Cross-posting this from the SK kickstarter in case people are on the fence about getting Sword of Air as an add-on at the end of this kickstarter:
I just got my copy of Sword of Air in the mail today and I gotta say that it looks like one incredible adventure.
I got really excited just flipping through and reading random bits here and there. This thing oozes Lost Lands flavor and lore. I didn't realize that this adventure would be so wide ranging geographically.
And the art by Artem Shukaev is amazing!
Great job Bill! (and everyone else that contributed to making this book so excellent) I think this one definitely deserves a place on the shelf with Rappan Athuk and Slumbering Tsar.
Question for the FGG crew: Where can I find more information about Abad Durahai and Alesardin from the Gulf of Akados region map?
Putting aside the insults, this thread has been a decent discussion on what does or does not work for folks with MM. I for one appreciate the input so far.
I didn't mean that people should stop posting their impressions of Mummy's Mask.
I meant that it should be ok for someone to say that they like or dislike something and why without having someone else:
-discount their point of view
or
-try to convince them that they are wrong
or
-insult them
Which are all things that I have seen happen in this thread.
Whether you love or hate Mummy's Mask, people have different tastes, that's ok. We're all simply letting the ice cream makers know which flavors we like and which flavors we dislike.
I would buy an S&W conversion of Tsar even though I own the PF edition already. I have stopped playing PF but would still love to one day be able to run a group through Tsar.
Given that they tend to do two or three Avistan APs for every Garund AP they do, I would predict that we are in for another Avistan APs after Iron Gods.
Avistan Runelords
Avistan Crimson Throne
Avistan Second Darkness
I have to agree with Abyssal Lord that this adventure does not feel like a 1E dungeon crawl to me.
The first two dungeon-crawls actually feel more like a series of linked Pathfinder Society Scenarios than the start of an adventure path. As it stands, the PCs actions in the first two dungeon-craws have little to no impact on the rest of the adventure.
It would also have been nice to have the potential for rival adventuring parties to be encountered in the first two dungeon-crawls because there is currently little chance to do any roleplaying during the first two dungeon crawls given that the enemies almost exclusively consist of vermin, constructs or undead.
Although the third dungeon-crawl is more interesting, I feel disappointed by this adventure and feel that this is a missed opportunity. I would have much preferred that the three dungeon crawls be combined into one and had the PCs make multiple forays into it. I was hoping for something along the lines of The Whispering Cairn by Erik Mona.
I think I'll go ahead and introduce them at the execution.
In my campaign, Amprei, the Chelish Ambassador, was directly responsible for having negotiated the contract between the Hellknights and the Crown. As a result, the departure of the hellknights from the city happened as a direct result of the PCs actions at Eel's End.
Soon after this happened, I started dropping hints about the formation of the Gray Maidens. For example, as the PCs were heading out to catch Trinia, I had one trusted NPC comment to them that they should be careful about which members of the Guard they return Trinia to because there were rumors that not all of the guards were loyal to Cressida.
This prompted one of the PCs to later investigate these rumors and through a fair bit of work he was able to find out that since the Queen had lost the Hellknights, Sabina had been seen approaching several female members of the Korvosan Guard and Sable Marines to form an elite Queensguard.
if you introduce a masked man in an adventure, you have to introduce the real guy in the course of the same adventure, otherwise its not fair to players who are trying to solve a mystery that's impossible for them to solve.
Yes - but if your players understand that and you only introduce one possible suspect the mystery becomes too easy.
On a different matter how do ships pass the North Bridge to get to the docks?
Personally, I think that the adventure, as written, does a great job of the Blackjack storyline.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't make the adventure your own or that you should avoid changing things, that's part of GMing any adventure path. And you also know your group the best and know what works for them.
But, as Jason S pointed out, the adventure does introduce several people who could also be Blackjack: Grau and Cressida are possibilities if you play them right, and Verik and even Trinia could also be made to look suspect depending on how things play out with your group (i.e. if they survive or not, or if the group sets them free or not).
