Grigori

Richard D Bennett's page

Goblin Squad Member. Organized Play Member. 230 posts (317 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 1 Organized Play character. 4 aliases.


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33. The Oliphaunt of Jandelay

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I'm on the "Yea" side, though only recently arrived. If the game is about the players' actions, then giving them the opportunity to radically affect the game and themselves seems of a piece with that philosophy.

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KingGramJohnson wrote:
I'm playing in a campaign where I have a mask that grants me see inadvisability for a short time.

I know exactly what you meant, but never have I wanted a magic item so much as a mask that grants me "see inadvisability."

"No, Bob, you probably should not do that or you're going to get yourself and your party in a world of hurt."

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Shaun wrote:


When I think of Nidal reaching out to a god to protect them, I don't imagine them saying "Well heck, I guess Pinhead is as good as anybody..." I think of them reaching out to a god who protects them for real... but causes them to become insular, xenophobic, and paranoid.

Ok, count me as one more advocate for the Midnight Lord.

When the Nidal tribes cried out for succor, what they were offered was not simply pain, but the strength to survive pain. In thinking about why anyone would worship a god of pain, it helps to remember those cultures and ideologies that see life in terms of struggle. Zon-Kuthon promises pain, but then so does existence itself. What Zon-Kuthon brings to the party is the wisdom (mind-blasting as it may be) to master pain and to use pain.

Nidal's relationship with Cheliax also makes their relationship with Z-K important in terms of his role as the god of envy. The Umbral Court hides and dreams of the day when Queen Abrogail is in a collar and on her knees. They covet fiercely and those who covet make great antagonists. Those who covet and think themselves strong-willed survivors make great long-term antagonists.

Z-K gets you to insular (we do not share our strength with others), xenophobic (the outsider will cheat you because they have things you don't - still with the envy), and paranoid (None can know our wants, for exploiting want is the key to True Pain).

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My players still run from the table at the mention of Mammy Graul.

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In the end, a lot of evil is preferring expediency to empathy. Norgorber makes his bones off this sort of thing - I could spend endless months trying to convince the vizier that he's holding the Emperor back from doing the right thing by his people, or I could poison him, blackmail him, have his throat cut in the night, and I don't have to go through all that silliness.

That appears to be a stark example, but think of the number of dramatic situations we see on TV and in movies where someone starts shouting "There's no time!" Crisis is where morality goes to die, and engendering crisis is how we get entire peoples to accept abhorrent things (see Cheliax and/or Japanese Internment). The great thing about crisis, rhetorically, is that it can completely reframe the question to skip over all the moral hand-wringing: No longer do we ask, "ought we do this?" In a crisis, it becomes "How could we do it?"

While Norgorber is an expert expediter, Asmodeus lives where the big decisions are made - the hard decisions that no one wants to make. Allowing a plurality of viewpoints may be moral, but it's also damaging to stability in the long-term: the inability to reach consensus means that progress slows to a crawl. How much wiser and more progressive to simply silence dissenters and do what must be done! The greatest good for the greatest number can be achieved if only the wreckers and dissenters are silenced!

Arcane Addict wrote:

I don't like Asmodeus. More accurately, I hate him and what he represents. I cannot think of anything I hold more sacred than free will, mine or anyone else's. Even among gods of torture and murder the tyrant Asmodeus stands out as the supreme villain. I would never worship him.

Unless we'd make a deal.

Asmodeus is the God who is there, waiting to help, when you are opposed by people who have no interest in deliberation. Maybe they're badly misinformed, maybe their POV stems from their faith and they have no interest in deliberating, maybe both - but important work does not get done because someone just won't listen. That's when he shows up, offering to change minds for you. Just this once, only if you ask, and for the Greater Good, right?

Yoda was right - the Dark Side is quicker, easier, and more seductive. Also, I hear they have cookies.

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Shelyn. Writers need all the help they can get.

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Both Shax and Nocticula, as demons, have a pretty clear agenda. Shax wants you carving people into little bits and Nocticula has other plans for your bits entirely.

Norgorber's agenda is unknowable, at least at present, which can make it hard to make good use of him as a force in the game...except that his portfolio makes him the patron of people who don't realize he's their patron. Everyone who cuts a throat in place of a standup fight they might lose. Everyone who uses blackmail to win an argument they might have lost rhetorically. The people who do dishonorable things for what they see as all the right reasons, like poisoning an enemy general to stop a war. All of that feeds Norgorber.

What does it all mean and what's he after? Who the heck knows, and I admit that can be a challenge. But like our worst concerns over what espionage organizations might be doing in our name, Norgorber gets a lot of people to do a lot of terrible things, all by pointing out that it's just more expedient that way.

