Brian Van Wyk's page

We play once per week with a 5 hour session. We started the same week I got the first book, and so far we are just starting book 3, and I have book 4 on my shelf. Unless you play several times a week there is no way you will catch up, especially if you have that holy grail of all groups that actually enjoys roleplaying, roleplaying takes longer than just whacking the monsters.

The AP's provide plenty of background information, including an outline of the entire AP at the beginning, you might ruin the fun a bit by giving away stuff a little too early if you arent careful, but I am certain you can foreshadow.

If you don't enjoy the path it takes, pick a dot on the map,make a reason for the party to go there, and starting making it up as you go along :)

RoTRL is very well done, and hopefully the next one will be even better (practice makes perfect), my only real complaint is that they assume that a DM has a crap load of time between sessions to memorize the book. Spending 5 minutes looking up answers to PC's questions (there is no index) kills the immersion somewhat.

Class balance would be seriously hosed, and the advantage is totally monsters. 4th edition is supposed to reduce the dependence on magic items a lot. In the mean time it is awfully hard to turn d&d into something it is not. Maybe run a GURPS fantasy campaign in the short term, that system works well in a low magic setting.

Basically I agree with the above posters, there are countless numbers of pages in the forums about how to do this on places like enworld.com and it is basically a HUGE task to reduce magic items and keep the game fun and fair.

]just for my own education how do you guys make those spoiler hide-n-go-seek buttons in your posts?[/quote wrote:

Type

(spoiler)text to hide(/spoiler)

just use brackets instead of parenthesis. For more code stuff, hit the Show button below the box you are typing in.

awesome, thanks!

SPOILERS!!!

I think the AP is fantastic, my group just got to the start of hook mountain and they are loving it. These AP's are about a million times better than the old modules from "back in the day" I used to be %100 anti-module, I believe the first module I ever ran was Shackled City, and this one is the 2nd.

I do have a few suggestions.

1. The blue pages, details about Varisia, Sandpoint, Magnimar, etc. Should be completely player friendly, no DM only information. It is painful that I cannot print out a copy of the city of sandpoint for the players.

3. More misc DM facts in all the rooms. If the room's flavor text describes something like wall paintings or runes, throw out a quick seed to give the DM an idea if some smart-alek player casts comprehend languages. Also details like ceiling height would be appreciated.

4. More prestige classes, the Desna handout was fantastic, more stuff like that would be appreciated. I am hoping the Gazateer and the Campaign Setting have lots of stuff to add to the world. I appreciate it when my players build characters that fit the world instead of trying to shoe-horn in their favorite greyhawk builds.

5. An index at the back, so that I can quickly lookup answers to player questions. I am sure there are automated tools out there that can read your document and generate an index. If you don't think it's worth the extra pages, generate it and put it on the web site for download, this would be a VERY useful tool.

Again, the AP is by far and away the best bang for your buck in gaming, and the only way to go. I wouldnt even consider DMing without these AP's after having them. Great work guys and keep it up!

just for my own education how do you guys make those spoiler hide-n-go-seek buttons in your posts?

There is a heroforge pathfinder addition available.

http://www.nzcomputers.net/heroforge/

Wow, still DMing #2, and havent even cracked hook mountain open yet. Thanks for the heads up.

The 10,000 years thing really annoys me as well. Our very first session everybody was introducing their characters when it was learned that 4/5 of the party took Thassilonian as a language. The one guy who asked me about it in advance I told that Thassilonian was such an old language that if you knew it, it was sort of like knowing Egyptian Hieroglyphs, you could slowly and painfully translate it and take it on faith that you are maybe close to being slightly accurate, but there is no speaking it. There is nobody around who would even begin to know the sounds of the alphabet.

Of course when everyone was at the table they had a fit because the players guide said that scholars often speak the language.

After a lengthy debate I said "Ok, makes no logical sense, but whatever, you all speak Thassilonian"

How in the world is a language from a 10,000 year gone empire still able to be read, let alone spoken? The Mayans were around less than 2,000 years ago and nobody can really agree on their written language.

I guess once again, magic has to be the answer, maybe there is some 10,000 year old lich that is teaching Thassiolnian in exchange for rare and powerful wizbangs or something. Or maybe one can somehow cook up a way to use comprehend languages to actually learn a language instead of using it as a translating device.

Where were the horses originally stabled?

They could have gone home...

That has potential. The horses were a gift from foxglove before the hunt. And they were stabled by the PC's at the sandpoint stables.

Kind of a creepy scenario :)

Looking for some clever ideas here.

