Rycross's page

Hey I had a few thoughts on your remix for Runelords. I like where you're going with it, in my game I made Tsuto a gunslinger after he escaped from jail when the PCs caught him. It turned him into a young Lee VanCleef with a broody trench coat and a chip on his shoulder, my players loved it. Also I changed Nualia's old lover from some random dude to none other than Justice Ironbriar. Her child then ends up being a half aasimar half elf with a feindish template. She was sold to a disreputable orphanage that didn't ask any questions in Magnimar. The book states that the child was deformed, but doesn't specify in what way, so I decided that the child was born with an oversized claw-like red left hand. As a cruel joke Lamashtu "gifted" Nualia with the exact same deformity and doesn't plan on changing anything else on her just to see how far Nualia will go to please her.
In another twist I also made Ironbriar Tsuto's father. As an elf it's altogether possible that he would "sow his wild oats" for fifty years or more and if Sandpoint is in his jurisdiction for capital crimes like mass murder, terrorism, trying conspirators of invasion and such it not only gives him a decent timeframe to knock up Mrs. Kaijutsu and Nualia. He could have visited under the pretense of investigating the area looking for a nice summer home in a quiet town or just an inspection of the law enforcement facilities in Sandpoint. Secretly of course he's also scouting the countryside for potential talent for his murder cult. He being the head lawman in the area also gives the PCs a very valid reason to seek him out when the story moves to Magnimar in book 2.
I also didn't really like the transition from Aldern's townhouse to the seven's sawmill being in a conspicuous note saying "here's where you need to go now!" So I had the PCs hit a brick wall at Aldern's townhouse where they were summoned to Ironbriar's office. He proceeds to chew them out for stumbling into an ongoing investigation without his direction and has them look into a string of murders that may be related to what they're looking for. I inserted the Dawn of the Scarlet Sun module here and in context of the game it was just Ironbriar manipulating the heroes into assassinating a rival underworld boss who was threatening Xanesha's turf. Tsuto shows up at the end of the module and helps them can the succubus at the conclusion (which could very well be the same one who enthralled Lyrie in your game hmmmm...) he then reveals that they've been manipulated by Ironbriar, shares the revelation of his parentage and that of Nualia's daughter and says that Ironbriar has found her as well and is planning to sacrifice the young urchin himself. Ironbriar has gone a bit mad and has begun sacrificing victims directly to his Mistress, whom he sees as a manifestation of Norgorbor that he must please. Tsuto knows that the cultists will be moving the child to the sawmill for her sacrifice in a few hours and wants the players to intercept the coach she'll be travelling in leading to a chase sequence. At the end of the chase Tsuto ransoms his freedom with the girl in tow against the ultimate location of Ironbriar. As he will be expecting the arrival of the coach momentarily the PCs have about five minutes to decide whether to let the murderer and known abductor get away with an innocent (albeit deformed) child in his grasp, or track down the only lead they have to discover a ritualistic serial killer.
The scenario as I ran it forced the PCs into an endurance run that they weren't prepared for. They basically had to do the entire Dawn of the Scarlet Sun module a chase scene and the entire sevens sawmill encounter in one big go. That stretched my PC's capabilities quite thin and left them gasping for breath, but they all had a ton of fun and I didn't really need to stat up Ironbriar any because he was at the end of the gauntlet and their best spells and abilities were likely to be used up by then.
I know that this post is turning into a serious novel, but I just had to share what I did with Orik. I made him the most unlucky sod in the world. I mean his backstory has him being pretty unlucky in the first place so my PCs let him live and since I had a guest playing Shelalu at the time she gave him a letter of recommendation to Sheriff Hemlock. I had him end up joining the Sandpoint garrison, getting involved with Shayliss Vinder (and if one of your PCs is involved with her at this point it could lead to her cheating on him with a clueless Orik.) Because Shayliss wants to keep their relationship a secret from her father she demands that Orik be really quiet about it and as such Hemlock doesn't know any better than to send poor Orik to arrest her father when he becomes a suspect for the skinsaw murders, which Shayliss causes a huge scene at. He makes up for it later by bringing Vin home and claiming he helped clear her father's name, which of course is a lie and once that comes to light there's going to be some sort of nuclear fallout. I'm trying to think of some other incredibly unlucky thing that forces him to live through his bad luck. Perhaps he and Shayliss' wedding day will be punctuated by a stone giant attack. hmmm...