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I'm using a riff on Gwaihir Scout's idea, in conjunction with a change to the end. Raven's Head has the Tyrant's blood on it, which is part of Adrisant's Incantation. When he doesn't get the blood, he grabs the Count. When the PCs rescue the count from Renchurch, it screws up the Incantation, which was designed to draw the Tyrant's power forth, but channel the Tyrant's mind to his blood, allowing Adrisant all of Tar-Baphon's power, while sticking the old lich himself somewhere convenient.

So when Adrisant actually does the ritual, and the Count isn't where he's supposed to be, he going to be possessed by Tar-Baphon himself. The PCs will, therefore, need those mythic tiers I've been handing them.

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If you wanted to insert some Gothic history (and tie the names back to their literary roots), you could incorporate an ancestor, Manfred, who forsook the lands after a "dark and terrible incident," with another man, Theodore, as the ancestor of the Muralts. Manfred's own descendants (presuming he either adopted or remarried after taking holy vows in penance) then progressively rose in rank through a variety of marriages that left Aduard as the heir of an admittedly messed-up, but high-ranking family.

If you haven't read the "The Castle of Otranto" by Horace Walpole, get thee to a public domain source posthaste!

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I tend to make edits whenever I get ready to run a campaign. I'm about to start running Carrion Crown, and I decided to replace Broken Moon with a different adventure. As a result, the County of Lozeri has been removed lock, stock, and barrel. It has been replaced with the equally-wooded County of Barovia, which is still very much under the thumb of its feared overlord.

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Genre fight! Genre fight!

The elements that make up a particular literary genre are no less arbitrary than the elements of what makes "authentic" jambalaya. First and foremost, it should be acknowledged that the acceptance or prohibition of firearms, technology, democracy, or letterpress printing is quite frankly a matter of taste. If you like them, great. If not, that's ok too. In either event, the settings in which exist the games you run and the games I run are a matter for us and our fellow players to decide, and certainly not something to be making ex cathedra proclamations about.

Going back to the original post and the author's blog, let me raise the same objection I did on his Facebook page: While we avoid getting into quibbles about the historicity of certain items and concepts, allowing cultural elements in our stories to produce the same exclusionary mores (and resultant odious behavior) as those elements did back in the day is not a quest for historical specificity as much as it is a comment on the way in which power relationships impact culture. Westeros is not a misogynist place because England in the era of the War of the Roses was a misogynist place - it's misogynist because that is the result of a culture built on primogeniture and violence as the preferred method of large-scale conflict resolution. When life is cheap, a lot of lives get sold cheaply, and that has less to do with history and more to do with values.

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I have two thoughts on possible small-size bad guys, one of which I'll share.

Halflings are more nimble than humans, stealthier than just about any race that is allowed inside of city walls for any length of time, and are physically gifted for the most part. Why, then, don't they just take over the local thieves' guild?

A halfling-exclusive thieves' guild that ruthlessly put down competitors would be a nightmare in an urban campaign. Run by Masterminds and staffed to the gills with rogues and alchemists, they'd be the bane of any law enforcement agency, and a fantastic foil for PCs - will the big folk dare a guildhouse where they'll have to crouch the whole time, laden with traps and murder holes?

In terms of narrative, it opens up interesting story explorations of how and why criminal organizations form, the reasons they might create rules of exclusivity, and how those rules help or hurt. I'd play that game every day and twice on Sunday.

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Can’t bite the cull now, wait for darkmans, when he’s clear.

Keep the secret speech of the streets in your back pocket! Add the clandestine tongue of thieves and swindlers to your game with the Thieves’ Cant Dictionary from Fat Goblin Games! With over 200 entries, the Thieves’ Cant Dictionary is your linguistic passport to a life of larceny and duplicity, all safely concealed in codewords and double-speak. Get yours now, before the Harman slaps the darbies on you!

The dictionary is world- and system-agnostic, the better to aid schemers and swindlers, wherever they gather.

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Considering that my father's name to my kids is "Bosco," this is going to confuse my son immensely. For that alone, I thank you.

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The Iron Gods Adventure Path brought technology into the fantasy realm. Also, I've heard there's this movie trailer out the other day about a space fantasy story of some sort...

For those of you who want a little more circuit and lightning in your fantasy, Fat Goblin Games is here for you with Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology!

Call to Arms is a book line for players and gamemasters alike. Each book focuses on a different type of item, expanding rules for those items and adding everything from new mundane and magical examples of the item to new character options related to the item. Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology brings new eras of scientific advancement into your setting, including rules, setting, and plot options for researching and developing new technologies and applications. New kingdom-building rules let rulers build their fantasy nations into technological juggernauts, and new crafting rules help engineers bolt and tape technology onto their favorite mundane and magical weapons and armor. New setting concepts ease the gradual introduction of tech into fantasy worlds, gremlin-tainted crafting materials offer new ways to “curse” technological gear, and new artificially intelligent item options help get digital life out of its shell and into your sword. Capped with a new artifact, new legendary item abilities, and new feats, Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology makes it easier than ever to add super-science tech to classic swords and sorcery.

