Warped Savant's page

We finished the Shadow Lodge War portion of my (super) truncated version of the Grandmaster Torch Saga!
The group was surprised to learn the history of GMT and had a lot of fun fighting the Red Mantis assassins. After everything was finished there was a celebration put on by the Decemvirate and during the party a few different offers were made to each member of the group.
They were each offered being promoted to Venture-Captains, the Taldor PC found out she had managed to manipulate things so that she replaced her original faction leader, the Andoran PC was offered a captaincy of a ship, and Amenopheus offered the Osirian a chance to search for any remaining Sage Jewels.

Before we get to Destiny of the Sands and then important Jewelled Sages scenarios I'll be running a Shadow Lodge epilogue for them to go off and rescue Eliza Petulengro by playing through a slightly modified version of "Abducted in Aether" (I didn't have her come back after she disappeared in Eyes of the Ten)

My thought with offering promotions is so that they aren't as active in the field as normal, which is why I'll be able to pass a year between each of the scenarios I'm planning on running (Destiny of the Sands all count as 1 in my mind). And with the Osirian accepting Amenopheus' offer it doesn't matter that the Eagle Knight took the Captaincy and therefore won't be much of a Pathfinder going forward.

I'm DMing Legendary Planet. Players are at 16th level. This one goes to 20.

How is it?

Warped Savant wrote:

Do most / any of the others know how it ends?

More or less.

This is mostly the same group that played through two APs (Giantslayer and Shattered Star, alternating books and GMs) in PFS-mode a few years ago. We filled in some gaps in level advancement with parts of Emerald Spire, PFS scenarios, and a high-level module or two, and ended up reaching 19th level at the end. (A subset of us reached 20th later after one last PFS special that had no upper limit.)

Part of the PFS content we used was Passing the Torch, because it was Seeker tier, and still relatively new at the time. However, those PCs had never met Torch before, so most of the relevant backstory was lost on them. (I believe that all of the players had had experiences with Torch, with other PCs, so out of character, we all had our own thoughts about him.)

We're all very curious how PTT will turn out this time around. At least a couple of the players despise Torch out of character, while another (my wife) generally dislikes him but has been much more sympathetic since playing the scenario where you finally learn about his early history. (That one is coming up next level, shortly before PTT.)

I meant to reply the other day...

It would've been weird to play through PTT without having much context as to who Torch was.
Similarly, I think my group will have a very different opinion of Torch due to me taking out some of the later scenarios (EG: Assault on Absalom) and adding in the Sage Jewel scenarios as he's involved in them in a non-antagonistic way. Plus, playing up the enemies from the Shadow Lodge as a splinter-cell of extremists because, right now, the players realize that the Shadow Lodge has good beliefs but the WORST leaders and are going about things completely wrong.

I could be wrong, but I think:
Emerald Spire (entire book is one connected dungeon)

Shattered Star (entire AP is mostly one huge dungeon?)

Scarwall Castle (book 5 of Curse of the Crimson Throne) is a massive castle

Briarstone Asylum (book 1 of Strange Aeons) is a large building

The final book of Mummy's Mask is a series of dungeons in one place, if that counts?

The final book of Kingmaker, but that's a demiplane rather than a dungeon

I assume, that the charisma modifier of the admiral is added to each squadrons base morale value. Is that correct?

The rules do not specify. I'm guessing it was lost in editing.

Admiral: Commander of a single fleet. An admiral influences a fleet’s morale score and determines the fleet’s maximum size.

Commodore: Commander of a single squadron. A commodore primarily influences a squadron’s Attack Value and Defense Value.

Step 3—Select Commodore: List the name of the squadron’s commodore, along with her Charisma modifier and Profession (sailor) skill modifier. An admiral can never serve as a commodore. If a commodore is also a significant character (either a PC or a significant named NPC), that squadron gains a +2 bonus on all attack rolls, damage rolls, and morale checks. (As a general rule, most NPC fleets should have 2–4 significant named NPCs serving as commodores.)

Page 66 of The Price of Infamy wrote:

Step 9—Determine Morale Check: A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its commodore’s Charisma modifier, further modified by flagship boons and the presence of significant commodores.

My guess is that page 66 is supposed to be "...A squadron’s base morale check is equal to its admiral’s Charisma modifier..."

Either that, or you have to change the line "An admiral influences a fleet’s morale score and determines the fleet’s maximum size." to "An admiral determines the fleet’s maximum size." (which seems kind of lame... base morale off of admiral's charisma makes more sense to me.

OPINION:
Morale checks will decide the battle more than attacks. Honestly, I took them out of my game because otherwise, when I ran a few tests, nearly every ship fled after a couple of hits / after a couple of rounds and it would've been disappointing to my group. I wanted the enemy to be willing to risk it all to win.

Yeah, she is! (If you want her to be)

One of the PCs in my game offered her a ridiculous amount of money halfway through the fight against the Scorched Hand so she flipped sides (Velriana had already been carelessly casting AoE spells that Idorii was caught in). Afterwards, Idorii was a mercenary that popped up frequently enough and the PC and her used each other as fun distractions.

I keep added or removing scenarios from my Grandmaster Torch / Shadow Lodge / Jewelled Sages non-PF campaign! (List in my profile behind spoiler tag is my current plan)
Reminder: because the game system I'm using doesn't have levels and instead simply uses "enemy difficulty" I'm able to put in whatever I want.

Eyes of the Ten went great, with the group trapping Adril in an Ioun stone and having him over to the Decemvirate.
Year of the Shadow Lodge and Shadows Fall on Absalom, combined with what they saw of the Decemvirate in Eyes of the Ten has the group questioning how good the Decemvirate are and also if the Shadow Lodge is actually all that bad. They've kind of clued in that there are extremists, but that some of what they're fighting for isn't all that bad... which is promising for the end of the season, and then leading into the Jewelled Sages storyline. (And they miss Grandmaster Torch... they're surprised he hasn't shown up lately.)

When I first read the "Heresy of Man" trilogy I absolutely loved it but realized that the PCs are assumed to have done something between scenarios 1 and 2.
It's way out of order but it was easy to insert anyways, so I put in the main adventure part of "Faithless and Forgotten, Part I: Lost Colony of Taldor". To do this, I ran the entire scenario for "Heresy of Man, Part I: The First Heresy", had the PCs get down to Wadi al-Hesr where they met up with Obo, who replaced Zefiro Balinger as the quest-giver, and the PCs were sent west to ruins near the Chelaixan region of Kharijite. (Cheliax is trying to claim that the ruins are ancient Taldan and therefore they should own that area as well). And then, obviously, instead of the ending in Lost Colony of Taldor the PCs returned to Obo and then The Heresy of Man, Part II will happen.

OH! And the group learning one of the faction leaders was a traitor was AMAZING! Especially since the one that realized it is from the faction of the traitor!!!

Dragon78 wrote:

Now that you say that, there might be even less people on this site when you take multiple accounts into....account.

Actually, isn't this all "sock puppets" of one person?

We're all just secret accounts of an Angry Bag, right?

I'm with Chuck Mount... a lot of this REALLY depends on the rest of the group.
If they're not even close to this one player in power the one player should fix their character and build it as per the rules because I can very nearly guarantee the rest of the players don't like playing with her.

