually get half a nights rest!
I’m being a bit harsh here. Really I think Pathfinder Society has been getting better and better, and I have seen mostly positive changes. Especially in the quality and fun of scenarios since Pathfinder Society started, and I expect to continue to see further improvement. I think with the inclusion of metaplots such as the Shadowlodge for Season 2, and the Ruby Phoenix Tournament for Season 3 are really going to help focus future scenarios and make players really feel like they are contributing towards a goal rather than just going out on random missions that don’t mean much in the wider scheme of things.
I personally like this idea. It encourages people to read some of the novels, and get a better idea of what the setting is like. Which first helps the company, and second helps to give the players a better idea of what Galorian is like.
And really, it’s a small in game bonus that can be explained in any number of ways. Nothing that should break anything. Just a single bonus roll to a couple pretty specific situations, and access to a magic item. Really this far from ruins PFS in my opinion.
Not everything a character does needs to be a life risking venture. They can study, meet people, do their day job, and do plenty of other of things where they could learn a little about Galt without putting their lives on the line in a Pathfinder mission. I think the greater information players get on the background of the setting from reading the books outweighs other problems.
Hello, my name is Nick. I hope to start running a monthly Pathfinder Socity game out of Quest Comics. I have over five years in GMing experiance, and I hope to create a fun experiance for everyone at the table.
I'm currently working out which day would work best for me each month, and I am currently looking at either trying to play a Monday or Saturday every month. I will post what game dates I have planned as soon as I work out my scheduling conflicts.
As Mike stated, I would be interested in hearing about any preferred dates, Seasons, or scenarios.
Naturally whatever I do I don’t want to alienate my players, and just screw them with a double dealing traitor. Not to mention that trying to recruit people to the Children of Westcrown should be encouraged.
What I am thinking is that Sian can ask for a meeting with the CoW. And I will let the party’s reaction during the meeting and from that point onward determine which way goes. Either a spy for the Council of Thieves or someone who really changes and wishes to join the CoW. How the PCs deal with Arael’s barely veiled racism. Naturally he should have a couple of perfectly good questions (“You want us to trust a tiefling who is a member of the Council of Thieves And tried to kill you a few days ago?). Depending on if they stick to their guns, and what arguments they use with Arael and anyone else that happens to be there should help determine Sian’s attitude towards the PCs and CoW. Then how they treat her in the future can further decide what her attitude will be.
I figure this is a bit more dynamic, and helps the let the PCs reap what they sew. The PCs words and actions will help determine how Sian will turn out, and either lead to her helping or hurting later on.
I would personally have little interest in a purposely designed evil adventure path. From my personal experience having evil party members has never turned out well. If you have either a mixed or full evil party you pretty much have to lay out a whole set of new ground rules just to have a chance of even making it work. Otherwise you can pretty much count on your campaign falling into a miasma of problems. Backstabbing, stealing, party conflict, and PCs killing other PCs will pretty much become a regular occurrence in my experience. This is why I generally only allow non-evil PCs. I do not expect the PCs in my games to be saints, but I do not want them to be flat out evil. It is the type of campaign I enjoy more.
It is possible to have an evil party and make it work. It just requires a lot of work and the right group. Have even one player who does not want to play ball and play nice, do not properly outline the ground rule, have one bad night, and the whole campaign can pretty much become a train wreck. This can be tricky if you have a new group, do not have players you think would be able to handle such a campaign, or have players that have little interest in this type of campaign.
I do not think an all evil adventure path would work out well business wise considering there would be a lot of people such as myself who would have little interest in either playing or running it either for moral reasons or because of the headaches it would involve. Also for myself the novelty of playing evil quickly wears off, and would I lose all interesting in an evil campaign before I would be able to finish such an adventure path.
I personally like the approach Paizo has taken with the adventure paths. I don’t think being a good hero should be easy. A real hero has to make the tough decisions to try and do the right thing. The world can be a very not nice place, and PCs should have to deal with that fact. I think resisting the temptation of falling completely too evil helps to show how great a hero is. It’s the tough decisions you make every step along the way that help define what type of character you are. Hero, villain, or anywhere in between.
I can only speak for Rise of the Runelords, Legacy of Fire, and Council of Thieves, but I have enjoyed the grayish morality choices that PCs are confronted with. I think having to decide between what is expedient, what is for the greater good, and what is moral and ethical keeps things interesting. As long as there are no points where the players have to choose to act definitely, without a doubt evilly (something I think the Adventure Paths have avoided) I think this is a good thing to have.