This represents the first product out of the Call to Arms line's Open Call that FGG did a few months ago. You'll get to read the work of some of the newest names in game design, along with some great old hands. Don't wait another minute! Go check it out!

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My friends and I recently started playing Iron Gods. I had gotten into the semi-habit of writing campaign logs during our Shattered Star campaign, but I wanted to try something different for this go-round. Having just re-read a batch of Robert E. Howard's poetry, I decided to give it a go. At my GM's behest, I share with all of you.

Numeria, where iron flesh and languid steel
So sternly strive to see their saga soon unfurled
When wicked gods of metal sought to rule o’er man
The Seven came to light the Torch, to save the world

Hither came Bil, feral master of war and wild
The beast lord, the one called Death by his warrior band
Strength of a bull, swift as a hare, to swim, fly, fight
Technic chains will chip and shatter by his stern hand

Hither came Cathal, bright-eyed, dark-haired warrior born
Dragging all his shattered faith and his broken chains
Howling his endless rage to the vault of the stars
Bearing his sword to where the Black Sovereign still reigns

Also came Dysim – the scholar, wizard, trickster
From a fabled line of cheaters to play for all
Cunning of a survivor and a scholar’s sight
The lowly rogue silently takes the master’s hall

Gilimphiloditangle Giampalixatangle
A’chasing wonder, half a step ahead of death
The coward who could never turn his eyes away
Stealing into peril, never taking but one breath

Hither came Lantis, the dark accursed, the damned
Fine frippery veils a feral ferocity
Prophets of steel prayed to a bloody god
Came Lantis, their dire bloody reckoning to see

Came Veredel, master of metal and magic
Weaving enchanted words into the swords and spears
A shattered heart seeking solace in blood
The lives of foes will pay the price for elven tears

Came Zelaran, the thunderer of steel and fire
Roaring and striking like a raging hurricane
Chasing wisdom in the circuit, sprocket, and gear
Dealing dire vengeance with ferocious iron rain

By bonds, by blood, by hate were these men called to go
Into the murk, where evil on itself was curled
To the silver portal and to destiny’s gate
The Seven came to light the Torch, to save the world

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Still need to research that spell to fast-forward time to Christmas.

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Hooray for Taxes!

::Ducks::

I am officially in love with the idea of Accountomancers, and with them developing a massive numerical conspiracy with the Axiomites to develop formulae that provide just taxation and accurate actuarial tables. This is a campaign that is waiting to be written... and will continue to wait, as about four people on planet Earth would play it.

Heretically, if you need some quick taxes on the fly, I must reference you to a random table, but I hear that guy's going places.

All hail the Master of the First Vault.

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Ravingdork wrote:
Melvin the Mediocre wrote:
Carteeg_Struve wrote:
Looking at this thread title, I was expecting to see stuff like "Summon Self". :)
Locate Terrain
"Halt Dead" :D

Power Word Contemplate

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The "Which Evil are we heroically fighting for?" issue is what led me to begin adapting the adventure for mythic adventuring.

It should be clear by the time the party finishes Book 2 that Baba Yaga is hardly better than Elvanna. At this point, however, they still need the old bag to stop Eternal Winter. As they progress through the story, they will continue to add to their mythic-ness until the final adventure, where they'll end up at 17th level with 6 tiers. They're still not ready to put Baba Yaga down (perhaps), but it's certainly on their radar. At that point, I let them decide if they want to pursue the subsequent mythic trials to try and free Irrisen once and for all, or if they're ready to go back to being a 1st-level party in a new campaign.

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A "Da Vinci Code" style adventure that goes around the Inner Sea to discover that there was an eighth school in Thassilon: Divination (the one school that does not appear in the star). But the devils that brought House Thrune to power are harboring a secret that could trigger a massive war: In order to keep the Masters of Sight from foreseeing their eventual coup in the kingdom dedicated to humanity, they had to execute a near-genocide, leaving the heirs of the divination school a smattering of scattered tribes that folk now call the Varisians.

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I've seen it mentioned a few times, but it bears mentioning that slavery can be probably be a part of a good society when that slavery comes about as punishment. Most of your Golarion societies don't really have the infrastructure for prisons and you're not going to execute every criminal. Prior to the introduction of expansive legal codes, magistrates, and the like in Anglo-Saxon England (just as a f'r instance), law was primarily an economic matter. A crime was a harm done to someone else and therefore punishment was directed at making restitution for the loss. For really heavy fines, offenders could be given up to a year to make restitution, or could be delivered into slavery, either of the local government or of the offended.

