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We're just starting book 5, and I think book 4 does suffer from a lack of investigation opportunities. You basically go straight from the Temple of Norgorber -> HL7 Siege -> Harrowland with little breather. If I ran it again, I think I'd insert some investigation side quests after the HL7 Siege but before Harrowland, just to break up the fighting somewhat.
EDIT:
So I've put all the material together into the one folder, for easy access. This also includes Magic Item Handouts and scripts for Ashes At Dawn and Shadows Over Gallowspire, which for some reason aren't included in the above links. Evil Paul Resources
--->Mega Sharing Folder<--- Enjoy.
Iron can rust, can it not? Just sayin’…
Nice, alternate maps always good.
(as an aside, I’ll be playing him a bit like Billy Butcher from The Boyz. It’s easy to have balls of steel when you are effectively immortal).
I’m not sure I understand how taking over crime solves crime. Lets say he takes control of the drugs trade, a professional burglary racket, and the white collar crime property scams. Does he then… stop these operations? Or does he try and turn them into Robin Hood style outfits? How does that work with drugs? I agree its supposed to be Punisher + Kingpin. I just don’t understand how those two fit together.
Miogomo - does anyone have any more thoughts on what exactly he is a "crime lord" of. His overall goal is like the Punisher. He wants to murder evil-doers within the city, as the Watch is incapable of this. To protect himself, he builds a power base of ghouls, and will also murder those who get in his way, like Grimwold. So far, so good. But... when he's not murdering his enemies he also is a crime-lord. What sort of crime? And why? His overall goals are just murder and vengeance, so running a drugs gang or a racketeering scam doesn't really help him. And why would the other gangs of the city want to ally in any way with someone whose primary goal is basically to kill them. I'm all down with the Magnificent Bastard trope and the PCs allying themselves with him. I'm just a little confused on his day-to-day activities as an NPC.
The timeline doesn't work for me. And the Radiant Festival is only really relevant for Book 1. This is what I did: * Book 1: Radiant Festival. Spring Year 0. Normal Weather.
Has anyone done the extended games for the Irorium in the back of the book? If so, how did that go? I want to make more of the arena challenge, and the PCs are keen to enter an Edgewatch (Major Crimes) team in the competition. I want to run Chariot Chaos, Whirlpool Warriors and the finish up with the Oggvurm fight (which I'm calling Blood City Showdown).
Kerr Batiste from book 1 is clearly a wrong-un. In my universe she's on the take as part of a slavery syndicate, but she could equally have thrown her lot in with the casino. Or, more likely, the Token Guard are involved. The Token Guard are seriously corrupt, taking payments from the major commercial institutions in exchange for security, while ignoring or bullying the smaller institutions. This is essentially a legalised protection racket, out in the open. In my universe they need somewhere to launder all this off-book money, and this is what the casino is for. So they have an alliance of sorts with Gage.
I quite like this as a back story. One of my PCs is a Suli. Gage is probably not going to like her.
Not a statblock, but here is a background I drew up for Skinny Bolera to help inspire my players in their Slot 0. https://drive.google.com/file/d/16QeK8PmBFCNtsUiVXTtq2fC7-xhdlIVT/view
Ah, re-read this section and you're right, I had misunderstood the "tunnel". Actually, I might re-instate this then. An underground tunnel implies access to the Undercity, which is presumably where the deals with the Twilight Four went down (or at least Skinner/Infector). So underground lair it is. Now to come up with some interesting fights...
These are amazing. I think the best ones are the "person plus background" ones. Eg, the Dreaming Palace, the House of the Planes, the Fayati and Skinsaw ones, etc. Would love to see Tyroccicese. He's been the only cause of deaths so far for us.
