Tubstout's page

Currently I am running Abomination Vaults module on Foundry. In fact, it's been such a delight and so well set up I'm running two groups concurrently! Iirc, Outlaws of Alkenstar and Blood Lords are also available for Foundry, and Kingmaker will be as well.

While I'd love for them to go back and add official modules for earlier 2e adventures, I know it's far more likely if we do get more for Foundry, it will be future products instead of going back to Frozen Flame or Strength of Thousands, etc.

I know Gatewalkers is not out yet, but I can hope they will continue putting out modules for Foundry (not to understate the great work that currently stands with PDF to Foundry).

I will most likely implement this change with Kaklatath. There's a lot of Book 4 that just doesn't jive very well with me tonally (and there's another campaign the same players are in that most of book 4 would seem more fitting. It might cause some crossed wires, "wouldn't this fit better in your other game...?" if that makes sense).

I was definitely planning on Weiralai being a fun recurring villain. The group really enjoys Leng (we also played another AP that had a connection/references to Leng so they got really excited for more of that here)!

I'm almost assuredly going to swap out the end boss. The players didn't really put a lot of stock into Briarstone Witch during book 2 and focused more on other things.

I'd really like to have a wild divergence into earth and running a series of sessions in Call of Cthulhu rules as well.

I don't have anything super concrete since it's been awhile since I ran it, but based on what you are describing I would take a long look at everything in Books 5 and 6. Almost all of the encounters and the cool factor in both is setting, and not story dependent. So I'd recommend filtering everything through what encounters you think will really interest your group and/or make things more event driven in book 5. My group basically skipped over all the desert encounters, which was totally fine.

Thanks! I am currently re-reading the books and I'm in book 4 right now and admittedly I never read 5 or 6 when I got them years ago, just skimmed.

I'm fine with picking and choosing what to run. I generally cut about 20% of encounters in any AP and don't run random encounters.

Spoilers for the campaign to follow.

Hello everyone,

I was a subscriber to the AP line when Strange Aeons initially came out and I started running it very quickly. My group got almost through book 3 (we are about to get their memories back) and we have taken a VERY long hiatus - roughly 5 years.

My players highly prioritize RP and have been incredibly cool and trusting with the amnesia factor for their characters. We move through campaigns incredibly slowly, even playing 4hrs per week. (For example, it took us 30 sessions to complete Book 1 of Curse of the Crimson Throne!)

The players are looking forward to returning and finishing the AP, making it the second campaign we will ever finish.

Now, even when I was running Strange Aeons in 2016/2017 and reading people's criticisms of the AP now that people have gotten to finish it for the past several years, I know there is some changes I would like to make going forward.

A lot of the issues I have seen stem with some tonal weirdness in Book 4, some plot points feeling a little odd or disheartening (ex. completing the Mysterium and missing Lowls yet again, only to be told you can research there instead, the Necronomicon being a let down), and the final boss feeling underwhelming or like they came out of left field.

Here are the things I am looking at accomplishing:

1) Trimming the AP. I want to cut some content to keep the campaign focused on the horror/weird fiction elements. We progress very slowly, and I want this to move at a decent clip if possible, thus cutting content. I am guaranteed going to be cutting the gnoll stuff in Book 4.

Any recommendations for streamlining or shortening the game without missing out on any fun set pieces?

2) I really like the idea of the group traveling to the "real world" at some point and running with Call of Cthulhu rules for several sessions. I think that would be a really wacky way to keep the adventure feeling fresh. This could be a fun way to link together any missing elements that I might lose by trimming the campaign.

3) Making the end boss more satisfying. I've read a lot of threads in here so I've seen what other people have suggested of making the last fight be Lowls, etc. But I figured I'd post about it again here.

I don't have any ideas set in stone, so I'm looking to bounce some ideas off people for what they did to mitigate any of these issues, or what they would recommend.

I am comfortable with tweaking APs. One of the big changes that has already happened in our game is that I allowed the ritual at the end of Book 2 to be successful - which the players unknowingly contributed to despite the fight being won. They rushed outside of Iris Hill in time to see Thrushmoor being taken away, and it's one of their highlights of any session we've ever played.

Thanks in advance!

Great story! I love Anchor Root.

I am most looking forward to the Lost Omens line at this point. The setting is so vibrant and bursting with plot hooks, inspiration, character seeds and options...

The Lost Omens books I'd like to see most are:
Tian Xia
Arcadia
Eye of Dread (I want something with more Ustalav!)