For city-states, such as Magnimar, or even larger, but new countries, such as the nation PCs will build out of the Stolen Lands in Kingmaker, there might be a jail in larger towns, but that's a solution for the first two dozen malefactors you run across. More important in these situations is a question that rarely comes up in adventure games: what is the purpose of the law? What rights, if any, are we trying to protect? Early law focused on protection of property or individual rights (at least for those deemed worthy of such rights). Slavery as a means of restitution could probably end up morally palatable.

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I have a theory for my own version of Golarion that he was both Geb and Nex, perpetuating wars and encouraging the study of forbidden lore in order to further the incalculable schemes of the Great Old Ones.

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I am completely over the moon at being selected and look forward to the finished product.

Do we announce the "Richard Pett Memorial TPK contest" now to see which encounter kills more parties?

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The fundamental alignment issue with slavery is that it transforms people into property, which runs afoul of the whole "dignity of sentient beings" part of the Good Alignment. But, as has been pointed out, there is a spectrum of options in how slaves are treated and the Venn Diagram of slaves and indentured servants has some overlap in terms of timeframe and right of the servant. An additional wrinkle is the question of punishment: When jails are expensive and indolent prisoners viewed as a waste of money, how much labor can I put a prisoner to before he's a slave?

To pick a nit, the "dignity of sentient beings" bit of the good alignment is another collision of 21st-century morality with the fantasy milieu. Just as a quick example, I'm currently playing in an adventure where the party has received a request to clear out a nest of kobolds. While we have suspicions that the kobolds were involved in some shenanigans in town, we have no real evidence of such. Rationally, each of us should slide towards evil with every sword stroke taken at a kobold. There are hundreds of adventures that contain similar scenarios. Orcs, goblins, kobolds - they're all sentient creatures and I'll bet all the gold in my coin purse that most of the folks in this thread have had at least one good-aligned PC kill one of those creatures with no better justification than "he was between me and the treasure."

I do agree that a Paladin returning a slave to its owner should get warnings that this will not sit well with the deity in question (UNLESS...we're talking about Abadar, but paladins of Abadar are weird birds) and that actually doing so would probably constitute an evil act for which atonement would have to be made. If you want to enforce the law at that level, that's what Hellknights are for, really.

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motteditor wrote:

Team Forest, represent! Looks like the Jacobs did not clone each other in this area, at least. We'll have to try better for our urban and/or cave/cavern encounters.

Creighton, it's very good of you to offer feedback to everyone. That's invaluable advice/help that I know not everyone has time to give.

String enough forest encounters together and that's one dangerous woods...and one weird adventure.

As a writer with a single credit to my name, I'll echo the thanks for feedback.

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I've been using pits with some frequency in our group's Shattered Star campaign and, like many "save-or-suck" effects that have come before, I like them less the more I use them.

Any effect that negates an encounter is a problem for me: If I fail, I feel like I've wasted my action. If I succeed, I have rendered everyone else moot. I've done this 1.5 times in our most recent dungeon crawl (the .5 being the removal of all of the bad guy's minions), and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth each time, because the five other players at the table get to stand there and watch. This has led me to larger thoughts about the nature of the wizard/sorcerer and how one of the balancing factors seems to be that they can take on whole encounters by themselves, but only a few times a day. To me, this seems to be an enemy of party fun, but that's a subject for a different thread.

As far as pit spells go, now I look for opportunities to use them to take out a part of the encounter and help ensure that action economy stays on our side. If I wanted to win the fights by myself, I'd go play Dragon Age or some such.

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Any effect that's "save-or-no-more-fun-for-you" ought to be used sparingly, but I don't buy into the bad form argument.

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It's worth noting that the poison and alchemy abilities are a part of the literary canon of Investigators: Mr. Holmes, archetype that he is, was a phenomenal chemist.

I think the "free" uses of Inspiration on certain skills might be a bit much, but they do serve to emphasize where an Investigator would normally spend their skill points, versus a Rogue or Ninja.

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Norgorber is, in my nowhere-near-humble opinion, one of the most fun gods in Golarion, because he'd be widely worshiped by a bunch of folks in denial.

Aside from the obvious folk of the Skinsaw Cult, anyone who sees secrets as power: cultish magicians, spymasters, devious politicians. If you're the kind of person who collects every little detail waiting for your enemy to slip up, Norgorber is your guy...or girl...or something.