Literally did this session yesterday. I've added quite a lot of content here, lots of it inspired from Gangs of New York, Peaky Blinders and the 1930s facist movements. The group are investigating the Washboard Dogs anyway, based on the conclusions to book 2, and they want to arrest them for slaving to the murder cult, among other things. They asked around in a number of pubs, accidentally met Maurissa, who directed them to the alley fight. Giord was later arrested, pretty much as per the book. In our campaign a huge number of goblin refugees have arrived, following the 2nd burning of the Chitterwood after a failed Isger rebellion. So the Diobel Sweepers has swelled in numbers and Berleth is something of a revolutionary, leading rallys in public about how a "new form of slavery" is sweeping Absalom. The Washboard Dogs are part of a wider "Teal-shirts" / "Absalom First" movement and gatecrashed a Sweepers rally, with it turning into a huge public brawl, many dead on each side, and most of the watch (except our heroes) taking the side of the Tealshirts, beating down on the Sweepers and other goblins. The rogue element in all this is the Infector, who has been planting bombs and poison elements all through the city, with the watch and the rest of the public assuming this is the Sweepers due to the alchemical connection. Anyway, the PCs met Maurissa for the 2nd time, at a copper smelting factory, surrounded by 40 of her goons, and realised that wasn't the time to bring her in. [Pretty much as per the module scene, except minus the bridge. Are there bridges in Absalom?] She gave them the location of the Sweeper's base and now they are arguing about whether they should raid and arrest Berleth or not, or whether that is playing into the hands of their enemies. The PCs have no interest in allying with Maurisa. She is clearly a villain. Even the promised "information about the murder cultists" holds no weight, if she wants to plead with that after an arrest, fine. But no deals outside of a cell. So I'm going to need a similar base to the Schoolhouse for a Washboard Dogs raid. I'm thinking of an underground lair, which would tie-in with communication to the Twilight Four cult, but it does double down on the evil-ometer. A smelting factory would also be good, as might be a large pub, or something similar (though we've had a lot of pub fights already). It needs to be working class, memorable, and a little bit dirty. Anyway... module is good stuff and I'm enjoying it so far... It has a good city feel.
I think you need a side-quest set in the mirror dimension with the PCs trying to find a way out. The last PC could be integrated in some way (perhaps they can communicate to him via mirrors) or you could hand wave that he is also captured by the duplicates.
I think it's based on Neuschwanstein Castle in South Germany. Almost Disney-like castle built by a mad recluse.
(btw, for those who are looking, the Zoo and Dragonfly Pagoda are both on the Silver Lawn, a bit to the right of the War Dome)
Fantastic Map. Especially useful as the new Absalom sourcebook has the map for the Precipice quarter pre-gentrification.
Finally got my copy after some delays with UK Distributors, and just finished Agents of Edgewatch Module #2 in the same week. I’m running Edgewatch long and fat, about 4 months per module, and this book is absolutely fantastic. There is soo much stuff, plots and NPCs and ideas virtually on every page, that there is more than enough to keep my cupboards stocked for another 4 modules. For those that are looking to buy the book, I would totally recommend it, wether you are Edgewatching or not. I would describe it as a gazateer of people, locations, factions and plot ideas within Absalom. So if your constructing your own adventure, or bulking up an existing one, you can flick through, grab some ideas and your ready to go. It is much more DM friendly that the previous softcover edition, and all in all, a much better book, not just because it is bigger.
Not to pick a fight, but: you wouldn’t allow Magus and Summoner in a Strength of Thousands game? (I'd include Magus, Bard and Summoner as full casters, ie, they get new spells every level. At least, I think so, I didn't do the playtest, so I've not actually seen the PF2E implementations of Magus and Summoner, but I'm assuming they are similar to PF1E in concept. It's academic anyway - I'm not running SOT right now).
Ignoring the rest of the discussion about theme, dungeons, plots, etc, and just addressing the point of which character class you can play. I think it makes sense to leave that in the hands of DMs rather than the AP. Likewise with regard to which material to include. For instance, for Edgewatch I disallowed Druid or Barbarian as character classes, and have excluded material from anything except core and the Edgewatch AP (eg, no spells from other APs). That was my decision. Likewise, if I was running Strength of Thousands, I would limit it to full casters only (eg, no Paladins, Fighters with Wizard dedication, etc). Again, my decision as by the AP you are allowed to play anything. For character classes and content, it makes sense to not have hard rules about which products people can use. They are trying to sell all their products after all, but mainly because creativity is in the hands of the Players and DMs, and it's not really up to the AP to say what NOT to do.
@Benchank, @naurgul, @ruzza, @OmegaZ, thanks for the replies. For those that made it through without going back to base, how did you handle levelling? The hotel seems tuned for the first two floors at level 3, and the basement at level 4. There is more than a level's worth of encounters (if you do everything). And there isn't enough XP in the rest of the module to start the hotel at level 4 (unless you do side-quests, which I have been doing, but I imagine others didn't). So did your players start the hotel at level 3 or level 4? If level 3, did you have them level up before Pratchett? How did you manage that if they didn't go home... did they just "ding" mid dungeon? If they started the hotel at level 4, was that because you did off-script side-quests, or because you just did an early story-point leveling before going to the hotel? My PCs are 100 XP off 4th, have a warrant for the hotel and are thinking about raiding it. I'm trying to decide if I should give them a very short 100XP detour + level-up before they go there (in which case they could conceivably do it without a long rest), or just send them to the hotel at 3rd, in which case it could be messy.