I'm unsure if Lost Omens would be the correct line to host a Darklands book, but I feel it would work better as a pseudo-monster book a la Book of the Dead. If Paizo would be interested in revisiting any of their old Adventure Paths Second Darkness getting touched up to be released in tandem would be very cool. Also extremely unlikely!

A book covering more "generic" NPCs such as those in the Gamemastery Guide.

Several years down the line we'll likely need more options for the newer Ancestries with less feat choice.

I would love an Adventure Path that has a heavy focus on the religion of Pathfinder. We often see cultists to evil deities, or ally with churches of good deities for healing or removing disease. I think an Adventure Path with the expectation of players being very devoted to their deities the same way Strength of Thousands has the expectation of players being spellcasters could be cool. It would likely lean more into plane-hopping than the typical AP. VERY niche and probably too open-ended even if you forced players to be limited to the good/neutral main pantheon. But we're all dreaming big here, right?

I have ran two sessions of the campaign at this point, and like I mentioned, I've been shamelessly stealing other peoples' ideas to fluff up the beginning of the campaign and get the players more involved in Korvosa before the king dies.

The game began with giving each character an individual scene and what their stakes are:

Maeve human/changeling sorcerer. Is a shop owner, selling various herbs and tinctures. Yargin and one of the lambs came into the shop, looking to steal some of her supply. When she noticed, Yargin shoved her into a storage room and tried to burn the place down. Luckily, it didn't spread and not much of her stock was destroyed, leaving mostly aesthetic damage.

Maeve didn't have any luck with the guard, but on her own time she learned more about Yargin being tied to Gaedren. She wants vengeance, less for herself than the others he's hurt; however her primary goal is to save the lambs.

Drake is half elf oracle, son of a big shot in Ustalav. He's an emissary who's had some of his father's investments stolen. His motivations are self-motivated, and he doesn't want his father to learn anything is awry. I think I will introduce the minor character of Amprei in the future since he and Drake run in the same circles.

The last two characters decided to create a duo; a noble and their butler. They are members of a created minor noble house called Arisen, a family very closely allied to the Church of Pharasma, and would do some charity work healing the wounded. Their manor is in the Grey, right on the edge of the district.

The noble is a young (roughly 16-18) elf duskwalker rogue named Lyros. They are the reborn soul of one of the heads of house - Loros Arisen. Lyros doesn't consider themself to be the same person, though the others in their house do, especially Loros' sister Lyvi. Lyros thinks of her as a grandmother, putting them very much at odds with the Arisen household, though they conduct themself as properly as the family expects.

The butler is an human dhampir named Laurence who looks to be in his 50s. He was found as a baby abandoned in the Grey by Lady Lyvi Arisen, raised by the house, forever instilling his loyalty. They treated him well, but he never took the family name, instead going by 'Laurence en Korvosa'.

A month before EoA, there was an attack on the Arisen's house. Lyros and Laurence escaped, going into hiding. They have reason to believe Lamm is connected to the attack, but not why. As far as they know, no one survived. During the first session, they visited the manor for the first time since the attack. It has been boarded up and the bodies have been removed - but they could find no evidence of who was responsible.

I am thinking the attack was carried out by the Red Mantis assassins, though who hired them I am not yet sure. I had thought perhaps the Arisen's were taken out as an early move to weaken the city against the blood veil. Any suggestions here would be helpful.

I'm also unsure how the city would handle such an event - the members of a minor noble house slaughtered overnight. Would the Church of Pharasma take care of the corpses? In any case, the city starts on edge after hearing about this. As I said in my first post, this will make the descent into anarchy after the death of Eodred less jarring. The dominos are already falling visibly to the PCs.

Continuing how to handle the political situation, I want there to be more intrigue in the game around the death of the king and also with the destruction of house Arisen, but I'm not sure how best to handle it. I want Lyros and Laurence to come into contact with multiple nobles and have to decide who they can trust, if anyone.

How have I carried on since introducing the characters - they are drawn to Zellara's after having their introductory scenes. I ended the first session with her beginning to perform the Harrow, and I linked the short story on this site to them to read during the week in between sessions. They thought that was really cool, and helped them to trust her.

The second session I performed the Harrowing, and it was damn lucky the order in which I drew the cards - it basically ended up with the interpretation that they would accomplish this goal (finding and getting vengeance on Lamm) but then disaster would strike. The card after this 'victory' card was the Avalanche. They dug the reading, and asked if this would continue over the course of the campaign.

