I am skimming Shackled city before I run it but this is what I have noticed. 4 adventures in a row all underground cavern/dungeon type. The first 3 are all in someones house to get underneath. Now this was just a skim, but... Is this a little repetive? Just how many unconnected dungeons are there in this town?
This is one of the things that I was upfront with my players before I started the game. I informed them that this adventure path was dungeon-crawl heavy, particularly in the beginning.
I find that if you set your player's expectations appropriately, they can find ways to enjoy the game because or despite of its distinctive features to a greater degree rather than being disappointed that the game that is going a certain way rather than the way they were expecting.
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I am skimming Shackled city before I run it but this is what I have noticed. 4 adventures in a row all underground cavern/dungeon type. The first 3 are all in someones house to get underneath. Now this was just a skim, but... Is this a little repetive? Just how many unconnected dungeons are there in this town?
If your players don't enjoy dungeon crawls, you'll certainly want to make some adjustments to Shackled City. Removing the dungeon of Jzadirune and having Ghelve's house directly connect to the Malachite fortress would be a good place to start, although you'll probably want to run a few additional encoutners before then to get the PCs up to at least 2nd level before they start on the Malachite Fortress.
The 2nd adventure does have a similar mechanic/setup, but having 2 House To Dungeon adventures in a row probably isn't too much to be repetitive, especailly since the tone and mood of the dungeons are very different.
The 3rd adventure breaks away from this format. The Lucky Monkey and the Kopru Ruins are not connected; they're two distinctly seperate sites. Additionally, this adventure has a lot of encounters that take place in Cauldron above, providing a lot of non-dungeon fun (especially the Flood Festival itself).
My advice is to read through the adventure, and once you start playing if the PCs feel there's too many dungeons, you can skip Drakthar's Way and head right into Flood Season.
In the end, though, there ARE a lot of dungeons in Shackled City, so the less your players enjoy dungeon crawls, the more you'll want to focus on the other parts of the adventure.
I think im going to run Age of worms instead. Ive noticed a lot of dungeons in the later adventures and while this isnt a bad thing (it is Dungeons and Dragons...) it seems like AOW might have a bit more vaired of a feel to it. Like that champions belt adventure where your in the gladiator ring.. thats original gaming. My skim of shackled city leaves me with the next room, another trap, some more Treasure feeling.
Right now I feel like I wasted 70$ though! Oh well.1
Hanex, the first encounter is not in a dungeon, and if your players enjoy roleplaying and city adventuring there are tons of possibilities in Cauldron. We are only through the first two adventures so far and we've spent about an eighth to a quarter of the time with roleplaying encounters, city encounters, etc. My players really enjoyed the roleplaying and investigation elements prior to even getting under Ghelve's Locks, then helping Ghelve with his prosecution for his involvement in the kidnappings, encounters with the Stormblades, with the Town Guard, the various inns, anticipating the Flood Festival, traveling to the Lucky Monkey, etc. THe detail provided for Cauldron makes it easy for you as DM to allow your players to interact with the city in so many ways. The dungeon adventures only provide the backbone to the adventure, but there is plenty of fun sidestuff to go around. And starting with the third adventure there is potential for wilderness travel and aboveground exploration of the Lucky Monkey filled with bandits.
I'm currently running Zenith Trajectory for my Wednesday night gaming group. They don't seem to mind the dungeon crawls, but if they did, I wouldn't have a problem with simply taking the major encounters and bad guys of the adventure and dropping them into a wildernis setting in the mountains and jungles around Cauldron.
I've done this with other adventures--I've turned dungeons into wilderness camps, running forest battles and into urban adventures on numerous occasions. It takes a little bit of time, but if you lift the main encounters, the cool traps and the lackeys...it's still only about 25% as much work as designing your own adventures.
I know that many of you like to run things with little modification, exactly the way it is written...and the appeal of a SCAP HC product is the fact that you don't have to do a lot of your own game prep...but seriously--if the dungeoncrawling bothers you, change some settings around.
I could have put Bhal-Hamathugn into a deep mountain lake about 3 days from Cauldron. The players arrive to find a cryohydra guarding the lake's approaches. They explore the fringes of the lake and encounter a Kuo-Toan raiding party, which they track back to a partially submerged lakeside cavern. At this point, the cavern could lead to a submerged Bhal-Hamatughn several hundred feet down in this lake, or perhaps to a Kuo-Toan encampment with a shrine to Blibdoolpoolp located in a sharply cut riverbed ravine that leads away from the lake. The ravine is only 40 feet wide and 180 feet high and lets in very little daylight. The Kuo-Toans live in cliff-dwellings just above the river, with connecting tunnels to the Underdark. Ghorlot swims the narrow river ravines, keeping his draconic fingerlings in natural pools below and between some of the Kuo-Toan dwellings.
As you may have gathered, I very much enjoy tinkering with published adventures to suit my own campaign, so I tend to be less critical of Dungeon content than some of the others who post here. I see the published material more as an inspiration rather than strict guidelines, but I feel that I'm in the minority.
