Hi all, in a couple of weeks, another couple of weeks away from the hardcover release, I plan on starting to run the Shackled City; I've got Life's Bazaar and Flood Season in magazine form, but will rely on the hardcover to get me through the rest ... You've mentioned changes to Life's Bazaar like dropping Kazmojen fighter levels, but also things like relocating certain scenes and having notes on how to generate characters for the adventure path. Any chance of posting up some tidbits here, so that those of us just about to start adventuring in Cauldron can kick off our campaigns hardcover style?
M
Creative Director
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Sorry, no chance of posting any tidbits on these boards. There are a lot of little changes, such as dropping Kazmojen a level or two, and I'm making the overall plotline work better as a whole. Introducing rumors and encounters with bad guys from later in the campaign earlier so that when the PCs meet the local crimelords in Lords of Oblivion or the Cagewrights in Thirteen Cages and Strike on Shatterhorn, they'll seem like they've reaced the final bad guys rather than just a collection of NPC stat blocks.
It's all integrated into the text, so there's no easy way to strip it out and post it online, alas, that wouldn't take up valuble time I need to finish developing the last half of the campaign.
One thing to remember as well... we're adding a new adventure between Life's Bazaar and Flood Season. And I'm also adding a lot of advice and goodies for DMs to use to start up new characters in the region; character traits linked to the campaign, for example. So if you can hold off starting a new Shackled City campaign until the hardcover comes out in a few more months... that'd probably be best.
If you can't wait, Life's Bazaar is huge enough that it should keep your party busy for a couple months, so if you time it right they'll be able to start the new adventure before Flood Season anyway.
So if you can hold off starting a new Shackled City campaign until the hardcover comes out in a few more months... that'd probably be best.
If you can't wait, Life's Bazaar is huge enough that it should keep your party busy for a couple months, so if you time it right they'll be able to start the new adventure before Flood Season anyway.
That makes sense to me. Based on all the changes you've mentioned, I'm seriously considering postponing my campaign (just finished Flood Season) until after the hardcover comes out. One of my players will be having a baby soon, which gives me a good excuse to do something else for a while. Perhaps I'll give the Banewarrens another spin...
James is right about the length of Life's Bazaar. That adventure could take six to eight four-hour sessions. You might also run a small adventure before Life's Bazaar, so your characters are a little tougher when they encounter Kazmojen (rather than altering his stats).
it sucks my player are half way threw the test of the smokeing eye and we normaly play every sunday (next month will be less) and for about 6 hours somtimes more so they fily threw these adventures so i don't know how much i will beable to use the ahrdcover ;-(
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This has put me in a bit of a quandary now. I Started Life's Bizaar in January, having fully converted it and Flood Season to 3.5. What became readily apparent was that there was absolutely no way it was a 1st to 3rd level adventure, more like 2nd to 4th, for four players. As I only had three so it was more like 3rd to 4th.
So I converted Evil Unearthed and ran it. By the end of it the part had nearly made 4th! They have nearly finished Life's Bizaar (or are about to be finished by it) and are 5th level (about 2000 xp off 6th), even having had the Striders along for part of it and Corporal Skylar Krewis for a while as well (nicked the latter idea off the boards somewhere).
My problem is whether to hang on for the hardback to run the new "filler" adventure (or will 3 5th level players be too high) or to hang on just for the book itself and continue with the new Flood Season? Or shall I just run the Flood Season which I converted to 3.5 from Dungeon? Aargh! Not enough meaningful information to make an informed decision.
James, I know you cannot give out tidbits or even hints as to what the new adventure is but could you please give me a little guidance on what of the above options would work out best. Halting the campaign after Life's Bizaar is an option I have discussed with the players.
NB the players full descriptions are elsewehere but all human male LN (except paladin): Ftr2/Clr3(St. Cuthbert), Cloistered Cleric2(Wee Jas)/Wiz3, and Crusader(paladin variant)5(Pelor). No rogue so the traps in Jzadirune mangled them, and I suppose will continue to do so throughout the campaign :)
A word of advice.
It has been my experience, after many years at this DM thing, that any campaign put in hiatus, or "on hold", is a dead campaign...never to rise again.
Your group's experience may well differ, but I think it would behoove you to simply carry on from here if you want there to be *any* point to picking up the hardcover.