Harald's page

After playing from Perils through to the end of Hook Mountain with a party of 5, and rarely encountering a situation where we felt we could lose the scenario, we've come up with the following house rules to bump up the difficulty. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts on these - too much, too little, off the mark?

0B/1L/2BL House Rules:

0B:
The rules state that if you have no cards left in hand, you ignore any extra damage you take. This means there is little to no risk in exploring with an empty hand, since you cannot really get hurt.
House Rule 0B: If you end up with zero cards left in your hand when taking damage, and still have at least 1 point of damage remaining to take, bury the top card of your deck and then ignore the rest of the damage.

1L:
We found the turn limit imposed by the Blessings deck was not limiting for our 5 player group. We never came really close to losing on time.
House Rule 1L: Add an additional location.

2BL:
We found that with 5 players there are too many Blessings being thrown in the key combats, against the henchmen and villain, making them far too easy.
House Rule 2BL: Limit of 2 Blessings in a combat.

I am sorry to feel the need to write this, but I am hoping that by reading these comments, you may return future AP's to the format and content that I feel made RotRL and CotCT so extraordinary.

I waited until I'd had the chance to read at least 3 of the Second Darkness modules, even though I had a bad feeling already after reading the first, and finding myself wanting much more content on the city and its NPCs than was offered.

In a nutshell, in the SD AP I miss the depth, complexity, difficulty, and engagement of the first two APs. The plot and NPC motivations are fairly flat and one-dimensional (except Saul), the opportunity for the PCs to become emotionally involved is poor, and the actions in the 2nd and 3rd module are essentially a hack&slash dungeon crawl.

I'm not saying they're bad modules. Each has some great individual ideas and events, and they are well done. But they are not exceptional as an AP with a campaign-spanning plot. There are a ton of good modules out there, and for the average of $150 I'd spend for an AP, I want something exceptional.

The stated aim to make the main module easier to create and edit may have succeeded, but it is also a lesser product as a result.

The overarcing module plot feels thin. It's a cool idea, but I think you can tell that the main plot was originally something that could have fit into perhaps 3 modules. The modules feel a bit tacked on with little depth in their connection. Riddleport promises an interesting start, but quickly becomes unimportant to the AP.

The Set Piece Adventure takes space away from the major module, and is only loosely integrated. Essentially it is a filler, which is not important enough to the plot to include. While the Set Pieces are also well written, the cost of including them (taking space from the main module) is too high.

The initial setting is interesting, but the level of detail in its description fails to approach Sandpoint or Korvosa. When I first read it, I felt like perhaps you had too much going on to give it the depth and detail that would make it excellent. There is little in terms of backstory for any of the individual NPCs, certainly none as interesting as those in the first APs.

Again, I want this to be constructive criticism. But I think the philosophy expressed in some threads on this board, which essentially boils down to simplifying the modules in terms of both volume and difficulty, would need to change for me to get my hopes up.

The setup of the Escape from Korvosa includes a description of an ill-planned and ill-fated attempt by Commandant Endrin to assassinate Queen Ileosa. Unfortunately, the whole scenario is barely believable, unjustifiable with the Sable Company morality, and seems impossible to make work under d20 rules. This story, even if only told to PCs, only serves to make them question how such utter nonsense could occur - and what it might really mean.

If someone could explain to me how to have this whole encounter make sense both from an in-game standpoint, and how it is supposed to work using the d20 rules, I'd appreciate it. Summarizing:

1 - It makes no sense that Commandant Endrin, leader of a supposedly LG military organization, suddenly decides to pull a crossbow and take one shot at the Queen. That's neither Lawful, nor Good, nor smart, nor wise, nor ... Any PC will look at this and have to wonder what's really the story.

2 - Under d20 rules, how does this one shot hit the Queen in the temple, and how does she then pull it out and kill the certainly high-level Commandant with one strike?

I've got a whole host of questions with this module. While each individual encounter and characterization has a definite "cool factor", the overall module has many things that just don't add up.

The whole rationale behind the Queen's instigation of the plague doesn't make any sense. It's stated she wants to remove the Varisians, Shoanti, and poor. Yet this plague is non-discriminating, other than the fact that the poor always tend to suffer more, since they have no resources. It is an utterly chaotic and uncontrollable way to achieve her stated goal. There is no consideration made for stopping the plague from affecting everyone - in fact the Urgathoans imply that it should destroy the city, and have no plans of stopping at all. And that's another consideration altogether. The plague will doubtlessly cost the city immense amounts of money in terms of lost labor and trade, even if it is stopped at some point. This directly and seriously will impact the royal coffers, which are already drained. Considering the nautre of who the Queen is supposed to be influenced by (Kazavon), that also seems a very unlikely goal. Queen Ileosa is acting not like a scheming villain, but rather like a genocidal maniac - why?

The plan for the initial distribution of infection is also somewhat nonsensical. The blood veil is concocted in Korvosa itself, in the Urgathoan temple, and yet a mysterious ship is loaded somewhere else to sail to Korvosa for the express purpose to be sunk in the river, with the hope that at least some of its cargo washes up where it can be found in a timely manner. If the plague can be spread as simply as through infected coin, then spending huge amounts of money on creating a bunch of magic coffers, some of which may wash up on shore, is a huge waste of resources, effort, and unecessary exposure. Rather than providing a red herring, the plague ship is a clue, especially considering the papers knowingly left on it. There could be many other better plans for misdirecting the source of the contagion, while easily spreading coin throughout the city, in places and with people you actually want to target. In the module, there isn't even any way provided to follow up on the deposit of plague coins in Abadar's vaults - it's just something that has happened already.

The sudden appearance of the Gray Maidens is poorly justified. You cannot simply conscript all pretty women and la voila - there's a hardened, trained, loyal military force. Even assuming you can brainwash half of them, it makes no sense that the others aren't missed when they're imprisoned. Moreover, their equipment is seriously expensive, and takes time to make - where did it come from?

The Queen's Physicians are all petty rogues equipped with an expensive mask. Why? If their purpose is simply to observe and foster the spread of the plague, they are either hired help - which would not warrant a magical mask, or they are fanatical Urgathoans, which should have some appropriate stats.

The encounter with Vencarlo and Trinia is not really tied into the adventure in any way. I understand it is continuing the development of those characters, but if it is done here, it should have at least some purpose.

The vampire spawn encounter in Racker's Alley is also random, without any possibility provided of connecting these creatures to their source, or any added plot development.

The Lavender encounter seems incongruous to its effect. 700 people saved because you shut down a snake-oil salesmen? There've got to be dozens of such opportunists in a situation like this.

The Carowyn Manor encounter is a good example of a targeted attack, but unfortunately falls down on explaining how the attack was done. It implies that smokebombs with Vorel's Phage were used, but Ausio's description tells of crossbow bolts fired. So how did one intruder manage to fell every single person at that party? Nobody was able to defend themselves? Nobody could run away? That is just impossible without some serious other influence. If the smokebombs were used, what is their effect - it would have to be devastating? And does Jolistina still have 4, as described in her stats?

The Hospice of the Blessed Maidens was an Arkona warehouse. And so ...? This fact is thrown in there, seemingly important, but has no impact at all on the adventure.

The blood veil immunity of the Varisians is supposed to be a magical effect based on the influence of Vorel's wife on some Varisians, which is not necessarily by blood relationship, but rather through the Varisian "family". And yet the research notes are supposed to allow alchemists to find a cure based on this? That makes it mundane, and removes that whole interesting aspect.

The setting and atmosphere of the Guide to Korvosa are great, you really get a good feeling for the flavor of the city. However, I am having some problems accepting the numbers behind the scenes - and that makes it difficult for me to work with some of the content.

The city is only supposed to have about 18500 current inhabitants, which is not a huge amount, although it is good-sized for a city in medieval times. However, somehow, this population supports 700 full-time Korvosan Guard, and over 200 Sable Company, on top of the bureaucratic structure of the Magistrates, the King, the Arbiters, as well as having cash for expenditures for fantastic structures such as the Tower, the Ampitheater, etc.

Which community of 18500 people could afford all this? Assuming normal proportions, we are talking 10% of the active adult population is in the military, not to mention any of the other overhead. That's huge!

The problem also shows in the map. The number of buildings is hard to estimate, but I would guess 10000 is not unreasonable. Even with the underpopulation due to the Magnimar exodus, that's still only a few people per house - which is very low for a city. 10% of the city, i.e. let's say 2000, live in Bridgefront, 3 blocks of buildings averaging at least 3 stories high with the Shingles. If you look at the map, you're seeing at least several hundred buildings. So the poor are living in 3-story buildings at only 10 persons per building?

I'm wondering what reality checks and considerations were made to provide a basis for the economic structure of the city as it is described. Otherwise I feel the population should be increased by about a factor of 3 at least, and that's assuming the outlying holdings of Korvosa double that population number.