Greg Volz's page

Don't try to be epic - epic comes from having an engaged player group who in turn make things epic...if that's why they're gaming. It's hard to explain but if your players want to have a low-level dungeon crawl there's not alot of room for epicness. If, on the other hand, they want to have a bildungsroman or monomyth-esque adventure then epic is what they're aiming for.

Have an outline, not a script. Months of planning and storywriting in your head will be dashed by a single player's actions. Make an adventure flow-chart if your going for epic and highlight the "required" scenes. The connectors that go between the scenes are where you have to be fluid because that's where the players have the most control and where you as a GM have to give the perception of choice or else the verisimilitude will be lowered.

The thing about old-school gaming is that no DM ran the game exactly the same. PF codifies things (actually the OGL did which is why, IMO, the d20 craze worked very well - every "old school" homerule could now be bound into the layers of the OGL and published) and is easily accessible via downloadable system reference docs (SRDs). 1st and 2e games had TSR material, Dragon Magazine, White Dwarf, some 3rd party publishers (Arduin, Judges Guild, other heartbreakers - my fave was Bard Games Arcanum) and fanzines for it's content. Due to the lack of material you were forced to make up alot of rules, content and this resulted in your own personalized brand of D&D that was only known by the amount of players you gamed with. With my cooking background old-school D&D was like chili...yes...chili. Most folks used the basics; meat, some tomato product, onions, garlic, and beans (for us northeners:)) but travel a few miles and then you find somebody who added broken spaghetti (ala Real Chili right here in Milwaukee) or someone who added cinnamon, or someone who did not use beans, etc. It was all "chili" but based upon the taste of the creator and his or her influences. In D&D this equated to all folks using a d20 to hit but some allowed no racial/level limits, some used Method V for rolling characters, some used Wolfgang Baur's Paths of Magic article from Dragon...all was D&D but each DM or gaming group adopted their own variations.

While this level of modification is allowable in today's PF world the intertwined aspect of the OGL makes adding or subtracting things more complex in that you have to do some litmus tests on your modifications, i.e. by removing a rule or option what downstream impacts may it bring forward. It mostly affects using pre-written material that does not follow your tweaks and thus increases prep time to modify the material to fit your variants.

I apologize for the stream of consciousness post but it's early and I haven't had my coffee yet.

Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Games
(gaming since 1979 or thereabouts)

This weekend I'm kicking off The Stolen Lands with a small group. I'll be using the Warpath rules to enhance the storyline a bit.

The first scenario will actually feature Oleg from quite a few years ago. He was originally a private in the Brevoy army (Restov Regulars). The battle takes place at an outpost on near the southern edge of Rostland (not suprisingly the same location that Oleg returns to years later to make his trading post).

There I will introduce them to some Iobarian barbarians who are searching for something (a precursor to a later encounter).

I'm thinking that the fort will house approximately 40 regulars with a small force of 10 mounted calvalry vs. 20 barbarian warriors, 10 war dogs, and a druid.

Oleg will survive as a plot device to later return as he either:

1) Remembers with fondness the time that the Regulars defended the borders from barbarians (but also the friends that he lost) or,
2) Returns to the place that so many of his friends died and in their honor opens this trading post in their memory.

Having the players run both sides I'll include background information on each of the goals and hopefully get the group more involved in the whole storyline.

I'll post stat cards later as I crunch through the Warpath rules.

You could always run a generational game and have pre-gens. The first group plays the one's farthest in the past. The next adventure features the children or maybe the next generation of heroes from wherever the adventure is set. The last adventure is farther in the future and the "big bad" is still roaming the land.

You could spread out the timespan even farther so while the players who were part of the previous adventure get a chuckle out of NPC's regailing what the "heroes of old" did...even though some of the facts may now be embelished or outright wrong.

Later,

Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Games

The problem is that because the roster of players may change, I'd like the parties to start out fresh each morning rather than follow a single linear plot over the three days.

Cheers

Here's one (with the three variations) of the handouts that kick off the Skinsaw Murders - Your Lordship notes from Hemlock - page 10. I used some of the background splatters from the adventure itself - thanks Paizo!

Later,

Greg Volz
Natural Twenty Gaming
www.naturaltwenty.com

I probably mentioned this before but my son made an aasimar crusader of Sarinrae. We just started last night and the odd looks that he's been receiving from the locals started to creep him out. I even had an old woman come up to him with a small shears asking for a lock of his hair.

He was raised at Windsong Abbey under much different conditions and was sent as a representative of the Abbey for the Swallowtail Festival/re-dedication.

The players were also very interested in the theft of Tobyn's bones (with much referense to "Tobyn's Spirit Guide") and Naffer informed them of Nualia and how Rayn (my son's PC) could be a brother to Nualia.

The elven cleric in the group was also informed by Father Vantus of Nualia's past and fateful demise.

Later,

Greg Volz