| Rook in the Castle |
Hello everyone! I know these questions are asked frequently, but I'll really appreciate any advice you can offer.
I will be DMing a campaign for the first time ever. We will be using Pathfinder ... also for the first time. We're all busy people so I thought I'd run an Adventure Path to help soften the landing of DMing. Plus, I played the first part of Age of Worms a while back and it REALLY got me hooked on the concept of an AP.
Before getting my Pathfinder books in the mail, I'd been looking over the website and the reviews here and I had settled on Legacy of Fire. After getting the first adventure, I was even more impressed. It seemed perfect.
Except, upon reading the Core Rulebook, I realized that I don't really have the crunchy knowledge or time to appropriately convert everything to the Pathfinder rules and I'm afraid that if I run it "as written," I'll not only be burdening myself with keeping two rule sets in mind (and I don't know 3.5 all that well, since I only played 3.0), but potentially walking into some pitfalls with either overpowered players, overpowered monsters, inappropriate random encounters, poor treasure, etc. I noticed that in the LoF forum, someone is running a conversion thread, but it's only halfway (or less) through the first adventure and even combing over this nice person's thread will take some work.
Reluctantly, I've turned my attention elsewhere. My good friend is already planning to run Kingmakers - and that's fine, since I'm leery of such a giant sandbox on my first time out of the gate as DM. That leaves me with Council of Thieves or Serpent's Skull.
I don't have either of the first adventures for CT or SS, but my impressions from what I've gleaned online are...
Council of Thieves-
Pro: Our group tends to enjoy socializing, planning, diplomacy, etc. along with the good ol' hack n' slash. An urban setting is perfect for this.
Con: Most of the reviews have not been very favorable, especially of the first adventure. I'll admit that what I've read about it so far hasn't hooked me either.
Serpent's Skull-
Pro: The theme and setting seem interesting enough. Pirates and jungles sound entertaining to me.
Con: I'm worried that there won't be enough NPCs and social flavor for my group. Yes, there are the npc castaways, but I'm concerned that this won't be enough. I have one player who is going full on skill-monkey-diplomacy and while I'm sure he'd alter his character concept, he's really jazzed about the current concept.
Does anyone have any advice? Does Souls for Smuggler's Shiv have enough to keep a party that enjoys more than just struggling against jungle disease and voodoo zombies entertained? Is CT as bad as everyone says? Would it be a disaster to run LoF WITHOUT any conversions other than coming up with CMB and CMDs for the npcs? Keep in mind that this is my first time DMing!
Thanks in advance!