| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I very much enjoyed reading a few Crimson Throne campaign logs when I was running that AP a while back, and figured I'd try my hand at it with the Extinction Curse campaign I started running on Roll20 as a quarantine diversion. Now that my group has kicked off and we're having such a grand time of it, it's looking like we'll continue it post-quarantine, bringing my "total active campaign" count to four.
Since I'm piling this campaign onto an already-existing workload of three other games, I'm running it very by-the-book. For house-rules, we're using the Gradual Ability Boosts from the Gamemastery Guide and I've given everybody a free Dedication feat at level 2 to help seal in that sweet circus flavor.
Rask's player has played a ton of Pathfinder 1e and Pathfinder 2e with me before this, and I ran a lot of 3.5 for Tar's player about a decade ago, but the other two players are (I believe) most familiar with 5e and have never played with me until this campaign.
- Rask, Iruxi Champion of Gozreh, circus animal handler, drug enthusiast
- Tar, Goblin Alchemist, performer, junk-welder, adorable but don't hug him
- Brun Treesoar, Halfling Ranger, safety, maintenance, artillery, the normal one
- Garrett "Cinder" Cinderholm, Half-orc Sorcerer, former barker, performer, likes puns, lives dangerously
- Rask has gone trident/shield and is a Redeemer Champion. He took the Reptile Speaker lizardfolk feat, and sort of stumbled into making the perfect character for Book 1 (and maybe the whole AP, honestly). Animal Wrangler background.
- Tar is a chirurgeon and makes a lot of disgusting "herbal" "tea". He's got an iron gut and uses it. Tinker background.
- Brun started with a longbow, but at the start of session three we ret-conned that he'd been using a slingstaff all along. I offered to let him apply the Crossbow Ace feat to the slingstaff, since it didn't seem all that out of line balance-wise to me (just an average +1 damage over the crossbow plus propulsive, which is at best a +2 damage later on, and less range, which feels right in line for a simple vs advanced weapon). Rigger background.
- Cinder is a Fire Elemental Sorcerer. He picked up Overlooked Mastermind. Barker background.
Before the session I had everybody either pick one of the NPCs with a starting act to link themselves to as friend or family, or create a backstage NPC that would tie them in. Rask works closely with Elizia and Mister Tickles, Tar has befriended the dwarven matron of maintenance Bergthora Battlebeard, Brun's netting saved the life of the Kanbali family's patriarch, and Cinder was half-raised by the Flamboni Sisters and refers to them as his "aunties".
SESSION ONE
We start in medias res, as per the book. The players leap into planning the circus. The first roll of the game is Rask's intimidate check to attempt to persuade Mordaine to perform as the Opening Act, and it's a near-critical failure, so she storms off, the party sighs, and they decide to send Elizia in instead, but of course her snake is sick. Rask is able to help Tar diagnose what the situation is by speaking to Mister Tickles ("Tar!" "What? I haven't had goblin pox in months!"), and he feeds Mister Tickles an anti-plague to get a success and get Elizia out in front of the audience.
As Elizia begins performing, the Professor calls the party's attention to hecklers causing trouble with their cruel bets. Cinder, Rask and Brun head over to take care of it. Cinder shouts out "You wanna see someone fall from a trapeze? C'mere and I'll make it happen," and one of them bolts, yelling back, "I like my bones unbroken!" Rask tells the second one that they've run out of dwarfs for one of the acts, "so why don't I just toss you instead." The ruffian responds with "You could probably benchpress me, so you got it, sir!" and gets outta there. Brun just punches the third guy in the stomach and tells him to shut up, and he's out too.
Elizia manages to get a single success even though Mister Tickles is still pretty sick, but then gets a critical failure, so Mister Tickles starts vomiting in the ring and the clowns are sent in to rescue them. Meanwhile, the Kanbali's bring their rat-eaten nets to Brun, who is able to both identify the problem and reassure them that everything will go smoothly.
At the start of the Build-up, the Professor points out the snakes beneath the risers. Rask leaps into action, grabs a couple mice, and persuades the snakes into leaving the tent with little trouble. Cinder asks what the snakes said to him, and Rask says "They were just hungry, maaaaan" and offers Cinder some of the seaweed he's munching on.
The Build-up sees Tar do his alchemical juggling act alongside the Kanbali Five, and Tar helps out by tossing some volatile chemicals up to the Kanbali family to liven up their performance. They net a total of two or three successes, I think.
Axel is freaking out about performing in the finale, and Cinder tries to get his head in the game and crit fails, so Axel is OUT. Which present a problem, since the party only has two tricks prepared among them, and since Mordaine has retired to her wagon, they don't have enough acts for the show.
