Hey folks! I've been getting requests on a daily basis the last few days for these cards and I imagine people are lurking on this thread. Back when I posted these in 2011 I didn't understand how Google docs worked. So the link I shared above required permission to view it (sigh) so everyone who clicks on it sends me a request. I'm so sorry!
Here is a link - do with these what you will, make a copy, edit them up yourself, do something great! Carrion Crown was such a great campaign for my players.
I don't think it is possible to edit my post from 2011 to fix the earlier link, sadly, or else I would replace the link there. Hopefully people will find this post deep in the thread.
I have tested this using different browsers that are not logged into my Google account and it seems to work and let me right into the document.
Paul, I actually ran your script, The Fall of Feldgrau last night before our session starting Feldgrau. I asked my group to entertain this and offered them up some parts. We hadn't pre-read the story and this was entirely off the cuff. Some of the voices are pretty funny - the player who played the candlemaker was playing it very timid and scared, the player who read for the margrave played it like an orc. :)
Anyway, if you'd like to hear the audio I uploaded it to youtube. I recorded it as a 'video' with my iphone during the session and it picks up about halfway through the reading so it's not all of it.
I thought some of you would get a chuckle out of it. Maybe this'll encourage you to add more stories, Paul.
It would be really nice if something like this had clear plug-ins for collaboration from the technology community. Paizo has a very 3rd-party friendly stance in pen-and-paper and I'd really like to see that transfered to digital products.
For instance:
Add my own maps
Add new rulesets
Adding new, custom generated monsters
Adding visual effects (fireball! call lightning, animations, etc).
Mapping
Character generators
Spellbook management
/etc
I'm not saying these things will or should be present on launch, I'm suggesting there be 'hooks' that allow technology creators to develop products to connect in and add functionality.
I want to bring up a few interesting problems I am having, perhaps you have ideas from your campaign how to address these:
CHALLENGE:
Spoiler:
The early Castle is really challenging - 3 trolls, 3 troll hounds, an advanced troll, a flesh golem hound, and a huge air elemental (or a DC 31 trap to perceive and disable). All this before the PCs are even into the castle.
The Huge Air Elemental has amazingly high AC, cannot be sneak attacked, has a lot of HPs, and if you are playing it meanly should just whirlwind a PC to pick it up and drop it off the side of the bridge - dead PC. I think the Elemental can only do this for 3 rounds though, which is good. This CR 7 encounter nearly TPKed my party, definitely seemed strange for a trap at the ENTRANCE to a castle.
PACING:
Spoiler:
Bloodfire Fever (from the Trollhounds) is quite nasty. I had 3 of my 5 PCs fail their saves (bad rolls). Notice what happens here is a 1-day-onset 1d3 STR, 1d3 DEX damage that takes at minimum 2 days of saves to cure (unless you're casting the requisite clerical spells). This is a nasty disease in my opinion. In a non-timed campaign, the PCs would go seek healing, sleep it off, etc. But the PCs are in a hurry.
These encounters at the front are very challenging. My PCs took out the Gatehouse, and then slept a night. Next morning they took out the Golem Hound, had a major problem with the Huge Air Elemental, and were totally spent by 9am in the morning - again, going back to rest more.
There's still a pacing going on in this part of the story to rescue the Count from his starvation, but the PCs have no way of knowing that. What's the hurry?
SPACING:
Spoiler:
Something is clearly wrong with this early area. I think the 5foot squares need to flat-out be turned into 10-foot squares.
1: The troll gatehouse has 3 trolls in it - each of which is 10foot by 10foot. They aren't even big enough to get up the stairs, let alone hang out inside and fight. Also the Gatehouse is described as big enough to hold many visiting coaches - at 20feet by 10 feet?
