Ok, so some self-shilling here; I was in Steel_Wind's camp about book 1: Its muddy, unfocused, and it makes the problem of hyping the hell out of Gaedren only to have him fall flat as a villain that dies in the first or second session, leaving the party with, essentially, no reason to continue to care about eachother. This has some easy fixes:
2. Don't hype Gaedren up so much. When the book starts, players should NOT have "Must kill Gaedren, must get revenge" on their minds. The most important piece of information I told my players was that when building a PC, they should build one who was affected by Gaedren in the past, in a way that was major in shaping who they would become, but they have HAD TO MOVE PAST THAT SINCE THEN. When the game starts, they shouldn't have even thought about Gaedren in possibly years. It should be a surprise when it's offered to them, a chance to fulfill a debt that's been smoldering in the back of their mind, not a raging fire needing to be doused. 3. Connect Gaedren to something later in the campaign. NOT ROLTH (that plot is dumb and makes no sense). I chose the Arkonas, in a long, elaborate plan for them to cripple the city via drugs (basically, they were going to do what Illeosa did with the plague, only with heroin). Make it so his death foreshadows and links into things to come. As for other things, the most important detail is to expand like crazy. Add content, create winding plots and paths, build Korvosa into a sprawling network of competing factions and plotlines. My game saw me spin the Freeport trilogy into a plot about Vampire Nobles creating a Lighthouse to hide a temple to Lissala and enact some crazy plan, a drug-trade spanning multiple crime bosses and fights, and all kinds of other stuff. Pillage other modules and books for things you can run, because the campaign absolutely works best when you DON'T RUSH THROUGH THE MAIN PLOT. I've written up my early work on the campaign in a thread called Askren's Crimson Throne, but I also have my player-written notes on all 60+ of our sessions so far. Right now my players are in a "fake" Arkona Labyrinth where they're going to "rescue" Vencarlo, who is actually Vimanda in disguise, specifically because I want to draw out the reveal of their true nature for a while longer.
If you read what I did, it involved playing the long game; Setting up Devargo as one piece of a larger puzzle. Arkonas wanted to use drugs to bring the city to it's knees (not knowing the Queen has a similar plan, albeit with plague instead), and Glorio played the hidden hand, the shadowy background figure watching the pieces move. He directed the Cow Hammer Boys to rob shops for industrial quantities of raw materials, but when the players killed them and took Verik, nothing tied them directly to the shadow giving them orders. He kept Gaedren sheltered, so he could invent the special drug in the background and then ship the formula before the players could arrive. He funded Devargo, giving him instructions on tasks to set his underlings to (tasks Devargo would pass on to the players) which included securing one of the docks in Midlands for their private use to ship drugs into the city directly, retrieving an amulet Glorio lost years ago when he robbed the Acadamae in secret, and delivering the drug shipments past the guards. All these things, on their own, seem like just crime. It's only when you put them together that the players see a hidden hand moving everything according to a plan. And then, when they discover it (after they've killed Devargo), Glorio can fade into the shadows and wait for Book 3 without the players really ever learning he was involved at all. Though, I had him send a taunting letter (his name not on it, obviously).
I agree with your point that it's pretty easy for players to make that connection early. in fact my players already figured out the vector for the plague. Our session went basically: Spoiler:
First the players cured Brienne with a scroll that was a combination of Remove Disease & Diagnose Disease spells, which basically gave them all the basic information about the actual Blood Veil (it's symptoms, it's method of spreading, etc.) but not actually a name or anything for it, since the disease is pretty much custom-made and brand new. The next day, when the players met with Vencarlo to talk about Trinia, somehow the rumor of a ship being sunk in the river came up. They didn't put 2 and 2 together right away, but the players did choose to visit North Point and ask around about the sinking, where I used the rumors straight out of the book. One of the players, a Cleric of Gozreh with ranks in Prof. (Sailor) identified the quarantine signal in the rumors, and they basically instantly realized that the box of coins Brienne picked up could have come off a quarantine ship, and thus been one cause of the disease, when the players rushed to the Bank to tell them, and found the growing crowd of people seeking healing at the gates. Now, at this point, the players know there's a plague, but they also know that honestly, the ship itself doesn't matter much. Not now, at least. The disease is here, and focusing on the sunken ship seems like a waste of time. They also know that the Churches are scrambling to put together a plan of action. Now, theoretically, the players could do as you suggest, and rush right to church and have them "wash" the coins, but this is why I make sure to make a point of having all of the events (the sinking of the Direption, Brienne finding the coins, and the second batch going into circulation) happen always a few days prior to the players being able to solve them with quick action. Brienne is at least 3 days into her sickness when the players arrive, which means it's been at least 4 days since she found the coins (one day incubation period, per the disease stats), which means at least 5 days since the ship sank (though in reality, could be longer). If it's been 5 days since the ship went down and the coins hit the Bank, that means by now it's far too late for any sort of action by the players or the clerics to stop the spread. Because by now, enough people have been hit that infection isn't just transferred by coins, but by contact. That one day incubation is enough to make it spread way too fast to control. Now here's my read of this: I don't really think the fact that the Direption was meant to be a distraction is all that important. What's important is time scales. If you feel like every event is moving too fast, and like players can put details together too quickly, that's a place where you need to insert something to stretch out the time. A simple side-quest or something to keep players busy for a day or two. Buy yourself the time to make events feel natural. Quote: The Wreck of the Direption: First off - this should be run after the manor. The manor gives motivation, the wreck gives direction. Best not to tell the PCs where to go then expect them not to go there. Agreed, which is why I put it after the Manor in my last outline post. The Direption is, for all intents and purposes, the smoking gun of the book. It's the major link directly to Dr. Davalus and the cult of Urgathoa. The only way to keep players from going there, is to downplay it's importance, and make them focus on other things, so that they forget it's there until you can bring it back into frame. Quote: Also, unless your group cannot put the clues together on their own, I recommend against having the nebbish acolyte wearing the blatantly incriminating evidence. It's just... a bit too obvious, and too great a bungle on the part of the bad guys. I think just straight having a dude with an Urgathoa symbol is a little on-the-nose, especially as there's a set of ledgers in the boat that straight say "R. Davalus" on them, which is proof enough for the players to seek out the Physicians at the Hospice. The problem, at least in my head, is that I'm not a fan of details that just pop out of nowhere. And I feel like the players finding R. Davalus' name on the plague-ship, and then charging into the Physician's place and finding out it's a cult of Urgathoa might be a little too "Wait, what?" of a moment. So I feel like there should be some sort of clue that indicates that the Physicians are not only evil, but also the exact opposite of what they claim to be, but BEFORE the players take the elevator down and find themselves in the middle of a temple to the god of disease. Still, good points, I appreciate you sharing them.
I haven't updated this in a while, but with the renewed interest in CoCT due to the announcement of the hardcover, I figure I'll drop some more thoughts I've been having; I pretty much settled on weaving the Vampire plotline into my game as a sort of side-plot that runs alongside the original Plague plot. I actually made a really complex flowchart of all the ideas I had for Seven Days, and it's...very convoluted, but it touches everything I want to include. Well, most everything. So my current progression goes along the lines of Intro
So now, things start getting tangled. I'll use a - to indicate things associated with the Plague plotline and -- to indicate things associated with the Vampire plot. Sickness
Defeating the Plague
-------------------------------------------------------- So, now that that's all out of the way, let's get some citations cleared up; * ) First, I stole a little bit of content from some modules here and there, The Lash of Malloc mostly, which is a story about a desert tavern who uses goblins to rob it's wealthy merchant patrons, and take young women as slaves. I removed the goblins, made it a dockside place, but kept the rest the same. When the players asked to buy slaves, the owner sent them to visit an abandoned manor (stolen from Hasken's Manor module), which was a trap where they were intended to die to Mange, a feral Skinwalker and recent escapee (who's escape they came across earlier in Book 1). **) As I've mentioned, I plan on replacing the entire Cinderlands chapter with one that takes place inside the Acadamae. So, sending Trinia there is basically the exact same foreshadowing that normally happens when Vencarlo encourages sending her to Harse. ***) This part, with the missing friend that leads into a cult of vampires, is actually a stripped-down, repurposed version of the Death/Terror/Madness in Freeport trilogy. A lot of the details remain, such as a cult and a noble building a lighthouse, but I've cut a lot of the fat, since obviously I'm not running three modules worth of content, and replaced the cult with a coven/cult of Vampires. The major difference is that the leader is a new noble who arrived in Korvosa from Ustalav the same time as Arkminos, and decided to spend his time acquiring power here. So the lighthouse is designed to be his "big threat" to the city, a way for his vampires to have complete access to Korvosa via a central sewer connection. **** ) I wanted to flesh out the Vampire stuff later, and foreshadow a cult, so I stole a bunch of stuff from the PFS S04-08 "The Cultist's Kiss" module. Basically, an old Pathfinder living in Palin's Cove outside Korvosa caught wind of a young Pathfinder girl arriving in town, asking questions, and then vanishing. He took the task of finding her, and it led him to Korvosa where he enlisted the party to help him visit Belodia Asylum, where they spoke with Tomasz Kosta, a patient/prisoner there who's stay was being funded by an unknown source. The crazy man is actually a dhampir, his parents being vampires recently arrived from Ustalav, and his mother has been visiting him via mist form at night, telling him he'll join them soon. The Pathfinder man went off to find a Standing Stone that Tomasz mentioned, and would return when he found it.