Also, I adore the prevalence of Norgorber worship among halflings and, as a practical point, it makes perfect sense. If I'm three feet tall and weight 85 pounds, the rules of honor and justice in a medieval world are a rigged game. Honor demands courageous combat against one's foes. For a halfling, that's a quick trip to the Boneyard. As Patton said, "The objective of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." Telling me that poison is unfair is a joke - how is it, somehow, better to use swords against people who are bigger and stronger? For the smallfolk, secrets, cunning, and treachery are their strongest weapons - just ask Tyrion Lannister.

But most folk may not even realize that they're walking with the Reaper of Reputations, or may deny it to the heavens. They'll poison their foes, slander their rivals, and play the game that possession is 9/10ths of the law; however, they won't realize just who it is they have served with their acts until they stand before Pharasma's throne. Some of Norgorber's best servants are those who have kept it secret from themselves.

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The Church of Cayden Cailean is the church of That. Drunk. Friend.

You know the one - if he wakes up on a Saturday before noon, it's a miracle, but it also means he'll be wherever you need him to be to help with whatever you need. Forever trying to replace reliability with exuberance and extra effort. This is why he's the god of heroes - because heroes are rarely the ones who toil ceaselessly, but the ones who are there when "cometh the moment."

They're fearless, sure, but they're also almost never around when you need them. When it's time to move furniture, they're sleeping one off; when it's time to save a hot girl, they magically appear and work twice as hard as everyone else.

Periodically useful, entertaining, and endlessly frustrating.

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The compulsion sub-group of spells puts a great big kink into our normal conception of morality because it straight-up erases one of the big requirements in making moral judgments: free will. Where Diplomacy can only make someone see an argument, it can't make them do something they believe to be wrong. Compulsion spells, especially Dominate Person throw that right out the window.

So, here's the question: is it ever ok to strip someone of their free will? If you want to get purely utilitarian about it, the answer is "sure." Stripping someone of their free will before they act on a desire to hurt themselves or others seems to be just the kind of thing a good enchanter would do. On the other hand, does the person who has overwhelmed the will of the miscreant now have moral responsibility for anything that person does while compelled? This raises some interesting questions about what conjurers do with summoned creatures, but one morality-warping school of magic at a time, neh?

There is room for a school of thought that says it's not ok to strip away someone's free will ever. For those thinkers, compulsion is always wrong. If someone's about to do something harmful, you can try to stop them, but taking away their capacity to be free-thinking individuals is a step too far. It's the same line of reasoning as people who would never use deadly force or nuclear weapons: some actions cross a line that can't be uncrossed.

Given all of that, I think many Chaotic characters would be opposed to compulsion spells on ethical grounds: If I am ethically opposed to rules and regulations restricting my choices, how would I then endorse the use of magic to compel my choices or the choices of others? Certainly philosophies that hold up freedom as a higher (if not absolute) good would take issue with that sort of thing.

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Re-skinning an adventure to go into your own game world is a challenge. I’m in a group that's wrapping up play in a Legacy of Fire campaign, which our DM placed into his homebrew world and he had a heck of a time just trying to keep the name changes straight. When I decided to place Way of the Wicked in Cormyr, I knew I had a lot of work to do – the Forgotten Realms has a ton of printed material and bringing that, even partially, into line with the very hidebound and goody-goody kingdom of Talingarde was a tall order.

So, let’s start at the most logical place – the beginning. The players are supposed to start Way of the Wicked in jail, but not just any jail – the most terrible prison in all the land. In the back of my mind, I already had the idea that Torm was going to undergo some profound life changes as part of the lead-up to the campaign, so I cast about until I came upon the 4th edition map for Cormyr, in which the Forest Kingdom is significantly larger. Looking around on that map, I saw that Darkhold, an old Zhentarim fortress (and the starting point of the only enjoyable evil campaign I ever played in) was now a part of Cormyr. Well, that’s just dandy! One tale of some bold Purple Dragons later and I had Branderscar Prison, once a stronghold of Cormyr's worst enemies, then a defensive post for Cormyr, now relegated to prisoner storage until they are sent to the salt mines or to their final judgment.

One more problem – Talingarde has a lot of water and several parts of the story have to do with sea travel. Once again, the Zhentarim come to my rescue (a change of pace for the Black Network, but what can you do?). So a Zhent smuggling caravan serves both to get my PCs from point A to their doo…er, I mean point B. It also gives me a great excuse to acquire Paizo’s Caravan map pack. Bonus!

