Wooping Llama's page

Due to an upcoming loss of regular income, please cancel my pathfinder battles subscription.

Thank you.

Hello,

Please cancel my order #1605663, the Thieves' World RPG Gift Set, that I placed on Jan 23, 2011.

I had these books a few years ago, and thought I had lost them in a move. Turns out that I hadn't. After digging through some old gaming boxes I found them buried!

Thanks for the help.

Lance Schroeder
schroederlance@hotmail.com

Wooping Llama wrote:

Also, it doesn't help that he read the cover blurb for What lies in Dust on the website, combined that with the NPC information given to him, and built up a probable scenario outcome in his mind.

I would be miffed if my players did this.

Well, I decided to treat the adventure covers as a sort of 'movie trailer,' helping to peak their interest. While I didn't purposefully show them the back of the actual module, I reason that if they decide to come to this website and look at the product blurb that it wouldn't make me upset.

To Farmerbob: I hear ya! Each group is going to react differently and as GM its our job to tailer each adventure to their play style. Even though this one issue has cropped up, overall my players really are enjoying the CoT. They have embraced this setting and story more than anything else we've played, which could...now that I think about it...explain why my player is so fired up about this. He just cares too much for those downtrodden souls of Westcrown!

My perspective is that it is an issue with how the GM portrays the situation. The player expectations are something that the GM is ultimately responsible for.
If I had only read "The Sixfold Trial", I would have had the NPCs put a much stronger and immediate causal effect between finding the Crux and ending the Shadowbeasts than would have been deserved.

I agree that the GM is ultimately responsible for player expectations at the table.

However, having read all six CoT adventures and not just Sixfold Trial, I still feel that the NPCs inhearantly place a great deal of emphasis on delvehaven being the key to defeating the Shadowbeasts.

Personally, I feel that the DM should portray the NPCs in a way that presents only the information that they actually have, giving the PC's only the conclusions that they form from their current information.

Whether it actual fact or not, the NPCs in "The Sixfold Trial" do imply a heavy amount of cause and effect between finding the Crux, getting into Delvehaven, and stopping the shadowbeasts. They don't know 100%, but they do believe it is awfully conincidental that Delvehaven was shut down at almost the exact time in history that the shadowbeasts started haunting the city's nights.

As the GM, I know the actual situation and how it will play out, but when I'm running an NPC, I keep them in their own mindset. If my players use NPC information to do something, and that NPC was wrong, then by all means would I expect their characters to not trust that NPC again.

The OP simply feels like the story for the third adventure was simply a let-down, mainly because they just did the 'find the mcguffin' quest in Sixfold Trial, and then were 'tricked' into another 'find the mcguffin' quest in What lies in Dust. Also, it doesn't help that he read the cover blurb for What lies in Dust on the website, combined that with the NPC information given to him, and built up a probable scenario outcome in his mind.

Do I agree with his conclusions or that the adventure was disappointing? No.

Do I understand? Yes, because from the player's perspective, that's where the emphasis was...on stopping the shadowbeasts.

As I said in an earlier post, I am confident that over the course of the following adventures, my player will see his feelings change, because he (and the NPC's that he 'trusts') will gain an ever more complete picture of what is happening in Westcrown.

As the Gamemaster of the OP...I just wanted to chime in here to you Mr. Jacobs.

Thank you. That is exactly what I told him after the adventure was over.

Oh, and as much as I appreciate you surfing the messageboards of your company, replying quickly to your customers, I do hope that you are at home and not at your office doing work on a Sunday night!

You and the rest of the Paizo crew are customer friendly, but come on...take a well deserved rest for goodness' sake!

My group just finished up What Lies in Dust.

Nicola - Human paldin 7
Montolio - Human Bard 6 / Pathfinder Chronicler 1
Arisa - Human Sorceror 6 / Dragon Disciple
Capulet - Human Ranger 3 / Rogue 2 / Bard 1 / Assassin 1

Overall it has been a good party make-up, lower healing has been made up though magic items, and the lack of utiliy spells from a wizard has been covered effectively from the bard.

Overall it has been a great group dynamic, though the cracks are beginning to show, though not because of class make-up. Nope, this group is beginning to fall prey to those old, terrible party killers named 'Rivalry' and 'Ego'.

:)

The bard took Westcrown Firebrand as a trait, and is very much a 'Ends Justify the Means' type character, which is rubbing the paladin the wrong way.

I suspect it will sort itself out as the events of the AP continue on: