Announced!
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Announced!
Josh any chance I can get this one slightly earlier then the scheduled release date?
We have a Con in Houston in Jan and this will be only 2 days before the con, and right now the only other low level season 2 you have are Before the Dawn part 1 & 2 which I will be worried will have players that already played it.
I know I am asking way before it is released, but if there is a chance we could get it a few days earlier, could that happen?
I can tell by the description and author that this one's going to be a stinker! ;-)
Director of Brand Strategy
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You may blame me all you want, but I (who works here and sees everything on everyone's plates) blame Ultimate Magic and a few other higher priority projects, as well as some much deserved vacation time among some of the staff.
But I'm happy to take the blame, as I know this adventure will be your new favorite once you get a chance to play it.
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You may blame me all you want, but I (who works here and sees everything on everyone's plates) blame Ultimate Magic and a few other higher priority projects, as well as some much deserved vacation time among some of the staff.
But I'm happy to take the blame, as I know this adventure will be your new favorite once you get a chance to play it.
wait...you already got a Vacation?... Paizo is too nice.. ;)
I know this adventure will be your new favorite once you get a chance to play it.
I'm holding you to this.
Or else!
Or else you'll torture us by continuing to write more scenarios?
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Director of Brand Strategy
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In all honesty, this might be the last one from me for a while. Now that I'm developing them, if I write one, it means more work on someone else's already crowded desk, since I don't think it's the best decision to develop one's own adventure. This was assigned before I took on the job, so it's the last holdover of pre-Mark PFS.
Thus I you'll like it the best because it could be my PFS swan song.
In all honesty, this might be the last one from me for a while. Now that I'm developing them, if I write one, it means more work on someone else's already crowded desk, since I don't think it's the best decision to develop one's own adventure. This was assigned before I took on the job, so it's the last holdover of pre-Mark PFS.
Thus I you'll like it the best because it could be my PFS swan song.
1) Hopefully you're not dying or retiring
2) Pre-Mark? From what did you spawn?3) I really enjoyed getting to play with a Glabrezu last weekend. >:)
4) Topping Rebel's Ransom or Hall of Drunken Heroes is a tall order (taller than the beer you still owe me...)
Uh oh.
I see a change in the description from
"Will be available for purchase Wed, Feb 2, 2011."
to
"Will be available for purchase approximately Wed, Feb 2, 2011."
This worries me, as I have promised a group (six players plus one waiting-list) that I would run the adventure on Saturday.
I don't know if this mixed group will be able to find something else that none of us have played. Hopefully the quest for perfection will not keep Paizo from putting the scenario up on Wednesday, given that they could update the PDF after thorough proofing later . . . (Though as a publisher/editor myself, I wholly sympathize with the problem.)
--Scott
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What kind of name did you expect from a dirty, skeezy smugglers' ship full of the worst kind of people you could put together and still manage to stay afloat?
Well, a lot of the characters remind me of darker versions of the crew of another freighter that sometimes takes passengers, especially if they are trying to put on an air of respectability.
What kind of name did you expect from a dirty, skeezy smugglers' ship full of the worst kind of people you could put together and still manage to stay afloat?
The slovenly mackerel.
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I played it with a very poor gm yesterday and it ran over, and attributed it to poor GMing. That said, due to a mix up, I thought I was going to run that session and prepped it.
It is roleplaying intense, with potentially very little combat. For GMs who are used to Dungeon crawls, this creates a very different dynamic. You basically need to know the module well and be prepared to act and at times improv. Skills very different from a dungeon crawl.
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I just want to make it clear, both as a player and a GM I enjoyed the module. It's a fun mod and a very nice deviation from the typical PFS mod.
My question/ comment is only that it seems like it takes more time to run. It sounds to me like most people are having that same general experience.
This is fair enough, lots of folks feel it can be run on time but that's not what they experienced.
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I just want to make it clear, both as a player and a GM I enjoyed the module. It's a fun mod and a very nice deviation from the typical PFS mod.
My question/ comment is only that it seems like it takes more time to run. It sounds to me like most people are having that same general experience.
"attributed it to poor GMing"... "You basically need to know the module well and be prepared to act and at times improv."
"can be run on time if the GM is prepared"
"if the GM isn't aware of what each one does/says the mod is going to be very ploddy for the group" This is fair enough, lots of folks feel it can be run on time but that's not what they experienced.