My PCs are finally heading to "check out" this hotel they keep hearing about in their investigations. Could be messy. For the DMs, did your players make it through the whole hotel in one dungeon delve? It seems you need at least one long rest. What do Pratchett and Ralso do if the PCs retreat for healing and come back the next day?
In book 1, the agents meet the assassin Cass Hamish in the House of the Planes who tells them that she was tracking a mark who vanished into the Dreaming Palace, but that Ralso's gang connections make the place off-limits. 1) There is no further suggestion of who the mark is (eg, amount Pratchett's victims). Any suggestions as to who they were and why there was a hit on them? This is Absalom, not Qadira. I would assume that assassination is a fairly rare thing, and putting a hit on someone is serious business. 2) I'm not sure the gang connections bit makes that much sense. Ralso was a gang member, but she left that life behind to move across the city and join Pratchett. (Indeed, some of her old friends are trying to get her to rejoin her life of crime). Why would a gang declare that the hotel is a "safe zone" and that they would enforce that for Ralso? Which gang is it? (We have a ton of gangs listed in book #3, is it any of them?). Does Pratchett know? Does the gang or gang actually enforce this, eg, are they staking out the hotel looking for dodgy people going in and warning them off?
I agree with all of Deriven Firelion's points. I'd also like to add what other people have said in that completing the heist to get "The Princess is in another castle..." as the reward I think is a terrible payoff. All that work without material award. Yet the heist is cool. It could be a fun roleplaying activity. It just needs editing. I've got tons of homebrewed side-quests in my campaign. As well as the murder plot, there are slave gangs, and drug gangs, and watch corruption, and simple thievery jobs. So I'm happy moving the heist into a side-quest with a different reason and different macguffin to get. Any suggestions on what that could be:
I think making Gage a mobster is a good idea - Gage needs to be a bad guy rather than just a neutral. Otherwise it's just the state interfering with private citizens.
Brutal. Did they pay for a Raise Dead or reroll?
Personally one I would love to see is a three part "mega prison" escape. We've already got Abomination Vaults as a megadungeon though. Obviously I'm but one customer, but I prefer APs with variety: roleplaying, investigation, combat, politics, exploration etc. Rather than big dungeon crawls.
How did the PC actually die... did they already have Wounded 2 and got crit to death? Or did the rest of the PCs let him bleed out.
Obviously it's your Absalom, not mine, but I would suggest that circumstantial evidence is more than enough for a search warrant. The purpose of a search warrant is to FIND evidence, so you will generally have minimal or no evidence prior to one. You just need a good reason to suspect the likelyhood of evidence. Likewise in terms of an arrest warrant. Even now, police don't need a warrant to arrest someone where there is clear and present danger to the public. In historical times, they certainly didn't. (Of course it depends a lot on class. The Watch wouldn't be able to arrest Hoff or Olansa Terrimor without a warrant, in the same way that you can't arrest a US Senator without a warrant, even if you get close enough. They would just say no, their lawyer files a complaint, and you might get fired. But arresting a "commoner" without a warrant is easy. Pratchett is somewhere in between - he's a middle class gentleman who owns property and runs a business, the two key marks of a "gentleman" in Absalom. But beyond that he isn't very well connected.)
I agree that Unity should stay dead, but as an aside, Unity wasn't a "He" in our campaign, they were a non-binary character. A Father/Mother. I think that works quite well for an evil AI. I also had Casandalae be the original android on the Divinity that Unity would use to walk around in, whenever the crew needed to take the ship's computer offline. And Helion was a self-bootstrapped process (ie, a "daemon process") that Unity had created and given life. This gives a nice Holy Trinity vibe to the three. You have God (Unity), Jesus (Casadalee) - both her own person, and originally the avatar of God, and the Holy Spirit (Helion) - both it's own thing, and originally a formless subcomponent of God.
Oh, yeah, I missed that on my list. More ratfolk. Ratfolk are one of the signature races of Starfinder, and if Iron Gods is supposed to be part of the myths and legends that are precursers to Starfinder (which I think it is), then we need more ratfolk. It feels like this is the story for them.