It absolutely did. I've been...incredibly busy, to say the least. I had a second campaign that's being livestreamed start up, and promoting it, finding guests for my weekly DM show, and writing plot for both games has killed my free time. So, let's type up another session! I'm going to pair the next two sessions into one, because they were functionally the same, just a long series of fights spanning the two. Session 18 & 19
During their shopping excursion, the group was pulled aside by Grau Soldado, their old friend who they had helped get sober and back into the City Guard during the riots. He was doing better, and took the opportunity to liason with the party and make sure they were on the road to accomplishing their task, as they had been out of contact for a while. They used their discussion with him as an opportunity to review their goals and focus, making the decision that they didn't care about using subterfuge to work their way into Devargo's good graces, he had one of their friends prisoner, likely being tortured, and they needed to get him out, and stop Devargo if possible. So with the group setting off towards Eel's End, they ready themselves for a fight, and a possible ambush. When the group arrived at Eel's End, it was less crowded, owing to the early afternoon hour, and the party made a straight line for Devargo's ship. After exchanging a few lines of banter with with two thugs standing guard at the doors, and being informed that they wouldn't be let in to see the King of Spiders, Harrald decided not to play coy anymore and punched one thug in the face, immediately causing the other to cry out in alert to the other off-duty guards stationed around the boat. The fight on the deck of the Eel's End was rough, with some guards dying, some being injured and fleeing, and the party barging through the big, spider-painted doors into Devargo's chamber with one badly-injured thug in tow, who they "asked nicely" about where to find Devargo. After searching the throne room, and almost dropping Harrald and Aiden down a trap door via pressing the unknown trigger switch on Devargo's throne, the group busts down the locked door leading down below decks. Itching for a fight, Harrald charges straight through the first door he sees, completely unprepared for coming face to face with Devargo himself in a small room, where the two square off, though it is a fight none in the group are particularly prepared for, as Devargo is apparently a much more skilled fighter than they expected him to be, commanding a variety of stances and maneuvers in combat that led to Harrald's being knocked unconscious. Shinji stepped in and backed Devargo into a corner next to his fireplace, where he was able to knock the crime lord unconscious and subdue him, though not without sustaining painful injuries himself. Aiden and Balthur decided not to venture into the cramped space, instead taking on the rest of the crew of thugs that were guarding their friend Swarthy. Eventually taking out all the thugs, the party took a minute to catch their breath as they were left seemingly at peace for a few seconds, with Devargo unconscious and the boat in their control. If you're wondering where Finn was...he stayed on the deck above with the prisoner. However, that peace was not to last, as Harrald was brought back to consciousness, and when Shinji went off to investigate the rest of the boat, the barbarian took out his rage on Devargo's body, beheading it angrily. The party secured Swarthy from his prison, and though he was beaten up badly, and had sustained extensive injuries, he insisted that he never told them anything about where the drugs came from, that he never gave up the group. Insisting that they would discuss the situation once they're safe, the party made their back up to the upper deck with Swarthy in to, prepared to leave Eel's End. What they were not aware of is the face that one of them had dropped a torch down into the dark hole that was the trapdoor in the Throne Room Finn had stayed in, and though he had used Create Water to douse the torch once it fell, the smell of burning was filling the boat. As the party made their retreat, Harrald emerged into the Throne Room first, catching a full view of a long, thin arm ending in a spindly three-claw'd hand reach up out of the trap-door hole and grasp Finn by the leg, before yanking him off his feet and down into the hole. ---------------- As soon as Harrald saw Finn be pulled down below, he shouted for his party and dove right into the dark hole after him, his fall actually slamming into whatever creature had grabbed Finn and sending them both crashing through layers of webs into the ground. Shinji, Aiden, and Balthur followed the smell of burning and smoke to the locked door in Devargo's antechamber below deck, and made their way into the Spider Lair on the ground, though their passage was slow and difficult, as they battled against the giant Ettercap, while Harrald attempted to rip through the webs and beat down the Ogre Spider on the other side of the room. Finn, unfortunately, spent a large portion of the fight trapped in Webs, but eventually cut himself free and managed to keep the party alive with heals. Chittersnap fought aggressively, and his small spiders kept the party on their toes, but eventually they saw the spiders, large and small, defeated. Balthur took one of Chittersnap's mandibles as a trophy, and the group gathered themselves to breathe and search the ship before making their departure. Touring Devargo's personal chambers, the party discovered his chest of valuables, most of which were small art objects and cash, along with one interesting jasper-studded amulet. Aiden attempted to Object Read the amulet, and saw a vision of a brutal assault where a young boy was struck down by an unseen assailant. As the party made their way out of Eel's End, licking their wounds and counting their spoils, they set their sights on Citadel Volsheynek to report to Marshal Kroft that the thorn in her side that was Devargo is no more. Discussion: There's not a lot to discuss here. I didn't really change anything about Eel's End, other than the fact that I rebuilt Devargo as a Path of War class, the Stalker (mixed with some Rogue for poison use). You'll see me going back to this a few times, because it's really a great way to turn a single enemy into a powerhouse fighting machine that strikes fear into players (unless they're using PoW too, which mine aren't).
APs are way, way too short. My Rise of the Runelords game? 42 sessions, and we weren't even halfway through Book 2. My Crimson Throne game? 22 sessions and we're not done with Book 1 yet. If anything, the adventures are far, far too stifled by the fact that the people writing them are shackled not only to a print-length, but also an experience track, that keeps them from being able to tell a well-paced story with fleshed out characters and motivations, since there's only so much room in the book and they need to make sure you have enough encounters to level up properly. How many times have AP books thrown in ridiculous, nonsensical fights just because? How many times has a villain just shown up out of nowhere with no screentime to set up why the PCs should hate them? Way too often. If you can't run a full campaign, that's not the AP's fault. Run a module. If it takes you a year to go through a campaign and you STILL feel like you're not playing fast enough, I think you may have a problem, and it isn't the book's fault. As a DM, you NEED to be reading the full adventure, you NEED to know them front and back, and understand the moving of the characters and plots within them. I'd ask for a show of hands for how many people tried to run Rise of the Runelords, and when they started reading book 2 went "Holy s##!, I roleplayed Aldern SO wrong", but I know it would be almost everyone. But as a DM, that's your job. Read the content, know the content, and if you feel it needs to be pruned, then prune it BEFORE YOU PLAY. Not during.
So just to get some more discussion going here: I want to expand the Vampire plot line through the book, which is to say I want to create one in general, because it doesn't exist. Initial thoughts suggest that perhaps the vampires in Korvosa: A.) Operate under some central figure that maintains a position of authority? B.) Have some kind of ongoing war with the Wererat population in the sewers? Or maybe instead of getting super complex with it, we just take the Racker's Alley vampires, a total of 5 Vampire Spawn, and use them to lead down a rabbit hole that exposes the little, unexplored story of Ramoska Arkminos and what led him to Korvosa so that he's not just "nameless scary Nosferatu" they meet in a dungeon, but rather a fleshed-out NPC. According to the entry for Racker's Alley, Arkminos is an underling of Conte Senir Tiriac over in Ustalav, who was requested by the Red Mantis. The Conte sent Arkminos over as a way of extending his reach into Varisia, and the Vampire Spawn in the alley are just slaves the Conte sent to watch Arkminos. This is all there currently is to the thread. So if we extrapolate, we see Arkminos as someone who really doesn't care much for the Conte's interests at all. It might be interesting to write up some new, not-so-feral vampires that the Conte sent over along with Arkminos to establish an official presence in Korvosa, and they have been left to spread their roots secretly. To make it interesting, the initial fight at Racker's Alley could lead to locations where the players find murdered/consumed Sable Company Marines, or even Grey Maidens, delving into the warrens of the city to root out the real vampire threat. Of course, when they kill who they can, they get to learn about the Conte trying to establish a presence, and it gives room to drop clues about Arkminos so the players know there is still a powerful and ancient vampire somewhere in the city who they know by name. Just some 5AM ideas.
Thanks for the reply. I have a thread where I (attempt to) ennumerate my running of my campaign, where you can see my major changes to Edge of Anarchy, where I did some fairly huge overhauls. Things like the hunt for Gaedren at the beginning of the book taking about 5 or 6 sessions of following leads and interrogating criminals, going from St. Casperian's flophouse to the Fishery to the docks to finally cornering Gaedren in an abandoned warehouse (the one that will be used as the Hospice in book 2), followed by a more lengthy chasing down of the Cow Hammer boys and Verik, followed by the players working undercover for Devargo for a while, which included both the complete versions of The Veteran's Vault PFS module and the short Daggers At Midnight 3.5 module. All with the thread of the Arkonas using Gaedren, Verik, and Devargo in an elaborate plot to create a debilitating version of Shiver to weaken the population for their incursion and attempt at the throne. All of this ran fantastically smoothly, but I mention it so you understand my enjoyment of slower-paced campaigns with quite a lot of padding. So this is my general concept with re-writing Seven Days, it needs a LOT more padding. Quote: Inserting an entire module would, in my opinion, unnecessarily spread out this part. Part of the point of the plague and its horror is that it does *not* slowly take hold but instead befalls the city like a crashing wave. Even at it's absolute fastest, a disease cannot possibly spread across an entire city in a day. It just can't happen. Especially a disease which, as per the title of the module, requires seven days to have lethal results in the average person. So no matter how you look at it, there needs to be time spent around the town so the actual atmosphere has an opportunity to develop, so players can actually see things slowly descending into plague levels, while they have to watch helplessly. If you turn around and say "Ok now everything is bad", it doesn't feel like a real event. I am absolutely against timeskips and fastforwards because I think they murder any sense of urgency or pacing, so just saying "A week goes by and you watch the city get worse and worse" is not my way. That week needs to pass, but the players need to be occupied by something during that time, and that's time I can use to do something that advances a plot or setting detail I want to get across. Right now I'm doing exactly that: My players could just be herded right into the Dead Warrens after being told "Shoanti are being attacked in the street" and that they need to solve tensions between the Shoanti and Korvosa, but instead I'm taking the time wrapping up another plotline while I gradually spell out the violence against Shoanti and other minorities around them, so that when they are actually called in to investigate a high-profile Shoanti murder, it has context within the city. Also, on the topic of horror, I disagree. This module is overwhelmingly directed towards horror elements, in much the same way The Skinsaw Murders was. The major problem is, it breaks them up too far apart with off-theme events that it doesn't keep a consistent tone. I don't need the whole campaign to feel like a horror movie all the time, I just want to keep a constant tension in the air where everything that happens has that slight tinge of the psychotic or the unnatural or the creepy factor that keeps them on edge, so that the big horror moments hit much harder. Quote: If you decide to let one or more of your PCs hear the ballista blast in the night, be prepared for the group to try and find the wreck. I have a custom of taking about a week worth of "off time" in between books that I usually fill with something else, usually something a bit unusual or that furthers the backstory of one or more characters. I intend to have the players engaged in this while the actual sinking of the Direption happens, so they're not really compelled to be involved in that, but can still hear about it after the fact. Quote: You are right, these quests seem very loosely connected and the way the PCs are tasked with them seems very heavy-handed. This definitely needs some personalization Like I mentioned, all the "set pieces" in book 1 were shot through with the over-arching plot thread that was the Arkonas connecting each piece. The actual connection didn't make sense until they put all the pieces together at the end, but the idea was always there. That's what I'd like to accomplish for most of Seven Days, though obviously everything can't be caused by the Urgathoa cult, so some things will be false leads and unrelated events. But I want to make sure there's a structure to all of it that will lead clever viewers to the conclusion if they follow all the clues.
So with Seven Days to the Grave fast approaching and the need to get all my prep-work started so that I can have things hopefully flowing well into the story, I think it's time to kick off the discussion of how to go about fixing what needs fixing in Book 2, and hopefully creating a much more solid experience for the players. Now, my working premise is that on the whole, Seven Days isn't actually that bad. Certainly not as badly paced and fumbled as the introduction to Edge of Anarchy was, meaning that it may not actually need any major overhauls to the story. The problem I have is that as it's written, Seven Days doesn't have a whole lot of what I really love, which is horror atmosphere. I mean, it certainly has some, and they're pretty great. But the problem is that they don't carry through to the rest of the book. So my working goal is, hopefully, to alter every section so that the feeling of uneasiness and "horror" persists throughout the entire chapter, eventually building at a climax with the Temple fight. So let's dive right in: Part One: Infection
Part Two: Outbreak
Ideas:
-One early idea that hits me is the old Gamemastery module "Gallery of Evil" to fill this early time, heavily re-written for the purposes here. The concept I am playing with is one of setting up a villain directly opposite to Blackjack for the course of this chapter, a sort of Joker to Blackjack's Batman, in the form of Victor Saint-Demain (the humiliated Inquisitor who went insane after failing to recover the Queen's Brooch). However, due to the horror nature of the story, I am thinking of making him a vicious murderer. More details to be worked out, but I think giving him a "signature" murder style, something gruesome and dramatic would fit his twisted need to reclaim his old fame... Part Three: Pestilence
I want to find a unifying storyline that leads continuously from the initial outbreak of the disease right through to the Urgathoa temple at the end, ideally one that the players don't realize they're tangled in until the end. This is where I'll do a lot of tinkering. Ideas:
-I know somewhere along the line I want to hint at Urgathoa's presence in the city. I want to do this by basically running a modified version of Carrion Hill, a horror-themed module where an invisible monster tears through buildings and leaves crushed and mangled bodies in it's wake. It's got lunatic asylums, murder, and plenty of horror. I plan on re-writing this so that the monster featured is one of the Leukodaemons, the pestilence demons the Urgathoa cult summoned and contained to create the disease, having escaped containment and gone on a rampage through a wealthy part of the city. -One of my players has a sick mother resting in a small church of Sarenrae, with a younger brother lost somewhere in the city. I am still
-I want to extend the Vampire storyline into something much longer and farther reaching. I'll have to comb through my materials for a module that includes vampires as a plot element to see if anything good comes to mind, but I have an idea for a plot thread about Vampire covens mind-slaving citizens to keep them safe from the disease to secure an un-infected food source. That's all for now, this is just a spitballing post. I'd really love to stimulate some discussion on this topic and hopefully come up with some great ideas to flesh out Book 2.
This actually presents a great opportunity to use what I'm gonna be doing with Devargo, which is pair him up with the Arkona family. Basically, things work like this: Gaedren has been buying Shiver in bulk for the last few months, secretly working on a special, more addictive version of the drug to make him lots of money. The players killed him, but only after he'd finished a version of the recipe. The Arkona family, in their plotting, desires to overthrow the government, and so they see the drugs circulating Old Korvosa as a tool to help this by making the populace compliant (ironically, a plan Ileosa will mirror in book 2), so they acquire the recipe in secret. In order to get the plan moving, they strike a deal with Devargo, the Spider King as he's known, who in my game is one of the larger Shiver producers in the city. It can be a deal for whatever you want, but the Arkonas have money and influence, and seeming immunity to the law or even control over it, and Devargo has the drug-distributing infrastructure. So the Arkonas, through Vimanda, incited a few guardsmen to rebel and act as puppets, patsies the Arkonas used to steal the ingredients needed to manufacture the drug during the riots (You can still use Verik and the All the World's Meat as normal, just have the players get there by investigating the heists), which would put the Arkonas in position to execute their plan. Now, in your case, all this stuff is in the past, and Devargo is already dealt with(ish), but the concept is the same. Have him join with the Arkonas, who should already be keeping tabs on the party, and use their combined resources to have him enact revenge on them. He could convince the Arkonas to exert some influence to frame the PCs for a major crime. See the players try and fight their way out of an arrest and indictment for something they didn't do, especially when the justice system has been rigged by money.
So I was going to post a long write-up of my notes and the bits of writing I did to explain the flow of the events happening next, but I feel it's better to just do the session recap instead. Session 6
While they were off doing that, the other two, Shinji and Balthur made their rest at the local tavern where Shinji has worked as a bouncer for a few years, the Deserted Bagpipe. Not a lot happened here, other than the dwarven owner, Therdrous Bonebraid giving Balthur a bit of a test in the form of a mug of Wyrm's Breath Bitter, a green and fizzy, bitter ale that causes nausea and noxious belching that can sicken and deafen people exposed to it. Luckily, Balthur has a cast iron stomach, and was able to survive the ale, though he decided against a second mug. Eventually, they were rejoined by Harrald and Finn and the group exchanged the local information they had received and planned their next move. Their next move, it turns out, was to try and unload some of their newly acquired treasure, and hopefully make nice with the shopkeepers who will inevitably be supplying them in the future. So naturally they made their way the next morning to the Gold Market. The flea market itself held little of interest for the party, themselves not much interested in the wide array of foods for sale. But behind the temporary stalls and shops of the market square, the Gold Market is ringed by a row of permanent structures, some of which fit the bill exactly. The first place they decided to visit was Gemshare Jewelers, a high-end jewelry shop that specializes in buying and selling gemstones. After haggling away a few pieces of treasure (the crown, the scrimshaw, the Succubi figurine), Shinji brought out the Royal Brooch, which Darin Jelenko the shopkeeper recognized very quickly. He informed Shinji that the brooch was, in fact, the one stolen from the Queen's jeweler, and he had no interest in purchasing stolen goods, much less risking his shop and reputation over a 1200 gold bounty. The bounty of course got Shinji's attention, and he pried about it, learning that the brooch was reported stolen about two months ago when the jeweler tasked with repairing it was robbed. By itself, not a noteworthy story, but the public took great interest in the drama of this tale because after a month of a public reward posted and no return of the brooch, an (in)famous Investigator announced he would succeed in the task. Well known for his huge ego and braggadocio, as well as his ability to apparently solve any unsolvable case he applies himself to, this turned out to be the one that got the best of him, and he failed in the task. Apparently the shame was too much for him, and he fled the public eye shortly. As Shinji left the shop, money for the other goods in hand, he nervously informed the party that they were in deeper danger than they knew, as they had now become embroiled in royal matters. The party did visit a few other shops, Slicing Dicers, a weapon store, Hedge Wizardry, a magic shop where Harrald ignored the warning of the owner and stepped on a pile of invisible walking sticks, but nothing came of it other than unloading some more minor items. The rest of the session consisted of Shinji and the others asking various questions around the market, gathering information about what was going on in the city. Harrald did much the same, though his information came from an old and unfortunate friend, a Watch Captain in the guard who took pity on him due to a friendship with Harrald's father in the past. Both sides pretty much managed to put together that as the news of the King's failing health raced across the city, many people were finding the implications of that to be something they were not happy with, and many were doing more than just loudly protesting in taverns, workers were taking to the streets and even visiting Domina Square to demand answers. No one quite knows what's going to happen, but Sable Company marines are already taking to the sky in case someone inevitably does something stupid. And with that information acquired and shared, the group ended the night, deciding that trying to get to the castle to claim a bounty on jewelery is not the safest idea right now. The headed off for the night, unsure of what will happen next. Discussion Time:
So I was going to post my notes for this session before I ran it, but work has been kicking my ass and I didn't get a chance to write up everything I wanted to write. Nonetheless, the session did stay within the bounds of my notes, which means I'm keeping the group paced as I'd like them. Basically, this session was necessary to set the atmosphere in Korvosa, to give everything that tinge of edginess. Of course, my players are one of those rare groups who, given the chance, will spend an entire session talking to shopkeepers, so once they start that I know I can keep them stationary for the time I need. There was a bit of narrative you might not recognize, and that was me introducing Victor Saint-Demain, the antagonist from the Dungeon Magazine adventure "Chimes at Midnight" set in Eberron. Obviously I won't be using much or any of that actual adventure, but as I was flipping through issues looking for interesting things, I couldn't resist the braggert-investigator-turned-crazed-villain, and I really wanted to do something with him later. So, I threw him into the Brooch storyline simply to up the stakes a bit and set him up for my players. As it stands, he'll return at some point in the story, a criminal mastermind using his incredible skills to seek vengeance on those who wronged him. Of course, the players won't know this until they stop his plans! A shame too, because Shinji's player seemed very keen on hunting him down and having HIM be the one to return the brooch, to restore his honor and, if things go wrong, be the one taking the fall and not the party. Of course, it all comes crashing down next week when the King officially dies and riots begin. I actually wrote an interesting little bit where the players are going to encounter Grau early on in the riots, and he's going to give them some cryptic foreshadowing clues about how he was offered work by Verik, and though he turned it down, it was part of the reason he ended up in the booze. That's all I've got for now, I'm still more than happy to workshop riot events, future happenings, or plot connections, as I'll need to get to all of it eventually.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you guys are enjoying the read as much as I'm enjoying running it.
I had actually considered exactly that while at work today, so I guess it must be a good idea, though my concern is turning Devargo into some huge criminal player that seems be the center of a whole lot. But I guess promoting him a bit up the criminal totem pole solves a few problems with the narrative. The way I see it, there's three basic issues to work out with this course of events. First, is to determine what exactly his sway over Verik is, what he's offered the rogue Guards to keep them in line, and of course what it is that they're doing for him that would put them on the radar. The thing is, there's a weird set-up where the major authorities (Ileosa and Kroft)send the party to stop the rogue Guards, but at the time don't make any indication that they know about or care about Devargo at that moment. So the question is, is the instigation here "Devargo is using deserting Guardsmen to do bad stuff", or is it "Deserting Guardsmen are doing bad stuff, investigate and find out who's behind it"? Personally, I think the latter is the more obvious choice, for the general investigation and all that good stuff. So what exactly are the Rogue Guards doing? Like I said, I'd like to stay away from the drugs thing, at least for now, because I have plans for Shiver and all that in other places. I think I like the idea of a heist, the Guards using their uniforms and the fact that security is thin all over the city to steal from wealthy traders and stuff. I think this might work because it sort of fuels a little web of connections that is forming in my head; We've got the leader of the Guards, Vancaskerkin, being manipulated by the Arkona girl, and if we stack the totem-pole in the most logical way, it's most likely that Devargo too is being manipulated by more powerful Arkonas, who allow him to operate in Old Korvosa and probably help him out in exchange for...something, I haven't decided yet. So since the Arkonas are at the top, they would have Devargo use his influence over the Rogue Guards to get them to knock over very specific locations, probably locations very particular to business rivals the Arkonas want to exploit the chaos to take out of the picture, because they're all about the business and acquiring commercial power. I figure if nothing else, this is setting the pieces up long-term for the Arkonas to hit Korvosa as a major force, taking over lots of stuff, but I haven't written that segment yet, nor know where I'd put it. This is actually detailed in the part about Verik, with the Arkonas desiring to topple the monarchy and install their own puppet government, so I'd love to do more with that. Ok, so Rogue Guards running heists on businesses and trade warehouses, snatching valuable goods, works of art, and other things. How do we break that down into a way the players can engage with it? I think the most likely would be "Crime Scene > Investigate > Catch In The Act > Raid Home Base" in a basic structure that has the players running behind the group for a bit before finally catching up to them. And it allows me to use a smaller group of Guards, enough to have a chunk of them be captured/killed in combat before the players hit World's Meat to encounter Verik, and I don't really have to do anything special to that scene population-wise. So the other thing to figure out is, what is Devargo's influence over them? What did he offer them as a method of keeping them in line? The book says that Vimanda contacted him and convinced him to take some followers, leave the Guard, and do the Meat thing. But since we're ratcheting up the stakes and moving them on to real, hardcore crime rather than just gouging prices on meat, they will probably need more hefty urging. I dunno, this is one issue I feel kind of stuck on. Writing it out, I think I can place most of the major details, but I wouldn't mind hearing about anything I may have missed while spitballing all of this.
