It's hard to believe after all these years, but i'm feeling pumped about starting up the Age of Worms, DMing it for the second time, with an all new group of players!
I DMed this starting in about 2006 all the way to 2014 where the party was left resting in the Roc King's nest in the Library of Last Resort. http://ageofwormscampaign.blogspot.com/2014/ While we started in 3.5e, we moved to PF Beta then PF1e where I was converting everything before each session. At the higher levels while the roleplay was a blast, the combat was slow going! It was such a great campaign, everyone was pretty invested it.
Now, living in a new city and new stage of work/life, I'm decided to run Age of Worms again, this time in 5e. I'm not so secretly hoping that we'll see new publication of this with a full conversion to 5e, but in the meantime, I'm grateful to posters here and elsewhere who are keeping this fantastic story alive.
I've warmed the new group up by running Mad God's Key (Dungeon 114). I had the human fighter of the party be from Diamond Lake, and a couple of the party's gnomes (bard, wizard) be from Grossetgrottel. The halfling cleric is a bit of a transient. They chased Irontusk (who will be Kullen) through the dockyard, investigated the missing book (which I will have be stolen by the Vecna cult of the Ebon Triad, whisked away to beneath Dourstone mine), and will be sent out to the Cairn Hills via Diamond Lake after sorting out the Green Dagger gang where they will find the book and key which was the last part in getting the Ebon Aspect going. It has been a great way for me as DM to get used to 5e (both converting the old Dungeon content and actually playing it for the first time), and I think has gelled the party nicely.
We're going to arrive at Diamond Lake soon with the Cairn Charm in hand, not knowing at all which cairn it might be associated with or how it works (Allustan will eventually help them with that later, also leading them to the collapsed Dourstone mine). They will end up checking out Whispering Cairn, which will set them on their journey! I may replace the whole Vecna maze in Two Faces of Evil with the cairn ruin from Mad God's Key.
Anyway, happy to be running this again and if you are playing in 5e, let me know any advice you may have had making the shift!
I just finished running cartographer Christopher West's Unfamiliar Ground published in Dungeon Magazine 119. It was great! It was the third phase of the first campaign I'm running with my kids -- 8 and 10 -- using the Pathfinder Beginner Box (with a bit of on the fly tweaking for the GMing as we went along).
endgame spoiler:
The undead dragon skeleton Snapper was absolutely the biggest thrill. The party walked around the room, trying the doors, getting fried by the trapped door, and opening nothing. Then the fighter thought to toss a pebble into the pool, and the splash back that they got was way more than expected! Everyone but the fighter failed their initial frightful presence save and ran out of the room. The fighter/barbarian took one unlucky swing and followed them all out. They cowered in the rubble in the hall for a few minutes and fixed their resolve to go back in. Second time round, everyone made their will save except the wizard, who headed back out into the hall. They started bashing with and smacking at him, while he hopped out of the pool and responded with random full-round attacks again. A rogue with a cure moderate wounds wand jumped around healing and getting in the occasional cause moderate damage. Out pops the crazy imp Hezzrack, who greeted Snapper amiably and was glad to see him playing with some new friends -- and then walked away (this was too much for the players who couldn't figure out what to do with such craziness in the midst of their toughest battle to date, and just watched him walk away). and the cowering wizard (who had just reached level 4) finally decided to summon an Earth Elemental who walked in and got in a couple of blows on his behalf. Finally, using the blunt side of his great sword, the raging fighter/barbarian who had been brought to zero HP twice, smashed his undead foe and the dragon bones collapsed onto the ground.
This has been a lot of fun to play. Thanks for the great adventure Christopher! Hezzrack and Neegla were compelling and fun to run, and the trip to the goblin cave was tricky and interesting, and as I said above Snapper gives a thrill and challenge. I certainly recommend anyone checking this one out to adapt to a Pathfinder Beginner Box game!
In other Zeech's Feast news, I did have a Nanaimo-based specialty cake company (www.aweecupcakery.com) make the Ziggurat Cake for the feast. It looked spectacular in the box and with the entire party at the Feast.
I had planned to have the cake come out as the finale of the feast. However, as the battle with the Hangman Golem and the Ebon Aspect went late into the night, I had to re-jig the events of the feast (I'm sure the cake wouldn't keep for a month!). Right after the skeletons did their macabre performance (at this time to my bleary eyed players), the Fabler hauls out the cake to open up the party eating. The expression on my group's faces was priceless as the dark chocolate and blood red Ziggarut of Kyuss walked out of the kitchen in four mazapan-covered layers. A great way to end the evening and to celebrate the 6th (!) year of our ongoing campaign, which I've been keeping a blog of here.
After a 2 year hiatus (new jobs, new babies, an active Shackled City campaign, players leaving, players joining) we are getting our once-weekly Age of Worms Campaign back on track for what is likely going to be a once-monthly run to the finish.
We left off our party at the end of the Champion Games where, through a combination of DM oversight (I can never quite remember in the heat of battle which bonuses stacks and which do not!) and party creativity and tenacity, the catastrophe was averted and the group were the game champions.
Our rogue abandoned the group with his loot from the Champion Games, (the player having moved off to one of the beautiful Gulf Islands in Canada), replaced now by a newly rolled 11th level archaeological rogue who had been poking around in other cairns in the Cairn Hills and having encountered a few Kyuss Spawn in the process. The brilliantly played Wee-Jas Cleric has also retired, with the player bringing in a newly rolled 11th level paladin who was a close friend of Eligos that had been doing much of Eligos' Age of Worms research for him. He has decided to take on the Wormhunter class as part of his new quest in joining the party. Hopefully the wormhunter paladin will be OK for a party that no longer has a cleric.
