I noticed that in "Here there Be Monsters" there wasn't a sidebar for Affiliation rewards like the previous two adventures. My group is deciding now before we start whether we want to use the concept, but if there aren't going to be ongoing rewards for belonging to them and ongoing ways to use them, we probably won't do it.
Is their absence in HTBM due to the fact the characters aren't in Sasserine anymore? If that's the case then I presume there won't be much to do with them in further STAP adventures. It seems like with Sending spells and the like and later on Greater Teleport characters could still interact with their respective affiliations.
Director of Games
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Just because the PCs have left Sasserine does not mean their affiliations are no longer important. One of the upcoming Savage Tidings articles covers how the affiliations are represented in Far Shore and how their role continues to play a part. At any rate, I will see what I can do about getting some of that information put into the conversion notes, or maybe just posted up here.
Jason Bulmahn
Author of HTBM
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Creative Director
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In addition, once the PCs get to Farshore, all of the affiliations are represented there in some manner. Members can hook up with other members, learn about side quests, and even use their affiliations to help bolster the colony. The affiliations interact with the story of Savage Tide in many more ways than just the awards. Not all of the adventrues will have awards sidebars, just the ones where we can fit said sidebars in, to be honest. And if we DID put awards into every adventure, well, that'd be handing out WAY too many affiliation points, to be honest. Don't forget that each of the affiliations has baseline awards as detailed in the first Savage Tidings article back in Dragon #348 as well.
The next affiliation award sidebar will probably appear with "The Lightless Depths" (Adventrue 6).
Thanks for the info!
I think they sound really cool, but I'm leaving it up to my players whether we use them. The party is mostly chaotic good and chaotic neutral, so they're not real "joiners."
Great job on HTBM, Jason. I love the barl-gura demon and how it's presented. So far STAP looks incredible, and I get to start running it in less than week now. Woohoo!
CG and CN? The Church of the Whirling Fury, the Dawn Council (Azure Temple/Procan, Kord), the Seekers, the Witchwardens, and Zelkarune's Horns can all work, depending on character motivations.
Affiliations are a game mechanic to tie the characters more closely to the campaign world, instead of being just a group who goes into dungeons and kills monsters. They exist to enhance ROLE-playing instead of "ROLL-playing."
One of my players read the rules for affiliations and loved them. He made his own group that is an espionage organization trying to stomp out the slave trade in the surrounding area.
I have plans to make the group eventually oppose tyranny as a whole on worldwide basis. Affiliations Rock! Gread addition to the campaign!