Rather then sending them straight after Lamm to the Fishery, I had used some other people's ideas of running a module. I implemented St. Casperian's Salvation and the Splithog Pauper is not an accomplice of Lamm's but a competitor in the shiver business - the PCs do not know this. They don't know who is in charge. The PC's decided to stake out St. Casperian's, and after it being quiet and rather innocuous, they are going to go in and fight their way to getting some answers.

Hello everyone.

I am an exceedingly infrequent lurker and even rarer poster to these forums.

I've decided to run Curse of the Crimson Throne in Pathfinder 2e. It will be my first time running in 2e and I'm very excited for it!

This is for me to get my thoughts out, as well as perhaps get some insight from anyone who's offering. I've ran all of Rise of the Runelords and 1/2 of Strange Aeons for this group, so we are well-versed in playing together and prioritize roleplay and character over combat. In the past I haven't done much to tweak any AP to suit my party better, but in this case I will be.

To prepare, I've read about half of the adventure and much of the back matter in the Anniversary Edition and have spent some time perusing the forums here.

We had character creation last week, and everyone seems to be settling into a similar kind of niche organically. All but one of the characters have some influence of death/undeath around them, and the odd one out is periphery to that. Here is what my starting party will be:

-Maeve, a human/changeling sorcerer with the undead bloodline. An... interesting mixture to be sure. She is unaware of her heritage and wants to learn more about it over the course of the campaign.
-Unnamed as of now, a half-elf oracle of lore. The eldest of 3 triplets who all are saddled with the blessing and curse of oracular powers. Grew up in Ustalav and moved to Korvosa. Don't have a lot of detail about this character yet.
-Unnamed as of now, elf duskwalker rogue. This is where things get wild. This player wants their character to have been a part of a noble house of Korvosa who have ties to the Church of Pharasma. Before the events of EoA, her house falls and she doesn't know who is responsible.
-Lawrence (or maybe Ludwig) human dhampir monk. This character is tied to the previous one and are creating the backstory together. This is the servant of the duskwalker.

With a character wanting to play in an invented noble house with a mystery baked in and ready to go I have a lot of options from the get-go. With what my players have done and talked to me about, they are very much looking forward to intrigue in the campaign so I think that side of the campaign needs to be buffed up.

This noble house will be a minor one, of course and will have ties with the Grand Cathedral of Pharasma. I think it will be located in or very close to The Grey District. The PC duskwalker was created from one of their ancestors. The members of the house are killed, perhaps while the PC is away with her servant - which means I need to decide who-dunnit and why. My current thought is perhaps this is the first move before the events of Seven Days to the Grave to ensure less help and monetary assistance can go towards stemming the blood veil.

I will need more interaction from the noble houses to assist with this subplot as well as to maybe keep the trail off Illeosa for a book or two. (Plus, the players want intrigue and perhaps houses vying for control of the Crimson Throne!) I'm also considering her maybe not being responsible for either the murder of Eodred or the blood veil.

I am already planning on making some tweaks to the beginning of the campaign so that they don't kill Lamm right away which will serve the dual purpose of spending some time in Korvosa before the riots start, and possibly meeting Eodred before he passes away. The assassination of a noble house over night followed shortly after by the death of the king means that riots starting quickly will probably be less jarring.

It seems fine to me, I don't think many groups will hit a dry spot with this release schedule. Then again, my group plays 3-4hrs a week and moves at a snails pace. We can complete two AP books a year.

This also encourages people who already have a Pathfinder AP subscription to not drop it in favor of the new shiny game!

Had one session of Thrushmoor Terror and things seem to be moving at a faster clip, we hit several small scenes to set up the small town and get them established over the course of the night but no combat was had quite yet.

Our group is very, very slow. Our 16th session will be starting this Sunday and this will be wrapping up Book One. There is a lot of waffling and discussion and they enjoy roleplaying as well (which is great) but oh man. They can't wait to get out of Briarstone.

I feel like my group moves much faster outside of a dungeon-based exploration set up. They get obsessive about exploring everything, but they're still new enough to Pathfinder mechanics and Lovecraft that they are quite cautious.

If the Nightgaunt was able to kidnap one of my players I was maybe thinking of having that player come back as a doppleganger later on, allowing the player to play as the doppleganger for a while(just letting him use the stats of his normal character plus the doppleganger abilities) before his real character would be found somewhere in the asylum maybe babbling to himself about the horrors he saw out in the fog. The characters reappearance would be left unexplained.

Okay. I will definitely be lifting this idea to an extent as one of my players fell victim to the nightgaunt.

