What Would you Have Done Differently

[teknohippy]

I'm going to get my players to roll-up characters and start the SCAP soon.

I've read everything and am now throroughly reading over Life's Bazaar.

If you've run it yourself, what would you do differently a second time, or to put it another way, what pitfalls and mistakes should one avoid.

Cheers

Iain Norman

[Big Jake]

I ran the SCAP twice, the first time I was running the adventures as quickly as they were being published, but the second time I had all of the adventures in hand. The biggest thing I did differently the second time through is that I introduced as many of the NPCs as fast as I could.

For example:

I ran a quick side trek before Life's Bazaar, where Maavu hired the PCs to guard a shipment to Sasserine and back so he could fill up his warehouses in time for the Flood Festival.

In Life's Bazaar, the PCs met Skylar Krewis as part of the town guard. I introduced him as a 2nd level fighter, and called him "Private Krewis" instead of sergeant, as he is in Demonskar Legacy. After they saved the children, Skylar got promoted, and the PCs met Terseon for the first time.

I introduced Lord Vhalantru during the Flood Festival. He awarded some of the prizes of the competition, and he gave each of the PCs a special token for retrieving the wands.

I created an extra encounter in Zenith Trajectory, where the PCs met a half-fiend cleric of Pelor. They discovered that some times things that look evil aren't always evil, which set up the encounter with Kaurophon.

I kept the Stormblades around, and used them to introduce information that the party missed on their own, or as an alternate method to get the party on the next path.

Introducing the NPCs early on will give the players the choice to go to whom they trust the most. When the PCs eventually raid the Cathedral of Wee Jas, they might need a connection in the town guard to make sure that there are no patrols in front of the cathedral when they plan to go in. They can turn to Skylar or the Stiders of Farlanghn, or ask Maavu for help, or even the Chucrh of Pelor. Or a combination of all of them.

Introducing the NPCs also negates the feeling that the NPCs are only there to give one piece of information, then to be forgotten.

[ultrazen]

Yes, you've got all the NPCs in front of you, so introduce early. The flood festival is a great time to show people off that wouldn't otherwise pop up intil later. They could just be spectators in VIP seats, or they might offer the PCs a short, formal thank-you for their work, something like that.

Regarding the flood festival:
I have tried really, really hard to make this work with the wands, but I find it impossible. Reading the spell description, I just don't see how a few wands are going to control flooding from the lake (especially if it can apparently drain to a normal level on its own in just a few hours). So instead of wands they are going after a staff of weather control (custom item, not in the DMG). It is made in several parts - by long-standing agreement, each principal church is supposed to keep one part safe. When it is needed, they assemble it and the high priests take turns using it. In this way the most torrential rains are kept from falling on the city, and the flood festival (or at least parts of it) is held under blue skies surrounded by a curtain of rain.

Jenya - seems to level up just by casting divinations and telling the party where to go... I'd encourage a bit more creative use of Jenya.

The good and bad points of Demonskar Legacy, where it goes and where it doesn't, as well as the Smoking Eye follow-up, have been discussed quite a bit on the boards. Don't introduce stuff from these things you won't use later, and be prepared for the real posibility of your players initially going in a different direction near the end of Demonskar if you present things exactly as written.

Dragons as random encounters (think Crazy Jared's pad and Hookface in Foundation of Flame) don't work in my campaign. Maybe they do in yours.

I also thought there were a bit too many Cagewrights - a couple of the final adventures just seemed to drag on. After Foundation, nothing should drag, imho. Maybe you like the 13 symbolism though.

That was the major stuff for me.

There also isn't much time after about the mid point for a lot of downtime for item creation, roleplaying skill/feat acquisition, and other stuff like that. Just be aware of it as you may need to make some allowances here and there if your group likes to make thier own toys.

[airwalkrr]

Big Jake wrote:

I created an extra encounter in Zenith Trajectory, where the PCs met a half-fiend cleric of Pelor. They discovered that some times things that look evil aren't always evil, which set up the encounter with Kaurophon.

The flip side is that the PCs are likely to think "What are the odds of TWO good-aligned half-fiends in this campaign?" Maybe a good-aligned tiefling or something slightly less obvious would be a more subtle suggestion.

And yes, introducing the NPCs early seems to be a very good idea. It's something I'm trying to do with AoW since they were kind enough to provide us with an outline early on. I'm running SCAP for the second time and one of my players rolled up a villain from the Hero Builder's Guidebook as a major NPC from his past. Since his family has a strong tradition of serving in the militia and he also rolled that both of his parents were dead, I decided that his father was one of the guards Triel Eldurast had murdered back when they were both guards. That should provide a couple of fairly interesting encounters throughout the campaign.

[Tiger Lily]

teknohippy wrote:

If you've run it yourself, what would you do differently a second time, or to put it another way, what pitfalls and mistakes should one avoid.

My biggest mistake was allowing the party to lay claim to Jzadirune through laying claim to Ghelve's Locks. Some other groups have indicated they were able to make it work. Was a huge nightmare for me and I wouldn't do it again.

[DM Jeff]

Might get flogged for admitting this, but I eliminated a lot of the empty rooms in Jzadirune. I also took a few of the "flavor rooms" where there was no combat or special clue and combined them into one room.

I certainly don't have super paranoid players, but they were only 1st level! Plodding along room to room to room can get very time consuming, so for example I made 1 overall barracks room and cut out all the individual barracks rooms that had nothing in them.

-DM Jeff

[teknohippy]

All good useful pointers, thanks. Anyone got anymore?

Cheers

I