I found that there was really no point in statting out Aldern. The PCs should be a bit skidged out about him anyway, not really hating him per se but being uncomfortable and not wanting to spend time around him nonetheless. Also, if Aldern is the only NPC that you refer to a statblock for your players, they're going to smell something coming with that character a mile away. Better to let him be an unstatted groupie for a little while, then make him "disappear" on a personal mission to "rally support from the nobles of Magnimar" when sheriff Hemlock leaves to gather reinforcements and apologize to your players for making such an annoying npc out of him. Then blindside them with part two and cackle maniacally behind your gm screen between rubbing your hands together and twirling your mustachios...

Goblins.
For pathfinder and low level players and inexperienced GMs that would always be my advice.
Goblins are fantastic tools for low level players because they're not too hard to kill and can show up in the proper numbers to give every PC one or two foes to really shine against.
In Pathfinder goblins are also fantastic as mitigation for themselves as well. If you introduce them in a somewhat crowded setting like say, your tavern the little buggers may just get far more interested in getting into a tug-of-war over a piece of roast mutton, or one might just discover that he looooves beer and drops his weapon to start sucking on a keg tap or any number of other antics. As a GM you can use this as an in-game device to scale up or down the actual number of monsters that the PCs are fighting mid-encounter, at the drop of a hat, without anyone being the wiser. It not only gives you a better idea of what your characters are capable of singularly, and as a group, it allows them a way to explore those options for themselves and gives them a few laughs in the process.

Bear in mind also that CRs are for all intents and purposes like posting speed limits on the autobahn. Just a friendly piece of advice for what's just about safe. With the introduction of die rolling into a numbers game you get a very random variable that can very quickly decide the outcome of any given encounter despite how carefully you calculate CRs so really it can be a surprise for even the most seasoned of GMs, but soon enough you actually learn to like that element.

A word of advice that you didn't ask for, but I think is very noteworthy for any GM looking to make their first adventure is to bear in mind that you alone are not writing the story, so avoid writing an exact narrative of events! Plan the game in a series of events and consequences instead. Plan for "ifs" and "thens" not "nexts" for example:
The PCs are enjoying the pub when suddenly monsters attack. IF the PCs defeat them THEN the mayor sends for them to investigate the old abandoned ruins in the north. IF the PCs run away, THEN they see a large section of the town burning and some hooting victorious monsters dragging enslaved townspeople and a large cart of plundered supplies and riches from the town toward the north.
If you structure your planning more like this there are less things to be taken surprised by it might help to plan events using a flow chart and try to think of how your characters will plan as evil selfish jerks or brave and stalwart heroes, if they stay or if they run, if they win or if they lose, of course players have a way of outwitting even the most well laid out plans so flying by the seat of your pants will be a skill employed often and your own improvisational techniques will develop over time in very fun, often surprising ways.

One last note: Don't be afraid to fudge the dice IF it facilitates everyone having fun. You always want to strive for having characters who can triumph through adversity, but that doesn't mean you should have them breeze through every challenge, and likewise it doesn't mean that they should have to roll up a new character every session. It can be very difficult to find that balance, especially at first. It's a great last resort to get out of sticky situations that you weren't anticipating but you won't be doing anyone any favors if you rely on it too much.

Anyway that's my course on game mastering 101 if you have any other questions, comments, or just want to get dazed and confused as to how people can have this much passion for a hobby, stop by the message boards compadre.

Well I was GMing a 3.5 swashbuckling game in a very renaissance setting when I decided to run a musical session. Yeah you read that right.

So the party, consisting of a swashbuckler, a spellthief, a cleric, and a fighter had all settled in for an evening's rest out in the wilderness on their way home to the great city of Solis from yet another rousing adventure when I ask them to roll a will save, I believe the highest die roll around the table was a 3, so needless to say they all fail miserably and every single one of them falls into the cold embrace of sleep.

They awake to find themselves tied together in a single file line and slowly marching their way to the top of a hill through a crowd of corpses dressed as an angry mob of Solisian peasants in equally decayed clothing. At the crest of the hill is an immensely large and draped pillar-like structure draped in a sheer fabric gently wafting in the breeze and a man in an impossibly red robe who turns to witness the oncoming procession of mentally bridled prisoners and begins to sing:

I know the gutter and I know the stink of the street
Kicked like a dog, I have spat out the bile of defeat
All you beauties who towered above me
You who gave me the smack of your rod
Now I give you the gutter
I give you the judgment of God!

