Pathfinder Adventure: Crown of the Kobold King

- I'm sorry, is that a child who is chained and *BALL-GAGGED* on page 18?!

Comparing to the illustration on page 4, it's obviously Jurin, who is 11 years old.

Will this product include any new backgrounds related to Falcon's Hollow, or should we expect to just use backgrounds from already published sources?

Yes, but perhaps not in the way you might expect.

There are four potential hooks to get the party invested in this adventure, each of which gets them headed out into Darkmoon Vale and, soon enough, involved with the greater plot of what's going on in the region. Taken from the introduction to the adventure...

When your players choose their character’s backgrounds, you should consider adjusting the flavor text a little bit to directly tie them into Falcon’s Hollow’s history and plots. On page 12, four initial quests are given to get the adventure started—these quests can be tied, thematically, to many of the common backgrounds from the Core Rulebook, as follows...

What follows are several paragraphs that describe how you can adjust backgrounds from the Core Rulebook to work with these four initial quests.

That said, there IS an additional element that needed discussion. It should be no spoiler and obvious from the title that the primary villains in this adventure are kobolds. As such, PC kobolds would be an unusual choice for players. The people of Falcon's Hollow aren't friendly on their own, but would be downright frightened/violent toward kobold PCs. And so I threw in an actual background for players who just really really really want to play a kobold—taking this background helps to contextualize why they can be in Falcon's Hollow without being mobbed.

Alternately, if the whole party wants to play kobolds, the adventure talks a LITTLE BIT about the idea of playing kobolds from a rival group that seeks to defeat the Kobold King. If you wanna run the adventure this way you'll need to adjust a lot of the framing and setup and part of the start of "Hungry are the Dead," but the dungeon itself works just as well.

jimbob5555 wrote:

- I'm sorry, is that a child who is chained and *BALL-GAGGED* on page 18?!

Comparing to the illustration on page 4, it's obviously Jurin, who is 11 years old.

To manage expectations... the element of kids in danger and being kidnapped, sacrificed, turned into monsters, and put in ball gags is something I revised entirely for this version of the adventure. Using the trope of "kids in danger" is something we really try to avoid leaning on these days, PARTICULARLY when it comes to doing art of kids being tied up or tortured. So all of the kids are gone from the adventure.

This is also tied to the fact that this adventure hook from the original "Crown of the Kobold King" kinda falls apart if you present the entire dungeon all at once, especially if (as I did, and as the author of the final level, Nick Logue did) you want the kobold king to be the primary villain of the whole thing. His story ends at the end of the first adventure in its original version, but in this hardcover edition, it's much expanded to cover all of the underground levels. The adventure hooks for "Hollow's Last Hope" and "Hungry Are the Dead" are likewise adjusted and changed to support a compilation rather than specific one-shots.

There IS still an element of the kobolds abducting locals for their own nefarious plots, but the victims being snatched from the region are adults, not children.

Will this get a Foundry VTT release?

Will this get a Foundry VTT release?

Unknown at this time.

To manage expectations... the element of kids in danger and being kidnapped, sacrificed, turned into monsters, and put in ball gags is something I revised entirely for this version of the adventure. Using the trope of "kids in danger" is something we really try to avoid leaning on these days, PARTICULARLY when it comes to doing art of kids being tied up or tortured. So all of the kids are gone from the adventure.

Just want to pipe up here and say thank you for this. I appreciate your willingness to critically examine your own work and update it. I for one am much more likely to purchase this product having seen this.

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