Nejqualmie Werd's page

I'll throw in my thoughts as well of the Society games from the perspective of the previous organizer of PFS in Indianapolis (and yay for Venture Captains now! 8-). Like Drogon (and similar to the OP), I'm a game store owner that is based around a cafe business model, which run games and events. And so I get the fun of building an community that is based around playing without having to worry as much about retail sales. Since starting PFS at the Arsenal Game Room, I have maintained a Google spreadsheet of which players have played which games, and will base which scenario to run around who RSVPs to show up.

We are getting to the point though, that we max out the tables all the time, in addition to having players who are walk-ins. While we haven't needed to use the replay rules, I can forsee at the current (increasing) rate of play as compared to the rate of scenario releases, that we will reach a point where all the low-level scenarios will have been run already, and that it will be difficult to seat everyone at a table where no one has already played the mod.

While I think it would be a great idea for some of these players then to GM games, I think we could agree that many players are best suited to staying players and not running games. In general, I would rather NOT play a game (especially an organized play game) than play a game with a bad GM. (BTW, I really like Drogon's idea of incentivizing good GM's to run games in addition to just playing; I've just started doing the same by running "GM only" tables so that our GM's won't have to "burn" mods - although, I realize this is no longer necessary, players still like to play a mod first before GM'ing it so as to not ruin the experience.)

Having played quite a bit in Living Greyhawk, I thought that it was a marvelous idea at the end of the run that they began allowing their commercial mods to be used for Organized Play. Not only did I begin actually buying and using the mods, but that they often provided a more "home-campaign" story-like feel with the extra playing that could be done in an 8-hour or 12 hour game, as opposed to having to squash the entire game into 4 hours. It worked well because not only did it add to the number of available adventures, but also for groups that had the luxury of time (such as an occasional all free Saturday), we could have the fun of the "special" double- or triple-header.

The Adventure Paths may be more difficult to convert over, but personally, I think they would be a WONDERFUL addition to the possibilities of adventure. At the conclusion of Living Greyhawk, I was running my home group through Red Hand of Doom, and aside from being a really cool adventure, I loved the whole campaign feel of the story-arc. While there are a lot cool things about the modular, episodic feel of the typical PFS game, having the option as well of participating in a longer arc of the AP would be neat. One could use the natural breaks in between each of the APs as suitable entry or exit points for PFS characters. So, a person could run through AP1 and 2, and should the group no longer meet, take that 7th level character into PFS. Or a group of PFS players who have level 8 characters, and not enough mods to support those PCs, could now take them and jump midstream into an AP. One could take that concept and apply it to the 12th level characters who players have built up and lovingly played and allow them to move into the APs (just not back into PFS games). In a sense, that's a glimpse of what the new Tier-12 only mods are doing.

In any case, personally I enjoy running PFS games, and as well as the benefit of the Society on gaming in general (and Pathfinder in specific) and would like to see as few hindrances to its growth as possible. From a business perspective as well, we don't want to turn away any players that have shown up to play. I'm sure retail stores see the same thing - new players play a few PFS games, have a good time, start thinking about the characters they'd like to play, buy the .pdf for the Core Rules, then eventually the hard copy as they become more committed, and then the APG for their second character. Unlike a typical home-game, that level of investment is worth it, because even if this one GM burns out (or takes a break, etc), the campaign and investment aren't down the drain, but rather, another table who's GMing the same game and the same campaign can be easily found.

-Andrew

With a first level party of six players, this is a guaranteed TPK unless the GM tones it down.

Room B2:** spoiler omitted **

The Optional Combat: ** spoiler omitted **
And the final bad guy: ** spoiler omitted **

So, in my opinion, this scenario is a death trap at APL 1, survivable at APL3 by playing the lower tier with at least two clerics, and playing the high tier should only be attempted with an APL 5 party and at least two clerics. There is just too much damage the party has to be able to soak up when the bad guys have the battle field control advantage.

The only character, that I can think of, that can easily handle this adventure,...

I ran this yesterday for a table of 7, APL 4.8 at the Tier 4-5 level - and I agree that the final encounter was very tough for them.

First combat was a walk in the park (1st level rogues with 5 hp) couldn't even stand up against the witch with a crossbow. Nevertheless, they found it hilarious that the NPC's were a group of opportunistic squatters when they were spending a lot of role-playing time "serving him notice of transfer".

I tried to play up the creepiness of the soul-bound doll - ran her as a spoiled girl who just wanted accompaniment to her songs, and was murderous when she didn't get it. Still, they were convinced the organ was the instrument of great evil, and spent time 1) tripping the paladin to keep him from playing it 2) alchemically bombing it.