2: The dog on the bridge is written with the goal of knocking the PCs off with a Bull Rush. Great idea! Sadly it doesn't work. Bull Rush requires charging at least 10 feet and then continuing in that direction, hitting a target, and pushing them backwards. How can you do that on a surface that is 10 feet across? If you charge down the bridge, at best you push someone parallel to the bridge. To push them orthogonal to the bridge you have to get diagonal or perpendicular yourself - which you cannot do while still moving 10 feet in a Charge. So the Golem Hound's dangerous Bull Rush is removed :(
3: The Trap at the end can produce a Huge Air Elemental - which is 15foot wide. I realize it flies, but really? The space at the end here is, again, 10 foot wide. I had it blow back my PCs towards the middle of the bridge and made them roll Acrobatics saves to try and land on their feet.
MOTIVATION:
Spoiler:
My PCs came here because the Judge asked them to "follow the beast". The Beast also invited them to the castle. But, having come here and trying to say "we were invited" a few times, they see no reason to keep throwing themselves against this fortress.
They did find the Whispering Way amulet (though I do wonder what possible motivation could exist if they had missed that). That is a huge clue and the first clue that the PCs get that the WW are involved in this module. Some of them are motivated in continuing in vengeance to their dead professor-friend.
However, others want to head back to town, lick their wounds, heal from the disease, and come back.
I am looking for suggestions on how to motivate them. They don't KNOW anything about the Count, never heard of him, and have no idea that they need to rush to save him from death. I could have the Count die due to their slowness . . . that might work.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Fun and challenging start to the castle. Definitely a nice change after the intense role playing of the past few (in-game-time) days.
I have (had?) a lot of the same questions. I resolved them enough to play the adventure but found each encounter with a haunt really cumbersome. I realize what Brandon was going for with the haunts and I really appreciate the atmosphere but I just wasn't able to pull them off effectively.
Spoiler:
I am disappointed to see a return of haunts in (at least) the last module as I'm not really looking forward to playing them again.
More to the point, I also ended up allowing Holy Water to be used and I used it as a splash weapon with a roll to hit - which I found really silly in the moment. So, what, we're rolling to hit on pouring holy water on a window that's slammed itself shut?
If you play it where only channel position can damage it I think you'll find that your party runs out of channels very fast. Furthermore, since knowing how to actually DESTROY a haunt is additionally really unwieldy (though I wrote some DM aids to help with that here) it means that if the PCs simply go home to rest they'll find the haunt is back next time they come back.
Spoiler:
Not to even mention the really obscure ways some of these haunts are finally put to rest - requiring spells that PCs might not have (odd druid spells a druid probably wouldn't prepare anyway for instance, not to mention what happens if no druids) and things like capturing the Cold Spot in a metal weapon, tossing it in a flowing stream, etc.... just weird. Again, I get the amazing amount of research that went into "real life" haunted lore and transferring that to game mechanics. I just didn't feel like it worked at the table.
I let cure spells (but not potions, though I see the flaw in not allowing them both equally) affect the haunts but since the cure damage is so much higher than channel positive energy I made them roll to hit with the cure spells offensively. Then, again, you get into a situation with what are they hitting?
Spoiler:
Against the Piper, the Marauder, Old Ember Maw - those are manifestations that have a specific target - but what do they target vs. a Cold Spot, Slamming Portal, Rapping Spirit - or again, in the last module, they'll fight haunting "whispers"
I really want to like haunts. They look good on paper, so thematic, so well researched, so fitting for the adventure path. But I really dislike them at the table. I think the intention is to view them as like the Trap mechanic but the trap assumes a thief's general knowledge of trappy-things allows him to fiddle with and figure out the workings of a trap and disarm it. Without the cards I linked above, and really even with them to some extent, that mechanic just doesn't transfer (imo) to haunts. I sometimes think the right thing for the players to do would be to run through the haunted areas, but (at least my) players aren't really built for that. It's not really in the list of things they know how to do. If they encounter a room they cannot deal with the last thing they usually want to do is dive through it into the unknwon beyond it. Several times my PCs would just go back to town and go "eff this. We can't touch that crap. Tell the priest to deal with it himself, we're going to sit here and protect Kendra instead of going to that spooky prison where we can't affect things."
Spoilers abound. Players please just stay out or this will ruin your experience of the module.