Otherwise, build a custom mythic enemy that can use timestop on everyone else and make a custom magic spell or cursed item (because you've allowed her to create custom things she doesn't have a leg to stand on if she tries to say it's not fair that you did it) that reduces her to a regular character instead of this giant ball of misunderstanding (or cheating) cheese that she's created* that way it was done "in the story"

*(and, sadly, that you've allowed her to create and continue to play for the past year?!? Seriously, have you spoken with the group? Are they all having fun? If you haven't yet, talk to them all separately to hopefully get honest answers out of each of them.)

Warped Savant wrote:

A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me.

You can check out Curtain Call, you do end up in Vyre but the player's guide mentions this is not an AP for the Hell's Rebels and not to rely on them for help as NPC's, "Curtain Call is not their story."

My local shop is getting the 3 books in for me next week!

(And I wouldn't want it to be a continuation of Hell's Rebels / I wouldn't want it to involve the previous heroes.)

I am VERY excited to read this adventure!!
My players pretty frequently talk about missing Vyre and wanting me to run an adventure that takes place there.

Or was your attention elsewhere?..

I had to make sure none of the ... foreign objects in the water made their way over to me!

I think if you're using PF1 adventures with a different system (or vice versa), that's close enough for government work. Whereas AbV is neither designed for PF1 nor being run with it.

I, at least, would be like to keep hearing about what you're doing....

That was my thought too. And thanks! It's good to see that people enjoy it :D

***************

I realized the other day that Eyes of the Ten should all be played right after each other instead of delayed like the releases were. I ran the first part, then started City of Strangers, then realized my error.
So I'm going to run the second part of City of Strangers then back to finish Eyes of the Ten.

I've added a full list of the scenarios I'm planning on running, and the order I'm doing it in (which is, essentially, the order they were released) in my profile, behind a spoiler tag due to how many there are.

(the other is Abomination Vaults, but obviously that is outside the scope of this thread.

I was going to ask "how come?" and then realized this is supposed to be for PF1 campaigns.

Meanwhile I've been posting about using a non-Pathfinder system, but using PF1 PFS scenarios to create the campaign soooo.... I'm just gonna keep posting my updates every once in awhile anyways :)

Warped Savant wrote:

A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me.

You can check out Curtain Call, you do end up in Vyre but the player's guide mentions this is not an AP for the Hell's Rebels and not to rely on them for help as NPC's, "Curtain Call is not their story."

Oh! OH!!!!

I'm going to have to look into that now. Thank you, Niktorak!

Do you prefer:

Not Sequels

As a GM, I like tying things in to each other. (EG: Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale & Realm of the Fellnight Queen into Kingmaker, Academy of Secrets into Curse of the Crimson Throne) but I'm also a GM that wants to put the players through the introductory story first. The main reason I bought Crimson Throne was so that I could run The House on Hook Street.

I seem to be one of the few people that didn't like Rise of the Runelords and because of not running it for my group I wouldn't run Shattered Star or Return of the Runelords. Even if it's not needed, it feels like the players would be missing things / call-backs due to not having played Rise.

So, mostly, I'd cast my vote for "not sequels".

Now, that being said, Seers of the Drowned City was written as an indirect sequel to Ire of the Storm and you could run either of those and never realize that the second was written with the first a little bit in mind. But Seers feels more like a "theme / tone" sequel that happens in kind of the same area of the world so has some connective tissue instead of there being throwbacks to Ire of the Storm. That kind of "Indirect Sequel" would be fine, but it's so indirect it may as well count as not a sequel.

I guess more of a "takes place after the events of another AP / module happened" is something that could work. A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me, something like The House on Hook Street is fantastic (I really didn't NEED to run Crimson Throne first, but I wanted the group to understand the city as much as possible), The Witchwar Legacy having ties to Reign of Winter was great. The difficulty with writing that type of adventure, though, is that you don't know what the groups did / what the area looks like after the AP is concluded. Vyre, for example, you could touch on NPCs from Hell's Rebels but those NPCs shouldn't be important enough that they can't be replaced by another NPC / by a PC in case they died / lost their political position during the course of the AP. (EG: The Mask of Vyre that was used in Hell's Rebels... perhaps the group didn't like her and managed to overthrow her so she shouldn't be written as a main NPC. The other Masks might've been overthrown as well due to the GM adding things or the group going really off-book but you can't account for that so you have to assume they're still in power. A module with the King of Keys, cult of the main bad guys in the city, and the prison there would result in me switching my group over to PF2 in a heartbeat.

Do point out to them that he has extensive burn scars. I don't know much about proper burn care IRL, but the affected area needs to be kept clean, and IIRC, some of these scenarios refer to oils, unguents, etc., that he also uses; some might be administered via bath.

Also, IMHO, meeting people in bathhouses has become an affectation for Torch. His injuries unsettle people, and the juxtaposition of physical vulnerability and Torch's aura of being all-knowing make for some delicious cognitive dissonance.

Oh, they are definately a little creeped out by him always being in the bath, especially when he invited them to join him in the bathhouse. :)

Torch involves himself in the Scarab Sages' business more and more as that faction's story grows, so these are highly appropriate to include.

That's what I figured, yeah.

This does hurt my head a bit, given the huge level jump involved for anyone playing these by standard PF rules.

With the system I'm using, it kind of comes down to enemies having 3 levels of difficulties so as long as you roll good enough on 3-9 D6s you've hit them, and they need to be hit 3 times. (Defending against them is much the same). So it is very different than pretty much any other system I've seen.

As you said, foreshadow main villain more. Alternatively, you remove all hints of her and replace them with hints that it's Pitax and end the game with book 5. (If you do this, hints should imply that there's humanoids / someone smarter than the enemies that is coordinating the attacks. If you foreshadow Nyrissa, enemies having locks of green hair works, combined with denizens of the Stolen Lands making references about her with nicknames or some big threat to the lands or something.)

Dudemeister has amazing changes to tie things together a little better, and his changes to mass combat make it less of a risk early on but later-game combats take FOREVER so if you use those rules you may want to roll it all between sessions.

Main Advice directly connected to Kingmaker:
Pre-roll the random kingdom events! That way you can foreshadow them or possibly connect them together instead of trying to retcon things so that they make more sense.

I've run a few APs for my group and, for a new GM, I can't stress enough how great Mummy's Mask is. Seriously, if you want to run an AP instead of modules I suggest this one. Pretty linear campaign that switches things up enough that it stays entertaining and fun. The BBEG is mentioned pretty early and you very slowly learn more and more about him. Reading other reviews had me wary, but it's not all traps everywhere and the types of undead change so that it never feels like you're just hacking away at the same enemies over and over and over and over again. Super fun, great AP to run as written and pretty easy to follow along with what's happening. It's also easy to run the first two or four books if you want and it would feel like a full campaign, which is also why I suggest it to new GMs. (GMs would just need to remove minor connective tissue to the next book and the players wouldn't know that the campaign was cut short)

It's so much fun! Ancient Egypt inspired setting, zombies, mummies, skeletons, nearly every kind of undead you can think of!