I also enjoy the non-treasure extra rewards that PCs can get as the adventure develops. PCs should be able to see direct rewards for their heroics besides just another +1 sword. It is also nice to see that the PCs actions really do change the world, even if it in relatively minor ways a lot of the time.
I also chime in agreement to the PCs being the big heroes of the story. It can be nice to have at least some people that can help the PCs every now and then, but it should be the PCs who save the day in the end, and allow for the victory against evil.
I had some interesting turns of events involving Sian.
I had Sian decide to attack the party while they rested in the Asmodian Knot. Unfortunately for her the PCs had prepared well for just such an attack, and her ambush quickly turned against her. Soon the party monk had managed to grapple her and pin her to the ground. With the rest of the party quickly surrounding her and telling her to surrender or else, she decided discretion was the better part of valor, and surrendered to the party.
The party then proceeded to interrogate her while using some enchantments and intimidation, and managed to get plenty of important information out of her. Telling them what she was doing up in the Asmodian Knot and who had hired her. She said she attacked them because she had been told to kill anyone who interfered with her mission (somewhat of a lie), and did not mention her contact in Aberian’s Folly.
The group then decided to let her go (minus her equipment), and really surprising me, they offered Sian the opportunity to join the Children of Westcrown. They then let her out of the Asmodian Knot without further harm.
So I’ve been thrown for a bit of a loop. What shall I do with Sian now? I would like to ask everyone if I should go for her trying to go for revenge against the PCs for humiliating her, or perhaps actually have a story of redemption for Sian?
The book does not exactly give much on her background or motivations. This makes deciding her next move in this unusual situation a bit difficult for me. It says that normally she would go back to the Council of Thieves given she achieved her primary objective. I would think she would not mention the less successful parts of her mission in this case (doing so would certainly not be to her best health). She does have an alignment of LE, but that could always change especially if I go for her changing her ways.
Name: Nailo
Race: Elf
Classes/levels: Wizard 3
Adventure: The Sixfold Trial
Location: The Nightshade Opera House
Catalyst: Troll Skeleton
The Gory Details: The rot grubs of the Trial of Pleasure took a major toll on the party wizard, reducing Nailo to only 4 Constitution. Leaving her with a pitiful number of hitpoints left. The party had to scramble over the proceeding trials to keep her from taking damage and dying. But the party made a slight error for the Trial by Combat and Love.
They had placed all their melee characters near the front of the stage, thinking that was where the main threat would come, while they placed Nailo and Calseinica near the back near the curtains. Much to their horror the back curtain came up, revealing the two troll skeletons. Thanks to a high roll and a +7 initiative check, they were on the top of the initiative and got to work tearing into the rear of the party. Thanks to a slash to her back by a lemure had reduced her to 1 Dexterity (thank you Critical Hit Deck), Calseinica was virtually helpless against the troll skeleton, and was torn to pieces. Nailo fared no better with her almost non-existent hitpoints, and was quickly turned into a mangled, bloody mess by the other skeleton.
The rest of the party, covered in the blood of their fallen allies, then engaged the skeletons. They nearly all perished, the fighter and monk of the party were both knocked into the negatives. But some timely invisibility and illusions along with the clerics healing managed to only barely keep the rest of the party from suffering the same fate as Nailo and Calseinica.
I have to tell you, the party was scared to death that they were going to have to fight Robahl has he came down in the role of Asmodeous. They were on their last leg, and not up for another tough fight. The Sixfold Trials have the potential to be extremely lethal to a party.
Thanks for the ideas. Considering one of my PC’s is also a noble scion, I was also considering doing the same thing you did with Tarvi.
I think it will probably be a good idea to try and link the Children NPCs to as many of the PCs as possible through backstory encounters and links. It would seem to me the more connections you can create, and the more you can make them attractive to the PCs the better.
I just received both Order 1248911 and 1258291 today. So you can remove both those orders from my sidecart. Whatever issue I had with my shipping seems to have cleared up.
Thank you for your efforts to make a happy customer. Luckily the replacement shipments are now not needed.
My group just managed to get through the sewers. We decided to call it quits before we really got into the roleplaying for the Church of Aroden, and save that for the beginning of our next game.
What I was wondering is what everyone here has done with the various NPCs in the Children of Westcrown? How did they introduce each NPC to the PCs, did you decide just to concentrate one NPC per PC, or all of them, or some other method? How much have you worked them into the adventure? Have any of you done any sub-plots with the Children? What uses have you found for them?
Whew! Just finished reading through this whole thing. Quite the campaign you had here, and to think it was just one player and the PC! I’m definitely going to be taking some pointers from this journal for if I ever happen to run my own Rise of the Runelords campaign. I thought you did a really good job bringing the NPC’s to life and making them interesting.