So, I'm am gearing up to get this game going again, but this time using Pathfinder rules. All the characters have been re-jigged using the beta rules (I really hope there are not too many changes in the final version!). Is there any advice for how much magic these newly rolled 11th level characters can bring into the game? Given the economics of you have to trade stuff and half-value to get more powerful stuff at full value, it seems that it might be a bit rich to let them buy whatever magic they want for the amount of standard GP a newly rolled 11th level character would have. I'm not sure though.
I am also bracing for the work of sorting things out on the DM side for running Age of Worms as a Pathfinder Advenutre. If anyone has seen the final printed version, are there any significantly different tips on doing DM conversions (page 298-9 in the Beta)? Any other tips? Anyone done this already and might want to share?
For those interested, I'll try to post anything useful up to therpgenius.com and the campaign blog up to http://ageofwormscampaign.blogspot.com/. Wish me luck. I've certainly enjoyed playing Shackled City as a Pathfinder player (currently a fey bloodline sorcerer just entering the Flood Festival, who is one of my favourite characters ever!)
The cleric of Wee Jas in the game I am DMing just sent me a pre-game alert to his intentions to execute the law and attempt to take Racknian down during their next fight in the arena. They have just killed Bozal (and were almost completely pummelled by Bozal's demon friend) and feel they want to do swift justice on Racknian for all the wickedness they have discovered under the arena.
I'm glad to have the information in advance, as I had only prepared for the battle with the flying dwarves and not something potentially much bigger. However, I would love a bit of strategic advice on how to handle it. I'm quite new to this high-level of play, so would really appreciate some tips.
I don't want to cop-out and not have Racknian observing the games that round, nor do I want to have his viewing area somehow magically protected. These seem to be simply too overt meta-game tactics to thwart the direction of the players.
I do think that on the first sign of an anti-Racknian strike, he would leave his viewing place (knowing that the Party is dangerous) and leave his henchmen to "expel" the Party from the games. Perhaps under Okral's lead, and supported by the officious wizard (he's only 7th level), 30 or 40 of the 5th level bodyguards would take to the field and expel the party. Handling that combat may be cumbersome. Is there perhaps more heavy support that Racknian might be able to draw on in such an instance? Would Orkal's men try to kill the party in front of the crowd (clearly Pitchblade would want that), or merely expel them for Racknian to deal with some other way.
The more I think about it, the more I think it looks like TPK if they go ahead with this. I'll try to give all the indications of that being a bad idea, but any strategic advice would be gratefully received.
My PCs have just crawled out of Sodden Hold, having lost their Kord-honouring fighter to the invisible stalkers. The party Cleric, a faithful servant of Wee-jas , has planned a large and impressive public funeral for their hero. I’m stumped on what to charge for it, as I don’t have a very good handle on urban economics in D&D.
First a bit of background. The fighter died a hero, trying to save two others from near death. The party elf wizard had been absconded by the dopplegangers and was out of the picture. The Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and doppleganger elf-wiz had just come back from a very serious entanglement with the giant octopus. The ‘elfs’ spells had ‘failed’ during the octopus fight, and the party asked him to try it out a simple detect magic in the Stalker’s room, which they had not yet been in. The tricky doppleganger muttered the password and failed the spell. The cleric came in and managed to get off the detect magic before being thumped hard by the Invisible Stalkers. A round of attacks ensued with the Stalkers only attacking the rogue and cleric at first. At last, the conspiring dop-elf-wizard turned on the party, sneak attacking the rogue, doing serious damage. Everyone was completely surprised. A massive battle followed, with the rogue and fighter dropping completely dead and the cleric, below 10 HP and almost out of spells, doing a very hasty, invisible, flying retreat out of Sodden Hold. He was not followed. He had, fortunately taken bits from each player early in the Campaign and was able to borrow from Pollard (Eligos’ assistant) the funds for a resurrection for the rogue (who he always spars with, but hopes to redeem). Alas, there were not enough funds for the fighter, so he was lost in battle. The party regrouped, went in and saved the real elf wizard and got thoroughly spooked by the mind flayer foreshadow experience.
Now, before going to search for the mind flayer, the cleric has the idea to sell the 19,000 GP assets of the fighter and hold a big public funeral. He’s contacted some performers from the Blueberry theatre (detailed in the Dragon wormfood article, with which they had a very funny bardic lore experience sorting out Ilthane’s tainted dark vial potions) to re-enact the scenes of the fighter’s life. He contacted the church of Heironeous to organize a big public funeral march procession, and the church of Kord to obtain appropriate miliary-like funerary goods (monuments, tombstone, coffin drapery, etc). Of course, there are also his own diety's interests in death he has long respected. Because they had made contacts with city officials, handing Telekin over with all the revealing papers, there is expected quite a crowd of public officials and others. All of this is in the heavy backdrop of whipping up the public for a new set of potential heros for the champion games.
So, for the big public funeral, with actors, city guards, appropriate donations to both Kord, Heironeous and Wee-jas temples, and the logistics of a Greyhawk festival, does anyone know where I might turn for guiance on costs. I’m thinking it might be appropriately in the 10,000GP range, but I’m really not sure. Advice would be appreciated. Game night is Wednesday.