The final encounter was brutal. They made a lot of noise getting the door open, but still, gave them time to line up at the door before the darkness was put up. Regardless, the two-weapon attack each doing 5d6 +2 for an average of 20 hp each and +8 to hit can easily wipe out most parties. The paladin spent an expensive consumable to break enchantment (I ruled that the deeper darkness was cast upon the stalker and so was successful in dispelling it with a caster level check success) to reveal him for one round - before he just 5 footed away and did it again. After that, it was bad news. One PC managed to get to the machine, but they didn't have the sunrods/rings, nor do I think they would have figured out the pattern even if they had brought them with them. They managed to get a lucky strike while guessing which square he was in, and converged attacks on it, and killed him, but I think this encounter could easily have been TPK (and deaths would have occurred, except I forgot the extra 4d6 from sneak attack the first round).

The paladin had a good idea to try to detect evil to pinpoint the location, but then I realized the stat block showed the stalker to be CN. I think that should be revisited. Sure, he was carrying out revenge, which is one thing, but I think it went WAY over the line since he was intentionally torturing Miregrold and then purposefully keeping him alive JUST SO HE COULD KEEP THE TORTURE UP LONGER. Even if he's a wholesome guy that hugs puppies and gives balloons to children the rest of the time, I'd say that this one extended series of evil acts should have made him certainly evil...

In any case, I like the possibilities here (and RP'ing Basia Kalistoff's accent), but the final encounter is probably challenging for even a tier 6-7 group.)

Andrew Chang wrote:

I chose this particular scenario because I was looking for a mod to run which could showcase the new Dwarven Forge set Return of the Ancients - it went over very well!

(Pics here: http://www.dwarvenforge.com/dwarvenforums/viewtopic.php?id=3626

Freakin' awesome. I blew up the maps to 1"=5' scale and yours are still WAY better.

(fixed the link; I think the first address you listed was wrong, but I saw it posted in another forum so I switched the address too)

Thanks - I'm not sure why that other link didn't work...

Wow! Those pictures look great.

Thanks! I really like my Dwarven Forge stuff - I wish I had a little more time to print out the catwalks as wel...

Next time I run the mod I will.

Hmm...just looked up the new pathfinder desecrate. It doesn't appear to hinder positive energy at all anymore?

I ran this scenario last weekend for a group of mostly new Pathfinder Society players - we all had a great time. The combats were very interesting as none of them were straightforward.

I give another vote to the description of the room being with the act - it was often very confusing to flip back and forth.

I chose this particular scenario because I was looking for a mod to run which could showcase the new Dwarven Forge set Return of the Ancients - it went over very well!

(Pics here: http://www.arsenalgameroom.com/smf/index.php?topic=59.0)

-Andrew

Andrew,

I sent an e-mail your way. Thanks for organizing this!

Cody Jones

Looks like Cody and I have 3 players and a GM for 12/20 at 4:00pm at the Arsenal downtown. If any more are interested, shoot me a message!

I'm in a similar situation, having relocated to Indianapolis from another state... How best to contact you?

Andrew Chang wrote:

I just had the pleasure of playing in my first PFS game at Neoncon this past weekend (kinda hard leaving this nice 70's weather to go back to Indy) with my old Living Greyhawk group. We all had a blast (much more so that the 4 or 5 D&D 4e Living Forgotten Realms games I've played).

Unfortunately, I no longer live near my group having moved to downtown Indianapolis. I'm looking for other games who would like to join PFS. So far, I've met 2 or 3 other people who are interested.

Looking forward to meeting you!

-Andrew

Hi Michael, I must say I approve of the Osrion! 8-)... the best way to contact me would be via email - its RPGAndrew at a gmail dot com address.

I just had the pleasure of playing in my first PFS game at Neoncon this past weekend (kinda hard leaving this nice 70's weather to go back to Indy) with my old Living Greyhawk group. We all had a blast (much more so that the 4 or 5 D&D 4e Living Forgotten Realms games I've played).

Unfortunately, I no longer live near my group having moved to downtown Indianapolis. I'm looking for other games who would like to join PFS. So far, I've met 2 or 3 other people who are interested.

Looking forward to meeting you!

-Andrew

There were an amazing number of PFS tables at NeonCon. Big props to all the GMs, impromptu and planned, who ran some awesome games.

In other news, Josh Frost is a madman and great GM. I learned quite a bit about encouraging roleplaying through kettle-stirring motions and a crazed look, though that was close enough to Josh's regular expression that I'm not sure it was acting.

Erik Mona's game was chock full of amazing imagery and he's very good at game pacing and improvisation. I'm shamelessly cribbing ideas from his game for my next campaign. If any of my soon-to-be-players are reading this, blame Erik for the good parts.

If you didn't get a chance to get to NeonCon, there's always next year. It was a really good time and I got to meet some really cool people, like that Ed Healy joker. I highly encourage you guys to start planning to attend next year. It's so very worth it. Doug's really put together something special here.

Yup, yup - I agree. I attended with four of my players from SoCal, all of us previous Living Greyhawk players. I'd been asking them about potentially playing PFS, but Neoncon was our first opportunity to do so. Even when there weren't low-level games running, they never failed to put together a game for us.

We all had a good time, and are planning to play regularly in PFS now. Thanks!