vornn's page

Only two maps left to make, Earth, Fire and Water are in the gallery.

PM me if you want to DD2VTT maps

With Book one completed, I've now made a start on Book 2 maps, I'll add more as I have completed them. :D

Go to Book 2 - It Came from Hollow Mountain.

These are great! Any chance you have images with original resolution somewhere as some of the maps like the Cenopath and Ghoul Market have a bit of artifacting on them from compression?

Hi, sorry, missed your post. sure, PM me and I'll get the files over to you. :D

I have uploaded the first level into a new Book 6 maps Gallery, I'll add the rest as and when I get them completed.

Go to Mummy's Mask - Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh

:)

Book 5 Maps have been loaded into the gallery.

Go to Book 5 - The Slave Trenches of Hakotep

I've completed the map for the Underflume. i've tried to make the rooms as per the book, some alteractions have been made to fit things in.

Don't forget, look out for the duck! :D

Go to Book 1 - Secrets of Roderic's Cove

I've added the map for Peacock Manor to the album.

Due to the size of the original map and the contents of those rooms, I've expanded the rooms a little to provide a little more space.

Go to Book 1 - Secrets of Roderic's Cove

:)

there are some great community created maps, have a look in the thread for those. sure, some of the links don't work anymore, but there are loads of versions that you can get hold of.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kwop?Community-Created-Stuff

Also, you should be able to import them into Roll20 (or any other VTT of your choice).

:)

fantastic. there's a Return of the Runelords discord for GM's who are running the AP. it's got some great resources already, but these would make a great addition i think.

thanks again.

:)

OK, four episodes in and I'm really enjoying the show.

thank for the recommendation.

:)

Hi Pathfinders, I plan on running Return of the Runelords in the somewhat near future, but there is a distinct lack of high-res battle maps for the AP, so I am attempting to change that! I am also doing this to try and remember how to use Photoshop and do RPG cartography.

Maps are all made in Photoshop, with various resources from free and paid for packs, most notable a lot of Vile Tiles bits and pieces in Roderic's Wreck. I also repositioned a few things on the second floor so the stairs physically makes sense. I hope someone gets use of these!

I will be making gridless, gridded and easy (cheap) to print 8 by 10 inch pages. Full maps are 150dpi for virtual tabletop, and the easy print are 300dpi for crispness. I can release the maps at 300dpi, I just doubt anyone is actually gonna print them at full size, that gets expensive and hard to store really fast.

Obviously these are fan creations and not for sale or resale, in whole or part.

Roderic's Wreck First Floor...

these look great, thanks for sharing. :)

Added maps to Book 1 link:

Hallen's Ferry map (grid/gridless)
The vindictive Traveller map (grid/gridless)
Alaznist's Armory (grid/gridless) - note, i created the inside of the vault seperate as i imagined it to be more tardis like on the inside. i'll create a version with it in the original place if anyone wants that.

grids, don't talk to me about grids...

that's great, thanks for sharing this.

:)

Bellona wrote:

...

(In order to reduce the reach of the system masters in my groups, I've limited the number of splat books used. This ensures that I'm not presented with a level 1 character from Avistan who has a regional trait from Garund, uses a weapon (and eventually a prestige class) from Tian Xia, and is of a species normally found only in Arcadia.)

vornn wrote:

...

i'm very relaxed with my rules for the game, always regretting this as i get up into 10+ territory and nothing poses a difficult encounter any more for the party, though I do say before the game starts that I will be running the AP as written and not making changes at all.

perhaps I need to get some better AP rules and see how that goes for when we start Return in December.