I think it is more like a movie script then a typical module and because of that, you need to know your lines and hit your mark have good timing. It's not a module where you can glance at a stat block a wing it.
These two things are very different sets of skills and I think some GMs are not actors.But running it takes more of the skills of actors then typical.
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I ran it with plenty of time to spare including about a twenty minute debate (that ended with a game of ennie-meenie-minie-moe) on if we were playing 1st level characters or 4th level characters.
I really don't know why people think that murder mysteries are fun. I've never had fun playing one. Though to be fair the DM was only okay.
Couple of questions after the spoiler bar:
Why give different treasure depending on who the murderer is?
I get the random dynamic of the whodoneit (though I'm not sure that the extra DM difficulty is worth the gain), but it leaves a bad feeling when you are allotted no extra access because our randomly selected villain was lame and had no cool stuff. Seems to me that it wouldn't be that hard to outfit the different folk identically and then we wouldn't necessarily even know that the murderer changed each time.
Also, what was the point of the storm?
I really don't know why people think that murder mysteries are fun. I've never had fun playing one.
Mystery/puzzle modules aren't really for me, either. I generally feel they're just one step away from "Guess What It Has In Its Pocketses". Mysteries have an extra problem when the party has access to mind reading; either it has the potential to short-circuit the module completely, or there's an arbitrary "you can't do that" situation built in (which is kind of lame either way).
Ran this a couple days ago. It ran somewhere between 4 1/2 and 5 hours.
All in all it looks like a highly enjoyable scenario for the right groups. I have a larger group (usually 6-7 player) and most of then tend to lean to the rollplay side of things over roleplaying. I understand the limitations of a scenario content space and I applaud your portrayal at a murder mystery in a system that isn't inherently suited to that type of story. Thanks for the variation in the normal scenario formula Mark.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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The extensive time the party has on board the ship before things start is problematic in a number of ways, Sethious, not just the mysteries of the cargo hold. Even more serious, if the party has been around for several weeks, they should already know all of the cew memebers well, and vice versa.
Better all around, I think, if the PCs were to be very newly aboard the vessel, perhaps on their first or second day from their embarcation.
I really don't know why people think that murder mysteries are fun. I've never had fun playing one.
I like mysteries. (After playing this adventure, I went to a production of "And then there were none.") I thought this was a good one.
I really don't know why people think that murder mysteries are fun. I've never had fun playing one.I like mysteries. (After playing this adventure, I went to a production of "And then there were none.") I thought this was a good one.
I haven't played this, but I do like mysteries ... so long as the GM is decent. The worst game I ever played was a mystery where the GM actively hindered us every step of the way.
I found out some time later that we spent an hour of the slot trying to find the hook, which as written was simply a bit of box text.
The extensive time the party has on board the ship before things start is problematic in a number of ways, Sethious, not just the mysteries of the cargo hold. Even more serious, if the party has been around for several weeks, they should already know all of the crew memebers well, and vice versa.
Better all around, I think, if the PCs were to be very newly aboard the vessel, perhaps on their first or second day from their embarcation.
I seriously considered running it with them just boarding as well. They also commented several times on how they would have taken the time to get to know people if they had been traveling that long and thought they were shady types. Even if it was just to figure out who to look out for. Even with those faults though my group enjoyed it. Those were just some of the gripes I heard come across as I sat behind the GM screen and figured I put out there as notice for others running in the future.
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The extensive time the party has on board the ship before things start is problematic in a number of ways, Sethious, not just the mysteries of the cargo hold. Even more serious, if the party has been around for several weeks, they should already know all of the cew memebers well, and vice versa.
Better all around, I think, if the PCs were to be very newly aboard the vessel, perhaps on their first or second day from their embarcation.
This is actually how I played it, the intro is a confusing mix of "This is what you need to do and these are all the people" and "You've been travelling with these people for 2 months...". I just settled on the idea that the characters were new to the ship and that someone else had guarded them up until this point.
If I ever run it again that is definitely the way I plan on going about it.
Mark Moreland-
Just outta idle curiousity, one of the potential pool of likely suspects...
...that wouldn't happened to have been, um, influenced by a certain translated-from-a-foreign-language PF and oldschool-mix game session on YouTube featuring a low-charisma, "cat-eared maid sexuality" ranger character would it, ya sly old-salty sea-dawg you? ;)
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I wasn't super impressed by this mod. Of course, there is the 'well we've been traveling with these folks for a few weeks' aspect, but that's been covered already.
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
Essentially it's assumed that the characters will fail at the task they are installed to complete, so if they do a too good a job the module will be two brief encounters and done...
The fact that the title of the module advertises there is to be a murder will make them doubly vigilant (and also invites all sorts of meta-gaming).
0gre, I know when you are at cons or other public games you kind of have to announce titles. If you happen to be running a home game though, I have made a point of not announcing module names until I hand out the chronicles to avert that kind of issue somewhat.
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Not yet run the module and as I don't know who will be playing (and thus their character factions) I cannot just prep for one outcome.
It looks great though things like the 50 days at sea seem an unwanted complication. At the very least you would think the faction quests should only reach the PCs on day 50. Otherwise why wait until the murder to start implementing them? I will also have to drum it into the players that the captain Veane's word is law and that the venture captains require the PCs to come when called and stay clear of certain areas. Still not sure why the PCs could not have joined the trip as late replacements of another group who had all come down with food poisoning....
If one of the NPCs is guilty then I run into this problem
Really looking forward to running it. I will print out 8'10 glossies of the crew and stick them on a board ala TV cop shows and issue the players with markers & string then see if they can join the dots!!
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Director of Brand Strategy
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Mark Moreland-
Just outta idle curiousity, one of the potential pool of likely suspects...
** spoiler omitted **
...that wouldn't happened to have been, um, influenced by a certain translated-from-a-foreign-language PF and oldschool-mix game session on YouTube featuring a low-charisma, "cat-eared maid sexuality" ranger character would it, ya sly old-salty sea-dawg you? ;)
Since I don't know the YouTube video in question, I'd have to say no. That character was derived from a number of genre tropes, so it's possible there are many instances of similar characters out there.
Since I don't know the YouTube video in question, I'd have to say no. That character was derived from a number of genre tropes, so it's possible there are many instances of similar characters out there.
No prob- that video's kind of NSFW (not in a "visually graphic" but more of a "verbally graphic" kinda way anyhow) at any rate. ;)
As the module author, would it be fair to say, given some of the problems others had mentioned in this thread about the playing/running of this module, that
P.S. Such an event could also be used in conjunction with heretic's post of why the PCs might be used as a last minute replacement Pathfinder personnel.
Member of Sethious' crew here.
I really enjoyed the modual, though the issues Sethious mentioned were somewhat glaring. There were a few other things.
2. Two rust monsters. We were APL 2 when we ran this, and I ended up soloing the two of them due to the party being all over the ship. Two hits, and my masterwork breastplate is gone. Oh yeah, I'm a Brutal Pugalist, and my main weapon is armor spikes. Two birds one stone >.< I ended up having to beat them unconcious barehanded, rejecting help from the Taldoran Cavalier in full plate. It was a fun encounter, but one that cost me a sizeable portion of my loot for level.
3. Profession Sailor. None of us had it. Not really an issue so much as a minor annoyance. Will I put one single point into this skill next level to reflect my experiences? Yes. Yes I will.
Sethious allowed me to make the check untrained though to help offset the storm. Good thing too, as the "Lightning Strike" roll did come up at least once. He also had the final fight happen during the storm, which was interesting in that it limited how many of us (7 player party) could actually participate in direct combat. I had to make the call to stay on the wheel or to enguage, and more than one person was taken out of combat by the storm. Good tactic for large table sizes running this encounter.
When all was said and done, I had fun. I don't know why the dwarf who is uglier than he is stupid (me) ended up doing the legwork of mystery solving (yay wisdom!), but it was good.
We also had some interesting things happen when my idiot brother (in character, another player's PFS char) lashed the Taldoran to the RIGGING and the "blown sail rigging" roll came up in the storm.
The storm also really made me appriciate the foresight of purchasing Soothe Syrup, as the "sickened" roll came up many, many times.
Over all, a good time was had by all.
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2) It says if the party doesn't fight Shira, they can find her alchemical reagents, and get the money from it. What's to prevent them from finding it afterwards? In my understanding, it should be the other way around, there is nothing to stop them from finding it when she's dead.
3) It says Captain Veane interferes with any combat between the party and the crew, why doesn't he interfere with the Shira fight?
4) The module details what's in Killik's footlocker, but mentions nothing of what's in the other crew's footlockers. What's in their footlockers?