Hanexs, nobody forced you to buy the expensive, hardcover compilation of the Shackled City AP. I personally love all of the work that was done on it (man, you just cannot beat that ending, on Carceri!), and dungeon crawls are the meat and potatoes of the D&D game. True, variety is a good thing, but any group that doesn't love a few good, old-fashioned, hack-n-slash dungeons is just, well, abnormal. Plus, the Age of Worms has a few problems of its own that I would be very interested in talking to someone at paizo about!
(Spoilers for the Age of Worms)
And to chime in here, I'm not sure that Age of Worms, which starts off in a dungeon, goes to another dungeon, then to a swamp, then to sewers in a city, then to catacombs beneath a gladiator arena, then to the first dungeon and an underground city, is that much of a releif if you have issues with dungeons.
Triel and the alleybashers particularly could be placed into Cauldron itself. The entire Kopru ruin dungeon population could be scattered about the City in little enclaves. Maybe they have rented a building or two. The characters could go on an urban mystery scavenger hunt trying to find the gnoll huecuva, the halfling diviner and Triel, who might employ their alleybashers to conduct counter-ambushes on the party, etc.
You can get rid of the Kopru Ruins entirely and turn the 2nd half of Flood Season into an urban adventure, IMO.
The alleybashers are out of their element in the Kopru Ruins--they're not dungeon guards--they're "alley bashers." Put them back into their natural environment--let the PC's investigate and split up while working all the clues as to the location of the wands of water controlling--and the alleybashers can go to work! Hmmmm.....I wish I could go back and re-run this adventure now!!
I can't wait to run the the Flood Festival. I've got so much fun planned.
There's a couple of PCs I can definitely interest in the drinking competition.
I'm introducing a music competition as well. The final will be between our party's bard and Annah Taskerhill. There's gonna be a big fight with the Stormblades at one point, it depends whether my guys can keep their cool.
The ball is a fantastic event for urban roleplaying.
The Morkoth hunt is totally going to wind our bard up.
I quote from his backround:
"During Bran's 12th summer he was waiting for his father at a his ferry dock, when his failed to arrive on schedule Bran waited and waited but his father's boat never appeared. The next day a search party found the City Banner than Ligron always flew from the back of his boat, floating in the lake. After three more days of searching nothing more of the boat was found, it was at this time Bran had to be forcibly removed from the dockside, grief stricken, shocked and still clutching the City Banner."
He believes the Morkoth got him. As far as my players are concerned the Morkoth is a myth. Well the guy playing the bard isn't sure. I've kinda hinted that he will see a morkoth, of sorts. So he'll go a bit crazy at the morkoth hunt and then think that's it.
Then Foundations of Flame is gonna be so much more shocking!
Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh.. The first 3 advenutures after reading just seemed a bit overly repetitive... but now looking through the rest there does seem like a lot of room for roleplaying (the taxes and flood things are cool). I wish this book came with a summary so I could just get a feel for what I am about to put my players through (anyone know of a summary online?). I think I'll skip the second adventure and swap out any others that I don't like....
Because I was concerned about the heavy dungeoncrawl aspect of the first adventure, I made sure to add a good amount of roleplaying before they went into the dungeon. A big part of it was roleplaying the character's interaction with their families. Kyra Lanthenmire with her father, mother, and brother, and then with the church of Kord; Seo with the cleric of Pelor and her parents; Gwyn Weer sneaking around her demanding husband Vortimax Weer; and Brunhilda Splintershield with her parents, then hooking up with the church of Wee Jas.
Keep in mind that unlike a typical dungeon crawl, they go home when they are done for the day instead of sleeping in the dungeon. So, have something ready for them when they do.
After the first adventure, the NPCs basically run themselves.
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Plus, the Age of Worms has a few problems of its own that I would be very interested in talking to someone at paizo about!
We're here and ready to talk, namfoodle! :)
Talking with our readers about what did and didn't work with the Adventure Paths is one of the best ways we have to make the next ones better.
Yeah I am definetely going with Age of Worms. There adventures are just so varied and interesting. The WC right from the start is a cool, easily runnable non hack and slash adventure. The seco nd module is a bit of a road bump but the rest seem to follow suit.
SC seems by contrast a little different... while there definetely are lots of role playing oppurtunities, I just cannot see the players feeling a theme throughout the campaign. The plot simply seems to complicated for the players to actually figure out.. and the actual adventures seem overly hack and slash, I know I could do lots of City Role Playing... but they dont seem to be actually A PART of the adventure..
Anyways, maybe in a couple years on my next campaign I might feel more comfy with Cauldron, until then... on to Diamond Lake
Cauldron is the true star of the SCAP, and the DM must make it live in the hearts and souls of his players. Once you integrate your players into the city, they will focus on why they are in the dungeon and not that they are in a dungeon. My players love Cauldron. It is there home, and they will go anywhere and do anything to save it.
Between each chapter I spend an evening doing nothing but roleplaying. I have had visits from mothers, PC's start up buisiness', minister to the faithful, deaths of friends, religious holidays, state dinners, etc. My players love these, and they enhance the dungeons, because they give the players a reason to be there other than the two P's, xp and gp.