And that doesn't include NPCs that you introduce from your own creation that are specific contacts to the PCs in your group. For example, one of my players took the Lamm killed my father background and his mother died in childbirth, so he was an orphan for a while and then adopted and raised by a Korvosan Guard. That's an easy sell as someone who might have been Blackjack and stopped a few decades ago for some mysterious reason.
Another thing to consider is that depending on how your group progresses through the adventure, there will likely be a few sessions between the PCs meeting with Vencarlo and them seeing Blackjack. Unless of course, they are already clued in to the fact that Blackjack will be making an appearance in the adventure.
My group didn't have a problem sticking together after Lamm was dead as the idea of a ghost having drawn the party together for a purpose greater than simple revenge worked really well for them. Having said that, if you have evil PCs it might be a harder sell.
With regards to moving Lamm to the end of the adventure: My concern with doing this is that the story of Zellara and Lamm are linked quite closely. Seeing the reaction of my players when they found Zellara's head in the hat box has been one of the more enjoyable moments of the campaign, but I think a key part of the whole Zellara reveal working has to do with timing. If you had the PCs working for Zellara for an entire adventure, a lot of questions would probably come up and ruin the surprise.
Like Jason S, I also had a lot of concerns about the structure of Edge of Anarchy before we started the campaign and was tempted to make a lot of changes to it. However, as I've been running the adventure I've been pleasantly surprised how much fun every encounter has been for the players when I ran it by the book.
The fact that most encounters in EoA can be resolved in several different ways has made it very unpredictable and fun for me to run and even encounters that were relatively easy in terms of combat (such as All the Worlds Meat), provided really great opportunities for roleplaying.
And with regards to Blackjack, if you don't mention anything about him until he makes an appearance in the adventure, I think it is unlikely that the players would immediately jump to the conclusion that it has to be Vencarlo when they first see him. But I think, if you introduce a masked man in an adventure, you have to introduce the real guy in the course of the same adventure, otherwise its not fair to players who are trying to solve a mystery that's impossible for them to solve. If they guess that it's Vencarlo early, then so be it. They get to feel good about themselves and it may create some cool RP interactions.
Thanks to the OP for asking this question, as I'm also running CotCT on Maptool. I'm only on book 1, but I had the same concerns as you when I read through the AP.
Also, I've been consistently blown away by the helpfulness of people posting on these boards.
Knick: As I've previously mentioned, I love your take on the Arkonas and will be using your post as a manual when I run this AP!
EvilMinion: Good to know, I didn't know any of that. Wow, symbols suck! (for the players that is)
...Ilthuliak can't be sent to deal with them either, as she's begun transforming into a Tarn Linnorm-Black Dragon hybrid...
I love this idea! Consider it stolen! I assume you will be removing the tarn linnorm runt from book 6.
Does anyone else feel like there's an overload of "dragon-like" foes in book 6?
Jabberwock, Ilthuliak, the tarn linnorm, even that zomok plant dragon thingy; they're all cool, but it does seem like it's one monumental fight after another. Especially if the PCs don't kill Jabberwock the first time around, you would pretty much encounter each of them one after the other.
Because you don't send a nuclear missile when a bullet will do. She has confidence in her minions, as she personally groomed them and empowered them to do the tasks she has for them. She was the Stag Lords patron for many years, possibly as many as 20, and if it wasn't for the drunk stupor he had gradually succumbed to he would have been a true lord of the area. The other bandit lord that was killed by his own owlbear was probably under her hand for a similar period of time. Irovetti has a similar timeline, and even achieves being the leader of a kingdom and army.
Keep in mind that she is a fey. That means a great deal in terms of her personality and psychology. She doesn't understand human nature because she isn't human. By her very nature she is aloof but passionate. The mortal experience isn't something she would understand because where she is from, The First World, people don't die permanently. They are reformed and come back, and cutting off another head there is done both for fun, (see what he becomes next,) and punishment (You failed me, get out of my sight.) she may have been in the Material Plane for thousands of years, but by her very nature she does not learn easily. This is evident by the prophecy that she ignores.
