kcunning's page

For a while now, the UPS-MI tracking links haven't been working at all. Recently, someone at Paizo said they were working on this, and I was wondering if this is still the case.

The reason this is so important for me: If I try to get information about a package that's super late, the second UPS sees a blank tracking, they blame the shipper. I can't get my local USPS to so much as fart at me until I can prove it was put into their hot little hands.

As I'm in the middle of prepping book two, I'm considering moving some of the encounters to different planes.

Book one is great, since you hop to two completely new locations (not counting a certain encounter). Book two just has you chilling on the Material plane though, which is a bit disappointing, especially since I like the plot.

I think Skywatch could work well as a reflection of Skywatch in the Shadow Plane, with the denizens being people stuck there due to some Missing Moment Nonsense. The "escape" isn't just getting out of the city: It's figuring out how to get back to the Material Plane.

Thoughts? I have some time before my crew makes it there.

I stumbled on a way to extract maps from older APs and make them look nicer using a touch of machine learning (but without having to install a ton of things on my machine). I showed a few fellow GMs, and rather than explain how I did it to each one, I wrote up a blog post.

(Spoiler warning: I used book four from Council of Thieves as my example, so if you really don't want to see a map from that book, consider yourself warned).

https://katieplaysgames.wordpress.com/2022/07/04/adventure-path-maps-vtt-an d-minimizing-heartburn/

It's not perfect, but it does make maps that lead to fewer headaches from players who have likely zoomed way in.

The tracking number for Order 36423267 was generated on March 25th, but as of yet, there's still no tracking available for it.

I am so looking forward to running Abomination Vaults next month for my group, so I was wondering if there's an ETA on a Roll20 module? I used the module for AoE and it saved me a ton of time, and helped keep everything on fewer screens.

I was charged last week, but it still says pending? This is a subscription order that had some sidecart added to it.

A player of mine loves to have family, so he decided to have his mother and sister incorporated into the first book. Now, I'm not sure if I missed it or if he changed his mind at the last second, but at our first session, the set-up changed from 'my mom and my sister are coming with me' to 'my sister is with me. My mom is already there!'

When he said that during the session, I asked him if he was sure. "You could have your mom with you..."

"Nah, we'll meet here there."

Well, uh, as most people who are reading this know, the people from the first wave are gone. I only know of two survivors.

Since I was only planning on running book one right away (giving another GM a break), I'm not really sure what to do about mom. I think the other survivors are found later, but I'm not really sure. One blurb did mention kidnapped colonists in book 3 (I think), but that could be your current group.

So, please, if anyone has an ideas, I'm open! I'm fine with just killing mom, if that's where the AP goes, but I think it's more interesting to keep hope alive. I just know I can't hand her over now because she'd know too much.

I recently went to a tech conference, and decided to run the Asmodean Knot from book 2 as a one-shot. I'm currently running it for my group, so I already had everything fresh in my mind as well as everything set up in Roll20. I figured I'd tell everyone what I did, just in case anyone else is thinking about doing this themselves in the future (or just plopping the dungeon into another game, which I heartily recommend).

What I changed

The first thing I had to change, of course, was the opening. I made it more generic, since it didn't really matter where the players were based.

The new opening:

One day, you're all called to your local Pathfinder lodge. A few days ago, a crowd of new adventurers took on a contract to clear out the long abandoned mansion of a crazed mage, Vheed. The town had been on the verge of taking him out on their own due to rumors of gruesome experiments, but found he was missing. Uncertain as to what to do, they opted to leave the mansion alone, worried burning it down might unleash some magics they were unprepared to deal with.

A band of goblins had taken up residence, so the Lodge was tasked with clearing them out. The adventurers did so easily, but then came upon the entrance to what appears to be a pocket dimension. Stating that they "weren't being paid nearly enough", they returned and asked the task be finished by someone else.

I skipped over the trip to the mansion and getting to the dungeon, dropping them in the first room right off the bat.

As for Sian, I changed her to merely be someone who heard of the fleeing adventurers and is determined to find what the dungeon holds before anyone else. Because of this, though, I decided that she could possibly be talked into joining the party, though she would still try to get the drop on them. It would take some fairly high rolls, but I've learned to never underestimate the ability of players to sell crazy plans.

Her arrival time means that the first adventurers did not see a body, allowing the players to deduce that they're not alone in this dungeon.

I also dropped everyone's level to four since so many people showed up, and spare characters were available if anyone bought it. Also, the sheets I found only had the levels one, four, and seven, and I didn't want to spend time leveling up on PDFs.

How'd it go?

It went really well! The players all enjoyed it, and most of our issues were due to limited table space and the dungeon being a bit too big for one play session. Because they knew they could just grab a new character if they died, they were extremely creative when it came to solving the puzzles.

What I'd do differently

I'd probably rework the dungeon to be shorter. There are a few bits that could be removed without hurting the overall feel, like some acrobatic puzzles and a rather large maze. There's also a prison area where I feel like everyone would choose to avoid the encounter, it may just be better to leave it out. This would mean moving the item found there to another area of the dungeon, but there's more than a few places to stash it. Maybe Sian found it, or maybe Jabe could be wielding it.

While my players opted to not get the reward from Livia, I think I'd have to change what she gives them. Instead of six answers (which is of little importance in a one-shot), I'd probably give out some potions of lesser restoration. In The Council of Thieves, the players start out with four, so I feel like that would be a fair swap.

Has anyone ever run a one-shot with the players controlling the Children of Westcrown?

In my campaign, my players have taken time to train up and bond with some of the CoWs (some have fallen by the wayside a bit, but I occasionally talk about what they're doing, so they're not completely off the radar). While the PCs are doing their thing, I mention that the CoW members are running their own missions, like dealing with some local thugs, clearing out a nest of goblins, or securing a location for some townsfolk.

They've mostly used the CoWs as resources or opportunities to roleplay, but I thought it might be a bit of fun to have a situation drop into Areal's lap that's obviously too high for the PCs, so he asks the PCs to pick out some CoWs to deal with it. Normally, my players just pick some of the members and then return to their plot, but I thought it might be fun to stop them, hand over the character sheets for the CoWs they picked, and then have them run the mission.

Any thoughts? Has anyone done this? I'm thinking about opening Book Three with this, since there'll probably have to be some implied downtime after Book Two.