Specifically, he wandered off by himself when the rest of the party returned to the chapel and entered the courtyard all by himself. He was lifted away, and struggled, but ultimately couldn't break free. Carried up, up, up into the sickly yellow fog. And then I called the game since the timing was just right. He is working on a new character to rejoin the party in the next session.

I'm one of those GMs who doesn't like killing characters. My players get very attached to their characters, and dislike the character creation process outside of brainstorming and creating a personality and backstory. (Yes, I have killed characters before. Brutally, in the case of our Rise of the Runelords game.) If deaths happen, I want them to feel meaningful, or fit within the confines of the narrative. This character disappearing without his companions having a chance of ever knowing what happened is a brilliant way for a character to go; thematically it's perfect.

And yet.

The amnesia angle is a pretty important unifying feature for the party and seeking revenge later on is a strong drive to continue the story, and not having a PC with that link has potential for some interesting inner-party dynamics, but ultimately ruins some of the narrative behind Strange Aeons. Ideally, I'd like to have the original characters stick together until the 4th adventure.

So, I'm thinking of having the nightgaunt drop off the character somewhere else in the asylum, and be found by the players at a later point. If I can manage it, his reveal will be at the end of a session. Afterwards, I will tell the player who originally played him decide if he wants to return to that character, or stick with the new one.

There is an amount of player agency that is innately taken away when they don't have direct control over a portion of their background. The amount the PCs cannot remember is variable. I believe it's said "no less than two years but not more than 5" cannot be remembered from their fugue state/amnesia.

Everything else is very much GMs fiat. I allowed my players to create their backgrounds except for the past 5 years of their lives. I told them during this time, they can't remember anything but they will recover those memories in time. I told them they may not like some of the things they did, and if they're not okay with that to communicate with me.

You can have it be that the players remember their pasts except for a small chunk, or like me, that they woke up in Briarstone unable to remember anything. Not even their names.

Even the events that occurred during those forgotten years can be changed to more suit your PCs. If you want to really fiddle with that, most of the work will most likely be done during Book 2, in which they encounter some NPCs who have...mixed opinions of them. :)

Thanks for continuing this series of videos!

I am in the process of converting the AP maps from the drawings in the books to VTT-ready maps for my players and I thought I'd make them available to you guys as well, if you like.

You can find them HERE and I will be updating them as I can.

Oh my gosh... thank you so much! Great job on these. I've been having a heck of a time trying to play this over roll20 and using the maps.

I don't have too much to contribute to this, there's a pretty wide net of great material here. I'll try not to repeat any of it, as most of my suggestions have already been covered!!

This music isn't strictly Lovecraftian in its tone, but definitely stuff I'm planning to play. Definitely not ALL of a lot of each album/artists discography are going to be useful, but I very heavily curate my playlists at the table.

Mamiffer
30 Days of Night OST
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni OST
Amnesia OST
Disparition (of Welcome to Nightvale fame)
Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts album.

So many other recommendations are great! I haven't started running Strange Aeons yet, but the first piece of music I'll be playing is from Resident Evil and will be used as the theme for the Tatterman. Resident Evil is definitely a series with a lot of music to glean, but it's not as consistently usable as something like Amnesia or Akira Yamaoka's work is going to be.

I actually quite enjoy these fan-made tracks in the same vein as the Resident Evil save rooms. They are generally soothing, yet haunting.

Do the players even know their names? IIRC the description of the room where their records are kept implies that they don't, but I don't recall that showing up in the Player's Guide, nor earlier in the adventure. Would be interesting if the players had to forgo their "real" names until they learn them, and how they handle the logistics of that up until that point.

I've checked the Player's Guide and the Adventure, and I believe that's the only occasion where it's mentioned.

At the end of the day, I think it's up to the GM and the group how they'd like to handle that. The Player's Guide says that they can choose how much or how little they want to remember of their past, but the last several years are a blur.

I'm going to have my players not know their names until they find their own records, which will be personalized handouts as recommended by Order of the Amber Die. I think I'll have them give me a list of three or four names so it can be something of their choosing, but they just won't know which one until later. Until they discover their names, they'll have to make do (with my group, I'm sure nicknames will surface quickly).

Hello all.

I'm super excited about the release of Strange Aeons, and I can't wait to run the game. This question isn't so much about the AP itself as it is about running an adventure that isn't completely released yet. Do you generally wait until a few books are out to begin, in case you want to thread things to later sections of the adventure early on, or tie things in to your PCs backstories?