In Skinsaw murders the party left their horses tied up outside of the manor. When they emerged from the manor and were attacked by ravens, they saw all of their horses were dead, they simply left them there. They next day when they returned the horse bodies were gone. I figure they are now ghoulish undead horses.

Where to bring them back? A random encounter on the road? Reports of farmers being terrorized? An encounter with a slaughtered caravan of varisian traders with enough clues to show that they were killed by evil undead horses? Maybe in a future module there are more intelligent undead to fight and they can be riding the ghoul horses? maybe the horses killed some travelers and they awoke as ghouls and are now riding the horses terrorizing the locals, sort of a four horsemen thing.

I am looking for any other good ideas for a fun way to bring them back.

Just a general suggestion, when playing a module tell the players up front that their characters need to be just a little bit heroic (interested in saving ppl and trying to do the right thing)

It is silly to assume that a culture will progress in the same steps and same general timeline as our civilization did. We afterall didn't have the benefit (crutch?) of magic. If necessity is the mother of invention, then inventions would be pretty far and few between in a world where magic can do just about anything.

Check out the blog and search Haunts in the threads.

After enough rooms to figure out what a haunt is and that they can be Turned, the cleric doesn't have to "see" the haunt to get a chance to Turn one if given a heads up by the effected character.

Thank you. That was what I needed :)

Wow you are amazing for doing all of this hard work and sharing with the class. Please add me to your list as well.

brianvanwyk at yahoo.com

If they make nice with the goblin druid have him travel along with them, just to keep an eye on em and make sure they dont do any unnecessary killing of goblins. His flame blade will help alot with the yeth hounds.

Although the foreshadowing of finding a silver weapon on the mutated goblins in the catacombs of wrath should have been a strong hint that silver weapons will be needed in the near future.

The party has just completed burnt offerings and they want to ask the sage a few things. I don't want to give away anything that may compromise future chapters. e.g. They learn something from the sage that I shouldnt have told them and they use that information to go to a particular dungeon about 5 levels to early and I have to either wipe out the party or rebalance the dungeon. (I run from campaign books because I don't have hours and hours to spend on game prep)

What does the sage know about..

The statues with the glaive and the book from thistletop?

The rune wells?

Malfeshnekor?

Would he know the true reason that the Sihedron medallion was created?

Would the sage know anything at all about rune lords?

And just a suggestion for future books. If you are going to say in the room description that the walls are covered in ancient runes and glyphs, for gods sake give the DM a break and provide a few suggestions as to their meaning. :)

Thank you.

Can I get some examples of Cheliaxian names? One of the players in my group wishes to come from Cheliax.

I prefer the you must rest to level approach. Not out of any misplaced sense of realism (hello? goblins, dragons, and wizards) but out of a sense of fairness. If you allow instant leveling, then a fighter or a rogue gets his level all at once, while a wizard needs to prepare his spells, and a cleric has to wait until the proper time of the day to pray for new spells. It just seemed more fair to me to make everyone wait until they rest so they all get their full level at the same time.

A slightly related question I have for the group at large: How do you handle awarding exp if you have more than 4 players?

do the maps in this supplement contain battle maps that you place on the table and use the figs on? Else what does this contain and what does it do for my rise of the runelords campaign?

What is the purpose of the pathfinder society information? Are the players supposed to start as members or is this something that comes out later in the campaign?

Is the existence of this society common knowledge, or is it a well kept secret?

It is my understanding that prestige classes will sometimes be included in the pathfinder books. Are they unlocked for the players by certain actions within that chapter of the campaign? Or are they simply available and not necessarily tied to events in the chapter?

I am nearly at the end of running my players through the Shackled City (waited for the hardcover to start it).

If there is one thing I would really like to see in future adventure paths, it would be for the authors to put at the end of each chapter a summary of what the PC's could have potentially learned in this chapter. I was especially terrified when *spoiler alert* the PC's encountered the soul pillars. I wanted to give the PC's some really good information as a reward, but at the same time I didn't want to blow a really great surprise that I might have forgotten was coming in a future chapter. or give them enough information to make a beeline for the final chapter where they would just waxed by the more powerful villains. (I know there are other work arounds for this problem, please don't post them ppl)

I wasn't thrilled with the adventure path just dropping a big old can of worms on my lap and leaving me with no guidance about what the players can learn from it.

I also want monster tokens! :)

There is a plus and a minus to the re-imagining of the monsters. The massive chest of WotC d&d mini's I have won't really work all that well for this. Any thought to including in the pathfinder books a punch out cardboard sheet with monster chits? It would be nice to always have the monster to put on the game board, even if it is just a disk with a drawing on it.