So what I am getting at is that she not only has confidence that her minions can handle the party, but that she really doesn't understand their weaknesses. Not just their mortality, but also such pitfalls as the Stag Lord's alcoholism and Irovetti's pride and vain ambition.
If she released the Jabberwock, she is also risking showing her cards too soon. A prophecy said she would be killed by adventurers, and few things attract adventurers more than a giant, rare beast that needs to slain. Waiting until her plans come fully together and her most powerful allies have been gathered keeps her protected. She has essentially ignored the prophecy, but you can see in the last book that it is still something she worries about at least s little. She won't know who those adventurers are...
Cool, an adventure by Greg Vaughan AND James Jacobs! I'm very excited to see what two of my favorite adventure writers will come up with working together! (i know you guys often work together as writer and editor, but this will be different)
Also happy to see Greg was able to keep his AP streak going despite how busy things probably are for him doing medical school. Hats off to you Greg!
I agree with all the issues you've been expressing. Seven Spears is the worst product that I've seen come out of Paizo - the entire thing is a poorly designed sandbox that lacks the cohesion or support to DM easily.
The utter lack of maps is extremely frustrating and the lack of real, important information to give out for discovery points was bad as well.
Worse, is most of the "major" encouters are either underpowered or too dangerous. This combined with the enforced calendar of several months of adventuring means that the PC's are full powered at almost every major battle because they are afraid to fight anything but the boring, boring wandering monsters and guards without full prep. Fully prepped a party of the appropriate level rolls over almost everything in the book.
As a DM it is exhausting to manufacture so much content within what is supposed to be an out-of-the-box prudoct, but fortunately I have a good group of players who have tried to take the slog with grace and enjoyment. The heavily manufactured "hook" with Julliver should come in a couple more sessions - fortunately the party chose Pathfinders and I should be able to use that to leverage them forward.
I'm hoping that the next installment is easier to deal with.
I have only read CoSS, not DM'ed it, but I agree with people saying that this is a weak AP volume that serves mostly as a bare bones framework on which to build an actual adventure.
I don't think paizo should take all of the blame for this one though, because as I understand it James Jacobs and Rob McCreary were brought on to salvage this AP after the original author failed to deliver and by that time it was too late to order the maps.
Still to be fair, I have to say that there was some pretty cool ideas in CoSS. For instance, I really liked the Angazhan plot around freeing Olujimi and also the aboleth sending out explorers into Saventh-Yhi made for an interesting mystery.
Honestly, from reading through the entire adventure path, CoSS stirred my imagination way more than Racing to Ruin, but that adventure had some decent maps and I can see how on a practical level, "maps" beats "no maps" any day of the week.
Second Darkness seems a better candidate as it needs the most work.
Maybe too much work.
Consider the negative opinion associated with it. People are less likely to give something they already don't like another chance to disappoint them.
Nope. I could fix it. It'll take more work than updating Runelords, but of all our Adventure Paths, Second Darkness is in fact the one I'd like to revise and expand the most.
I'd just like to note that James is speaking of his own personal desire here, and while that's something we certainly consider, it's far from all we consider.
Allow me to give you another data point. While we rarely talk about print run sizes or sales numbers, we do, every now and then, do blog posts where we tell you which items are getting low on stock—defined as under 1000 copies—in our warehouse. (You can find the most recent one here.)
From that, you might deduce the following stock levels for each volume of the AP:
Rise of the Runelords:
Sold out: 1, 3, 5, 6
Between 25 and 100 copies: 4
Between 100 and 250 copies: 2
(Total remaining copies: 125-350)
Crimson Throne:
Between 25 and 100 copies: 2
Between 500 and 1000 copies: 1, 3
More than 1000 copies: 4, 5, 6
(Total remaining copies: 4025-?)
Second Darkness:
More than 1000 copies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
(Total remaining copies: 6000-?)
Legacy of Fire:
Between 500 and 1000 copies: 4
More than 1000 copies: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
(Total remaining copies: 5500-?)
It doesn't take a business degree to see Rise of the Runelords is in a class by itself. It made a standout candidate for a compilation; any other AP would require a lot more justification.
Note: "More copies in the warehouse" does not directly correlate to "fewer copies sold", as print runs vary from volume to volume. But it's safe to assume that a compilation of any of...
Vic,
Thanks for sharing this info. What you are saying makes a lot of sense.
I'm sure Paizo has contemplated many different options with regards to updating previous APs, and I know this idea won't appeal to everybody, but I thought I'd put this out there anyway:
Have you thought about releasing a "seventh" PFRPG update AP volume for each of the 3.5 APs which would contain updated NPC stat-blocks for all of the previous 6 APs, some basic broad stroke modifications on how to better link up or DM each of the previous APs, some additional encounters and maps. What I envision is a product that would contain all the fixes to the AP (like the Anniversary Edition of RotRL) but which would not necessarily reprint the core text of the 6 APs.
This would encourage customers to buy old AP volumes of CotCT, SD and LOF as they would still be necessary to play the AP in its updated form. It would also avoid the risk of people cancelling their subscription thinking that they can just wait for a compilation.
These updates could be published in a 64 page module format or a 100 page AP format as necessary. Or if printing would be too costly or if more than 100 pages were needed, maybe you could do a pdf only format like you are doing for "The Emerald Spire" mega-adventure.
Anyway, I know this wouldn't be a hit with everybody, but I would definitely buy these updates.
"Seriously, guys, please stop asking for other compilations. It's not going to happen, and I don't want people who don't read carefully thinking it's likely to happen.
One of the main reasons for not doing this one is that just having the notion out there that we *might* do this for other APs is harmful. I'd really appreciate it if everybody would help squash that idea whenever and wherever it is raised.
This is a unique circumstance."
I understand Vic's concern about hardcovers hurting sales of subscriptions and I would not want to see that happen.
On the other hand, these boards are designed for people to post and express their views and ideas and also to give feedback to the designers about the products that have been released.
Paizo gets the final say on what products they choose to release, but it should be ok for anyone to pitch ideas about what kind of products they would like to see released or to express excitement at the prospect of a product seeing the light of day.
I've been reading these boards for a while now, trying to soak up the collective wisdom in preparation for my own CotCT game.
We finally started a few weeks ago and are about a third of the way through Edge of Anarchy and are having a blast.
I have some ideas for changes to the campaign but would like your input:
Curse of the Crimson Throne spoilers:
I don't like the Dead Warrens encounter within the context of CotCT. Don't get me wrong, the dungeon looks decent and might be fun, and Derros are cool mobs if used appropriately, but in this case I don't think it works that well within CotCT.
First, the set up of the encounter does not make very much sense. If Rolth has “long been a thorn” in Cressida’s side why wouldn’t she send her guards in to deal with him, instead of hiring the PCs. At least in the other encounters up to that point (All the World’s Meat, Eels End, the Shingle Chase) there’s a reason that makes sense for why she would prefer to have things handled by outsiders.
Second, how did Cressida/Thousandbones find out a) that Rolth is involved and b) the location of one of Rolth’s supposedly "secret" lairs. This just seems a bit too convenient. I realize that this encounter is supposed to foreshadow Rolth, but I've got other plans on how to do this (see below).
Third, the derro don't really play any roll in the rest of the campaign so I feel like I could cut them out without losing any of the story. Also, from my reading of it, Vreeg comes off as a bit of a cartoonish encounter, as I imagine this little insane humanoid flying around the room raining down undead creatures from his robe of bones. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be a very cool encounter (kinda like some of the goblin fights in Burnt Offerings), but it feels a bit out of place with the rest of the tone of CotCT.
I do like the “Dead Shoanti” hook though, as it explains tensions between Shoanti and Chelish better than any exposition on my part and also sets up future encounters with the Shoanti really well. So I'm planning to replace the "Chelish Ambassador" hook from Eel's End with the "Dead Shoanti" hook.
My players have already met Vencarlo and interacted with him a great deal, so I don't need him to be there at the start of Eel's End. In this case, the “Dead Shoanti” hook goes off exactly the same, except it was Devargo (not Rolth) who purchased the corpse and hung it up from one of his ships as a warning for other Shoanti to stay out. Because one of the PCs is Shoanti, I’ll have Thousandbones approach the group directly with the request to get the body back.