(The Mummy's Mask board on here is pretty quiet, not because it's not a good AP, but because there's not much say about it / GMs don't have many questions / people aren't looking for advice on how to make it better or fix things)

***

Or, if you go with what Andostre suggested and look at modules, the three he listed (Crypt of the Everflame, Masks and Golden Death) are pretty good.

I prefer The Dragon's Demand because it feels more "classic". It's levels 1-7 and you get to fight a dragon at the end!

Ire of the Storm is also really good. They play through levels 1-5, there's wilderness exploration involved, going through ruins, and stopping an evil cult.

PLUS! If you like it, there's also Seers of the Drowned City which is thematically (and a little conceptually) connected to Ire of the Storm, and they start at level 6 in the same area. It was written to be a sequel to Ire and works pretty well at it.

Because I've needed a change from Pathfinder and wanted to use a much more simple system, but I love Paizo adventures, I'm now running "The Grandmaster Torch Chronicles" using the PFS Scenarios listed by Tim Emrick HERE but using a system called Broken Compass (which will transfer over to Outgunned: Adventure once those books are out).
So, with the system being called Broken Compass but it's Pathfinder scenarios we've decided it's "Broken Wayfinder"
First session, PFS 00-01, went really well! Converting on the fly was easy, players liked / are curious about Grandmaster Torch, 3 players played through the entire scenario within 3 or 4 hours, which is much nicer than me running a PF Adventure Path for 6+ hours a week.

I don't know if the simplicity of the system will be appealing enough to keep it fun for months on end, but we'll see how it goes!

Warped Savant wrote:

Tim Emrick wrote:

Torch/Shadow Lodge Campaign

Hi Tim, sorry, one other question for you... Are there any of these scenarios that you would count as filler / that you would take out if levelling didn't matter? (I assume the four level 1 scenarios aren't part of the story based on your comment, but I'm curious about the rest.)

There were a number of 1st-level scenarios that mention the Shadow Lodge but don't have very much to do with it, so we decided to play some repeatables instead for that level. So, yes, that level was filler.

Night March of Kalakamedes is filler, and once that was added, Valley of Veiled Flame was added because of how its reward interacts with the former scenario's.

Beyond that, I'd have to do some digging through our group's discussion to figure that what else was filler.

IIRC, the player who worked out the initial draft found most of his information by combing through scenario tags for "Shadow Lodge" and using PathfinderWiki to identify all of Torch's appearances.

Awesome, thanks, Tim!

Quote:

Torch/Shadow Lodge Campaign

(roughly chronological within subtier; multi-table specials not included do to logistics)
Lv 1: 5-08, 6-10, 9-16, and Murder's Mark (all slow)
Lv 2: 0-01, 0-14, 1-45
Lv 3: 2-15, 2-17, 2-19
Lv 4: 3-01, 3-18, 4-19
Lv 5: 9-04, 5-12, 5-15
Lv 6 5-16, 2-23, 2-24, 4-21, 4-23, 9-21 (all slow)
Lv 7: 2-06, 2-07, 2-09
Lv 8: 3-12, 3-14, 4-03
Lv 9: 4-22, 4-24, 2-25, 6-07 (first 2 slow)
Lv 10: 2-04, 2-26, 3-20, 3-22 (last 2 slow)
Lv 11: 4-12, 4-20, 9-07
Lv 12: 9-25, 10-22, 10-23

Where only one part of an arc was tagged Shadow Lodge, we tweaked the schedule to fit in the whole arc. Between those additions, and the number of relevant scenarios at that level, we're currently playing all of 6th level in slow mode. (We are doing 2-24 tonight.)

Level 1 is mostly repeatable filler. We avoided quests because you have to play pregens for those, and we only wanted to play our new, weird PCs.

Hi Tim, sorry, one other question for you... Are there any of these scenarios that you would count as filler / that you would take out if levelling didn't matter? (I assume the four level 1 scenarios aren't part of the story based on your comment, but I'm curious about the rest.)

...which is essentially a curated history of Torch's involvement in PFS plot lines (occasionally out of chronological order due to level tiers), with Passing the Torch as our final adventure at level 12. This one is more round-robin, with the five of us having aporoximately the same number of scenarios to run over the course of the campaign. We are 6th level now, having recently completed the Destiny of the Sands trilogy, and will be finishing Shadow's Last Stand next week.

You don't happen to have a list of all of the scenarios your group is playing through, do you?

I'm not ready to run a full adventure path again yet, but I have an experiment in mind that will involve PFS scenarios* and what you're doing sounds like it could work out really well for what I wanted to try, which also allows for me to run the scenarios in chronological order if I choose as levels won't matter.

*I don't know which ones yet; I'm hoping to find a bunch I can string together into some sort of story, which is why what you're doing sounds pretty perfect to me.

My first post was back in 2017 and I had already been running Kingmaker for a year. While I was running that I heavily lurked before posting anything, and I had been very occasionally lurking since around 2013, I think?

I've never been super active, but I'm slowly regressing back to being a lurker :)

Warped Savant wrote:

That being said, I think Hell's Rebels does the same type of story much better, but can be a lot more nuanced and more role-play heavy than some groups would like / it might not be what new players or groups expect, especially if they're more into fighting.

Curse benefits from its authors having a rather better sense of the society they were creating and its implications for what an overthrow and replacement of tyrannical power would look like in its context than Rebels does. You have to do quite a bit more detective work into Ravounel's society than you do Korvosa's to get a good sense of it (or rely on these forums to do it for you which, to be fair, we have). This is a problem not just for verisimilitude, but because it leaves internal faction management -- what should be a high priority for leaders of a mass party uniting everyone from the despised and otherized proletarians of Devil's Nursery to the most august if liberal personages of the Court of Coin on the basis of lowest-common-denominator politics -- completely unexplored.

Yeah.... I didn't have those problems with Hell's Rebels.

Did your group not enjoy Hell's Rebels, zimmerwald?

Of the ones you have, Curse of the Crimson Throne is, I think, one of the better ones for new groups as it's relatively straight-forward and has a good mix of RP and fighting.
That being said, I think Hell's Rebels does the same type of story much better, but can be a lot more nuanced and more role-play heavy than some groups would like / it might not be what new players or groups expect, especially if they're more into fighting.

Of the rest of the ones you have listed, Mummy's Mask is a GREAT AP for a new GM / new players to start with.
Not many chances for role-playing, but the story flows really well, doesn't need any modifications, and it's easy to wrap the game up early at the end of either books 2 or 4 if the group isn't working out / you're not enjoying being a GM. (The Mummy's Mask board on here is pretty quiet, not because it's not a good AP, but because there's not much say about it / GMs don't have many questions / people aren't looking for advice on how to make it better or fix things)

I'm with you, it would be nice to see them put up more AP books.
I'd pick up all of Carrion Crown, but only books 1, 2, 4, & 6 are available.

Would love to hear how everyone used The Witchwar Legacy as a 7th adventure? I haven't read it yet so maybe it's obvious if I do.

For Witchwar Legacy I gave them a Mythic rank and had Kostchtchie recreating Rasputin's body in the final place in Witchwar Legacy which he was going to use to manifest himself on Golarion. Don't forget, Kostchtchie is based off of real-world Koschei, so Rasputin knows him as Koschei.