That's pretty cool to hear, I always appreciate people liking my methods enough to steal them, as I've certainly acquired most of them via other DMs, so the more you can pick details up from all over the place and roll them together into a better whole, the more you can pass on to future DMs. As for starting a new game, I heartily recommend getting every player a PDF copy of the Guide to Korvosa and having them read it. We know how heavily this game depends on investment in the setting, and having them talking the slang and knowing which parts of which districts mean what is the best thing you can have coming into CoCT. The more they buy Korvosa as not just a campaign setting, but a home for their PCs, the more they want to save it. On another note, I've not actually had time to do much writing for the next sections of the book, so I'm sitting here puzzling about how I want to run All The World's Meat and what I want to do here, so I'm hoping to solicit some ideas. The setup as-written is pretty straightforwards, Ileosa refers the players to Kroft, who enlists them while dealing with the riots, and sends them after Vancaskerkin who is instilling rebellion among some guards. Party goes in, fights three guys, comes out. What I'm thinking off the bat is that I want to do more here, specifically with the rebellious guards. It's a problem that is never really addressed in the book and is assumed to be over once Verik is in custody. But I think that creeping tendrils of sedition and the threat of a guard coup in the middle of riots incited by lack of faith in the Queen is a tense and interesting set-piece to play with. One of my players already has a contact in the guard, who I was really just going to use to do the Grau Soldado thing, but if I tee up Grau and the PC's contact, I may be able to leverage them into a resource to help the players hunt down a troupe of more than 3 rogue guardsmen. The only problem is I'm drawing a blank as to how I want to do it. Obviously Verik is at the head of things, but I'm not sure how to lead the players to him, while rounding up rebelling guards along the way. Expand on the "meat" business? That seems a bit harsh. I don't know, I need ideas here.
And so we return for the final session of the "Gaedren Saga", with the players squaring off against the man they've been hunting for these past weeks, and the final realizations of bigger things that they've become a part a part of leaving them unsure what happens next. Session 5
Outside of that, they had finally honed in on Gaedren, and this demanded their attention at present. Following their standard tactic of scouting out their target location and infiltrating at night, they proceeded to spend the rest of the day trying to locate the warehouse they had only seen from a distance. Eventually they found the location and staked it out for the rest of the evening. I'll save the details of this part, they are largely unimportant and just a lot of local flavor and describing the geography of the location. Once the sun had set and they were convinced that no one had gone in or out, the party maneuvered their way around the back of the warehouse, where they found three large wooden loading-bay doors. Some straining and strength checks later, they had lifted one of the doors on it's metal tracks and found their way inside. After exploring what appeared to be a long-disused warehouse full of forgotten trade goods and mountains of crates was quickly disrupted as Gaedren began taunting the party from the shadows. With wheezing laughter and shouts of "Whoever sent you, you're already too late!" and other cryptic messages, Lamm led the party into the darkness where he taunted that he was not alone. This was immediately followed by Harald the Urban Barbarian being caught off-guard by a loud crashing sound as Gaedren's new "pet", a Young Basilisk (liberated from one of the Arkona's exotic creature cages) barreled into him and knocked him backwards, proceeding to tear into Harald with it's jaws. The group had sort of split up in this warehouse before that point, so the crashing sound that got all their attention forced many PCs to run around in near-total darkenss to help. Sensing his advantage, Gaedren even used the opportunity to slip from the darkenss and land a sneak attack on Harrald, taunting him a bit before slipping back into the shadows. The fight raged for a bit, with Shinji the Ronin using his sword to inflict some wounds on the Basilisk and keep it at bay while Harrald fell to Gaedren's taunt and chased him into the darkness, where the two dueled. Eventually, Balthur the Fighter managed to join Harrald, and together helped Harrald grapple and eventually pin Gaedren to the ground, but not before taking a knife to the leg (critically). After that, Balthur turned his attention to the other two and the monster. It was at this stage of the fight, with Shinji and Finn attempting to hold off the Basilisk that it glared with it's burning vision and turned Shinji to stone, while giving way to it's wounds and scrambling back up the mountain of crates it came from. Balthur gave chase. While that was going on, Harrald succumbed to the overpowering rage at Gaedren, and while pinning him, forced him to ingest a total of three full vials of Shiver taken from Devargo's shipment. Gaedren began convulsing and went unconscious. Eventually, Balthur cornered the injured beast and with Harrald's help, they slew it. The party then spent the next while puzzling over what happened to Shinji, and whether he was dead or what they could do for him, none of them having any ideas or success in figuring out what to do. Unfortunately for Finn, who had encouraged the group to try and take Gaedren alive so he could question the crimelord about his lost brother, Gaedren had succumbed to the Shiver and was dead. Balthur put his hand on Shinji's stone shoulder to say goodbye to him, and it was only through dumb luck that most of his body and clothing had been covered in the blood of the Baslisk he just slew, as Basilisk blood is the only cure for a petrified victim. Seeing the effect of the blood on Stone Shinji, they proceeded to use the monster's corpse to paint the Ronin in blood hastily to revive him, and Shinji was returned to life, albeit very confused. After taking stock of their surroundings, the party decided to investigate the rest of the warehouse, well aware that part of it where they fought had been turned into a makeshift bedroom by Gaedren. The contents of the room were the same ones written for the Fishery, meaning that they found his trunk of "treasures", including the damaged Royal Brooch, and more importantly, they found a pile of junk among which sat the fly-covered hatbox containing the dessicated head of their former benefactor, Zellara. Before they had a chance to finish puzzling over the sight, they were greeted by the apparition of Zellara, this time taking no precautions to hide her magical nature, and was more than happy to admit to being dead, as well as apologizing for her deceit, necessary though it was. She informed the PCs that while it was true that she had brought them together to bring down Gaedren, he was only the catalyst, for it was the Fates that guide the Harrow that had truly chosen them, and she believed that they were brought to answer the ill omens that she has seen in her readings. While she could not say what this impending Eclipse was, the Harrow seemed to indicate that it is a great evil, The Tyrant, and that whatever it is it has already been set in motion somehow. The hatbox also contained a small bit of foreshadowing, a little note from Gaedren reading "Here, a gift. Make a pretty one. -Lamm". The room also contained two separate books a small one which seems to be a coded transaction ledger, and a larger one which seems to be some sort of journal, filled with everything from rants and scribblings, names and places, transaction details, and various other things, all kept in disarray as Gaedren tends to do. They have not had time to make sense of any of it yet. And so that's where we ended our session, with the party leaving the Warehouse, Finn insisting on giving what little of Zellara's body they had a water burial, even though she didn't seem to mind not being buried much. Zellara's Harrow deck in hand, and urged on by her promise that as long as they hold on to her deck, she will always be there with them and will do everything she can to make sure they are made whole, the party strode into the city contemplating what was next for them. Discussion:
So like I said, this brings the "Gaedren" chapter to a close, but obviously there's enough hooks in the group tugging them in different directions that they're not necessarily lacking things to do, though most of what they have in mind is what I had hoped, which is time spent identifying their loot and seeking information while trying to not make a stir as to draw Devargo's attention to them.
The important thing to note is that while there have been rumblings about the aging King and the unfit Queen, King Eodred is not dead yet. In fact, he won't actually be "officially" dead until about a day or so down the line, and it's only after that when the atmosphere in the city starts heating up and eventually comes to a boiling point. What I'd really like to do is keep the party occupied with mundane things, forcing them to move around the city and see it turn into the powderkeg of civil unrest, until things eventually come to a head and finally explodes, which will either force the players into hiding or into the midst of things. I've got a "script" for all of this, but I'll be playing a lot of it by ear, using bits as I need them, and letting the group fill in the rest. The next major "chapter" is going be All The World's Meat. I haven't decided how or if I need to change anything here, but I like the setpiece enough to keep it mostly in-tact. It fits the general "underworld" themes we have going on, and obviously I don't want to pass up an opportunity to foreshadow the Arkonas. Also, it may just be my devious side, but I can never resist the chance to put an object like the Raktavarna in the hands of the players. I know it's something they'll just forget about or ignore, and I love having the intelligent object use subterfuge to remain hidden while spying on them. Even if they players never know it's there, the little assurance in my mind that a BBEG somewhere knows exactly what the party is doing at any given minute gives me giggles of joy. Again, if you're reading, thanks for sticking with me. I'm really enjoying the places this campaign is going, and I look forward to testing out some new ideas soon.
So I neglected to make a post for our last sessions, so I'll dump them both here. My players are drawing closer to the end of their story with Gaedren, but things are a bit complicated (as they always are with me), and the plot is always thickening. Before I recap, I should give a big shout-out to Inspectre, who's thread I've been reading and details of which I couldn't help but crib because they were pretty awesome. Session 3
When faced directly, the players realized the child was not a child, but rather a disguised Gnome, Hookshanks, and Finn retaliated by using his domain power to knock Hookshanks backwards through the hole in the floor to the river below. The Gnome caught himself on the ledge, but Shinji immediately followed up with a strike right through his collar that killed the Gnome instantly, sending him tumbling into the water below, and unfortunately taking Shinji's sword with him. One emotional reaction later, Shinji had dove straight in after his favorite sword, sinking to the bottom to attempt to retrieve it. Finn reacted too, diving in after Shinji to save him. Balthur, left a bit confused, could only attempt to grab one of the children's hammocks to help pull them out of the water, but in his distracted state, the Little Lamms all fled the building. Sword in hand4, Shinji was pulled to the surface and the two were helped up, but not before noticing the under-structure of the Fishery, the secret walkway at water level. They decided they needed to get there, and the only way was through the boat. Some time later, Balthur in his extremely heavy armor had broken through the walkway on the side of the building, and decided it was best if he stay behind, while Shinji and Finn carefully went ahead, though it didn't save Shinji from falling through the rotted deck of the boat in his own turn. After swatting away some large spiders, the two investigated as best as they could, eventually finding the clues that led them to discover the secret door. Making their way along the under-pier, they barged into the room under the Fishery where Yargin was hiding. Even though Yargin was across the room with a wand pointed at Shinji, the swashbuckler managed to keep his calm and engage the man without attacking, reasoning with him that all they wanted was Gaedren, and Yargin could walk away and hide, surviving to see another day. The peaceful engagement worked, and Yargin told them all he knew, that Gaedren is in hiding somewhere and sends special crates of shiver to the Fishery to be sold, and to do it he has to maintain a supply of raw shiver from somewhere. He told them that while he doesn't know where Gaedren is, he knows that his shipment is being picked up on the docks the following evening, and all they need to do is take a prisoner, intercept the shipment, or follow it to find out where it's going. With the players holding their next clue, the session ended as they planned on how they were going to proceed. Discussion:
There isn't actually much to go over here. This is where some of the new additions I thought were cool start to show up. The shiver that Gaedren buys comes from Devargo, who you'll see gets foreshadowed in the next session, and he's buying it to cook his own brand of shiver. I didn't go with a special magical domination variety, but as the party hasn't found any of Gaedren's shiver yet, they don't know what he's cooking. It's going to be a more powerful version, ab bit like crack was to cocaine, and they'll find his lab in the Warehouse with him as a clue in to how he's infused this new brand of shiver into the community, which I hope to spin into some sort of side-thing later. Not sure where I'm gonna go with it.