Now, the story challenge. When I last left Cormyr, King Foril Obarskyr was advocating for more rights for the peasantry and less power for the nobility, in that egalitarian way that so many monarchs do when under the influence of game writers. How do we get from that to a realm which has one state religion, especially in a place as overwhelmingly multi-denominational as Faerun? Here, Gary McBride saves the day. The story of the Talingarde dynasty remained almost entirely intact, only the names were changes and one big event was inserted to jack up the paranoia level to one that would support a more oppressive religious regime. No doubt Mr. McBride will recognize his own writing heavily used here, but it looks something like this:

Campaign Notes wrote:

Most say the troubles began with the children of King Foril Obarskyr. Foril, the son of Azoun V, had earned the name, “The Victorious” (often today simply shortened to The Victor) by leading the armies of Cormyr against the forces of the Empire of Shade and their client state, Sembia. He also expanded the Forest Kingdom’s borders to the south and west. In the Year of Resurrections Rampant (DR 1441), Foril was crowned King of Cormyr. One of his first official acts was the signing of the Treaty of Griffonfang Bridge, ending the war between Cormyr and Sembia. Having proven himself as a warrior, the nation waited to see what sort of ruler he would be.

The answer was that Foril Obarskyr was the sort of ruler that came along only once every thousand years. At the Battle of Gnoll Pass, the King scattered the Goblinoid tribes of the Stonelands for a generation. His expansion of the Imperial Navy, also known as the Blue Dragons, drove pirate activity out of the Dragonmere entirely. So fearsome was his battle reputation that he could send letters asking “Must we meet on the field of battle?” to errant warlords to bring peace.

The King also proved to be a capable builder and statesman. He directed the War Wizards to assist in the construction of the Watch Wall – a series of fortresses that, along with the Stormhorn Mountains, would at last prove a lasting barrier against assault from the north. As a paladin of Torm, he worked hard to spread the faith of the True God, but also kept to the Penance of Duty and encouraged religious tolerance.

For 25 years the Victor sat upon the throne, bringing a golden age to Cormyr. Today, his statues are to be found in almost every town and hamlet throughout the kingdom. He did have his faults though. Like so many great rulers, he was a great soldier and king but a poor father.

After the death of the Victor, his oldest son Irvel ascended to the throne as King and was called the Learned. More a scholar than a king, Irvel proved largely disinterested in affairs of state. He commissioned the great library at Suzail and began renovation of the ancient Obarskyr castle into the great palace known as the Adarium. As the first wing of the Adarium was completed, he retreated there and was rarely seen in public.

The other son, Prince Erzoured, was not so reserved. Though he had no official power, he often ruled in the king’s absence and commanded great loyalty from the knights of the realm. This might have been an acceptable arrangement. After all, Prince Erzoured was a soldier and an heir of the Victor. He could have become the de facto ruler while the official king sat in his distant pleasure palace and library. Alas, that Prince Erzoured was also mad.

Prince Erzoured became convinced that his mother (who had died in childbirth) was not the queen but an angel of Torm. He believed himself a demigod and incapable of wrong. At first the Prince’s madness was subtle. He often dressed all in white and even had a magic set of wings made for himself that allowed him to soar over the capital.

But in time the visions began. He communed with these so-called angels and they whispered that he should replace his brother and become the true and immortal master of Cormyr. The king received disturbing reports of the prince’s madness and plots but refused to believe them. “My brother but jests,” is famously what Irvel replied to the reports. Finally the “angel” prince would wait no longer. He flew to the Adarium and with a flaming sword slew his own brother amidst his books and proclaimed himself King Erzoured the Immortal. His brother’s two year reign was at an end.

For a brief time, it was possible that Erzoured’s claim of kingship might have been acknowledged. His brother after all was little loved and tongues wagged that getting rid of the absent king was a blessing. Maybe the new king was a divine messenger of Torm’s will. But within days the mad decrees began from the Adarium. The king decreed that Torm’s High Holy Day would no longer be the Divine Death on Eliasas 13 (the day Torm overcame Bane during the Avatar crisis) but instead would become the king’s own birthday. He ordered the military to prepare to invade Hell and commanded his wizards to research opening a great gate. First, he explained to his flabbergasted advisors, the army would go through the gate to Mount Celestia and to the realm of Torm himself to call forth an army of angels. Then the King personally would lead the host to invade the nine hells and overthrow Bane and the forces of Evil.

Finally the people had enough of this madness. Officially, the histories record that after only five months in power, King Erzoured, called the Mad, tried to fly from the highest spire of the Adarium without his magic wings. More likely, he was thrown from the spire by paladins who would tolerate no more of this madman’s blasphemies. Whatever the truth, his reign was over.

Fortunately for Cormyr, Irvel had a son – Baerovel. The grandson of the Victor was neither mad nor a recluse. He had been clever enough to avoid the Adarium and the capital during Prince Erzoured’s angelic rampage. Baerovel was a handsome knight and closely resembled his grandfather the Victor. Thus was Cormyr spared a potentially disastrous war of succession, especially with the Shadovar and the Zhentarim watching closely for weakness.