I ran the first session of Trial last night with my party of 7 PCs and have some thoughts on the organization of the module, things that I think could have been done better on my part, and things I wished the module had made more explicit. Maybe these will help other DMs yet to run this to prepare and maybe you guys can offer some suggestions to some of my concerns.
This post will probably be pretty long.
Spoiler:
The PCs are instructed to register as public defenders of the Beast. My PCs immediately didn't want to do that. Why should they DEFEND the Beast? The Judge merely hires the PCs because she doesn't think justice is going to be done and says flat out that it's OK if the Beast is guilty - she just wants a fair trial. I was able to lure the PCs to the table via a combination of money/reward, sense of justice, and sense of just curiosity. But I'd warn/suggest other DMs to remind PCs that "defending" the Beast doesn't necessarily imply that you think he's innocent. I realize they should have known that and that I as the DM should have been more clear on this, but just be wary of that.
The whole break-in at the university concerns me after DMing it more than it did when playing it. Why did the Way use the Beast in the first place? My PCs did their detective work, easily found the window, and demonstrated that they could unlock the lock with a Knock spell and could easily have stolen the Effigy using Mage Hand from outside. So really, why didn't the Way just open the window from outside the building and Mage Hand the item out?
How big are the windows in the Workshop at the university? The module says "3 massive windows". OK so tell me again why a thief couldn't have just opened the window, climbed in and taken it. Why did the beast apparently hand it through the window to a waiting Way member? Why didn't a student or a professor take it? It's not like the workshop was protected. Cromb even says the item isn't particularly valuable (just singular) and that it's been there for years. I played it up that the windows were tiny, barely a foot square hoping that no one could fit through there and, as mentioned above, my PCs just demonstrated themselves using Knock and Mage Hand how easy it was to take the item.
I wonder if it might be a good idea to change the module around so that the Effigy was kept in a high security, protected facility and come up with some way that the Beast hid the item after getting it out of the secure area - there the Way came and got it later (basically accounting for why the Way needed the Beast in the first place).
My PCs are really excited about this because it seems to stupid to them - so clearly there must be some awesomely ulterior motive! Sadly, having read the module, I don't think there is. They are thinking that this is all a cover for some elaborate plan - but really it's just a diversion to keep the PCs here for several days. All this stuff at Hergstag, Morast, and Sanctuary have abso-freaking-lutely nothing to do with the Way - those events were done way before the Way was here and they involve Grine and company - again, nothing to do with the Way. When the PCs are done with this, they're won't see a darned thing until the Beast heads to the mansion - so what's this all about? I'm a bit worried it's a not going to be interesting. Can we think, collectively, about a way to make these events related to the plotline?
What about removing the trial entirely from the module - having the PCs arrive the day that the Beast is convicted and escapes from jail to go off to the mansion. The PCs might be hired to help stop the Beast. What would you miss? 3 subplots and a bunch of experience - but related? Let me be clear: I realize that everything the PCs do in a campaign do not have to be related to the alpha plot-line, but at the end of this module we try and tie back to the alpha plot-line and it doesn't make sense. The amount of damage that the Way caused in the mansion demonstrates their massive power and resources at their disposal. So why this elaborate silly plan to steal this item?
I find the organization of the module a bit complicated and really wish I had put together a flow-chart or something before running it. As with any detective story you have everyone's different version of what they know. My PCs wanted to know what the beast knows about the events, what Gustav knows about them, what the Judge knows about them, what the professor knows, what each of the witnesses know - then of course there's the set of things they will find out on their own. I suggest DMs put some thought into developing supporting information that relates what each NPC knows.
The meeting of the Beast looks good on paper, but I found it hard to play. The Beast is instructed to repeatedly say that he "didn't do it" and play him as angry, beaten by the guards but if the PCs show him kindness to play him like a child, calling the PCs his "friends". But I was VERY worried on the spot about what to have the Beast say. This again goes back to the previous bullet and I warn DMs to prep for this. What should the Beast really say about these events?
Be prepared to talk about the court rules and where you can use magic. I know the module brings this up, but it's way the heck in the back of the module. Early on when the PCs are starting (like, in the front of the module) my PCs immediately wondered why we don't just divine the truth. I realize this is explained in the module but I found myself flipping all over the module looking for bits and pieces of what I wanted to say. Again, be prepared for this - I wasn't ready and I fumbled around a bit which I don't like doing.
I know I'm hounding on this, but bringing up a different point. In the "Adventure Background" section there is discussion about how the Way "found out" about Caromarc's secret - the Beast! - and sought a way to make a deal with him. What deal did they want to make? To use the Beast to steal the Effigy? Vrood is presented as CR10 in module 3 and the Beast is CR13 in module 2 - so I guess one could say the Beast is more powerful than Vrood - but Vrood isn't acting alone, and given all the damage they caused to Caromarc's mansion, bypassing all the defenses and setting all the elaborate traps, clearly Vrood has more at his disposal then his lone CR10 self. And again, his CR10-self is more than powerful enough to take down an iron door protected with Alarm or to just open the window and magic-out the item he wanted. I guess I just don't see what the Way wanted with the Beast and why they wanted to blackmail Caromarc. That sort of causes all of these problems for me.
Perhaps it's just a bit of my vision from behind the curtain, but I didn't feel like the module went very smoothly at the start. My players tell me it's great and they are excited, but it felt extremely kludgey to me and I wished I had prepped some of these things mentioned above beforehand.
I'm also pretty concerned about tying these events into anything meaningful. While I find them all interesting little side quests the PCs will be baffled as to why the Way went through this trouble instead of just walking in and taking the Effigy.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I realize I repeated myself several (many) times but feel I am bringing up different aspects of the same problem and left those bits in there as explanation of why I think the module is unclear.
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I just want some advice on how to fix the module in my eyes or see what I'm missing that ties these loose ends up nicely.
So my crew has cleared all of Harrowstone and only has the room with the Splatter Man. I've had a love/hate relationship with many aspects of haunts - from their "how would I know this destruct condition" to what I feel (felt?) were ambiguities in the haunt rules.
Having run 99% of Harrowstone now over several months I have one particular problem that bothers me about haunts. I'm not sure if this is good or bad that my players are playing this way.
Haunts trigger once you get inside their radius - PCs outside of the radius don't see the effects. So a PC who walks into a room and the room starts the haunt, booga booga, the PC seems all this horribleness, but the ones outside the room . . . don't. My PCs have begun to use this very efficiently to their advantage and I think it sort of ruins a bit of the fun of haunts.
Here's an example:
My PCs dug the back way through the secret passageway into the Nevermore, where TSM is. We have a rogue character who is out in front, like a good rogue, he sneaks into the room. Well, the haunt goes off since it affects the room area. No one else sees this, of course. Blood starts appearing on the wall, spelling out the rogue's name, he fails a Will save, loses Wisdom damage, I tell the other characters that they DON'T see this - all they see is their rogue looking pained in the room. So they reach in a drag him out. :(
Is this bad? I dunno. If you think about haunts as basically psychic traps - I totally can see a rogue out in front exploring, getting blasted by a trap and backing out - then the team regrouping and thinking how to tackle the room. But I think it ruins quite a bit of the interesting aspects of haunts. There's been all this work put into the effects and the PCs just go "OK, we're sending in the clerics first, tie a rope to me, if I get blasted, drag me out of there (fail my perception check)."
I mean . . . good role playing . . . good roll playing . . . but working as intended?
There's also something interesting that I'd never really thought about until I was in the moment. Consider this:
The Mourning Maiden haunt has a 15foot radius - which is smaller than the torture chamber room. So as a DM you have to ask PCs to move about the room and when someone gets with 15ft - WHAM! Roll Perception, OMG you see the iron maiden starting to creep open!
OK so what happens here if they fail the Will save, the one that causes them to see a loved one inside - the one that makes them run into the (now open) Iron Maiden? More to the point, what do the *OTHER* PCs, outside of 15ft, see? Because . . . the iron maiden didn't open for them, it's just a piece of furniture.
