Inspectre's page

Hello everybody!

So I’m currently running a heavily modified Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, and it’s likely we won’t be done with that game for another year at least (currently starting Book Four). But I want to be able to offer my group a choice of several options on what to play next once the CotCT game concludes, assuming that my players do in fact want to play through another AP and not do something else (like run screaming out the door, heheheheh). By my count, that’s 18 possible choices of the next AP to play through, assuming you include Hell’s Vengeance and Strange Aeons in the list (I did say it’d take another year to finish CotCt *at least*).

Now, why I am posting this here instead of General Discussion asking for advice is that I already have some ideas on which APs are at the forefront of my own personal preferences to run. If I had infinite time and resources I’d probably run them all as I’ve found parts of each AP that are intriguing. But since I can only manage about one AP at a time, I think the next AP I would like to run after Curse of the Crimson Throne is Hell’s Rebels (assuming my players can stomach *another* city campaign right after).

Interestingly, before we started Curse of the Crimson Throne we were debating which AP to play, and it came down to Curse of the Crimson Throne and Council of Thieves. Due to Council of Thieves being the very first Pathfinder AP written, it has some known problems and ends at an earlier level than all the other APs, so we ultimately went with Curse of the Crimson Throne.

But as I was thinking about running Hell’s Rebels, I had an idea. Hell’s Rebels is the latest Pathfinder AP, a city-focused AP set in Cheliax focused on rebelling against House Thrune (or a member of House Thrune anyway). Council of Thieves is the first Pathfinder AP, a city-focused AP set in Cheliax that appears it will be about rebelling against House Thrune but pulls a bait-and-switch to substitute in the titular Council of Thieves. Do you see the resemblance? They are similar but different, not parallel stories but ones that could fit together, like two sides of one coin.

And so I welcome you to my latest deranged project, a mash-up of Hell’s Rebels and Council of Thieves. I welcome you to – HELL’S THIEVES! confetti geysers Here-in you will find my attempts to splice together these two APs – it should go without saying that there will be HEAVY spoilers for both Hell’s Rebels and Council of Thieves. Possibly also Hell’s Vengeance as well if I decide to shoehorn in some elements from there as well, like the Glorious Reclamation (like suggested in another thread on these boards – what can I say, I really like our plucky heroes having to stab their Glorious Reclamation allies in the back, else Cheliax crush them right alongside the Reclamation). Likewise, this is nowhere near a step-by-step accounting of the spliced AP – for one thing, I only have up to Book 4 of Hell’s Rebels at the moment (short on cash), so I can only speculate as to the details they hold. I also only have PDFs for Book 1 and 2 of Council of Thieves at present (I did say I lacked infinite resources after all) but I have read many threads in the Council of Thieves forum so I at least have a general gist of how the remaining books go.

As a result, expect this to be more of a stream-of-consciousness series of posts as I come up with various ideas to support a joint AP. You are welcome to provide commentary, suggestions, and/or just call me plain crazy, as some of my ideas probably will be rather out there. As with the write-up for my Curse of the Crimson Throne alterations, if you see anything you like, feel free to hijack it for your own Hell’s Rebels/Council of Thieves’ game!

Now then, let’s get started talking about how we can ram these two APs together like children with action figures, shall we?

Alternate Title: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Break the AP

Hello everyone!

Long-time lurker, first time poster here.
I got roped into DMing a Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign a little over a year ago.

It's been a number of firsts for me, between first-time DMing Pathfinder (and indeed, playing Pathfinder other than a few one-shots and putting together a couple Pathfinder characters from the SRD for fun) and first-time running a published AP (I've tended to DM homebrew games prior).

Needless to say, I've made some mistakes and had some struggles, but I've got a pretty good group and CotCT pretty much deserves its reputation as one of Paizo's best APs. In short, running CotCT for the past year plus has been a whole lot of FUN.

All of the well-deserved praise aside, however, there's always ways to tailor a pre-written AP to better fit the party and just add more fun stuff! One way I've done this is to voraciously comb through this entire wonderful sub-forum and absorb all of the ideas and passion put forth in 1,000+ threads talking about CotCT and what various DMs have tweaked or added. I've incorporated some of those ideas into my own game (thanks everyone!) and been inspired by others to come up with my own vaguely original material (okay, so mostly I just slapped some fresh paint on other stuff that I stole).

I would like to pay some of that back now by posting my own contributions to the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, in the hopes that some other prospective DM will be inspired by one or another of my mad ramblings. Also appeal to my own vanity by talking about all the horrible things I've inflicted on my poor, poor players for your entertainment - but mostly to inspire new DMs to this AP how to inflict new and sometimes bizarre sorts of suffering on their players!

As such, consider this thread a combination campaign journal, CotCT discussion, DM Planning/Asking for Advice/Feedback (currently in Book 3, Escape from Old Korvosa), and place for me to store my mad ramblings on the CotCT adventure path. Feel free to comment on or steal for your own game anything that you like!

It should go without saying that there will be heavy spoilers in this thread. Since I'm also thinking about weaving some modules into the AP as well, I will try to keep a list here of all the content that you should be prepared to be spoiled on at some point. That being said, I've also gone pretty far afield from the AP as written, so this is also probably not the place to be if you want to find out how the AP is supposed to go. Right then, I think that covers things, so let’s move on to the game itself.

Potential Spoilers Ahead for:
Curse of the Crimson Throne AP (Books 1-6) Plus Guide to Korvosa
Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale
The Harrowing
Academy of Secrets