Baerovel returned to the capital and was crowned king. The new king quickly realized that he needed to solidify his power and explain away the difficulties of the last six and a half years. In short, he needed an enemy to unify the fractured Forest Kingdom. He found one – in the church of Bane.

King Baerovel blamed the cult of Bane for using their black magic to summon a devil to possess the former king thus driving him mad. It was a brilliant political solution (though an utter fiction). It removed blame from the royal house of Obarskyr and instead placed guilt squarely upon an unpopular cult most closely related to the hated Zhentarim. This was the beginning of the Purges. The Knights of the Golden Lion took the lead in destroying the temples. High priests were burned at the stake and the sect was driven underground. Like so many moments of religious fervor, the fire quickly spread beyond its original target. Torm’s faith had become tremendously dominant in Cormyr since the Spellplague and now every other faith was seen as suspect – only Torm had the might to stave off the Black Hand.

Baerovel died comparatively young of a mysterious illness. There were rumors that the Cult of Bane had placed a curse upon the king. These rumors only fuelled the purges further. On the day after Baerovel died, The Most Holy Champion of Torm Vitalian made the Proclamation of Supremacy. Torm would now occupy in fact the position he had occupied de facto for many years – the spiritual leader and guardian of Cormyr. Every other faith was invited to acknowledge their subservience to the True God or to practice that faith somewhere else. The priests of Ilmater, Torm’s former advisor and counselor in the Triad, accepted the new religious law; however, the vast majority of faiths simply shuttered their churches and departed.

King Baerovel was followed by Azoun VI, his son named for a happier time in Cormyrean history. Twenty-two when he took the throne (the same age as the Victor), he has ruled for 15 years as a capable, energetic king who has done much to put bad memories in the past. Beloved by his people, he has proven again and again he is the true heir of the Victor. Early in his reign, he personally led the army to relieve the Watch Wall after another hobgoblin incursion. It was on the watchtower walls that he earned himself the title The Brave.

Azoun VI has continued the prohibition against the cult of Bane and supported the Proclamation of Supremacy, but he does not pursue the purges with the same vigor as his father. After all, that battle is largely won. No one has heard of a Bane cultist in Cormyr for years. Instead, he turns his attention to the west, hoping to be the king who liberates the merchant nation of Sembia from the yoke of the Empire of Shade.

He has failed in one duty however. He has failed to yet produce a son. Instead, he has only one child – a beautiful, brilliant young princess named Bellinda. Twenty years of age, she is already a prodigy of arcane magic. If her father produces no heir it is an open question whether the men of Cormyr will follow a queen instead of a king. Her story is yet to be written.

So Cormyr has become a far harsher power in the last years than it was under the tender mercies of TSR or WotC. Additionally, there is precedent in Cormyr for overlooking female descendants (hence the Steel Regency). For the Barcan line that previously held the throne in Talingarde, I am using the Crownsilver noble family, which descends from the Obarskyrs and, therefore, fulfills certain other needs of the story.

Coming in August – The Church of Torm, the True God!

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My initial pass has maintained my excitement about running this campaign. This one does seem to be a little heavier on the "In order to do X, you must get Y on your side, which requires you to do Z," but that very structure should, hopefully, incite the PCs to do what needs to be done in Book 5!

Marsember will make a fine stand-in for Daveryn. About time someone burned that town to the ground anyway.

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One of the challenges Paizo has set up for themselves is consistently running games on the Medium XP track. The 3.5 APs essentially ran on the Fast XP track, which allowed them to go to higher levels in the same amount of time.

While I'm a fan of the Medium XP track for story purposes, a Fast XP track could represent a more action-movie oriented campaign with a save-the-world ending.

The elephant in the room is that Paizo seems to shy away from writing adventures over 16th level. They've introduced villains for 20th-level characters, but only in sourcebooks. I understand that high-level writing is a challenge; however, that would be why I would want Paizo to give me some material in that direction - they are, after all, the professionals.

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Well, I can tell you how we handled it in my campaign and why that's probably not your best option.

In Rise of the Runelords, we had a TPK during book 5. The whole party died and, due to circumstances involving the dungeon, there wasn't any realistic chance that they would be found by friendly parties, let alone resurrected. Thus I made a decisions: I ended he campaign right there.

Now let me say why this was probably a bad idea.

We had invested two and a half years of time in pursuing this story. Take the time the players had invested and multiply it by four for the time I had put in as GM. This, of course, says nothing of the financial investment - but money spent for 30 months entertainment is probably worth it.