:D

As an experiment - one which was met by howls of indignation by the min-maxing, cheesing optimiser in one group - I told both my main groups before they started their new APs that their L 1 PCs could not start with any ability scores higher than 16 (even post-racial adjustments) and that only one ability score could be below 10 (and that one no lower than 8). Also, any non-humans had to be either from the CRB or from another 10 RP-based species. (I'd forgotten that dwarves are technically built with 11 RPs, so of course the min-maxer made a dwarf PC. :p )

That might sound draconian (the non-Krynn definition), but I really wanted to see how it affected the game balance. A previous AP had had an elven wizard start with Intelligence 20 and he walked all over the opposition due to incredibly high spell DCs (compounded by Spell Focus, etc.). In both of the previous APs, each group of PCs had in general one totally bombed ability score - unfortunately the same one within the same group (i.e., low Charisma in one group and low Wisdom in the other one).

Also, with some specific exceptions, I limited the spells available to those from the CRB and APG plus two "skinny splatbooks" (Player's Companion series) per PC.

So far,...

Thanks for the info. I think that i will be making a small change to the character creation guidance in my upcoming game, hopefully there will be enough time for everyone to readjust their characters.

:D

Sunderstone wrote:

Important things to keep in mind are that all the 1e APs were designed for 4 PCs using a 15 point buy.

vornn wrote:

Really? i must have missed that somewhere. is this listed somewhere?

The "4 PCs" bit is listed in the AP's Advancement Track sidebar (usually p. 6).

The "15-point build" bit repeated every time a designer/developer is asked that question in these forums. Not to mention the fact that table 1-2 in the CRB lists 15 points as Standard Fantasy (p. 16) and it is actually stated that "the standard value for a character is 15 points" (CRB p. 15).

What muddies the waters is that PFS-legal characters for PFS scenarios are built with 20 points. But the APs and other adventures are definitely written for 15-point characters.

Aside from the party consisting of 4 PCs built with 15 points, there is one more assumption made by the AP developers, etc.: that the players do not possess vast amounts of system mastery. System masters with access to every PF splat book in existence can make incredibly successful/OP builds by taking advantage of all the rules options, etc., even those which were not balanced against each other.

(In order to reduce the reach of the system masters in my groups, I've limited the number of splat books used. This ensures that I'm not presented with a level 1 character from Avistan who has a regional trait from Garund, uses a weapon (and eventually a prestige class) from Tian Xia, and is of a species normally found only in Arcadia.)

Thank you.

i'm very relaxed with my rules for the game, always regretting this as i get up into 10+ territory and nothing poses a difficult encounter any more for the party, though I do say before the game starts that I will be running the AP as written and not making changes at all.

perhaps I need to get some better AP rules and see how that goes for when we start Return in December.

:D

Important things to keep in mind are that all the 1e APs were designed for 4 PCs using a 15 point buy.

Really? i must have missed that somewhere. is this listed somewhere?

in the playthrough I ran we had 20pts, and yes, there were times where the party felt it was a breeze, additional mooks in some encounters made it a little more fun and the advanced template/full HP on EVERYTHING made it a little more challenging. great AP, fun settings and quite a roller coaster for the party. :)

Steel_Wind wrote:

Ziday wrote:

ckdragons wrote:

You're maps are very good! Keep up the excellent work!

Thank you! Hopefully they get better and better so I can do the later books justice.

I would ask that, in the future, you strongly consider exporting your maps with the grid OFF.

If it is at all possible for you to re-export your existing maps with the grid off, that would be very helpful as well.

Good idea, I'll make a separate section on the google drive for gridless maps.

vornn wrote:

Hi guys,

Here's my first map for the Return of the Runelords AP, Rocdrick's Wreck.

I made a slight change to the layout, so that the stairs fit from the ground to the first floors. kinda looks ok.

Enjoy.

Go to Book 1 - Secrets of Roderic's Cove.

That is incredibly impressive. Love how much you paid attention to the details described in the AP. I hope one day my maps reach your level because holy crap that's cool. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you. :D

Hi guys,

Here's my first map for the Return of the Runelords AP, Rocdrick's Wreck.

I made a slight change to the layout, so that the stairs fit from the ground to the first floors. kinda looks ok.

Enjoy.

Go to Book 1 - Secrets of Roderic's Cove.