Outside of that, the players didn't really get any loot from the "boss room" of the Fishery, so I'm just moving everything from there to Gaedren's new digs in the Warehouse. Also, I planned on having Gobblegut be in the fight, Yargin taking care of him in place of Gaedren, but as that fight never happened, I got to keep the "bad guy's pet" aspect for Gaeden. I gave him a Young-template Basilisk, a companion he found caged in the abandoned Arkona warehouse. Anyway, more to come in the next session post. Session 4
Anyway, after they did some investigating of the pier, finding out that it doesn't seem to be operational at the moment, which is why the existance of a lower water-level deck area for mooring small rowboats, complete with recently-wet rope was a bit out of place, and led to the PCs concluding that they must be arriving by boat. When nightfall came, the party hid themselves, watching two men wheel a small wagon onto the pier and start unloading crates as Finn spotted a lantern moving in from the river. Rather than waiting for the drop to happen, the players attempted to engage the two men, a failed bluff causing the situation to go bad. One of the men dropped the name of The Spider King to try and scare the players off, but the bait wasn't taken and combat ensued. One death later, the other man attempted to run, but was caught and questioned at swordpoint, also offered the opportunity to live if he gave them Gaedren. This man, working for Devargo, didn't know anything about Gaedren's location, only that the "Old Man" was buying shiver in large quantities and no one's seen him for months. However, he also didn't know Devargo, even by name, only ever refering to him as "The Spider King", as I wanted to save that puzzle piece for later. The person in the boat never made it to the pier, the fight scaring them off, and the party proceeded to split, Balthur and Harald securing the shiver crates and bringing them to Balthur's blacksmith shop, and Shinji and Finn doing their best to follow the boat from the shore. They couldn't follow it completely, but they could see down the river where it appeared to dock at a pier jutting off from a boarded up warehouse... Discussion:
Again, not a ton to go over here. I'm not generally the kind to turn my campaigns into a spiderweb of plot threads where every bit that crops up turns out to be someone or something the players meet later on, it always feel too coincidence-y to me. However, having Devargo foreshadowed without his name being given is an interesting bit, I think, because it seemed to give the players the idea that there are, in fact, more criminal players in Korvosa, and this one pays his taxes too, and that it may be someone they have to square off against later. Devargo will mark the second criminal the players have to choose to work with despite their distaste or outright animosity towards, which I like a lot.
Like I said, the Warehouse Gaedren is in is the Arkona warehouse, which turns into the Hospice in Seven Days. I like it because it shows a bit of evolution in the city, now it's a boarded-up, forgotten storage where a criminal can hide and work uninterrupted, with obvious doors and stairs that the players can't get to, and later it's a place seemingly given new purpose in the midst of a plague. I've worked out the slow-burn style of progression into anarchy that's going to happen when Gaedren is dead, the foreshadowed connection to Rolth, and I'm currently working on how the players will deal with the Splithog Pauper and their deal. Anyway, that's what's been going on the last 2 weeks. Thanks for keeping up if you are, I'm looking forwards to seeing what happens next.
There are no other canon modules or stories that reference the Skinsaw Cult that I know of. The Hidden Cult of Norgorber within Magnimar, dedicated to the worship of Norgorber as that "Reaper of Reputation" is led by Staunton Vhane, the Forever Man, who is given in the Magnimar: City of Monuments book as a level Taldan Human 15 Cleric. Not much else is written about him. Be aware that James Jacobs accidentally used the name Staunton Vhane again in Wrath of the Righteous as a Dwarven NPC, they're not the same person. As for bringing him down to a place where a level 6~ party can kill him? I wouldn't do it. EDIT: I feel I should also point out, the Cult of Norgorber is NOT the Skinsaw Cult. They are two different things.
Thanks for the interest. Gonna move right along with this past Fridays session, where things went about as well as could be expected. Session 2
Kreun made it clear that he had no intention of starting a fight, his house was one where all those broken by society were welcome, as long as they paid proper respect. He could tell right away that the party were not there for drugs or shelter, so they wanted something. He offered the party a bargain for the information they needed, he puts them on a path to Gaedren Lamm, and in exchange, when the group puts Lamm in the dirt, they return to him with the crime lord's ledger full of contacts, business details, and other information. He made no secret of the fact that killing Lamm would create a power vaccuum and he would like to be the one to snatch some of that. Uneasy, but desperate for the lead, the party accepted the deal. Kreun pointed the group towards one of Gaedren's old business fronts, the Fishery he used to sell dock dumpling slop to merchants, used as a front for his other activities. Gaedren has gone into hiding, so he's not likely operating this business directly, but it's still operational, and drug pushers still make pick-ups there, so someone in the building must know more. The party scouted out the Fishery early the next morning, the Cleric investigating around the dock area early while the Fighter knocked on the door later in the day. Together they didn't gather much information, but it was enough that the party decided it was obviously still a front. They waited until nightfall and then assaulted the building, busting in both doors and engaging in combat with a human thug and a half-orc brute. The orc died, but the thug was saved from death by the Cleric as a prisoner. Our session came to a close as the group had made their way into the building and began looking around, putting together the pieces of what kind of business is done in this old warehouse. Specifically, a business using children. Discussion:
Obviously, there's not much to explain here. Yargin took over the Fishery business from Gaedren and now runs it himself, employing the same collection of characters as given int the book. Currently, Hookshanks is hiding among the Little Lamms who are in the large workroom, his presence keeping them from fleeing or saying anything to the party for the time being.
Yargin is below where Gaedren was, as he runs the drug operation from there. People who buy and move drugs from him know to enter via the back dock and the ship, which keeps the drug business away from the legit fish business. I'm keeping the alligator too, because why not. The important part is that Zellara's head is NOT here. It's at the Warehouse with Gaedren. When the players do raid the lower floor, they're going to find a decent sized shipment of Shiver, marked with Devargo's seal. It's not meant to be a direct link for them, but a foreshadowing to another drug-dealing criminal they'll meet shortly after the city falls to chaos. Anyway, that's all for this week.
I did it with Rise of the Runelords, so it stands to reason I'd do it with Curse of the Crimson Throne. That is to say, taken on the task of re-writing the campaign in my style, which means more padding, more content to explore character relationships and choices, and more exploring Korvosa and hopefully developing deep and meaningful connections to the people and places within. Let me start by explaining my experience with CoCT. I've attempted to run this campaign like, 5 times now, all with mixed success. My farthest was level 8~ in book 3, my shortest didn't even make it to session 1. But through all of it, I've always loved CoCT, and I've spent every time polishing my knowledge of the city, and making the way I bring players into the game down to a science. So when my Rise of the Runelords group decided to go on hiatus as one of our original members had to excuse himself to deal with personal stuff, my group decided they were tired of the one-shot modules, and wanted to play something they could really explore characters in, rather than just throwing together a build for whatever level one-shot I can throw together. I, of course took the opportunity to pitch Curse of the Crimson Throne, knowing these guys are fantastic roleplayers, and if they buy into it, we could do great things with this campaign. They bit the hooks, and we went right into it. Character creation went about as well as it could. All human save one Dwarf, all melee save the Cleric, things are looking good, and I'm excited to play. So let's look at our dramatis personae: Harald Frontsman
Spoiler:
Human Urban Invulnerable Rager Barbarian. An orphan born to the streets, blessed with large physique. Grew up taking any job that he could get, though attitude or addiction usually ended them quickly. Pesh addiction caused him to be in debt to Gaedren Lamm, who made him do some thug work, and then abandoned him as a fall guy, sending him to prison for 4 years. His limb saved from removal by an old family friend taking pity, he left prison bitter and angrier than before. He still has a Pesh addiction, and still takes odd jobs as they come, trying to make his way day to day in a city that doesn't much care what happens to him. Finn Dawley
Spoiler:
Human Cleric of Gozreh. Born to a lower-class family, his father was a merchant who traveled to merchant ports far from Korvosa, and eventually he joined the crew as a young man. Educated by a ship's priest in the worship of Gozreh as an apprentice, he spent the next 4 years constantly traveling, learning the art of magic and healing.When he returned to Korvosa, he found his family gone. After much effort, he tracked down his mother, homeless on the streets, but his younger brother was nowhere to be found. Forced to take a job with the Church of Sarenrae to keep his mother in their hospital, he endeavored to find his brother with no success, other than vague rumors that he had been taken by drugs and folded into those under the sway of Gaedren Lamm. He has since been working his job and hoping for the best. Balthur Stoutforge
Spoiler:
Dwarf Tower Shield Fighter. The son of a well-respected, but not particularly wealthy smith operating in a cheap shop near the docks. His father was an honest man, but his location caused him to be the constant victim of local crime gangs shaking him down for various protection payments. Eventually, his father couldn't pay the ever-increasing demands by Gaedren Lamm, and was beaten within inches of his life for his troubles. Balthur was forced to take over work in the shop just to survive in Korvosa, and has been trying to avoid the criminal element as much as possible. Shinji
Spoiler:
Human Ronin Swashbuckler. One of a pair of unfortunate sons born to a female bar wench hopelessly addicted to drugs and in massive debt to local crime lord Gaedren Lamm, his mother gave up both boys in partial payment of her debt. Raised as part of the brigade of Little Lamms, he and his brother did not have an easy childhood. When reaching young adulthood, his brother had developed considerable skill at picking locks, and thus was taken into Gaedren's inner circle while Shinji escaped. Angry and without direction, he took up with a group of sellswords and learned to fight. After becoming convinced that he was too good for that life and deserved more fame, he struck off on his own as a mercenary, bodyguard, or currently a bouncer for a small bar, where he continues to work to keep himself alive in Korvosa. So this sets the stage for our characters. Aside from these, for CoCT I have every player write me up to 3 NPCs, small characters of their creation whom they have a relationship of some sort with somewhere in the city. Not important people, but enough so that the players can have a minor resource and a familiar face in the sea of strangers Korvosa can be. I won't detail these unless they come up. And so our party meets. We didn't have much time to play our first session, but we got enough done to set the proper scene. Session 1
When they meet there, there is some uneasiness, maybe even some hostility, but after someone mentions the name Gaedren Lamm, everyone relaxes a bit. They go inside, look around and talk for a bit before Zellara joins them and tells of her need of their help. Of course, everyone is skeptical for their own reasons, but she suggests that she read the group's fortune before they go. You can find my write-up of my Harrow Reading for the group HERE (ignore the bit at the top, it's old). Needless to say, some of the details in the reading resonated a bit personally and the party decided they needed time to plan. So they left Zellara's and hunkered down at a nearby tavern, talking over what they knew, what resources they had, and where to go next. Knowing that Gaedren cleaned house a few years ago and has gone into hiding, his location unknown to most everyone, the group decides they need to follow the only lead they have, which is drug traffic. Luckily, Harald has a bit of a Pesh problem, and one of his few "friends" is a street-level pusher known as Sid "Swarthy" Swartham, a jumpy little man who is trying to get out of the game. Under a little bit of pressure, he tells Harald that he doesn't know where the product comes from, only where he picks it up, but that his best bet is to check out the old church-turned-flophouse known as St. Caspeiran's, a crash spot for junkies of all types. And so with that lead in hand, the group has a direction.