I actually do like the sound of it. I'm running Agents of Edgewatch now, but in a year or so, I'll need a new AP, and having been inside a city for so long, it will be good to have a pure wilderness adventure on offer. Stretch our legs so to speak. Plus I like the idea of a 3 volume AP. But I want plot rather than a big dungeon crawl, and I prefer 1-10 rather than 11-20, so Vaults and Ruby Phoenix don't do it for me. Frozen Flame gives me a nice way to try the 3 volume approach.
Iron Gods 1 was awesome. Iron Gods 2 needs:
While still keeping what was good about the first one, eg, - roaming around the country
Our party redeemed Meyanda as well. I agree that all villains shouldn't be redeemable, but she's def in the "can be saved" camp.
Yep. Plenty of time for Radient Festival to finish during the downtime though. Nothing wrong with months of Downtime.
Maybe, having won in the Irorium, Oggvurm and his girlfriend become part of the parade in book 2? Yeah, I think working them into the parade is a good idea. I'm closing the Radiant Festival at the end of book 1. It doesn't make sense to compress the whole campaign into a few weeks, better instead to make it over at least a year or so. (And I've never yet met a player who wants a compressed timeline - people LIKE downtime). Other than the parade in book 2, the Radiant Festival doesn't really play any part in the story anyway. So I'm moving book 2 to be a "Christmas Movie" and the parade to be a midwinter festival parade. (Cf Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Home Alone, Batman Returns, and many others - there is long history of crime related Xmas movies). Not sure what I'll do with Oggy there, but seems like he could be involved in that somehow.
I like to think of Numeria as the four "zones" in that map, and link them back to real world places to get a feel for flora/fauna. Felldales is like the red desert in Wyoming, Utah and the Grand Canyon. So coyotes, wolves, goats, and other semi-mountain creatures. This is supposed to be the most dangerous zone, so it's the area I most associate with dinosaurs (all kinds). Hyenas and lions, while not common in Wyoming, seem like a good fit here. Sovereign's Reach and Numerian Plains are more like the great plains of the midwest. So bison, pronghorn, wolves (again), etc. The Numerian Plains is the most fertile of these two regions, so larger animals such as deer, elk, wild horses, etc. Sovereign's Reach is more of a fallow wasteland, so more small rodents such as voles, ferrets, snakes, etc. Soveriegn's Reach should be pretty gloomy and foreboding, so less birds as well. Sellen Hills is a fantasy version of the Scottish Highlands (or, I guess, New Zealand, which basically is a fantasy version of Scotland). So deer, bears, grouse, wolves (again again), boar and other game, sheep and goats, etc. Less North American animals.
One of our party is a Lizardfolk from Droon. So I'm planning on briging "Oggy" in early, once per book, as a recurring NPC. I like the "Pontiac Bandit" in Brooklyn 99, who recurs once per season for one episode, then leaves so the PCs can carry on with other quests. It's a good formula. This is what I have so far: Book 1: A lizardfolk warrior-princess arrives in town, demanding an escort from the PC and his "minions". Disgusted at the weakness that is displayed (which includes a patrol shift in the Miss Absalom Beauty contest at the Radiant Festival), she leaves to explore the festival on her own, returnining with Oggy as her new boyfriend, saying he will win the Irorium for her. Oggy will cause some minor issue for the PCs and immediately become disliked by them. -- Book 1 / Book 2 downtime interlude ---
Book 2: ??? Book 3: ???. Book 3 finale: As written. Ie, it is revealed that Oggy isn't just a douchebag, but actually a terrorist. Any suggestions for missing appearances for Oggy, preferably with said warrior-princess? Generally escalating the stakes, in both drama and his douchbag-ness, without requiring an actual fight to the death. One other thing to note, is that Oggy is "just under twice the height of a lizardfolk". Lizardfolk are 6'-7', making Oggy 12' tall. He is totally massive! There is a picture of Sajan (the iconic monk) fighting him, where Sajan looks just a bit smaller, but in reality Sajan wouldn't even reach up to Oggy's waistband. Oggy is intelligence = 8 though so he's not clever, but he's not a monster. Just a REALLY big dude. I think if Oggy is to be wandering around the city, and not locked in a cage like a monster, the two lizardfolk accompanying him will probably need to look after him. Perhaps one of them is his lawyer, and the other his manager.
I kind of doubt they would put out 3 tied-in hard-covers just to have it be a 3-part AP. I think it must be the late-2022 6-part AP. I think this is more likely. Schedules can always slip. Agents of Edgewatch launched Aug 2020 (and is now complete), but the Absalom book won't be arriving till late 2021. Waiting a bit until the Geb/Nex/Alkenstar AP ensures that all of the hardcovers are out and in peoples hands before the AP drops. There is enough hype around it, that a 6-parter would seem more likely IMO.