Then the entire mob bursts into song

Vengeance victorious
These are the glorious days
Women of Solis, come gather your bloody bouquets!
Now gaze on our goddess of justice
With her shimmering, glimmering blade
As she kisses these traitors she sings them a last serenade

The curtain blows away in a sudden violent burst of wind revealing a 15 foot guillotine and the crowd continues

Sing, swing
Savor the sting
As she severs you, Madame Guillotine
Slice, come paradise
You'll be smitten with Madame Guillotine

The swashbuckler at the head of the column is asked to roll a will save, he rolls a 5 and instantly snaps his head up and joins the song

The world may be ugly but each man must do what he must

His hair is violently jerked back by the dead fingers of a rotting woman as she thrusts he maggot ridden, eyeless face into his

Give in pretty dear, in a year you will be pretty dust

The rest of the mob then takes up the dirge once more

Now come let our lady possess you
In her breathtaking, hair-raising bed
She will tingle your spine
As she captures your heart and your head

Sing, swing
Savor the sting
As she severs you, Madame Guillotine
Slice, come paradise
Our Delilah will shave you razor clean

Suddenly the cleric stops dead in her tracks and is asked to roll a will save, an 18, the party breathes a collective sigh, finally, a good roll! The cleric then raises her eyes to the sky and her hands still bound laces her fingers in supplication and much to the horror of the rest of the group she joins in the song

God, when did man lose his reason?
Save us, my God, if you're there
God, can you not feel the terror like a fire in the air?

At that moment the darkened sky splits and issues forth a pillar of blinding light that strikes the cleric square and grows to encompass the entirety of the hill, as the unholy mob is blasted away in a divine wind that leaves the party untouched the mob tries in vain out sing the holy energies but is ultimately overcome

Flash, slash! Glisten and gash!
She will ravish you, Madame Guillotine
Split, Madame just bit
Give her more to bite, she's a hungry queen
Sing, savor the sting
As she severs you, Madame Guillotine
Slice, come paradise

The party's vision returns and they are no longer bound and now find themselves staring at the man in red now kneeling at the shrine of murder

Hail her Majesty!

He bows his head on the block as ghostly voices scream the last line

Madame Guillotine!

At last the blade falls and just before the inevitable and much aforementioned "sting" the party all snaps awake in a cold sweat greeted by the sight of a cold fire pit and an ominous nearby hill in the moonlight. They wordlessly gather their things and silently agree never to speak of the evening again.

I must admit I can't take credit for the lyrics They're stolen directly from the song "Madame Guillotine" in Scarlet Pimpernel musical you can find the song on youtube and I'd post it here but I'm not really sure what the rules for posting youtube videos on this particular forum are. It's really pretty cool sounding though so I urge you to check it out.

But yeah that's my epic story, complete with lyrics.

Well I always like to get an amulet of cleanliness, which functions very similarly to the ring of cantrips mentioned earlier but it can only be used to clean one's self. The most fun I had with it was with either a paladin obsessed with keeping his whites at their whitest (his command word was "lavender" and it left behind the faint but pleasant aroma of said flower) it was constantly being passed around the group after every fight and it was later re-named the Fabreezian charm, or with a swashbuckler who was obsessed with high fashion and in a group with a werewolf and a centaur who didn't really wear clothes, an assassin who insisted that black was really the only necessary color for him (who my character nicknamed Gloomcookie just to spite him) and a dwarf who was the biggest slob on the planet. (his command word was "egad" and no one ever actually figured it out. they just thought he was always clean for some reason)

When my players had cleared out the catacombs of wrath and had found the small hole that led to the intersection of streets beneath Sandpoint they all got terrible rolls on their perception checks and couldn't quite make out the specifics of the conversations going on above them. For some reason they interpreted this to mean that they must therefore be directly beneath the main encampment of the goblin horde and immediately began to make plans with the gunslinger in the group to mass produce black powder and try to collapse the ruins and destroy the encampment from below. Looking at the map of Sandpoint and the cross streets referenced in the catacombs of wrath description it really only would have collapsed both the town hall and the garrison, as well as a fair chunk of residential areas in the center of the town, and seeing as how I really kind of wanted them to be hailed as "the Heroes of Sandpoint" and not "those colossal jerks who blew up the mayor, sheriff, and half the town just before a major invasion" (though the chant of 'Death, death, on the fifth of Neth, the gunpowder treason and plot' really might have been a fun thing to haunt them for the rest of the game) just as they turn away to begin enacting their explosive plan I had the very distinctively voiced Sheriff Hemlock stand above the hole and say (in my best Lance Henrickson impersonation) "Madame Mvishti I just got back into town with reinforcements from Magnimar. Can you tell me precisely why you dragged me into the middle of this intersection?" followed by an elderly woman who sounded suspiciously like Miracle Max's wife from the princess bride saying "I got no idea, kid. All I know really is that when I get a message this clear? I gotta follow through. Now be a good boy and walk me home." To which the barbarian player turns to the rest of the group and says "Wait...so...is Law-man working with goblins now?"

