I'm about to start running the AOW adventure path, but I'm not sure how to get the party started. I take it they are supposed to go explore that cairn, but what's their motivation for doing so. I read trough the mag, but I haven't figured out why they would go check out that area?
Anyone help?
Most of it can be found in the "Prelude" paragraph on page 18 and "Getting the players involved" on page 64.
The best way to start the campaign is to talk to your players during their character generation and weave their backgrounds into Diamond Lake (uninteresting jobs) and explore how the characters know each other. Next make it clear that DL is not the place where anyone, who can help it, wants to live. Basicly your players' characters are waiting for their Big Opportunity to change their dreary lives.
Next give one character, through his or her background story, the map which shows the cairn and let this character recruit other partymembers. Depending on the characters your players are making this can take some work but the best way is to allow your players to help you with this part.
In my campaign for instance the rogue found the map when archiving papers from a former mine-manager for his uncle Smenk. As no-one else knew about the map he figured that no-one would miss it, so he took it for himself. Sometime later he was fired from his job by Smenk because of similar offences and his bad attitude. As his income dropped below what was able to support his hedonistic lifestyle he needed more money. He remembered the map and asked 3 others to join him, 2 miners (an impoverished swashbuckler and a barbarian ex-slave) and a wizard apprentice. The swashbuckler asked his friend the monk with him and the wizard asked a cleric of Wee-Jas. Finally the bard overheared their planning and joined in exchange for his silence.
This whole prelude took 1 character genertion session, one roleplay/planning session and some personal conversations and e-mail. This extra planning has payed back in some very interesting backgrounds and inter-party roleplaying.
Arjen
I'm in the early stages of getting an AoW campaign off the ground. I'm going to run a couple of small, intro adventures to get some party cohesion, and to explore Diamond Lake before getting into the published modules.
To kickstart the actual Dungeon material, I plan on having the characters look into the dissapearance of a few local children. The wolves that call the Cairn their home have been preying on more than farm animals.
It's a bit Spielbergian, using kids as a motivating force, but it gets the characters directly into the action. Once they solve the mystery of the missing kids, there's this whole catacomb to explore...
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I ran the "Night on the Town" scenario as a jumpstart for the Adventure Path after getting the players to develop some excellent backgrounds to tie them into the Diamond Lake region. Having the PC wizard an apprentice to Allustan has paid great dividends, along with having the PC rogue being one of the liberated kidnappers from the Night on the Town scenario. I used the Free City Trio (Auric/Tirra/Khellek) to be the catalyst to explore the Whispering Cairn ("If they think something is in the Stirgenest then what about that place the local youths go on a dare?"). I found having a relatively weak premise to start the Adventure Path makes the series of events that lead to the Kyuss-plot that much more fateful. The Cosmic Balance works in mysterious ways...
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I used Mad God's Key from Dungeon 114 to start our AoW campaign.
It let them cross swords with the Cult of Vecna, helped them score some points with the followers of Wee Jas, & got them interested in the Cairn Hills area. After a couple of hints about Diamond Lake (presented as Tombstone), they were raring to go.
My PCs created new characters for AoW. I gave very little consult on this but when their stats are fixed I sat down with each of them to create a very indivual background story with respect to the Diamond Lake backdrop. So all PCs are origin to DL or environment but most characters are unknown to the others. I gave each character his own motivation why to either search for treasures or to flee DL. Each player recieves a short summary of DL (background, major players etc). Where most of this background is common knowledge - so known to every PC - each contains special information that only this PC could know.
Here are a few examples:
The wizard is Alustans apprentice and is about to start his "wandering years" as part of his education.
A fighter starts as a bouncer at the Emporium. He is board and looks for new opportunities.
The cleric starts as a cleric in the garrisons chapel. She is in competition to the paladin maid and chooses to find spiritual enlightment elsewhere.
An elven fighter is one of the prince´s guards. The ghostly voice of his long dead ancestors sends him on higher missions.
On our first session I created a scenario where all PCs would wittness a scene that gave each of them the opportunity to act. With a little help from the players this brought the group together and they decided to go treasure hunting for verious reasons but with a common goal.
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One of my players is a druid and I used the "Nogwier sends the player into the hills chasing stories of unkillable undead" idea. The druid went to Diamond Lake looking for some help and found the other players. They started searching the cairns for a possible source of these undeads. The Whispering cairn is the only one with signs of recent activity, the wolves, so they started exploring it. There has been enough encounters with and hints of undead that player motivation has not been a problem for me.
You can use anybody to send the players chasing stories of undead, if you want to go that route.
Now if only I can get my players to trust Allustan.
In a rather bizarre fashion, I can tie each of the first four adventures into one of my players.
They explored the Whispering Cairn because the druid was told by Nogwier to explore rumours of green worms (as mentioned above; great minds think alike, obviously!)
They are heading into the Ebon Triad temple in 3FoE because the fighter works for Balabar Smenk and the rest of the party is being blackmailed into doing the dirty work.
Next the sorceror, who studied with Allustan will be approached to provide bodyguard services down to Blackwall Keep.
Finally, the changeling rogue will have obvious links and problems in HoHR.
I ended up using money as a motivator. All the pc's came up with good backgrounds and reasons for being in DL. As an added bonus, i allowed any pc who had a background in which they grew up in diamond lake, I gave them knowledge:Local as a class skill no matter what class they took. (which turned out to be pretty helpful to a few).
At the start of the adventure, I only let them start with 1d10 silver and 1d10 copper pieces of their starting money. (after they had bought all the wanted too). then i went through and trimmed their character sheets of a few things. Namely consumables, like rations and torches and such.
This way, they started out in a rough town, down on thier luck with only a few pennies to rub together. I had the bard type character win a map of the wispering cairn in a game of chance. and after hearing about the other adventures in town exploring the the other cairn, he thought he might be able to find some riches in the wispering cairn, so the put together a group of people who likewise needed money and the rest is history.
It all worked out really well. The PCs are really motived to secure some funds, not enjoying having to go to town to buy poor meals instead of teh standard fare. Its actually interesting to watch them budget, selling a silver ring they found so they can get a weeks worth of meals and some other misc supplies. Its a bit of a nice change from dealing with high level PCs who have enough gold to live in the lap of luxury and can wreck the economy of any small town when they stop by.
Plus they have really taken to fixing up the old mining office from dragon #333. They are spending their downtime (while pc's heal up and rest) to fix up the place.
Overall it has started out really well. Thanks for the suggestions all!