That's a problem that will have to wait, though. The Dwarven Throwers are rocking the Big Number, but there are some drunker brawlers in the crowd! The party jeer at them and goad them into coming down and fighting them instead. One of them accidentally kicks a kid in the head as he's leaping down, and Brun hits his calf with a sling rock, causing the crowd to gasp. Tar admonishes the drunkard, saying he shouldn't get into fights while drunk, and starts bandaging the dude mid-fight, causing some of the crowd to go "awwwww." Rask grapples with the other one, and Cinder crits one with produce flame, lighting him on fire. The crowd is at first horrified as the drunkards run away in terror, but Cinder shoots them all a winning smile, noting that "there's more of that to come in the finale!" The kicked child cheers and stops crying because fire is cool ("This circus is AWESOME!"), and the crowd seems to think it's all part of the act, maybe? They don't lose any Excitement over it. Tar encourages the crowd to enjoy alcohol responsibly as they walk backstage as the Gottliebs give them some flying side-eye. Cinder earns a second Hero Point.
Cinder eats his pride and goes to Mordaine to beg that she perform in the finale. He fails again, but spends a Hero Point to reroll and hit the DC exactly. Mordaine agrees to save the circus in this, it's darkest hour. It gives the finale an extra little flair, since it totally has a fire-water-fire theme going on, since Mordaine is featured between the Flamboni Sisters and Cinder's drum-laden fire dance.
The finale is going sort of smoothly until the Flamboni Sisters get a critical failure and Cinder has to call in the clowns. He then rolls a critical failure on his last action of the round, and the outlook for the circus as a whole is looking pretty hopeless. But Cinder's player decides to blow his last Hero Point and reroll, and rolls a 20! This puts the circus' Anticipation up to 16, but the crit with Brun's backstage Pyrotechnics work pushes the circus' Excitement to 16 exactly, meaning that they actually manage to critically succeed on the whole performance, which nets them a pretty nice pay out.
The party begins to investigate Myron's murder. They nail all the investigation checks in the big tent, and Rask actually wonders a bit whether this could be Gozreh's displeasure, but ultimately decides that's not likely given the manner of Myron's death. Brun is able to follow the rat tracks, and they decide to follow it to Bartolph's wagon first. Brun is suspicious and knocks on the wagon's side, calling out, and hears a low threatening growl as Tar approaches the wagon door and cautions him against opening it.
I forgot how 2e's detect magic worked, and when Cinder pinged the area I told him he detected an aura hanging in Bartolph's wagon. Brun clambered up the wagon and attempted to create a hole in the roof using a knife to extract the item, since they were afraid it was affecting Bartolph (it wasn't, it was just the owlbear claw, but it worked in their favor). The door of the wagon starts to rattle and the wagon starts to rock as Brun gets to work, and Rask tries to brace the door closed. Some claws rip through the wood of the door, giving Bartolph a way to look at who's outside, and by the time Brun extracts the owlbear claw, Bartolph has mostly expended his rage. He knocks the door down onto Rask, causing a bit of damage, but manages to stop himself before mauling Tar and looks a bit sheepish. They're able to tell that he wasn't quite in his right mind, and is feeling a bit mournful, and they coax him back into his wagon to sleep it off.
They head to Myron's wagon next, and Brun actually notices the roots of the dream pollen pods sticking out from under the wagon and identifies them as such, but the party decides to open up the wagon door anyway. I'm fairly sure I ran the trap wrong, since I gave it three attacks (and it acted first since it rolled well). Most of the party wound up confused (Brun actually critically fails on his Will save), and Rask knocks Brun unconscious with his claws. Cinder is able to burn up most of the pods on his turn, though, and they survive just fine.
As they're recovering from that encounter, a couple of roustabouts trigger the snake encounter in the woods, and the party rushes to defend them. Rask is able to tank the giant viper and saves against the poison thanks to the buff from Tar's elixir of health. It's over pretty quick.
The party recovers again and follows the rat tracks to the Kanbali wagon. Brun can hear the rats inside, so they move to open the door, but Nemmia has been waiting for this and the rats come cascading out. It's really not an ideal situation for Nemmia, though, since without room to maneuver her Entangle doesn't get much value. Tar is able to deal with the rat swarm with two bombs, and the giant rat doesn't last much longer. They're able to corner Nemmia in the wagon and wear her down without any member of the party dropping.
The party's feeling pretty pleased with themselves, since they managed to knock Nemmia out instead of just killing her. They tie her up and bring her back to the fire, and we end session one there.
We just finished up session six this past Thursday, so I'll try to get the other sessions up when I have time. They're currently headed to Erran Tower and just hit level four.