Overall AP Schemes, adding on The Witchwar Legacy:
Kostchtchie wants Baba Yaga out of the way.
He goes to Rasputin and promises to elevate him to if he can lock her up.
Rasputin gets Elvanna to help in return for the promise of her ruling all of Golarian and gaining their mother's power.
She's doing the ritual that's going to cover the planet in snow, which is giving Kostchtchie more power.
Since Rasputin died Kostchtchie has started to recreat his body in The Witchwar Legacy and is planning on possessing Rasputin's body as a way to return to Golarian.
Baba Yaga knows where Kostchtchie will be reborn as she knows where the Torc is, and is therefore where Rasputin's body is being recreated. She'll only tell the group if they release her from the matryoshoka doll. (Which has the added benefit of putting more pressure on the group to release her instead of the group deciding "no, I'm pretty sure we can figure out another way to stop Elvanna afterall")
(But I don't remember how I let the group realize Kostchtchie was going to be reborn on Golarion. Maybe Rasputin said that he'd be reborn on "your world" as he thought he would be and didn't know that Kostchtchie was usurping those plans, so for all of book 6 and then The Witchwar Legacy the group thought they had to stop Rasputin at the end but when they got there the body was an algamation of both of them?)

THIS POST of mine has other changes I made in the campaign I ran.

Book 3 was so incredibly long... At some point they had done like 2/3 of the adventure but thought that they were like at the end of the first dungeon of three. In retrospect it was a very bad idea, since the players thought it was too long and dragging on.

Something to help with this (because I didn't let the players know how far along they were at all) is to have each of the dungeons mood and descriptions feel very different from each other so they might realize that it's three inconnected ones.

Book 4 is really disconnected from the rest of the adventure path. The final dungeon is very cool and a nice boss fight, and the siege is nice too.

Just as warped Savant said, On the siberian line is a freakin masterpiece and fits perfectly between book 4 and 5. (I asked my players if they wanted to do a nice sidequest that would suspend XP progression, everyone agreed and everybody enjoyed the adventure).

However, adding on the siberian line makes this AP a 7 modules adventure, which is getting long. Maybe shorten book 4, so it doesn't feels stretched.

My players really liked book 4 so we ended up to stretch it out a little / they took time off after everything was finished in the final dungeon in order to explore the world more and so they could be celebrated for the heroes they are (which doesn't happen enough in this AP so the happiness and merriment was a nice distraction. (I ignored the gaes 'cause i didn't like the idea of it and I knew the players that took on the Black Mantle* wouldn't drag there feet with getting things done so it felt unneccessary.)

*One of my players refused the Black Mantle knowing that it meant he wouldn't get +2 to a stat of his choice.

I liked Siberian Line enough that after buying the PDF I decided I wanted the physical book enough to order it off of drivethruRPG. I cannot express how much I like that module.
I use milestone levelling so XP wasn't a problem, and the players know I add stuff so levels are sometimes longer than they would normally be. I think I had them start the book (in the hut) as level 13, levelled to 14 at the end of Siberian line, then went with the spots listed in the AP.
And I ended up to add The Witchwar Legacy to the end of the campaign, making it nearly 8 modules long :)
(For Witchwar Legacy I gave them a Mythic rank and had Kostchtchie recreating Rasputin's body in the final place in Witchwar Legacy which he was going to use to manifest himself on Golarion)... Here, I'll put the plot details I used for that behind a spoiler:
(Don't forget, Kostchtchie is based off of real-world Koschei, so Rasputin knows him as Koschei.)

Honestly, with how it's written, books 3, or 4 could be taken out. I don't suggest that, mind you, I think they're all a blast but, yeah, there's not much connective tissue between them.

For advice:
The AP requires buy-in from your players. It's about helping someone evil in order to stop someone that's more evil. (I played Baba Yaga's evil sort of a "teaching people lessons even if it kills them" type of character). It's okay if not everyone wants is eager to help her, but they have to understand that it's neccessary. (My group wasn't sure if one of the PCs was going to attack her at the end, two of the other PCs wanted to join her, and if it came down to a PvP fight no one was sure which characters the fourth PC would side with. And it worked GREAT! There wasn't inter-party fighting but there was tension.)

The weather rules as written can kill your group at the Winter Portal. I always suggest the expanded weather rules in Ultimate Wilderness. And don't play the enemies to their maximum potential. It will be a frustrating fight that people (probably) don't enjoy, and has a decent chance of being a TPK or causing the group to have to flee even if they are fully prepared. (Also, the snow is meant to be a pain at first and then the PCs will find ways to overcome it. Be glad when they do because it's annoying to deal with all the time.)

I ran it on a VTT and the paperminis have (what I consider) to be pretty nice art and made it easier than searching for images for the tokens.

The PCs should go to level 2 directly after the lodge (it's poorly worded in the book) and some people have suggested to level the party BEFORE the lodge because of how deadly it can be.

For book 2, write out a timeline of the events and encounters as they're blended in together in-game but separate in the book.

Book 3 was pretty straightforward but with a confusing dungeon, I think. The fight at the pit in book 3 was nearly a TPK so watch for that. (And book 3 can age PCs and give them negatives if they're not careful.)

Book 4 likely has the PCs go through a tunnel but doesn't really describe the end. I think there was an important item in the book and I made it so that it could heat up and melt the ice at the end.

The most exciting book (book 5) is fantastic but nearly right away falls into feeling like it could take place on Golarion. To fix that, pick up On the Siberian Line. Trust me. Action, intrigue, spies, fighting on train roofs! One of the best add-ins I've ever read. The players learning where they were before they left the house had such a great reaction we had to take a break for a little while before continuing. PCs hearing the "loud drone of possibly giant dragonflies" shortly after they left the hut had them confused until the bi-plane came into view.

"Rasputin" was reputed to mean "the debauched one" so when his name would first appear I used the meaning rather than his direct name (because translation magic doesn't neccessarily understand proper nouns (and that way it was more fun when they first faced him).

I LOVED book 6 and I know at least some people on here will disagree with me. But the atmosphere of it, the calmness, the otherwordliness... I thought it was great. It tied in to Baba Yaga's origin and it made sense even if it wasn't some huge, dramatic, epic place.

Trap for the players to watch out for: Winter Witch or ice-based casters / weapons feel thematically appropriate but are a terrible choices as too many things are immune to cold.

My party just mutinied in Skull & Shackles, taking out Plugg and Scourge. Just as a storm is about to hit, next stop Bonewrack Island.

Fantastic!

Oh... oh that's a tough one...
Scarwall in Crimson Throne is incredible. It's such a large, classic feeling castle.

Misgivings from Rise of the Runelords fit in really well to my version of Crimson Throne and the players all loved how creepy it was. I left the haunts but took out all of the fights, which really unsettled them because it's Pathfinder so they were expecting to fight ghosts and what-not.

But, as Yakman said, Briarstone Asylum in Strange Aeons is the winner for me. It's so large, filled with so many different things, different styles of encounters, great atmosphere to it... Really well done.

there's also a ton of really fun humanoid villains who you can sprinkle into RP sessions before your Silver Ravens run into them. The Gardener in particular might be a wonderful addition to Books 2 & 3 before he's encountered in Book 4.