Just wondering if my two-weapon shielded fighter (from APG) could apply the feat weapon focus, and all the goodies that spring from that tree, to his shield as used in a shield bash attack, and would that require any prerequisites other than what weapon focus would normally have. I ask because weapon focus states that you can take it for unarmed strike, but you would still need imp. unarmed strike to avoid AoO. I'm wondering if a shield bash would work the same way, but Weapon focus doesn't expressly state that you can, so what's the consensus Pathfinders?

My two cents: when talking about the concepts of good vs evil in role playing games I think it's actually a good thing to paint wickedness and righteousness alike in broad strokes, especially for kids. I think it's important to understand the basic concepts of an idea before you begin analyzing the intricacies of said concepts. That being said, it's not like it's a concept that you can't or shouldn't leave behind or outgrow at some point. Likewise, look at the racial diversity within player choices, PCs are more often the most accepting characters when it comes to making friends with a racially diverse group. When a townsman yells for help and the half-orc, elf and dwarf spring up with the human the players get the opportunity to judge their companions by the content of their character and to try and make friends with people with a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds that they can interact with. It's a great way to teach kids that in different places people do things differently and that exploring those differences is an adventure not something scary and alien and to be avoided or unaccepted. By playing a game in which you quite literally stand in the shoes of another you really begin to flex that empathy muscle and it can really aid in understanding how to understand.

I had the same fear looking at the map and solved it by locking the door with a wrath magic protected key/lock and had Elyrium keep the key in her favorite book in the meditation room I justified it by saying that the key used to be the Scribbler's key to the minor runewell and now Elyrium keeps it outside the runewell and occasionally "gifts" Koruvus with the usage of the item. My PCs actually ended up going through the rest of the dungeon before even discovering the runewell where we had to wrap-up the session for the night. The next week when we got together they had to be reminded that they did in fact find a mysterious key, and that this, being the last room in the dungeon and the only actual surviving door in any decent working order might be a fit for it. The fight itself was fairly difficult as the PCs are very melee heavy, but between fairly clever usage of the ranseur they took from the statue of Alzanist and a crit from our cleric of Sarenrae with the flame of the dawnflower trait (which in that case I ruled would count as being good aligned for the purposes of overcoming DR, not what's written, granted, but I thought it was a bit too climactic and cool not to do) they managed to take her down. The cleric got a really great moment to shine and really strike a pose, so all things considered, it came out alright.

Well my PC's are an interesting bunch, they managed to get the story of Gervais Stoot and the Chopper murders shortly before Hemlock pulled them aside for the trouble at the crypt where they somehow came to the conclusion that the Chopper's evil spirit had come back and had a diabolical plan for Sandpoint and all it's residents who held power at the time of recent troubles, but were fairly quickly dissuaded by Hemlock (who they actually kind of like, despite the fact that he hates having to ask anything of them and only does so with a show of annoyance and grudging respect for their talents) when he asked them to see Shalelu when she was introduced. They also spent the majority of one session in the Curious Goblin talking to all the town's intellectuals and the fighter walked out with a book of sword techniques written in a poetic cipher that he will slowly unravel as he levels up and gains his feats to reflect his study of the tome, the cleric walked off with a cookbook, the gunslinger strode away with a copy of Zoltar: King of the Jungle under her arm, and the barbarian got offered a job as a P.E. coach for the Turandurok Academy. They just finished the ruins of wrath and they're convinced that the small opening at the top of the staircase leads directly into the middle of the goblin encampment, which they plan to raid tomorrow. We'll see how that one goes.

I was a bit concerned about this one too, as one of my PCs it the only one involved in any kind of romance (despite my better attempts at getting another PC interested or getting the PC interested in someone else as well) so having your lordship point out his obsession in the first note is only going to eliminate any of the guesswork or red herrings in the mystery, and I really want to try and build up the suspense for an unexpected reveal. As to bigrig's issue what I might suggest is to let the PC's cleverly deduce that it is a ghoul/ghast, but remember that these creatures are usually at the thrall of a much more powerful will. Give them some red herrings like the Sandpoint Academy's headmaster is rumored to have some sort of goblin farm or diabolical laboratory in his basement, the truth of which is that it's just a glorified trophy room, or perhaps the PC's notice that the proprietor of The Curious Goblin bookstore has been acting shifty lately and closing his doors earlier and earlier, the truth: the latest volume of the ongoing adventures of Zoltar, King of the Jungle has just come in and he doesn't want to lose face in front of all his scholarly peers for reading pulp fiction about half-naked men in exotic locales (even though secretly they're all reading it too). Bear in mind also that the whole point of finding clues is to lead to the next one and ultimately to the identity of your killer. Figuring out that it's an undead beastie in the initial set up still gives you a great deal to play with, they establish the what, but not really the where, when, why, how, or, most importantly the who that is committing the murders and when the next victim falls.