So that's where my campaign is kicking off. I'm going to use this section after every write-up to detail some of the major changes I have made, and am planning to make to the story as it goes. So, here; Chapter One Changes:
So this is probably where I've done my heaviest modifying so far. My initial impression of CoCT when I first read and played it was that it had a fantastic hook in the Zellara-ghost thing that could grab any player, but it stood at odds with what the setting and the campaign were trying to do. Zellara/Gaedren are a completely self-contained story, despite the Player's Guide selling Gaedren as a miserable, despicable criminal who the party should hate, but he's designed to die in the first, maybe second session. Not to mention, as soon as he dies, the city is thrown into chaos. This means that the players will be engaged in what is essentially one dungeon from the beginning of the game until Gaedren's death, and then Korvosa is instantly changed, but they never actually get to SEE it before it goes to waste. This is my central gripe with how it's structured.
So, we fix it. First, we stretch out the intro segment. I give huge credit to Olondir and his thread HERE where ideas were workshopped that I ended up putting into play. My final writing of the chapter sends the group from Zellara's to St. Casperian's, where they engage with Belphais Splithog who offers a trade for information. He "sells" the party the location of the Fishery, which they can raid as they choose. Gaedren is not at the Fishery, but with the right pressure Yargin can betray his status. The actual transition to the Warehouse is a bit awkward currently, having intended to use the dock chase from Mad God's Key, but ending up using that scene for this same group in Runelords, I had to change it. Still haven't figured out how to smooth the path to the Warehouse. Anyway, Gaedren makes his last stand at the Warehouse (the same one that turns into a Hospice in Seven Days), and Zellara reveals herself to the players. The Queen's Brooch is found, unknowingly, and the players leave unsure of what comes next. The next bit is one I've been writing, but haven't road-tested yet. When the players emerge from killing Gaedren, I'm not having the city be in riot-mode at all. Rather, everything is still perfectly normal. I want the players to take time trying to appraise/sell their loot, talk about their Gaedren-free future, and contemplate what the Harrow told them, all while rumors of things being not right at the castle spread. Once the players learn that the Brooch belongs to the queen, news will hit the streets like wildfire about the King's death and controversy over the Queen being fit to rule. I'm going to pepper in specific book-written events on the streets as the city's demeanor changes, while workers and citizens from all over are going to mass in Endarin Square to voice their displeasure, huge numbers of Hellknights called in to keep them down. I actually really want it to be ambiguous as to who hit first, so that no one has a clear story of what exactly started the riots. Someone did something stupid, and panic and chaos take over. The whole rioting thing is going to be a bit of a slow burn, because more than anything I want the players to FEEL like they're in the middle of a city sliding down into chaos. I don't expect I'll change anything about the meeting with the Queen or Kroft, and I have not yet written anything for All the World's Meat or Eel's End. I'm getting to those now.
So that's my Curse of the Crimson Throne. I hope I can keep this thread going and maybe have some discussion on changes, additions, different use of characters, and ideas people want to see played out. I know my group will be up to the task.
As anyone who has dipped into my "Extra content and campaign padding" thread will know, I'm sort of in the middle of my second playthrough of Runelords, and this version is the one where I'm experimenting with all the changes I've made to the campaign. I won't be able to say what did and didn't work until I've got it all in retrospect, but I can go over what I think I could have done better in Burnt Offerings. 1. The Festival. I actually think this went about as well as it could. I mean, I didn't pad it endlessly with carnival games and milling around talking to NPCs, I made sure to give every player a chance to engage with at least one event, and overall it was solid. A good understanding of the people, shopkeepers, and personalities in Sandpoint are key to really selling the town in one session here, and I'm happy with my result. Potential Experiment: Have the players actually arrive in town the day before the festival and see the town as they're setting it up. Also, like Lorax said, goblin scenes involving saving NPCs from goblins would be a great idea. Not even full combat, just "You're running down the street and you see this. Use some sort of skill to save them." 2. Local Heroes. This part I think could have been better. I botched a few things (like the Shopkeeper's Daughter), but overall the players did get to meet a lot of NPCs and really cement themselves as fixtures of the town. If I were trying it again, I would make sure to use a lot more "encounters" with NPCs, little vignettes of life around Sandpoint that people see as they walk around. The little scenes of helping people (Boar Hunt, Goblin in the Closet, etc.) went as well as could be expected, I wouldn't change much here. Potential Experiment: Have more people come up to the party and engage them, bring them to their shops or insist on sharing a drink in the tavern. Little roleplay events like that. 3. Glassworks, Catacombs. Again, not much I'd do differently. The Glassworks can be a real slog if the players go in the wrong entrance, lots of rooms of nothing. I should have made the Goblins more animated and vibrant. They did their thing in combat and whatnot, but having them shout and sing and generally be the excitable creatures they should be is something I always fumble. Tsuto went really well, though. I've had better fights with him (He once knocked an entire party unconscious save for the ranger, who tried to fire an arrow at him as he ran down the hall to escape, and he just turned and caught it mid-air, glared, and then left), but Tsuto did escape which made me happy. The Catacombs ran fairly well, no real issues here. I wish I could remember my Erylium encounter, but I know it was fairly by-the-book, and was challenging but still able to be completed. Potential Experiment: More dynamic Goblin encounter, I guess. I can't think of any ways I'd change this part. 4. Thistletop. I loved the Gogmurt encounter, it was a really tough one for the players, and ended with him being captured and interrogated. Again, the actual Fort was played about as straight-from-the-book as possible, so it went pretty smoothly. I absolutely loved how Orik was used, the players captured him alive and he ended up saving their lives from potential death in the Tsuto/Lyrie/Yeth hound fight. Only thing I would have done differently here is have Nualia monologue a bit more in combat. I always fail at having enemies be really dynamic, so I tried to have her really engage the party. I was hoping them to be a little more angry at her, but they ended up being a bit sympathetic, which works too. They still decapitated her. There was no Bhargest fight though. Potential Experiment: Have Nualia advance her plans a little bit, be in the middle of accomplishing something when the players actually fight her. On the whole, I only really added the Chopper's Isle side-trek to Burnt Offerings, but doing it again I might add more. Still, it was 17 sessions from the Festival to returning to Sandpoint with Nualia's head, so maybe that's long enough. I dunno. Really, though, I don't recommend just reading this thread and swiping every idea and hoping it works for you. Adventure modules are something you really have to understand before changing. An old illustration teacher of mine once said "You have to understand human anatomy before you can change it.", and I think that applies here. You really need to understand the story as a whole, the encounters and how they're designed to play out, and most importantly WHY someone made the changes they did to really get the effect out of them. I would not advocate anyone use my Skinsaw Murders plot changes without specifically understanding why I made them. It's really more for people who see the plot and the events and say "Yeah, this doesn't really work, I need to fix this.".
As a DM, I would really feel like I'm not adequately doing my job if I need Lego props just to bring a small town to life for my players. Let me clarify: I run my Runelords game on Roll20, via Skype. So there's no actual face-to-face with my players, just voice chat. And I can honestly say that they would rather spend a day just hanging around the town talking to NPCs and shooting the s&$& with the friends they've made in Sandpoint than doing much of anything else. Selling a setting is not about gimmicks, it's about being natural and easy to fall into. Sandpoint is nice because as a city, it's small enough that you can actually remember what every building is and not really have to worry about the problems that come with a large city like Magnimar where there are a hundred taverns in a single district so you just roll a random name and random NPCs and call it done. Sandpoint is a small town, with small streets and few people. A player walking down a main road will see familiar sights and easily identifiable landmarks. There used to be a document buried in the Community Created thread which seems to be gone now (but some of the contents can be found by googling Sandpoint NPC Encounters) that broke the city down street by street and gave you little bits of scenes players could see depending on what street they went down, all of which helped to establish the things players may come to learn about the town. I would absolutely recommend using those regularly. The point is for the characters to be interesting, engaging, and likeable. If that isn't the primary concern, it won't really matter if you have a prop box full of unique hats for every NPC they talk to.
The best tip I can give any DM attempting to run an AP and "do it right" is this: Know the plot. You NEED to know what is happening, what will happen, and exactly who the actors involved are. Running an AP is like putting on an elaborate stage show for the players, and you really need to be intimately familiar with all of the character's motivations and exactly WHY they're doing what they're doing, or else when the players throw you a curveball, you will have no idea how to roll with it. For example, no one should ever run Rise of the Runelords without reading entirely through the first and second books before even beginning to sit down and consider how you're going to run the Festival and all that intro stuff. The reason I say this is because Aldern Foxglove, a character the players will encounter in the very first session, has very important details about his immediate past that are only detailed in the second book. And if you don't understand exactly who he is as a character, and exactly the narrative arc that brought him into the player's path in the first place, you will absolutely botch his character, and the result is that you're misleading players for when those details come into play later. It's all about understanding why things are happening. If you know Enemy X is in Dungeon Y for a specific reason, and has specific goals in mind, then when the players don't kill him or skip his dungeon entirely or whatever else they might do, then you know how you can make Enemy X act in this situation, in a way that keeps the story making sense. Otherwise, you're just reading a story to your players, but no one is getting the real effect.
Don't really have much in the way of questions. I've always wanted to find Wayne at a convention and bother him in person about just how much his art has been a really big influence on my own illustration for years now, but this'll do I guess. So, thanks Wayne. My question would probably be whether you still paint traditionally or have moved completely digital. If the former, I have no idea how you work so fast. Also where can I get poster-sized versions of your covers?