What I did on the spot I'm marginally happy with, I said that the PC ran up to the device, opened it, jumped inside, and closed it. That kind of works. So next PC goes "wtf!?" and runs into the 15ft radius - now, question, do *THEY* see a loved one inside? I thought their friend was inside. Do they fail it run up, jump in there WITH the other PC? Do they jump in and toss the other guy out of the way?
Furthermore, my PCs decided to basically stand there and beat on the iron maiden - they became convinced that THAT was the way to destroy the haunt. Technically I don't think this would work. My PCs started prying the door off the torture device. Frankly I think the haunt would still exist with the door missing, even if it appeared that a real door was there.
The whole thing just becomes kludgey. What bothers me is that I've felt after running Harrowstone that almost all of the haunts had this kind of kludge. I love the theme and the work put into them, but somehow I don't like how they come out at the table.
Extreme spoilers in here. Players please stay out or obviously you are in danger of ruining your fun and other people in your campaign.
I have created set of cutouts for the 5-ghosts cursed items to give to players as well as a set of DM aids to remind the DM the special conditions related to these items.
At the link below, you'll find:
PLAYER HANDOUTS: The vault module text says each of the 5 special property items has text identifying what it is. This is pretty vague and I decided to type up sort of museum / journal-like "cards" that Lyvar Hawkran would have placed with each of the items when (presumably) he placed them in the vault for safe keeping. You might consider cutting these out and handing them to the player who takes that item. You'll notice in them that I wrote them as though I imagined the items when they were put away. Was the "tarnished silver flute" really tarnished when the Piper was jailed? How about the moldy spellbook? I imagine it molded over time.
DM AIDS: Each of the items have some very specific curses and benefits that are extremely situational. I found it difficult to remember some of these conditions and have created a single piece of paper with (hopefully) short reminders to key you as the DM off. Examples are when an arcane caster holding the spellbook casts a spell (will save to stop casting), first time a PC touches the axe, etc, etc.
Then, further down in the document you'll see much longer text (almost a page per item) table describing in most cases flavor text I wrote up for you as the DM to read to the player. An example:
The first time a PC picks up the Piper's flute:
Quote:
Ahhhh, this flute is tarnished and old but you can tell the silver and construction are both quite fine. Probably a bit of polishing and a bit of playing to blow out the dust of the ages would help.
And there's text for if they try and play it, and if they try and polish it, and . . .
There's also text for what happens at the end of the adventure and notes for what the items become after the curse ends.
I hope you guys enjoy. As usual, I made these for me but enjoy sharing with folks.
If you don't like the text or the colors and want to change it you should be able to make a google docs copy to your own doc and fix up whatever you want.
Well, if you feel that the method should be difficult to discover with a straight knowledge check, why not encourage them to use the Spirit Plancette and have the haunts themselves tell the players how to release them?
Have you read the sidebar on page 65 of the Pathfinder 43? It's called "Investigating Haunts".
Yeah, I read that. Wasn't sure how far to take the haunts in the game and since they have only ventured into Harrowstone once up to this point it might not be a bad idea to start utilizing that option. That way they have a good in game way to discover how to lay to rest the haunts. The thing is that I don't want it to be difficult for them to discover how to destroy haunts because it would just be nerve wracking and frustrating and harrowstone can be tough as it is with some of the encounters in there. I think I will just utilize the standard knowledge checks vs the CR of the haunt. Seems to be the best way for the party to cope with permanently ridding the rooms of haunts so they don't have to continuously worry about them resetting. Thanks for the input! Much appreciated.
Try these haunt cards I made up. I found haunts to be a problem thematically with how players would know things about them and these were what I constructed to get around them. Hope they help.
I'm adding youtube links into Ridetide's work here. All credits to him. Of course I have no idea if these are THE specific pieces he meant. I had to guess my best as some of these are interpretations of the works - especially the classical.
Riptide777 wrote:
The Haunting of Harrowstone
01 Prologue: Rising Appalachia – Oh Death
02 Burying the Professor: Frédéric Chopin – Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35 (Funeral March)...
The forums 'quote' mechanic won't let me do it all in quotes. So here's his post with links embedded in it.
