Hi All,
I just wanted to post to say that Sunday, May 18th marked the end of my group’s Shackled City campaign. The campaign began in September of 2005, enjoyed fairly steady bi-weekly play, and saw the Heroes of Cauldron overcome all manner of challenges. Those challenges cumulated in a final battle upon the plane of Occiptus against the demon prince of madness known as Adimarchus.
When my group and I began the campaign roughly two and a half years ago there were eight of us participating. At the end we consisted of five members with the party’s character composition as follows:
Romin the Wanderer, 19th level human cleric of Fharlanghn.
Royce, 19th level human rogue.
Arivanna Dancingblades, 9th level fighter/10th level elven ranger, bearer of the Smoking Eye.
Zaruthiel, 2nd level fighter/17th level elven wizard.
Alek Tercival, 17th level human paladin of St Cuthbert (GMPC).
A large part of the success the group enjoyed when the attrition set in regarding their party’s size can be attributed to smart tactics, a revised feat progression, and the inclusion and use of action points. These factors I believe really helped to maintain not only the party’s survivability, but also served to promote the feeling of heroic fantasy that D&D is famous for.
As for the campaign material itself and the excellent support it has enjoyed, I would like to thank all of the authors who worked on the adventure path itself, James Jacobs for his efforts consolidating the adventure path into the hardback collection, the contributors to the RPGenius website for their material, and finally the members of the Paizo boards for their discussions and advice regarding the different aspects of the Shackled City campaign. Your efforts and contributions helped to make for the fantastic gaming experience that was enjoyed by my players and myself.
Speaking of my players, I would like to thank them all. For without their enthusiasm and participation, the adventure path, while a fun read, could never have realized its potential. My friends were a great group to commit to the campaign knowing that it was going to be for a long duration. I appreciate them always contributing to the sessions to make them truly enjoyable and memorable.
In closing, I encourage anyone considering running one of Paizo’s adventure paths to do so. The material contained in the various adventure paths, to my reading, is top notch and the community here at Paizo is great for sharing ideas to make the respective campaigns the best they can be. The only real difficulty will most likely be trying to decide which one to do. :-)
Good Gaming,
Mark