I too was worried about the decline of the adventure path from its high point during the first three books of the campaign. I’m not a big fan of strait, meticulous dungeon crawls, that take many weeks to play through, and will probably try and add more roleplaying like you did for those adventures to make them a little more dynamic.
Seems like the action points really made the difference between victory and repeated TPKs for you in this adventure path.
Great job Moonbeam! I found this to be inspirational.
Thank you very much! This is the type of high quality service I have come to expect from Paizo.
Hopefully the shipment will come in normally and was only delayed by the floods we have had recently, and there won’t be any need for the replacements. If the items do come in I will make sure to note here that the replacements are no longer needed.
The system says that order 1248911 was shipped out on September 16th, but I have not seen it thus far. I’ve allowed for some extra time due to the flood we have suffered here in Georgia and the fact that the road system in and around Atlanta has been completely messed up, but I am starting to become worried now that about 20 days have passed since it was shipped. I’m not sure if you can confirm if the shipment has been marked as delivered or not.
The same for my order 1258291, which was shipped out on September 21st.
From this point forward I plan on paying more for my shipment to get UPS, and so I can get access to the shipment tracking so I can keep an eye on what is going on with my packages.
I did not have problems with Paizo shipping earlier in the year, so I don’t know exactly why I am having issues now other then the floods recently.
That sounds more like a royal masque than a 'standard' opera, but The Daughters of Thalaria has just been added to my home game's canon as having been performed as part of Abrogail II's coronation festivities... Excellent stuff!
Thank you.... hmm, I found this and it sounds about on par with what I had in my mind.
I hope to have at least three of the books by the time we really get the adventure going. My group goes pretty slowly (especially when we miss a week here or there like we are prone to do), and I don’t expect to start any sooner than early October. I’m pretty sure I should be able to manage given the pace of my group, and I’m pretty good at being flexible most of the time in running adventures. I plan on adding a few encounters and roleplay stuff for the Bastards of Erebus to help give me some time to get more material and see if anyone else trips upon any problems before me.
I’ve been reading through the threads here, and they have been a lot of help. This is certainly a very nice community here at Paizo! This definitely seems like the right place to take advantage of.
Promoting roleplaying has certainly been a primary objective of mine since becoming GM of my group. I don’t think my group had a ton experience or opportunity to roleplay in the past, but I have been gradually building up the roleplaying in the current campaign we are finishing up. I hope I’ve gotten to the point where they are prepared for a heavy roleplay experience like CoT.
I’ve spent a lot of time with them as you suggested Shisumo trying to get them to develop the background and personalities for their characters, and get them exited about their characters (it probably helped that I offered an Exp bonus to those who took the opportunity to build their characters’ background, personality, goals, and description). I’ve put a lot of emphasis for why their characters would want to join a resistance group, and their connection to the city of Westcrown, and they seem to be getting into it and seem to be legitamently exited by the campaign. I think the background and goals are really going to pay dividends once we get into the campaign, and I start weaving their backgrounds into the campaign. I know I personally am going to have to step up on my own roleplaying to give this adventure path the justice it deserves.
I think your idea of contacts is an excellent idea Micco. I will definitely have to bring that up with my group. It seems imperative to get the group to have a connection to the city and its people, and bring the city in general alive. Given that this is a city based campaign, it only makes sense to have the players create some of their own contacts.
My group just voted to do Council of Thieve as our next campaign, and we hope to start it in a couple of weeks. This is the first Paizo adventure path I will have run, so I am looking for any helpful hints or advise for running one of these. I’ve read through the first couple of adventures, and I am looking forward to running this.
It seems that a lot of the campaign is pretty flexible. Something which I do like. I guess I’m wonder how to take advantage of this.
The Children of Westcrown that the first book introduces seem like an interesting plot point. How has everyone else planned on using them? I’m thinking about making some sub-quests around them, some roleplay opportunities to build relationships, and some additional muscle when needed.
I was also wondering how much people planned things out ahead of time for these adventure paths? It would definitely seem to pay dividends to foreshadow future events, and I hope to build up a good roleplaying experience for my players.
Great campaign Moonbeam! I just read through the entire thing and I’m very impressed. Looks like you did a great job with a lot of the NPC’s in the adventure path. They felt really organic in this, and none of the NPC’s felt out of place. I thought the changes you did with Haidar made him fit into the adventure a lot better then he would have otherwise. I also liked how you managed to modify the adventure to better fit the players. Good job.
I'm also eagerly awaiting for mine to get shipped and gain access to the PDF. I really want to see how this chapter in the adventure path goes. So I'm just hoping for the best right now about getting it before too long.