These maps are great, thanks for sharing. :)

I've been working on Rodricks Wreck myself (I'll post once done) and noticed that the rear stairs are offset on one map and not the other. I fixed them on the map i'm making, but still.

My only criticism is that I didn't have these before. Some of these would have been truly wonderful. I was especially worried about Chisisek's Tomb, because the only map I have I can't get the labels off, and your version looks fantastic. I look forward to whatever you make for Book 5 and 6!

haha, thanks. I need to make a start on the maps for Book 5 actually, my party is just in the process of cleaning out the Sightless Sphinx, before moving on. i'll update this thread when I've created/uploaded the maps.

I could have done Chisisek's Tomb map in two ways, either as an upper/lower maps, or as I made it. I opted for this version, so people would be able to load it into whatever VTT they use.

:D

Its 2023 and If there was a relatively high resolution module for Foundry VTT made for Mummy's Mask I would purchase it immediately and run it!

I shared the maps that I have created for my games in another thread, feel free to use those. if you want the DD2VTT files to import into Foundry/Roll20/whatever, drop me a note, and I'll package them all up for you.

I could module them up for a Foundry module, but it would take a couple weeks to sort, but would include walls, lights, sounds, etc.

have fun running your campaign

Here are the maps for Book 4

Go to Book 4 - Secrets of the Sphinx.

:)

Thos are great! I'm starting Mummy's Mask this week, i'll make great use of them. Thank you!

Fantastic, i hope your guys enjoy the AP. see if they can find all of the ducks in the maps. :D

Hi,

Not sure if anyone would be interested, but I completed running HV a little while ago and thought that I would share the maps I've prepared for the game.

Enjoy.

Go to Book 3 - The Inferno Gate

Go to Book 4 - For Queen & Empire

Go to Book 5 - Scourge of the Godclaw

Go to Book 6 - Hell Comes to Westcrown

Hi,

Not sure if anyone would be interested, but I started running MM a little while ago and thought that I would share the maps I've prepared for the game.

I'll add the new maps for Book 4 when I've compeleted them.

Enjoy.

Go to Book 1 - The Half-Dead City.

Go to Book 2 - Empty Graves.

Go to Book 3 - Shifting Sands.

Where is Fort Estazano located? I can find that it's near Longacre but I can't find any reference in what direction and how far. Does anyone know where to find this info? I feel like I'vd scoured Book 1 and couldn't find it. Searching online has been fruitless, too! Thanks.

Hi

I put it on the edge of the whisper wood, located about 45 minutes or so from town. i couldn't find the location either, so using my judgement, size of trees, etc, i deemed that it was best to locate it there.

hope this helps :)

hi

pride for the summoner, fiendish for the gunslinger and blackguard for the two weapon fighter, the cleric of grotus didn't accept a boon

hope this helps

That fort is quite sandboxy...

What would happen if the PCs take the whole dragon body with them?

My party did just that, cut the head off and took that back to the capital, then returned the day after and cleared the remaining enemy from the citidel, and then proceeded to make whole/create undead on the dragon corpse. they are now heading to the Fountain on the back of the dragon.

the citidel fight was quite fun, took ages to get through and they did miss a couple things. i kept attempting to bottle neck the party into places but as you can imagine at 13th level, wasn't hard for them to deal with everything i threw at them. great fun.

Thanks man.

how have youbeen getting on? did you start the campaign? are your players enjoying it?

hi, few years ago now (we're currently in book 5!) but the fight went like this.

the party assaulted the walls first, and took out the three guards on the easten wall. the militia moved into position to make the assault on the gate, once the party had tackled the lock.