My group had either heard about, saw, or interacted with nearly every single enemy a book or two before they were introduced as written.

I think Skull & Shackles has a lot of potential for great roleplaying, especially in the first book.

Skull & Shackles has way more potential for political intrigue than people give it credit for. The PCs can affect a worldl of change in the Shackles.

To the OP: don't believe what you hear about Hell's Rebels. It is very much a traditionally combat-focused game, and the cast of NPCs who matter is actually vanishingly small.

I'm a year and a half late but, oh man, do I ever disagree with you on this one.

NPCs that featured prominently throughout the Hell's Rebels game I ran included:
Laria, Hetamon, Zea, Raenna Solstine's grandchildren (I introduced them in book 1), Setrona, Blosodriette, Vendalfek, Octavio, Marquel, Strea, Luculla, Tiarise (also introduced her in book 1), of course Thrune (but that's a given), as well as a few I added in like the previous duxotar of the Dottari.
Hell, even Odexidie made a few appearances after the initial encounter he's introduced in.

Warped Savant wrote:

You clearly think rolling is better.

Why would you think that?

I am talking about point buy within the conext of your system. I had thought that was obvious since this is a thread about your system.

The fundamental trait of point buy is minmaxing.

I disagree but it's a matter of opinion and I'm not going to attempt to change yours.

...there is a difference between between being wrong in a very limited context vs being wrong on a general holistic level.

Yes. And you're telling them they're playing wrong in a limited context. You're telling them they're playing wrong.

...just like you wouldn't ask an average 5 year old to critique particle physics research papers

I've never read SW so I have no opinion on it, but we're not 5 year olds and your system isn't anywhere as complex as particle physics.

The only players who understand that style of play are those that introduced me to gaming and those I introduce to gaming. Everyone else gets offended and hostile.

Yeah, okay. You think the people that taught you how to play and that people you have taught to play are the only people that know the intended way to play.

I've wasted too much time on this conversation already; I'm out.

Awhile ago I made it so that the items that "everyone needs" can get a second enchantment / can be put onto another item that takes up the same slot without adding on 50% of the new enchantment. (Or that you could essentially wear one of the main items and another item in the same slot without one of them being cancelled out and we would just pretend that the two items got combined... no one worried about the specifics 'cause they liked the idea of being able to use a cloak of elvenkind while still having a cloak of resistance)

Cloak of Resistance + any other cloak = Cost of both items
Headband of [Mental Stat(s)] + any other headband = Cost of both items
Belts of [Physical Stat(s)] + any other belt = ...you get the point
Ring of Protection + any other ring
Amulet of Natural Armor + any other amulet

That way all of the other cloaks, belts, amulets, etc that the group found and would be useful were actually used instead of "sell it 'cause my cloak of resistance is too important"

For neat or in-character interesting items that someone wants even if there's no benefit in game to it (EG: "You find a really nice writing set worth 250 gold") my group has always said "yeah, keep it" when a PC wants it and moves on.
No, they don't track how much value of treasure anyone has taken compared to everyone else, no they don't make the cost of an RP-only item come out of their share of the loot once it's divided.
When they find their first +2 ring of protection they figure out who likely needs it the most, that character takes it, and their +1 ring of protection is passed down to another PC if they don't have one. (If everyone has a +1 already the no-longer-needed one goes onto the loot list and gets sold). But if someone is buying a +2 Ring of Protection their either selling or upgrading their +1. (Sometimes the players will ask each other if anyone needs it, but usually they're too excited about their upgrade and don't think of it / they need the money from the sale in order to afford the new one).

I've played in a group where someone recorded what he bought versus what we found. Found treasure would go to whoever needed it the most, but if we found something that was an upgrade to something he bought he'd take the new one, keep the original and sell it next time we were in town instead of giving it to someone that would benefit from it. (Or he'd offer to sell it to them at the sale price.)
It was weird. Not something I had experienced before, and not something I'd knowingly do again. Yes, it's a game of math, but I don't want to be that much of an accountant.

Thanks, guys! I appreciate the comments.

Thank you for sharing your adventure here. Much appreciated ᕙ(⦿‿⦿)ノ‍☠️

I've seen a few different people over the years try to work Smuggler's Shiv and Plunder & Peril into Skull & Shackles without people really finding a solid way to do it, which is what prompted me to lay my thoughts out.

*round of applause and an extra rum ration for your crew!*

Seeing your changes, and the help you gave me all those years ago, while I was running Kingmaker is what inspired me and gave me the confidence that I could merge all of these campaigns together and make the changes required.

Diego Rossi wrote:

You get false positives.

No, you do not get false positives, the spell "Detect Evil" Specifically reveals if the target has an Evil Aura or not, this aura is based on their HD and actual alignment. The only way you get false positives are with the target having certain feats and/or spells, items on them. Their current thoughts or intents have absolutely nothing to do with it, only their actual alignment.

Yes, you can. From Detect Evil: "Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell."

A good person that is really angry about something and thinking about ways to kill someone even if they wouldn't really do it would detect as evil during that time.

From the lawful evil description: "He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank." So someone actively thinking about killing all goblins simply because of their race could detect as evil even if they're a good alignment.

I enjoy playing with, and twisting the ideas of, alignment.
A priestess of Gyronna who will methodically ruin the life of someone that abuses his wife but is highly respected in society so that he wouldn't face repercussions / wouldn't stand trial for it? Yep, that makes sense for the priestess to do but that the players would have a hard time blaming her for it.

People running a protection extortion racket? Yep, evil, but death seems too extreme.

Lawful Evil politician that is doing everything by the proper and good laws is hard to run up and kill without getting people on their side first and even then, that'll likely face consequences due to the politician not breaking any laws.

Senko, your example of the NPC being of unknown alignment, rude, and looked like a monster? I can do one better that I did to my group... NPC was a boggard so looked monstrous. That was it. They killed him from a distance... then the NPC's pet came out from the house and when they got closer they saw the boggard had a smashed up arm... That was one of the first encounters I ever ran for my group and, boy! did they feel bad. Thankfully they quickly learned that NPCs in my games aren't always what they seem.

And we're done!
Last week they fairly quickly took out the admiral and her crew. Afterwards Tessa Fairwind called a meeting of the captains in the fleet and convinced the group of them to pick up as many pirate lords on the way back to Freeport in order to overthrow Kerdak Bonefist due to it, well, being his time to go.
Because the PCs ship was faster than the rest of the fleet the plan was for them load up with as many pirates as they could and to go around wide to Fort Scurvy while the rest of the fleet faced off with whatever ships Bonefist was sure to have in the water.
From there, I ran Fort Scurvy with the small army of pirates breaking down the gates and storming the place. The PCs mowed through the troops, we didn't worry about looting due to the chaos of the fighting, and they weren't focused on killing everyone in the fort. (And, due to them having so many pirates with them, the PCs weren't the target of every single enemy).
They took out some of the siege engine crews to give Tessa's fleet a better chance and happened to find Tsadok Goldtooth. The tracker in the group was able to find tracks leading to the dungeon, fights were had, due to ridiculously high diplomacy rolls and some bribes being paid (and because it was obvious how the fight would go, AND because he had almost never used diplomacy to overcome a fight so I wanted to allow it the chance to work) Horrus Riptooth allowed the PCs to pass.
All of the enemies were as statted in Fort Scurvy (including Goldtooth, Bonefist, and Hyapatia/Typhoon Tess) and the only enemy I kept in from Skull & Shackles was using Brinebones instead of Seagrave 'cause undead bronze dragon seemed more impressive.