The time invested, however, suddenly turns to ash in the mouths of my players. Everything they had done to develop heroes worthy to take down a Runelord is now reduced to a group who died alone and forgotten in a dungeon that only a handful of people even know exist.

As a response strategy, I can share what my wife is doing with her Kingmaker campaign. As the kingdom develops, we've got a ton of NPCs. After a PC unexpectedly died, she made the decision to have us each create one of those NPCs ourselves and that this NPC would be there if our current character fails a critical saving throw. It also gets around the Kingmaker-specific problem of "Welcome, strangers. Won't you please join our government?"

All of this is a long way around to answering your question: don't let the story die. If your players are invested in the story, get them involved in finding away to see it through to its conclusion. For my part, I'd endorse the creation of new PCs to follow in the dead PCs footsteps; however, I don't think a deus ex machina save of the party is completely out of the question if that what it takes to save the story.

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My extensive experience with Crayola says you'd mostly get Brown Dragons.

It really depends on ow much time and effort you want to put into the question. If it's something that will have a significant impact on your story, consider Alex's dominance theory. If not, the "It's Magic" defense says go with Mom's color, as they're her eggs. As highly magical creatures, dragons need not be subjected to Gregor Mendel's petty gene rules.

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Brandon Hodge wrote:
Bookkeeper wrote:

I confess that I was planning to run Carrion Crown until I read Shadows of Gallowspire.

** spoiler omitted **

I really want to understand your critique of the finale properly:

** spoiler omitted **

But, Bookkeeper, you read that and see a boring finale where your...

My apologies, I should be clearer.

Spoiler:

I had restarted my AP subscription based on CC. Yet, as each book came out, my enthusiasm for it dwindled. I had resolved to make changes to several adventures and to replace Ashes at Dawn entirely - I think the developers gave Neil Spicer an impossible task and he wrote a very good adventure that is practically unplayable if your party includes Pharasmins or Paladins. So it was not that Gallowspire killed overwhelming enthusiasm, it was, no pun intended, the nail in the coffin.

For me, The final eight pages felt a bit like a cheat: a cult that called the Whispering Way, the home of the most dreaded necromancer in Golarion's history, and, after all that their final battle is with....a wanna-be. A powerful and dangerous wanna-be, to be certain, but still a guy [i]wishing[i/i] he was the dread lord.

I will still make use of a lot of that adventure. I think Renchurch is probably one of the best dungeons of undead I have read in a long time and presents a fantastic challenge to players who think their 15th level Cleric is going to solve all of their undead problems for them. I'm also presently playing in a PbP CC campaign to see how other GMs handle what I see as serious story challenges.


The bottom line for me is this: the more editing and writing of an AP I have to do myself, the less reason I have to buy the AP. The conclusion of CC made the amount of editing I would need to to do for my players more trouble than it was worth.

Thank you for the response and the critique of my answer. You're right: I haven't yet run it and therefore my opinion shod be taken with a healthy dollop of salt. Best of luck to you.

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The great hiccup in relativistic evil is that there is a very non-relativistic spell out there: Detect Evil. There is a hazard in overlaying modern moral relativism over the game world, because Evil exists in a very Manichean sort of way in Golarion. Good and Evil exist to such a degree that they can be identified by magic and even filtered out by magic.

For a long time, there has been a tendency, both by players and game designers, to impose modern morality viewpoints on a world that has not done the cultural development that would lead to those sorts of conclusions. We do this because playing in a world where women and minorities are treated as chattel or worse usually isn't a group's cup of tea (unless we're there to fight that sort of thing). Our up-to-date sensibilities collide suddenly and violently with the morality system as it is presented.

Good and Evil must be, at some level, objective in a world where they can be the trigger for magic. They are forces that exist independent of actions, though they can be reinforced or diminished by certain actions. Smite evil doesn't work on people the Paladin believes are evil, they must be legitimately evil (a fact rogues have thanked the universe for these many decades). I'm sorry to those folks for whom this feels like game rules imposing themselves on the universe, but it's sort of like physics: falling damage implies gravity. Detect Evil implies that Good and Evil are objective forces and not simply a framework we've constructed to cope with the world (How that collides with Pazio's introduction of the highly amoral Great Old Ones is a completely different topic).

As to the OP's question, we can drift back towards relativism a bit in that, although evil is an independent force, it is not a shackle to free-willed creatures. Evil exists. That doesn't mean I have to choose it. Why some creatures end up in the evil camp reaches back to the myriad explanations listed above. For me, moreover, this presents a greater challenge to the Paladin player: You can smite evil, destroying it utterly (just ask the folks in the impossibly long Smite Evil thread); however, in acknowledging that being evil is a choice, you have to consider your decision to smite in terms of whether killing people who made bad choices is a good act.