Exemplr came in and unleashed the howl and everyone, except one of the party, fled. Low rolls on the number of rounds though, and the people cannot be affected by the same howl again for 24 hours. our fighter took some damage from falling off the wall. the last remaining guy who saved hi check, managed to hold for a few rounds and got Exemplr's HP down by a good number, but paid dearly with his own HP. the cleric, who had recovered fired off some Magic Mistles and reduced the dog to negatives.

iirc, the party was rolling rocks for all this encounter.

hope this helps.

ok so my player's are really embracing the spirit of the AP, and decided when the time came for the execution to build a giant wickaman style angel, and burn the condemned alive in-front of the town, while making the bard sing about it... they never released him, and so when the angel knight (his sister) turned up to stop them... suffice it to say more bodies ended up on the pyre, so how should I move forward with the resurrection when there's no body to steal, the pc's made sure of that, they specifically watched it burn down to nothing but ash.

how did you get on with this?

1) How did you find the difficulty balance? I know its got a heavy intrigue focus, but some of the combats seem like they would get really difficult if the PCs build too heavily in that direction

for our group it was good, we had a couple of front liners and two casters, plus Chimri was available to talk some sense into the party if they were on the wrong track. one of the party min/max'd a little but the others made normalised characters and it helped, i tried to get the players to think like the characters, based on their wis/int levels, worked for a little while.

2) Whats the timeline like, in game time i mean. Book 1 kind of lays out a rather specific time frame that ends up being around a month in game time length. But how about the rest of it. Will I need to make changes if my Players like doing downtime activities like crafting or what not?

Book 1 was good, the timeline was quite solid, with downtime for crafting (though not by our party), by the time they had replaced the law in the town, they were partolling most days, keeping the peace, etc. there will be loads of time to craft, research and the what not.

3) Book 3 seems to get some heavy criticism, Any suggestions on making the twist more of a surprise? The fetch quest aspect i don't think my players will have particularly much problem with. They'll have a more fun version of it in Book 5 regardless.

book 3 was really fun, and the herasy devil was really fun to play with, the players in my group kinda suspected that the baron had some other ideas. so I played the baron's cards as a double-double cross, saying that the devil had wanted the sacfifice, but the baron would bind him before the sacrifice could take place. and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!.

4) Book 4 has a nice Stat Block for Abrogail II, but unlike every other such stat page I've seen theres basically no info on her background, her motivations, or any real fleshing out of her as a character instead of a plot device. She has 3 paragraphs of text 1 about how she got the throne, 1 about how she treats traitors, and a 3rd that just says she tells the PCs what to do. Are there any other sources that flesh her out more?

The Cheliax book has some more information, but not masses. my party has just started this book, so I'm interested to see where we will go with it. reading between the lines, i think i can see how she treats everyone. she is power hungry and wants to remain that way. removing anything and anyone that get's in her way.

4b) It does seem like she's young and single though. Anyone who's played this ever have anyone try to do anything with that? One of my Players is a CK2 addict playing a Noble with very high aspirations.

i suspect that she's not interested in love right now (if ever), power is her thing. i'm sure that there is a large amount of suiters in the courts, who she has little time for.

5) The Hellfire Compact and its later expansions, how troublesome is it down the line if players dont want to sign on? I know come book 4 Abby kind of forces it on you at least in part.

i advised the players that they needed to accept the rituals, as they were story elements that were required. they followed suit. there was an in character discussion about if someone can be connected to two 'masters' at the start of book 3 with the Inquisitor, as one of my PCs was blessed by Moloch.

7b) I also have a player who is interested in taking advantage of the evil nature of the AP to explore Necromancy and maybe even Lichdom. However i dont want to open that door for only one PC. I dont consider Lichdom to be super powerful in this AP due to the primary enemy being Good Aligned Divine Classes. I do need to find options for 2 martials and an enchantment caster if thats the case though

this is where i have an issue with the AP, everyone says it's an Evil AP. think of it as an AP, but with a different set of skill requiremenst, yes it's an Evil AP but it's not an Evil AP. Think Wreck It Walph. think Bison's speech from 'Street Fighter the Movie' which sums it up too. 'The day I killed your father must have been the most horrible day of your life, but for me - it was just Tuesday.' well ok, maybe not that onebut you get the idea.

if the players want to be a Necro, sure, why not. i have one in my game, he causes issues for me all the time with 8HD worth of undead on the field, but would the local people in Cheliax allow a Lich to walk around, take residence and cause issues for the country?