As a note, "Ismail Queeg, the Pirate King" from Fort Scurvy probably could've taken the group out in three rounds by focusing fire on a single PC per round. Thankfully the group had tactics that made it better for him to move around even though they couldn't see him so that he was typically only getting one shot off a round, but, oh man, him against 4 level 14 PCs could turn into a TPK really freaking fast! For GMs that decide to use him in the future, maybe take away some of his AC bonuses. (Once the players got off a strong Greater Dispel Magic they were finally able to start to wear him down.

Out of 6 APs this was the fastest we've gone through a book. It was only 3 sessions, 6 hours long each, but was also one of the closest fights we've had, both with the fleet battle and then against the Hurricane King.

The entire campaign was 42 sessions, 6 hours long each, and out of the 6 APs I've run this is the one I'm most proud of due to how much fun we had and how seamlessly I was able to intertwine all of the different books / modules / adventures together. After the session was finished we sat around chatting and the players started asking what parts were from which books. The looks on their faces when they realized two things they thought were connected were actually from two different adventures was great! It was a lot of work, but it was all definitely worth it.

Is there anything I would've changed?
No, absolutely nothing.
It was beautiful.

Warped Savant wrote:

*In order: Kingmaker, Hell's Rebels, Mummy's Mask, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Reign of Winter, and Skull & Shackles.

Well done. But now this begs the question of how those compared to each other.

I have so many thoughts and they'll all be all over the place and disorganized! (And, TL;DR, I loved them all for various reasons; they all feel very different from each other with Hell's Rebels and Crimson Throne being the two that were the most simliar even though they were distinctly different.)

In order that I ran them:
Kingmaker: I knew that the BBEG was poorly foreshadowed so I looked to the forum and received invaluable advice and changes from DM Dudemeister. I really liked this campaign because of the world-building involved, how much time passed, and that the kingdom felt both important and like another character. Not a campaign I'd suggest for a first time GM as it's super open-world. It took up a lot of my free time as I was constantly going over all of the different places the PCs were likely to go and I am fully aware I constantly over-prepped for this game. All of the APs that came after were much easier to run.

Hell's Rebels: I cannot put into words how beautiful this campaign was. I didn't feel like anything needed to be changed or added. As a warning, GMs should read the entire thing as it (mostly) all takes place in one city and some of the characters, gangs, areas, etc aren't really discussed / fleshed out until later books (EG: A group of tengu are frequently seen on the bridge but there's no mention of them until book 4 or so). Two of my players picked the perfect backstories and it allowed me to connect stuff from later books to their characters. The story is so well connected and the stakes are big enough that so long as the PCs care about the city at all (which is fleshed out well enough that it would be nearly impossible to not care) any non-murderhobo group will thorougly enjoy this game. Manageable for a new GM but there's a lot of moving pieces so it might be over-whelming. An experienced group will get more out of it than a group of new players. Killing everyone when you first encounter them isn't an option, which could be detrimental to some groups. It was also a fairly emotionally campaign for my group and I am super proud of my players for this game as they fully immersed themselves into Kintargo. The events of this AP will stick with us for many years to come.

Mummy's Mask: Great campaign for a new GM and new players! Seriously, any time someone says they're a new GM and they want to run an AP instead of modules I suggest this one. Pretty linear campaign that switches things up enough that it stays entertaining and fun. The BBEG is mentioned pretty early and you very slowly learn more and more about him. Reading other reviews had me wary, but it's not all traps everywhere and the types of undead change so that it never feels like you're just hacking away at the same enemies over and over and over again. Not much room for role-playing, but after how heavy Hell's Rebels was we (especially me) needed something more light-hearted and a game where I didn't have to think like a evil jerk all the time and constantly try to figure out what he would do to the PCs and their allies. Super fun, great AP to run as written and pretty easy to follow along with what's happening. It's also easy to run the first two or four books if you want and it would feel like a full campaign, which is also why I suggest it to new GMs. (GMs would just need to remove minor connective tissue to the next book and the players wouldn't know that the campaign was cut short)

Curse of the Crimson Throne: Oh man, was this a tough one. So, this was my least favourite to run but that was mostly due to circumstances. COVID had started and lockdown made it so that the last few sessions of Mummy's Mask had to be done online. The we started a campaign where a plague hits the city... George Floyd was killed while the AP has the players helping the town guard.... Games are supposed to help people escape; Crimson Throne didn't do that. Yes, they stopped the plague, yes, the city guard really were good guys but... oh man. Bad timing. The story was good, but reality made it less enjoyable.
BUT! Scarwall! Oh man, Scarwall was amazing! Cinderland were good too. It helped that a PC was shoanti. I'm glad I ignored everyone saying to take out or change books 4 and 5.
I also changed how the plague started by using a chapter out of Rise of the Runelords and ran the players through a haunted house. Overall, if someone wants to run an urban campaign look at Hell's Rebels instead, but this was pretty good too. Better for new GMs compared to Hell's Rebels.

Reign of Winter: OMG! Baba Yaga! Russian Fairy Tales! Plane-hopping Chicken Hut!!
I frequently see people say that this AP is a railroad but I.... mostly disagree. It's as much of a railroad as most other APs, really. Yes, you have to go and do certain things to continue but, hey, what campaign doesn't have that? There's a Gaes put on the PCs early on but I ignored that as "if your character doesn't understand why you need to do the thing then either I failed as a GM to explain why it's important or you need to make a character that wants to save the world." I don't want to spoil things just in case people reading this will play through it later so I'll be somewhat vague. Half my group were from Irrisen and were fully on board with getting the final thing that was needed, one was ambivalent about it but knew what needed to be done to save the world, one was vehemently against it to the point that he refused a +2 to any stat for the entire campaign and we thought the game might end with him trying to destroy it once the world had been saved. Even though there was tension among the PCs they all knew what needed to be done and they all fully trusted each other. I really liked the AP as written but added in a module from Legendary Games at the beginning of book 5 to make it better. The in-character group dynamics made this AP really fun to play through, as well as the wonder and excitement at learning about the places they ended up.

Skull & Shackles: We wanted to play this one in person so we had to delay it due to COVID. After playing through two other APs first we finally got to play pirates! The first book sounded way too tedious and second book was too directionless so, as I've previously said, I used Smuggler's Shiv and Plunder & Peril instead. I did more customization for this campaign than I did for Kingmaker, which I didn't think was possible, but it was much easier to do. Even though it's a giant sandbox and the players can go anywhere there's enough of a story to point them in the right direction so that the GM can prevent them from getting too distracted.
I ended up buying a lot for this game and all of it was worth it. (Purchased: All 6 books, Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, Plunder & Peril, Return to Freeport, Freeport: City of Adventure, Fort Scurvy, Map Folio [best map folio! It looks like an old-timey, well-used map!], Isles of the Shackles [indispensable for fleshing things out], Ships of the Inner Sea [not super useful but good for if you want to have unique ships attacking the PCs], Pirates of the Inner Sea.... I think that's it?)
This is the campaign I'm most proud of because of the amount of work I put into it and how well I was able to intertwine the story.