Rule #1: Never, ever, EVER run Jade Regent without running the Burnt Offerings book of Rise of the Runelords. Seriously, just don't do it. It seems like a bad idea to you, because your players have not invested themselves in Sandpoint and created that bond with the NPCs, and that factor is CRUCIAL for Jade Regent. Much like how Curse of the Crimson Throne does not work if the players are not built specifically as denizens of Korvosa with this backstory detail that ties them together, Jade Regent doesn't work if your players are not coming to the table already knowing who these NPCs are and liking them enough to run a campaign alongside them.
Have you considered that 12 somewhat-trained militia men aren't really all that cut out for the task of invading a fort? There's no way that many armored men can keep any sort of element of surprise when approaching or anything like that. Besides, if they left the town undefended, what might happen? But really, if your players demand a solid justification as to why they, as PCs, have to solve problems, rather than just sitting back and letting the NPCs do it, your response should be to ask them why exactly they're even bothering to show up to the game at all. I mean, clearly they're not interested in playing, and looking for an opportunity to not have to do so, so why bother making a character at all? If you wanted to sit around and have them listen to you tell the story about how the Sandpoint guards organized a raid to get revenge on the goblins that attacked their festival, why do you need character sheets and dice and rules for that?
Ahh, Harrow. Didn't know there was a thread about this. I've actually written up my Harrow Reading HERE. What I did for this was actually very simple; I dealt myself some cards, I wrote their meanings (copied from the Harrow Guide that comes with the card pack), and then just fluffed them up a bit in the descriptions so that every card could either A.) Hint at something that was going to happen in the campaign, or B.) Hint at something about a character/his past. The thing about a Harrow Reading is that it's almost irrelevant what cards you draw, as you can always make them about something significant. However, I pulled a few specific cards out, rather than drawing them randomly, because I wanted to hint at certain details where a random draw just wouldn't do. The important part, I think, is do not be specific. I've read write-ups where people use the Harrow drawing to literally tell a party where to go next, and I think that's a terrible idea. Have Zellara sit the group around the table, and draw the cards one by one, flipping it over and interpreting it (read the description from the document) before moving on. Take it slow, add emphasis and drama where needed, and generally make the players feel like this is important, like this is information they may need, even if they don't know it yet. Gravitas is the name of the game. Running a reading for each character is a complete waste of time, and I really cannot see the point, as what you'd be doing is giving a party of between 4 and 6 people each a different set of information, and each the idea that this information is important for them to follow. How do they then decide what to go on? What if bits of information conflict? Who's do they defer to? One reading for the whole party. The reading is not to give them direction or motive, it's to make them aware of dark tidings and possible great or terrible deeds they may take part in. It's all about the mystery. That's my 2 cents. I have a recording of myself doing the Harrow Reading for my session if you'd like it.
In case no one ever saw them, you can find some of the maps I've made for Curse of the Crimson Throne either on my DeviantArt or Cartographer's guild: Old, terrible maps I'm not proud of, but are "useable"
Newer maps with a bit more effort put in:
I'll be, very likely, re-doing all of the old maps for the AP as I run through it, as I really want to spend some time re-imagining the maps in more detail as I've been doing. If I'll get to them in a timely fashion, I don't know. But you can see some of the things that I've been working on, if you want:
For the record, my group just hit session number 27, and only 2 of those were Skinsaw Murders sessions. So, including the little bridge between books, 25 sessions for Burnt Offerings. I plan on doing at least another 25 on Skinsaw Murders alone. But this is not just running by the book, I added quite a lot of things (Chopper's Island, lots of around-town roleplaying with NPCs, even a hook piece from Shattered Star because why not.) I've completely rewritten Skinsaw Murders, too, so it follows the general outline of; Lumbermill murder > Habe's Sanatorium > Meet Ironbriar (as a 'good guy') > Work for Ironbriar to 'investigate murders' > Discover Skinsaw cult > Investigate cult > Reveal/fight Ironbriar > Shadow Clock > Farmland > Foxglove Manor > Conclude at Foxglove Townhouse. Changing the plot around opens up a lot of new roleplay potential and lots of room to let the story really breathe.
I did some serious time spent re-writing the introduction. It's a great premise, but it's badly executed, for two main reasons: 1. It spends time setting up Gaedren as this important figure in your player's backstories (if you made them take campaign traits and base their character around one, which you absolutely should have), and then he proceeds to die in the first, or maybe second session with no real build-up. It's bad narrative. 2. It doesn't provide the opportunity for the players to get to really experience Korvosa as a normal city for any real length of time before the entire place turns to chaos and disorder, which is a major drawback and a reason why a lot of people fail to connect to the city. CoCT's major strength is that it's perfectly positioned to be an adventure that players can fall in love with the setting and then really spend their time becoming the heroes of that setting. The problem is, while it make "work" if you play it right out of the book, it really doesn't have the impact it should. CoCT absolutely needs a few things for people to really get the most out of it; Players who are interested and engaged enough to read through the Guide to Korvosa and get to know the city as a place they can be find details to cling to. They're playing locals, people raised in Korvosa, who have a reason to save it. This isn't the murderhobo-friendly adventure. It really needs the players to have that reason to hate Gaedren as the cause that brings them all together, and it NEEDS to have the "intro" segment where the players hunt down and kill him to be much, much longer, enough so that the players can really feel like this is something THEY accomplished, not something that was just waved away so the real campaign could get underway. Stretch it out, make the investigation into Gaedren take time and effort. Make the players work for it, hunting down drug dealers and criminals, chasing them through the slums and knocking over businesses fronting for crime operations so that when they finally meet Gaedren, he's a real foe, one they can feel good about ending. Use that time ti introduce the city to them and let them get a feel for how it moves and flows, the news coming from the castle and other parts of town, the people and the places. Because soon this will all go away and be replaced by chaos, and for that to mean anything, it needs contrast. Go read the thread I wrote in about modifying the opening, and see how that proposed solution works for you.
So I'm finally arriving at the Skinsaw Murders more than 25 weeks after starting this campaign with my group. We just played session 1 Friday, which was largely consisted of the party being shown the murder scene in the lumber mill and being told of various things going on, with some leads elsewhere. So, I'm coming to the point where I need to pad this stuff out. Small bits of content, extra modules I can rip sections from to use, anything really as long as it matches the dark tone of TSSM. This is also an open forum to share ideas, obviously. First, I'm thinking of heavily focussing on Undead this time around, so the things that catch my interest are the ones that really let me play up that ghoul-invasion aspect. I've got a little blurb written by someone detailing an abandoned horse left on the side of the road, it's rider I'll probably have the group find the remains of later as a meal for roaming ghouls. Also, I've got the PF module Hungry Are The Dead, which as I read through I am just enamored with. It's a big, chunky dungeon crawl loaded with disgusting rooms filled with undead being lead by a Dread Wight Necromancer. In my head, this seems like a great little bookend for the chapter, by introducing the players to Carlizu when they visit Habe's Sanatorium, and having him escape. By the end of the chapter, I figure it would be cool for him to have stumbled upon the power that turned him into a much more powerful (and undead) necromancer. Though more likely, I'll shrink the actual dungeon down to be a few less rooms and smaller, so that it's not 10 sessions of dungeon crawling. There will be more ideas coming, I haven't even gotten into planning out Magnimar, but one thing I know I'll have to include somehow (if only in a passing mention) is the Succubus Assassin of Shax that the party let escape when I ran Dawn of the Scarlet Sun as the in-between books 1 and 2. As a side note, I have a player who's background involves his father using his children as collateral for a debt, making the PC basically legally bound to go to Turtleback and join the Black Arrows, and he's been doing everything he can to get out of it, asking everyone he found with some influence to help, but without much success. He absolutely loved it when I had him return to Sandpoint to find a note from Orik Vancaskerkin (who actually saved their lives in Thistletop once they spared him) saying that he's gone in the PC's place. So big thanks to whoever it was somewhere on this board who suggested that.
Rule #1 of DMing a dungeon is: Enemies do NOT stay in their rooms. The rooms they are found in is just a suggestion, a basic plan for the DM to start from. If the players alerted the denizens and give them enough time to move into a more fortified position, then that's exactly what they'd do. Remember, players making noise and stuff is not a no-consequence event, it should have ramifications, and if they give the enemy the ground and the time to set up a proper ambush, let it play out. Put the enemy group in the best positions you can, that play as much off their strengths as a group as possible. Give your group a challenging and tactical encounter. Don't be afraid to hurt them.
I know this has probably been done over a million times in the 10 years this AP has existed, but I'm coming up on it and after the last time I ran Nualia, I really want this time to be better. I don't like the way the fight is, by default, set up, what with it's 1x1 corridors leading to and from her room meaning that any sort of push into the hallways basically creates a conga-line traffic jam, and her moving to the L-shaped room is the only way to give her some room to move around in. The last time I did, she ended the fight with Obscuring Mist as per writing, but all it did was turn combat into a boring slugfest of 50% miss chance that no one enjoyed, and she couldn't even retreat because the only way she knew was blocked by PCs. So I want to do this better. Currently, my party just engaged Bruthazmus after descending to Level 1 after entering an alarm-raised Thistletop, they're mostly out of spells and I suspect the challenge of Level 1 will drain them a lot. So I'm not worried about Nualia being too strong (though I may give her all three dogs on the lower level, since she has warning they're coming). What I want to come up with is some interesting things for the fight itself. Is starting in the Observatory really a good move? Removing that means that the only other option is the L-room, and even that ain't huge. Obviously we want the trap, so the first room is out. Have you guys come up with any ways of making her fight really interesting and memorable? The thing that springs to mind is a last-minute Obscuring Mist use to cover a retreat to the Crypt where she hopes the Shadows will deal with the PCs when they chase her in, but I don't know if that's enough.
Well, my suggestion for that specific case would be this (and bear in mind, I don't know for sure how you're handling the tone of the city up to and through the Fishery hunt); I would do what I'm doing now, which is dropping hints about things not being right in the castle (maybe too many guards are on duty at the gates, maybe no news has been in or out in a while and emissaries are being turned away, things that are not out-and-out signs of foul play, but that the normal operation has been interrupted), and in the middle of all that, drop a line to PC (maybe via a friend who is sympathetic to the cause of the victim/people, maybe just via someone shouting news on the corner, however you want) that there are some people gathering in the square to ask for justice for something that you want to be the original catalyst for the riots. [Though do remember, Korvosa is not really modern-day America, and I don't think it would be a town that would be so quick to have public protests over the death of one single person, nor that anyone in the city would even consider that an option for getting things done. It's up to you, but to me, it clashes tonally a bit. I would re-write it to be something a little more in-line with the city's public interest.] Once you've got those two pieces of scenery tee'd up, I would personally go the route of having the guards hit the pavement as soon as news starts spreading of the king's death, and because this protest mob is already formed up, they'll be caught in the middle of it. Hellknights called to the scene could easily be the unnecessary use of force that pushes everything over the edge, and suddenly this small public display turns into the tipping point for the entire city's lack of faith in Ileosa's ability to control things, their distrust of her fueling the rage, and as more people pour into the streets, more guards and knights push back, creating full on chaos. This could take a day or two to play out, but I think the most important thing to remember is that this doesn't have to happen on-screen. Like, the players don't actually have to be present while all this happens, more than likely they'll be off somewhere else and only see and hear fragments of it, and if they ask around about what's going on, you can give them bits and pieces of the whole picture so they can put the puzzle together and understand just why things are the way they are. I say this because the idea is anarchy and chaos, and I think it's important to remember that to really sell this idea, the players need to be just as off-balance as the city's populace. They need to be in the dark about things because if they see every event unfold, they don't feel that confusion and panic around them. Every random passer-by will have a different story, all concerned with different details. Some may say it was the small protest that is the center of it all, some will say the guards are to blame, some will say it's all Ileosa's fault, etc. But let the players sift through that to assemble the picture. Then, once a balance has been established, you can have them move on with the plot, returning the brooch to the Queen and being sent to Kroft, playing out the Anarchy scenes, etc. That's my two cents.