What do you guys think?
Council of Thieves and CotCT spoilers:
Ok, so if I remove the Dead Warrens, I was thinking to fill in some of the hole that will be left by running the second half of the Sixfold Trial, which is Book 2 of the Council of Thieves AP. This would take place between CotCT book 1 and 2.
The hook would be that the PCs are invited to a party at the Ornelos’ mansion to celebrate the quelling of the riots and the return to order in Korvosa.
Ahead of the party, the PCs could be approached by Vencarlo (or some other NPC) who has learned from his mysterious patron (Glorio Arkona) that a necromancer named Rolth has hired someone will try to sneak into House Ornelos to steal something. For the first three books of CotCT, I’m hoping to set things up so that Glorio Arkona and Ileosa are waging a political war between each other with the PCs caught in the middle.
The actual party could feature many of the important characters that appear later in CotCT such as Glorio and/or Melyia Arkona, other nobles, Marcus Endrin, Cressida Croft, priests of Abadar or Asmodeus, Zenobia Zenderholm, etc…
Once the PCs sneak into the Asmodean knot, things would work more or less as described in the adventure except that Sian Daemodus would become a Red Mantis Assassin.
Advantages of doing this is that it would foreshadow the Red Mantis before CotCT book 3. Also, it would support the Asmodeus/Devil theme that seems to run through book 6, but is mostly absent from the rest of CotCT.
I’m not sure if I should use CoT Book 4 The Infernal Syndrome as I don’t want to add too much extraneous material to CotCT as one thing I appreciate about it is that the BBEG is obvious and PCs’ focus is clear throughout the AP. However, the explosion that happens at the start of CoT book 4 would give a reason for the PCs to leave Korvosa as Ileosa could conveniently put the blame on the PCs.
I’m also thinking of having the horned devil Mavrokeras being the one imprisoned in the Nessian Spiral instead of the Pit Fiend Liebdaga. That way it would foreshadow CotCT book 6. In that case, I would not run CoT book 4 other than to have the big explosion happen at the end of CotCT book 3 as the impetus for the PCs to leave Korvosa.
One thing I struggle with though, is if it makes sense for the PCs to be running around the Ornelos Mansion without Toff Ornelos knowing about it, but I was thinking that I’d make it so that Toff is estranged from the rest of his family. Also, the historical character of Volshyenek Ornelos would replace the characters of Avengen and Dargentu Vheed from the CoT AP.
Another question is what could Rolth be trying to steal from the Asmodean Knot (i.e. what could replace the Chelish Crux?) If possible, I'd like it to be something that ties in later in the CotCT AP.
Thoughts? Ideas? Is there anything I’m forgetting or haven’t taken into consideration?
Developed and unified rules for equipment feats. At the moment these feats seem to be all over the place, and it would be much easier to understand them and use them if they were united (much like the background traits system were in the APG).
Heirloom weapons - Guidelines and examples for creating magical items (doesn't have to just be weapons) that have a historical legacy that are balanced for a character to use them from level 1 to level 20. I'm imagining properties that become unlocked after certain conditions have been met (can be as mundane as reaching a certain level. Although for GM created heirloom weapons, they could be unlocked after a certain event has occurred).
Low-Magic Item Campaigns - It might seem an odd request for Ultimate Equipment, but guidelines for how to keep PCs balanced without needing magic items (perhaps they gain bonuses for attack, AC and Saving Throws as they reach certain levels).
I really like all of these suggestions. Especially the Low-Magic Item Campaigns would be very interesting to me.
I play and love Pathfinder, but with regards to equipment and magic items in the game, my philosophy has always been in line with with this quote from the Iron Heroes rpg:
"You are not your magic weapon and armor. You are not your spell buffs. You are not how much gold you have, or how many times you've been raised from the dead. When a Big Bad Demon snaps your sword in two, you do not cry because that was your holy avenger. You leap onto its back, climb up to its head, and punch it in the eye, then get a new damn sword off of the next humanoid you headbutt to death."