*******************************************************

So, the inevitable "which one was the best?"
Honestly, all of them except Crimson Throne for various reasons. If forced to rank them they would probably be (other than all being tied for 1st):
1) Hell's Rebels because it was truly unique and we had the perfect storm of characters for it
2) Skull & Shackles because it was so much fun and it's a great story
3) Mummy's Mask because straight-forward games are sometimes needed
4) Reign of Winter because of the journey the PCs take and that there was low-level friction between the group even though they knew they all needed to work together
5) Kingmaker because of the large scale of it
6) Crimson Throne has a lot of potential but world events and also adjusting to online made it difficult

Oh man, I could go in to so much more detail on any of these campaigns but I already feel this is too long for most people to read.... If anyone has any questions about any of these APs feel free to ask, I'll talk your ears off.

Skull & Shackles / Smuggler's Shiv / Plunder & Peril / Return to Freeport / Fort Scurvy worked out better than I could've ever anticipated.

After 42 weekly six hour sessions the Shackles has been saved from insidious people and the evil machinations.

It has been absolutely wonderful running this game for my wife and friends, but for now, after 7 years of GMing, 6 Adventure Paths*, 19 modules, and a few PFS scenarios I'm taking a break from GMing for an unknown amount of time.

*In order: Kingmaker, Hell's Rebels, Mummy's Mask, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Reign of Winter, and Skull & Shackles.

I did what Leedwashere details in THIS POST. The group was able to set up sufficent defenses after a few rounds so that by the time any enemies got to them they were able to easily handle them. I ended up running maybe 10 rounds (probably less) of combat and then started to narratively describe what was happening.

The meeting of the Pirate Council really helped to drive home how popular the PCs have become. All of the Pirate Lords arrived, most having to use teleporation to get there. Seeing the players' faces when I said that all 28 Pirate Lords arrived was quite fun, so I'd suggest that to other GMs. A lot of the other captains were swayed into believing that the threat was real but either couldn't get ships to the battle quickly enough, were worried that it was a ruse by Cheliax so sent the fleets to the western end of the Shackles, or were holding back near Drenchport in case the map was wrong and the Chelish armada was going to take a slightly different path. (The last one will help for attacking Bonefist next week, see at the end of this post for what I have planned).

I'll say it again because I've seen some comments on this board about not liking the Fleet Battle rules: We had a lot of fun with them!
They're (mostly) very straight forward, the only confusion for us really stems from Morale and Morale Check being two different things so we've renamed the latter "Loyalty Check" to add some clarity.
We also reduced how often the Loyalty Check has to be made so that it's only done by a squadron on any turn that it has taken half or more of it's maximum hits, or when a ship in that squadron is sunk. (But I think we kept forgetting that second one, which I'm okay with because, really, battles being decided because most people ran away is rather disappointing.)

The Battle of Abendego was MUCH closer than the Battle of Empty Eyes. I upped Tessa's Porfession Sailor from 15 to 21 because if she's to be the next likely candidate for the Hurricane Crown I feel her skill should be a little higher. I also allowed the group to recruit a squadron from Lilywhite because they had impressed Delemona well enough. For it's stats I copied Mephistopheles’ Squadron. Cheliax didn't have the best of tactics, but they weren't holding back much. Mostly, I kept forgetting to use the boons that the NPCs granted and they frequently targetted Tessa's squadron even though, I think, it was the hardest one to hit. Tessa's squadron was also doing the most damage so targetting them didn't feel out of place to anyone.

At the end, 4 of the Chelish squadrons had fled but most of the ships in each squadron had already been sunk and each of the routed squadrons could only take another 1 or 2 hits before being neutralized. The rest of the Chelish squadrons were sunk. (Looking at the map, 3 ships were able to flee the battle, 5 Chelish ships were disabled instead of sunk at the end. The PCs completely lost 5 of 8 of their squadrons, with only Madshank’s Marauders, Fairwind’s Luck, and The Freeport Five (which is a reskinned "Queen Bes’s Own Squadron" because Sandara has been a constant crew member so the 5 captains they recruited in Freeport formed the squadron).

Next week will start with fighting the Chelish Admiral, followed by, presumably, the PCs attacking Fort Scurvy. (Because Bonefist was enough of a jerk the PCs want to take him out of power). Thankfully, even though most of the fleet was wiped out, there's enough Pirate Lords on the PCs side in the waters around Drenchport and on the path to Freeport. The ships they can pick up along the way will be swayed into joining the fight against Bonefist's fleet, which will allow the PCs to take their crew, along with a lot of other pirates from the ships that were lost in the Battle of Abendego, to directly attack Fort Scurvy. With Bonefist being at least a bit of a coward he's hiding in the sea caves beneath his fort instead of taking his ship out to lead his fleet.

Smuggler's Shiv / Skull & Shackles / Return to Freeport has been working perfectly!
Smuggler's Shiv was required to plant the seeds for one of the major confrontations in Skull & Shackles and allow the BBEG to use plots in Return to Freeport,
We've completed Return to Freeport (the later books are easier to shuffle into Skull & Shackles but I was able to use a lot of the stuff throughout the adventure) and are working our way to the end of Skull & Shackles.

I have absolutely loved running this weird, little amalgamation of campaigns.

Today began with the group getting adjusted to being in Dark Freeport. The dim light, as if from a full moon even though there was no moon (nor stars, for that matter) in the sky threw them off a little.
I have it so that there's a decent amount of devils throughout the place and since there's no wildlife, people, waves... no sound of life, everything echoes weirdly and is amplified.

There were some (essentially) random encounters with various devils while the group headed towards the tower that was hundreds of feet tall and had a giant beam of light coming out of it (see book 6 of Return to Freeport; I would've had more devils if the group hadn't teleported back to Freeport as soon as they heard that Lanteri was planning to "bring Freeport to it's knees" (extra week they gained tha tI mentioned 3 posts up)) as that was OBVIOUSLY where Lanteri was doing is evil machinations (spoiler: No, it wasn't :D). I replaced all of the creatures with devils that were statistically similar. (Or, in the case of the Ghawwas Divs, called them "Eukrenos Devils," gave them DR and immunities that devils have instead of the ones they normally have).
Oh, and I placed the tower in Bloodsalt for no apparent reason because I didn't want it on the island that Fort Hazard / Fort Scurvy is on because... I dunno, I just didn't.

At the top they found a sized-large serpentfolk (giant-sized Asaam from Serpent's Skull), and the pit was water instead of sand. I didn't have him step into it and transform; he was using the pit / beam of light as a Gate type of thing that he could call devils through. (Plan is to bring a bunch of devils into Dark Freeport and when the Chelish navy attacks The Shackles Lanteri and his devils walk out into Freeport to assist the navy / bring Freeport under his reign.