Since I can't sleep, I'll write up how this went down for me and you guys can take some ideas from it, if it works for you. First, I regret not having the foresight to run a bit of Korvosa adventuring before the cards were given out. I know, hindsight and all that, but I really want more time before Anarchy starts in the city to grow connections. I had players whip up some NPCs and community ties in their backgrounds to use as resources, but I don't think it was enough. Anyway, I started my session by having players show up with a brief write-up of who their character is, and more importantly, a detailed description of how this particular average day in their life goes, with all the basic events that take place up to the point where, during the course of this day, they stumble across the Harrow card that carries a message meant for them. They get to describe how they find it, how they react, etc. The players went to Zellara, and I think I may have fumbled something because unlike my first game where they were enthralled by her, this group seemed to approach her very skeptically, as "Just another fortune teller", and even the Harrow reading she gave to prove what she knows about them, they just kind of shrugged off. But, they took the quest because they all had ties to Gaedren and wanted him taken care of. Bear in mind, I told them to think of him as more of a past trauma, rather than something front-and-center in their mind when the game starts, the card they get should dredge up the memory, I didn't want them showing up as if they were gung-ho to kill him since they were kids. Now, I made it so Zellara didn't have direct information about his location, simply by never having her actually visit him in person. No one questioned it really. So I wanted to stretch out the time it took to get to the fishery, but I decided not to make it take a ton of time. The players went out into the underworld for a bit, using their connections to collect the information that since they all last saw him, Gaedren has cut most of his criminal ties and "gone legit", by taking on a fish business that lets him profit without any real effort from him, because getting old has a way of doing that to you. So they got the location of his warehouse, and scouted it out for a day (this is two days passed since the game started), then went in the following day at night. Taking the place by surprise at night, they fought Giggles right up, as he caught them on his patrol route, but they had just opened the door to the room with the sleeping Hookshanks and Yargin, who they basically held at knifepoint while the fight went on to keep from moving. Giggles and the dog taken care of, Hookshanks convinced them to let him go while Yargin was locked in the bedroom with a desk to the door. Hookshanks gave them some info about Gaedren and that his operations have mostly been taken over by other people, so a lot of traces of his organization still exist. In the desk of the office, I put a letter from Rolth requesting bodies of certain physical characteristics be sold to him if they happen to produce any, hopefully this will become interesting later by hinting that there's a golem-making necromancer somewhere. They let the kids go, went through to Gaedren, and fought him, no big deal. In his treasure room, I put a lockbox filled with Shiver and Dream Spider venom, the former which the ex-addict PC promptle destroyed, and the box they kept (It's from Devargo). Again, hopefully these ties will keep things from from feeling disconnected, and will let the players feel like it's a constant chain of events. Zellara's head was interesting also, I had her appear behind them as soon as they identified the Harrow Deck artifact. This time, the Cleric of Pharasma was very keen on knowing what they needed to do to put her to rest, which I couldn't really just explain away very well, I don't think they were very convinced about it being "My soul is here to help you save the world" kinda stuff. Anyway, that's where we ended. I've got plans for the following: -The next day or so, I assume they will all find a collective shelter to examine the clues and talk things over. I'm gonna start dropping rumors about things not being right at the palace, but no chaos just yet. -After they've gotten their heads together and picked up on the rumblings, I want to have people out in the streets shouting about the king's death, spreading the news all over, with people arguing about Ileosa taking over. -Then the next 4 days or so will be rumors and news spreading through the city as mobs start to form, guards start to hit the streets, and by the end of it, the Acadamae and Bank will shut their doors. My goal is to pad out the campaign and not make it feel like a flashmob, but more like a real, building frenzy that they're caught up in. Any suggestions on this, I would certainly welcome.
So, gearing up to start running CoCT again, and this time around I wanted to really crank up the intro mission a bit. I always felt that while the twist was great and it had some of the best characters and setting an AP has had, it fell short in the department of having any real weight or punch. Starting with the Player's Guide really selling up Gaedren as this big underworld force only to have him crash and burn as soon as anyone challenges him and then never be mentioned again, really doesn't have the impact I'm going for. So I wanted to find a way to have Zellara bring the party together based on their destiny and connections through Gaedren, but I didn't like the idea of her just sending them right to his door. So I wanted to have the players basically do what Zellara just sort of handwaves in her speech, the snooping around and bribing people to try and find his hideout. I think this serves two purposes, the first being that it lets the players really dive right in to the city and start using their wits and making contacts to explore the personality and boundaries of the town, and two being that it gives the players a bit of grounding in the setting, letting them experience it at it's most normal before everything turns to riot and terror. The problem I'm encountering here is one of Zellara; Spoiler: She says Gaedren killed her son, but as far as I can tell, there is no son and it was simply her he murdered. Being that she already died and her body has to be at the Fishery, how do I sell the idea of her not knowing where it is? I mean, I could just use the "doesn't remember the exact details leading up to her death", but obviously that would make no sense to the players since they don't know she's a ghost and either it would just come off as weird, or they would end up asking questions later. So really I just need to come up with an excuse for her to not have any information on Gaedren so the players can do it, but one that sort of makes a bit of sense once they figure out that she did, in fact, know where he was because she went there.
Squeakmaan wrote: The problem there, is the only thing stopping Carrion Crown from being a "real horror" adventure is the group playing it. Atmosphere is almost entirely dependent on the players and GM working together to create it. For example, my usual group tends to have a lot of table talk and laughing, this isn't bad, for us, but it makes horror essentially non-starter no matter how the AP is written. That's a cop-out. No, Carrion Crown is genuinely badly written. It's just a bunch of campy horror movies, because no matter how hard the DM works, you can't make Frankenstein scary. Skinsaw Murders did it just fine through straight up creepy factor and providing situations that are easy to sell. Carrion Crown never manages to do this, nor does it ever really try. Yeah, with enough work, I can make Skulls and Shackles into a "horror" campaign, but it's not an excuse to not just write a real one that's designed for it.
Is it too much to ask for a real horror adventure? Like, real atmosphere, like they pulled off in Skinsaw Murders and Seven Days to the Grave? None of this campy monster-movie stuff Carrion Crown tries to do. I'm talking Castle Ravenloft style. Really, gritty horror that players and GMs can really get lost in. Far as I'm concerned, no other setting matters until they get that nailed down. And please, never do a Kingmaker adventure again. Ever.
Just run it as-written, it works pretty well. I know it did for me. Also this:
Personally, I don't, but that's just because I have a lot of issues with consistency and coincidence. When everything in the game is just a happy coincidence, like there just HAPPENS to be a necromancer ritual going on in the exact random barrow the players decide to explore, and the weapon the leader is using just HAPPENS to be a nice, enchanted version that one of the party spent all his feats on, it grates on me in a way that I don't expect anyone else to understand. Because while I know games aren't meant to emulate real life, I don't want my entire campaign to devolve into the players holding off on buying an upgrade because they know the AP's style of "Quest, Quest, Quest, Boss Dungeon" means that if they wait a session, they'll just encounter a special NPC with a weapon custom built for them that they can loot for free. That's too meta for me, and I spend a lot of my effort trying to remove those meta aspects and the ability of players to rely on them from my games.
Since I have some posts on the RotRL board for this, my Jade Regent maps can go here. Warden's Shack 1st Floor
These are the one's I've finished so far, and if I can kick myself to stop being lazy, I can get around to finishing Brinewall Castle 1&2 and the Dungeon.
Honestly? Double the length of an AP and I'd be happy. Or, at least, pre-write them so that there are existing modules that are designed to mesh in to extend the life of a campaign, and that would be great. I find most APs are actually too short, in that if you play them as-written, you come up with large sections of time where you either need to hand-wave some timeskips or you have to add in content so that the game takes as long as it feels like it should. I just got done with the second book of Curse of the Crimson Throne, and I honestly think that if the module was written so that there was more content to flesh out the exploring of the city and actively fighting the plague, it would have flowed much better. I know APs are constrained by time and publishing costs, and I am fine with that. Gearing up to run Jade Regent, I've made sure to flesh it out with quest and module plug-ins so that it actually takes the appropriate amount of time and doesn't involve lots of timeskipping and handwaving. So if anything, they're too short, and leveling from 1 to 20 is way too fast.
If you guys are using Roll20 and having problems with maps, here's what I suggest: First, choose your PDF reader. If Adobe, you need to zoom in and use the Snapshot thing. If Foxit, it doesn't matter if you zoom. Either way, copy the image from the PDF. Then take the image into Photoshop. Turn on the Grid (Ctrl+H) but turn OFF Snap in the View menu. Then go to Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grids & Slices and set your Gridline to 75 or 150 pixels. Now you go ahead and resize the map. This takes some fiddling, but the easiest way is to put the center on a gridline, and then Alt+drag the sides to scale both sides at the same time until the grid in Photoshop and the one on the map match up. Once you're done, you go View > Snap and turn it on, and crop the image to the nearest full squares. Then save it as a JPG and upload it to Roll20. Now in Roll20 when you make a new map page, you need to go into the page settings and turn the Grid OFF. Drop your map image in on the Map layer while the grid is off. Do not resize it. Turn the Grid back ON in the settings menu. Now Right click > Advanced > Align to grid. Drag a random amount so the little window pops up. Now since you already know the proportions of the map, since you aligned it to a pre-set grid in Photoshop, you can just put in the number you know. So if your grids in Photoshop were set to Gridline Every: 150px, you just put 150 and 150 in both of the boxes. Bam. Map perfectly aligned. It seems complicated, but it's actually really fast once you do it once or twice.
I've got some maps I made up for my Rise of the Runelords game, as well as other APs. I don't make every map, just the ones I can't find a decent version for. Here's what I've got Catacombs of Wrath
They're notably lower-quality than the ones I'm doing more recently, but they're all at least useable with minor hassle. If you plan on printing them or aligning them to a VTT like Roll20, they should all be at 1" = 150x150px. There will be plenty more coming down the pipe, I'll share those when I get them done. Also if anyone cares enough to check out my other work, it can be found here every so often;
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