I only have experience running adventure paths that have been completely released for many years with lots of input from the community behind them (Runelords, Legacy of Fire). This gave me a distinct advantage of being able to read ahead and look to places, such as these fine messageboards, for tips, warnings, suggestions and inspiration.

It will be a very different experience running it without being able to do much research ahead of time, though I suppose it will only matter for the very early sessions. I won't be surprised if the entire AP is published before we get to Book 3. I'm sure I'm not alone in being very excited for the release of an AP and had to jump in head first as soon as possible! Please let me know your experiences or recommendations.

I know there have been a good handful, and not all of them are in Pathfinder necessarily.

In our Rise of the Runelords game, Aldern was subsequently named Mr. Fancypants.

Also, our players love to nickname the players, mostly to their chagrin. Our half elf cleric is named Nora, so after they visited the Hagfish, and met the barkeeps own Norah... "Don't you dare start calling me a hagfish!"

Shalelu was too hard to be remembered, so they called her "Sha-nay-nay" and "Sha-le-lu-le-lo" but spelled her name differently every time on the initiative chart. (They had an easier time with Malfeshkenor.)

Outside of Rise of the Runelords in our World of Darkness games. One of the PCs was named Cam, but one of the others immediately started calling her "Cambles".

One of the characters was attacked at his college campus, and his friends heard his cries for help and all decided to help him. Unfortunately, the person who had attacked him was actually a giant snake in disguise, and they didn't stand a chance. The first person who got truly hurt in combat was poisoned by the snake, and he stumbled into a corner and made his saving throw every turn as all the other friends fell. When the PC managed to kill the snake and rush to his friends' side, he finally failed his roll and died. Everyone at the table was very upset, and started lamenting, "Friend number 1! Why? He was the cool one. He wore the leather jacket!"

But the most ridiculous of all, was when they fought against a giant spirit, who was in the form of a rusty tank with blood oozing from the rivets. I had an actual name but it's been lost because what the players named him easily overrides my memory. They were so certain they were going to get killed, one of the players wrote on the white board we used to use as a gaming mat, "Rape Hungy". They ran away after a few rounds, but Rapehungy is immortal to this day at the gaming table.

Just ran this last night. Once my players entered the Glassworks, they started heading towards the prison and zombie pits, but before entering the always ominous closed door, they decided to turn around and headed straight for the Elyrium encounter. I debated locking the door to stop them, but instead tried to make the altar unpleasant and obvious that they should not forge ahead. Instead they did.

They fought her summoned monsters, a sinspawn and her all at once. The fighter has a ridiculous armor class for his level (I ran the beginner box as a prelude so I believe he got some nice armor from Black Fangs cache). A lot of enemies wail on him but he's almost impossible to hit unless I roll a natural 20 (I think his AC at lvl 2 is 28...first time Pathfinder DM is learning things.). Elyrium's spells did a number on him as he often failed his saves and was rendered useless. The sinspawn also caught him flatfooted and nailed him with a sinful bite.

The other two party members, the cleric (who is known for being amazingly badass) and the rogue (who deals absolutely massive damage because he's the only player who min-maxed like crazy, but always ends up bleeding out) did their best. At one point, the fighter was feared, the rogue was down and the cleric was barely holding her own against ALL the enemies.

The fighter got his bearings back and gave the rogue a potion to get him on his feet, the cleric killed the sinspawn with her trident, and the summoned monsters were killed. Then it became a matter of getting Elyrium out of hiding, who kept tossing spells at them, occasionally appearing when she tossed her dagger, only to go invisible the next round. Unsure what to do, they tried to enrage her by breaking skulls on the fountain, and the cleric ran over to the minor runewell, and I was hoping she'd figured it out--instead the players started discussing if they should pour their only holy water into it.

That's when the half orc fighter got his idea. Once they managed to pinpoint her location he tossed some oil at her, which managed to splash onto her, revealing her location. The next turn he lit some flint using his sword, and tossed it at her. Wanting to move the fight along, I called it a CMB move. Why not? He rolled a 20, the fire caught the oil covered quasit. It didn't take long for it to burn through her fire resist, but in that time, the cleric of Gozreh managed to catch the tiny demon in her net and grounded her. Before the net caught fire, the group just started beating the crap out of her. Net burned through, she ran for the fountain and jumped in to douse flames, hoping to be able to fly away afterwards. Nope. Cleric pinned her with the trident and the rogue coup de graced her.

It's always interesting with them...

Later they pushed Koruvus into a zombie pit.