Afterwards the group was rather lost as to where to go as they hadn't seen any other lights / signs of life so they tried, assuming she was dead, to send a Sending to Caulky. But she's still alive! She had overheard some of the Norgorberites mention a secret tunnel down near the docks so she told the group to search there and that she was in where the Sea Lord's Palace was supposed to be (that way the group could realize that Lanteri was still in Dark Freeport as they were getting concerned that he was somewhere on the Material Plane and that they had no clue as to where he would be.)

So into the tunnel they went, which they didn't have to fight past the sea serpent nor the deep tiger anemone because I want there to be as little life in Dark Freeport as possible. Mister Clack, the eurypterid, was a great throwback to the eurypterids that woke them up at the very beginning of the campaign especially since, really, getting Lanteri feels like the climax and book 6 is an epilogue. I like the zenness of eurypterids being there at the beginning and right before the end.

They've taken out the Norgorber cultists and next week they'll start searching the place.

But we've finished Return to Freeport! Now we have a bit of book 5 of Skull & Shackles left, followed by the first part of book 6, then Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games to finish it all off!

"Plots and Poison" has been dealt with with minimal changes (Zesshessn was replaced with Zarskia Galembar as she survived book 3, but statted as a medium sized The Eel from book 4 because I left out the party on the Island of Empty Eyes, and was exposed as a Serpentfolk when the rogue PC got her with a Dispelling Attack rogue talent.)

Getting to Dark Freeport was also run by the book, which is where the session ended. Next week (possibly the week after) should be a blend of the ending of Return to Freeport and the ending of The Price of Infamy.

I forgot to mention:
If anyone does run Plots and Poison from the 6th book of Return to Freeport (which I highly suggest; it looks to be a great quest), change the skill checks involved in chasing Mr Pinfeather.
I've done at least a half dozen chases / races in various Pathfinder APs and they've always been really good.
This one isn't.
Most of the cards seemed to have two skills that felt too similar and there was a least one card per PC that would be impossible for them to succeed on based on the Pathfinder chase rules.

EG: The first card is either a DC 25 Diplomacy or 28 Intimidate. Two characters had no chance at succeeding at either of those skills meanwhile the face of the party couldn't possibly fail. (I think the 4th character had an okay chance at making the Diplomacy check). But both being Charisma based automatically means some people will be stuck. Another one is Climb or Escape Artist, both of which aren't skills that people invest much into so it's too easy to fail on that one... it's kind of like that. If I had noticed it earlier I would've found either a different chase from another adventure or created my own.

Fleet battle went great! Everyone really enjoyed it, they thoroughly trounced Lanteri's fleet in the span of 3 of 4 rounds. (I get the impression it was easy for them due to having more squadrons than Lanteri... which makes me a little more worried about the upcoming Chelish invasion. I may have to increase how many squadrons they have in that fight.)

While they were celebrating for the night they received a Sending from Caulky again that said "Lanteri said he's going to bring Freeport to its knees; his co-conspirators are a Mr Pinfeather at Black Gull and Captain Cecelia Mawkins in Freepo--AHHHHHHHHH" so, ya know, for some reason they figured they had to get to Freeport right away and teleported there in the morning.
I had decided that the Merrymead Festival (replacing Drac's Fall) would beginn 8 days after the Battle for Empty Eyes as that would give them just enough time to sail to Freeport and put a stop to Lanteri's plans.
Now they have an extra week to do it!

After looking into Pinfeather and Captain Mawkins they knew to check out Drusilla's Draughts. Getting past Drusilla was more complicated than they expected but managed to do it. Now they're in the back area and are about to face off against Zarskia Galembar (from book 3 of Skull and Shackles). I decided that after fleeing from the PCs back then Lanteri started using her for this plan instead. If she had initially been killed I may not be puttinng this part in so I'm really glad she managed to evade the PCs.

...I'm not going to post after every session, but once or twice a book I'll likely talk about the general things that have happened, which will include the changes I've made...

It turns out I was wrong about that one, wasn't I?

Once the campaign is finished I'll likely put up a breakdown of the events level by level with page numbers for each of the books.

We're currently halfway through book 5 of Skull & Shackles as well as about to start book 6 of Return to Freeport. Book 5 of Return to Freeport is too similar to Skull & Shackles but uses a simplified version of ship-to-ship combat to decide where ships are compared to one another*, which I prefer, but makes it so that most of that book doesn't really work with where we're at in the story. The most tempting parts to use are some of the advanced scouts in order to run small fleet battles to get the players used to them but they're heading back to the island of empty eyes where Lanteri's fleet will arrive en masse as oppossed to the two fleets trying to find each other on the open waters. If the PCs were sailing around with a small group of other ships I'd fully add in a small fleet battle, but that's okay. And the rest of my posts in here will get into really heavy spoilers for both adventures so I'll say it again:

THIS ENTIRE THREAD SPOILS SKULL & SHACKLES, RETURN TO FREEPORT, PLUNDER & PERIL, AND SOULS FOR SMUGGLER'S SHIV ABOUT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. DO NOT READ ANY OF THIS THREAD IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING IN ANY OF THESE ADVENTURES.

I did forget to mention a rather fun encounter from Return to Freeport that I added in last session though!
While the group was approaching the Shiv a storm suddenly surrounded them (event F, Return to Freeport, book 5 but moved to directly over them). During the storm Cormoryxial, the cetus, appeared and, because the group wasn't flying the flag of Warvil Lanteri, demanded tribute. The group immediately as expected, realized they were in danger after getting hit a couple of times, shaman tried, unsuccessfully, to baleful polymorph it (because it's funnier that way) and then, on the next round, took advantage of the cetus's weakness to petrification and turned it to stone where it then sunk to the bottom of the ocean and (likely) broke apart into many pieces.

*ship-to-ship combat very nearly always ends in one ship boarding the other and I find the rules of getting to that point boring for most of the group and kind of needless as it's not the type of thing my group enjoys. If your group really likes that stuff, and more advanced ship building rules, I highly suggest looking into Fire as She Bears by Frog God Games.
Rather than using the PF rules for determining ship direction and distance the captain makes a Profession Sailor check (or, at a -5 penalty, other skills that are appropriate) with a maximum of one other character aiding them. The enemy also rolls and whoever wins can increase or decrease the range between ships.
Ranges are:
Extreme (1,000 feet or more, out of range of all weapons and effects)
Long (400-999 feet, and assumed to be within the range of any long range
spell)
Medium (100-399 feet, and assumed to be within the range of any medium range spell)
Close (25-99 feet, and assumed to be within range of any close range spell)
Boarding (ships are closer than 25 feet, and crew can swing or jump from one deck to another)
Between each check to see which ship determines range there are 5 rounds of combat. If the ships have gotten to the "boarding" distance a ship trying to get away has a -5 penalty on the Profession Sailor check. There's also modifiers if you're using multiple ships but fleet battles with the regular ship-to-ship combat rules would take FOREVER due to the amount of hit points involved so I'm sticking with the PF fleet battles rules.

Drift Hackers: Alphanumeric!

It's from ReBoot. Enzo would say it all the time when he was young (so at least the first two seasons, possibly three) whenever he was excited about something.