BE WARNED THAT THESE SONGS ARE OFTEN REMOVED FROM YOUTUBE due to copyright so it's possible these links will be dead over time and you'll have to find new ones.
I can't help but thinking that the best thing about a 2player RPG between man and wife would be emphasis on the R and P. Kendra certainly is a grieving 20 something in need of comfort. Then there's the lady who runs the apothecary and the sheriff. Queue 70s music! Might finally have an idea how to get MY wife into RPGs!
I've had this problem with haunts which I think I've solved satisfactorily for me. I'm sure this was the initial intention with haunts but I find/found it hard to conjure up flavor stories around haunts. Not that I've used it yet, but for instance:
Spoiler:
The spectral carriage, where one would need to plane shift a horse into the ethereal plane while it manifests to destroy it.
or
Spoiler:
The Gjenganger who body has to be exhumed, carried around the church 3 times and then passed over the church walls.
I was dealing, personally, with a mix of "oh come on" and "how do I relate this to the players in such a way as to get them to do it".
Enter, the haunt cards! These are cards which are intended to be printed out and handed to your players when they roll appropriate Knowledge rolls about the haunts. I have taken some of the rulings from the Haunts thread where there are 2 rolls - (1) to find out it's a haunt and what it's going to do, how do defend against it and (2) a lore-centric roll (local or history) related to how to actually destroy the haunt.
Each haunt presented in the Haunting of Harrowstone (though I intend to add the other adventures in if they have haunts - I haven't checked yet, still DMing Haunting) has 2 cards - one for each of the rolls.
I have added a fair amount of flavorful text around the legends to actually construct legends that I can hand to players. I suspect the players will read the card and then ad lib the legend themselves. If you glance at the first few and don't find them particularly flavorful, scroll down. I think it gets better.
Take a look, see if you like. If you find any grammar or spelling errors, let me know. Also if you have some better ideas, let me know too (reply here) and I might add in the changes if I like. If you want your own copy (you can just print it in the link) you can copy it yourself and edit it to your heart's content.
Hope you guys enjoy. There are currently 18 pages of cards.
And a final warning, PLAYERS STAY OUT! Haunt destruction conditions are extremely detailed and are not for players to know about!
Rather than block this entire thread in a /spoiler I'm going to assume PCs read the header and don't come in.
I'm pretty confused about the Haunts section in the Haunting of Harrowstone book - page 64.
Can we talk about this some and some folks explain them to me?
Haunts appear to have (among other things):
How you notice them (usually perception)
Their hps
A 'weakness'
A trigger
An effect upon trigger
A set of requirements to dismiss them - "Destruction"
Wow this is confusing. OK so.
PCs get near a haunt, and have a chance to 'Notice' them. That makes sense.
The trigger effect goes off. That makes sense.
How are the PCs supposed to know how to destroy a haunt? For example the Headless Horseman requires a holy weapon buried in the ground and them him taunted so as to move over the area. The Cold Spot one has to have a metal object subjected to Heat Metal and then that object buried in hallowed ground. Whhaaaa? Are the PCs supposed to figure this out from talking to old wise men or something? I can swing that. "Oh, you felt that cold spot? I think ol' jenkins had a grandfather who dealt with that. Go talk with him." ????
Why do haunts have hit points? Can PCs just attack the Choking Hands and try and do 18 points of damage to it? What does that even look like?
What are these Weaknesses? Most of them appear to be weak to "Hide from Undead". Orbs are weak to "slow" - is that the slow spell?
And finally, they appear to reset - usually 1/day. What does that look like? If you trigger it and then walk away, next day it can happen again? Is it that simple?
There are some words in the document about working out a code to talk with a spirit through rapping. Example?
PC: "Spirit! Rap once for yes, twice for no."
PC: "Spirit, to lay you to rest do I need to bring mancacles enchanted with bless weapon."
<RAP>
PC: "Sweet! Is that is?"
<RAP><RAP>
PC: "Ummm... spirit... do I have to then throw these manacles into moving water?"
<RAP>
PC: "Cool! Got it!"
My PCs are less psychic.
Clearly I'm very confused here and MUST be missing something. Someone please enlighten me.