8) Any other tips and tricks.

there's a really amazing playthrough on youtube for the AP, i think they are in book 4 or just starting book5 right now, and it's an amazing view at what can be done with the Adventure Path, really smart players having fun with it.

also, have fun, and as it says on page 3 of The Hellfire Compact, don't be a jerk.

I bought the PDF through Paizo's store and was hoping I could export the images . However, the PDF is protected with a password and I cannot do this.

Are the NPC images (e.g., Cimri, Boggart, Archbaron Darellus, etc.) available for download and printing? I could snip them out of the PDF with Windows Snipping Tool, but I then have to blur the surrounding text. I was hoping for a clean copy to share with my players.

if you use the arrow tool, and click the image, does it highlight? if it does you can copy and paste that into an art package, save, job done.

being someone who has the hard copy book, I just searched google for the characters and when that drew a blank for some, the adventure path, the book name, character type, etc. they are all online available. one tumblr blog is running both Vengeance and Rebels at the same time and has a lot of the artwork in the blog.

it's a fun AP, we've just started Book 4. I have all the maps i've created/found, tokens for the NPCs and the like, I'll let you have them if you want? there is also a really good playthrough on Youtube which really helped me get into the flow of things, well worth a watch.

have fun.

GrandChefPanda wrote:

You get them with each chapters pdfs

That doesn't really help people who have bought only the physical books. Seems like Paizo is missing out by not selling a la carte...

I've always got the physical books, just love that feel of paper that I can flick through. however it does make it a little difficult when I need to get the maps into Roll20 for my games. there are some great community created maps out there which are a good size that you can print. I've even made a few which are over at DeviantArt (for want of a better place). it would be great if Paizo made the maps available for free as a downloadable option, like maybe you register the hard copy book to your account somehow, but I'm not sure how that would work.

anyway, good luck.

KujakuDM wrote:

1: Frontier Town & Woods

2: Completely Urban with a Little Cavern Delving

As far as I have read.

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Hi

Book 3 deals with town and the forests surrounding it.

edit:

actually, if you are going to run it, it's a really good AP. book one allows the PCs to get to grips with being on the other side, and book two takes it to the next level. book three looks to be a complete blast, really looking forward to starting that once my party have completed book two.

if you are planning on running it, there's a Youtube series that is really good to work through, they have just completed book two and it's worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mB2yZRlTeY&list=PLFufCxsOxAo7JIv59umM- Ks0c3p-6dpzB

:)

That's an amaing list, thanks for sharing that.

My group have started to cause a little havok in the town, they've checked out a few things and gained some info as to what the town is like.

it's going to be a fun ride.

:)

i did some maps, mainly because I got the hard book, not the PDF. i'm not the best map person, and I'm struggling to recreate the final map for the book, but feel free to use any that you need.

https://vornn.deviantart.com

:)

I am excited for this section of the adventure now, was wondering how to get them from M to TBF, this is a great help. thanks guys.

We've been almost a year playing and we are starting book 3.

I think it would be good if there was a google maps type landscape for the map, where you can add notes and the such, so that new GMs like me can use this extra work put in by some astonishing people.

:)

i've been attempting to remap this and it's quite a nightmare in DPS, i cannot imaging how long it took for you to make this out of card!

likewise, I'd love to see some pictures.

:)

Hi

I'm quite interested how you ran with this actually. I'm past this bit, having just GM'd the Armory, where the session didn't quite go according to my plan, but the players had a blast.

thanks

Hi GM's

I'm running this AP at the moment and we are nearly at the end of the first book, great fun and the players are having a blast.

I did make some maps for the first book, which I have been adding to my Deviant Art page, though I'm not the greatest map person around.

https://vornn.deviantart.com

have fun