Because my players don't like the investigation a lot and don't propose alternative investigation lines but I see it a little difficult to know where to start I don't understand that. This is the Watch-AP. Does that not imply that there would be lots of investigation, and by choosing this AP, are your players not saying "I like investigation". I'm totally down with Naurgul - I've been adding a lot more investigation to the AP so far.
Some good points about Slavery/African themes, which I generally agree with. And yes, it's good that Golarion has analogies rather than straight imports, eg, slavery in Golarion isn't really connected to the colour of human skin, there isn't an explicit Garundi -> Inner Sea slave Corridor, etc. And I totally agree that Africa has a rich history outside of the slave trade. (And even the very fact that I've used the word "Africa" to reference a hugely diverse area of landscapes and peoples is incorrect here). I'm certainly interested to see what Strength of Thousands has to say. But at the same time, absence of politics is itself politics. If there is no exploration at all of the relationship between the Northern/European nations of Golarion and the Garundi nations in our story, then that itself is still comment. It might be that the comment is "the Northern nations are not relevant to our story", which is totally fine. But if it's "the Northern nations play nicely with the Garundi nations in our universe" then that suggests that what happened in Earth history is purely down to individual people being bad, and side-steps the notion that systems, such as colonialism, empire, commerce and religion can all inexorably drive terrible outcomes which is political comment I would disagree with, even if it is said by accident.
So I'm at the House of the Planes, maybe 1/2 done with that part, and the party has NOT picked up on the missing people thread. I keep mentioning missing people and folks who haven't come back home and co-workers who never showed up the next day but...nope. Just going along with the flow. This is gonna be hilarious. Perhaps... When they get back to the watch station, Lavarsus has just had a meeting with the Watch Commanders where he's had to present his current crime stats including open cases. He looked terrible in front of his bosses, and has once again been reminded that Edgewatch are one of the worst performing forces, despite significant investment leading up to the Radiant Festival. He's been told that if he, Lavarsus, cannot manage crime in his small district, especially during such an important period, then perhaps his position should be reconsidered. So Lavarsus is now super pissed. And you know what they say about sh*t flowing downhill.
Given it's our first "Africa" AP, is Strength of Thousands not going to explore slavery and abolitionist themes at all? Actually there is Serpents Skull and Skull and Shackles, isn't there? So scratch the "first" thing. Question still stands.
I think it depends on the Devil's personality and how long he's got. To quote from Good Omens...
A call back to Crypt of the Everflame would def tick some boxes regarding sequels, building on existing content, a call back to the heritage of PF1 (Everflame was the the very first published PF1E module). It would also fill the requests for a Razmir AP. Everflame was Nirmathas + Razmir, so presumably we would start by building on the outcomes of Ironfang Invasion and then migrate over to "do" Razmir. Interesting hypothesis, even if completely wrong! :-)
There's a strong emphasis in the setting that this is a temple of Blackfingers not Norgorber.I like this explanation best. It's easy to see how worshipping the Skinsaw aspect of Norgorber in public would be a huge deal. But worshipping "the god of alchemists and poisoners" seems way less scandalous, especially if you focus more on the alchemists part. This also explains why Flakflatter can be a public figure. He is one of the cities leading alchemists, and an expert in poison. That's all. And of course, clerics of Norgorber don't even have to be evil, as the church will point out (not that there should be anything illegal about detecting as evil. What goes on in a man's mind is his own business, says the church).
Stats like that don't reference a stat block. They just give you a flavour of the NPC, listing the important things (alignment, race, "job", level). If you want to stat them up fully, that is left as a job for the reader, but most of the time you shouldn't need to. An evoker is a wizard specializing in Evocation spells (ie, creating energy, aka, blowing stuff up). He's LN. That's enough of a hook for any role-playing. His level is 3 and he's a Wizard. That's enough for setting DCs for Perception, Saves, etc. If you need skills, come up with a personality (either on the fly or during prep) and give appropriate skills. Fully statting every person the PCs meet would waste space that could be dedicated to story or known combats. You could use the NPC Gallery in the GMG, but it's got a limited selection of people. If every low level mage encountered in every campaign was a True Neutral 2nd level Astronomer with counterspell, sleep and telekinetic projectile, things would get pretty repetitive.
Amen.
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