This is going to feel like a bit of cross-posting, but I didn’t get the responses I was hoping for in the general discussion so thought I should get a bit more specific.
In summary, I’m looking to compress the three current Adventure Paths into one grand story line. Instead of spending 20 levels trying to solve one global problem, the group will take mini-paths and get the satisfaction of saving the day multiple times.
The goal is to start them out in Shackled City vs. the Cagewrights. By level 8 they will have overcome them and stopped their plot to turn the city into a gatetown to Carceri. After that winds down, they’ll move on to an abbreviated version of Age of Worms and so on.
Because I have to squeeze 20 levels of Adventure Pathing into 8 levels, I’m looking for the experience of others who have played or run the series for inputs on what events were critical to the basic story and those scenes that were just too good to cut and should go in regardless.
For instance, I don’t think Zenith Trajectory adds anything to the story line, so I’m going to cut that one out of the series. However, I really want the players to meet Celeste, so will use that scenario as the springboard to another adventure down the line. Likewise, Crazy Jared is a great NPC encounter, and I will probably use that bit during the quest to rescue Alek Tercival.
So, can anyone share some specifics about the series’ true high points, low points, and mission-critical events as they played out at your tables?
While you’re at it, I invite you to my parallel discussion about the Essential Age of Worms over here:
Well... I think you're going to hit a lot of problems if they've won the whole thing by 8th level.
Wouldn't it be easier to interweave them, so that they're still wrestling with trying to fight Dragotha after recovering from saving Cauldron, while doing whatever it is they have to do in savage tide at high level?
Even then, I don't know Age of Worms that well, but Savage Tide feels like it draws you away from the Cauldron/Kyuss area.
I guess I'm just not seeing the reason to combine the three - what is your real goal in doing so? To trim out 'the chaff' and have a shorter campaign? Because you want to make them lower level? Because your players have ADD?
My reply wasn't incredibly helpful, so I'll alter it slightly.
1) The threats and events in this campaign are too difficult to complete with 8th level characters, and converting would probably not be worth it
2) Instead of trying to do all 3 back to back, because you don't think they'll survive doing 3 mega campaigns... just make each shorter. Pare down to the best adventures and moments of each, and just level them way too much. Still 3 campaigns going from 1 to 20, but in far fewer sessions.
You're going to lose some measure of 'caring' by compressing stuff down, no matter how you do it... you won't have time for folks to, say, open a tavern in town, get onto a council, be elected mayor, etc. Maybe you can do some of that stuff between sessions.
I'd suggest breaking it down to 6 or 7 adventures, doing like... 3 level jumps. 2 - 5 - 8 - 11 - 14 - 17 - 20 gives you 7 adventures, for instance. Just wave your hand and say a bunch of stuff happens in between, and poof you're the new level.
Vhalantru is key to keep. Occipitus could be worked another way to trim it down. You can drop Drakthar's or Zenith's, by and large (perhaps, have the Stormblades do them) Shatterhorn can be dropped (maybe figure out a way to work Embril's bit in earlier or later). You can make evacuating the city tons easier. You can trim parts of the festival (but realize you're cutting RP and attachment to the town).
Reduce the number of Cagewrights, which lets you trim down 13 cages and maybe combine some stuff pulled from other things into it.
I think it is an interesting concept but I do believe you will need to make an extrodary amount of changes to almost every adventure in all three Paths to make it work. You will end up doing no Path justice and create a new campaign that will be unlikely to flow or make sense.
I believe it could be a bold and ambitious undertaking but an extremely daunting task none the less.
If you intend on just using 4/4 and a half adventures (2 levels per adventure) and condense them down to fit for character Level 1 - 8 and still retain som semblance of story line then I would choose -
Life's Bazaar + the actual Flood Festival (not the adventure) - begin tax increases automatically and make Vhalantru their helpful patron
Demonskar Ball (for purely biased reasons :) and because the characters do not gain any XP during it)- begin influx of half orc gaurd
Secrets of the Soul Pilliars-explain Cagewrights at start of adventure and ritual
Lords of Oblivion - Use Foundation of Fire Adventure but do not award any XP for the different rescues
Thirteen Cages - limit the Cagewrights to 13 altogether (6 Apprentices who are killed off during LoO & SotSP) + (6 Cagewrights who will be faced during Thirteen Cages)+ Dry'yrd
Exclude Adimarchus from the Path altogether.
You will need to reduce the powers of all the adventures and villians to appropriately challenge the characters at levels 4-8 which will be a difficult task, particularly with a beholder!
The players will recieve no real opportunity to foreshadow the main villians, characters or city using this method
So my overall advice is to choose an Adventure Path (SCAP would be my choice of course :)) and just play that through. Otherwise I don't believe you are doing you, your party or the AP's any service. Just using one will be much easier and provide more flow and excitement than the rushed method you propose.
Whatever your choice, I wish you good luck
Delvesdeep
Keith,
I don't think interweaving the Paths will solve my problem. I'm running a group of players that meets very infrequently and we just can't maintain the flow the APs require to sustain them. By whittling them down, I hope to be able to keep things progressing towards a conclusion, even if that conclusion is a little watered down (ie. dropping Adimarchus completely and just focusing on the plot of the Cagewrights to turn Cauldron into a gatetown.)
I'd thought about doing level bumps to keep things going, but discarded it when I thought of how neat it would be to see the game evolve as the three Paths have done. It's a valid suggestion, though, so I'm going to rethink that. It would save a lot of conversion time.
Delvesdeep,
I think we're on the same track as far as the essential adventures for the SCAP. My goal at the moment, in summary, is:
Life's Bazaar: cut the dungeon in half, though. No Jzadirune, but keep the skulks and creepers as the antagonists.
Obsidian Eye: use the Zenith Trajectory lead-in with Celeste at the CoS to intro this adventure from another issue of Dungeon. It suits the desert location I've relocated my volcano-dwelling city to.
Demonskar Legacy: I'll be adding in Crazy Jared from Zenith (one of my favorite encounters) as a step along the path to tracking down Tercival. Otherwise, this adventure won't change much other than using a weaker demon at the end (they'll be around level 5 at this point, I think).
Soul Pillars + Lords of Oblivion: I'm combining these two such that it's Vhalantru directly who sends the assassins. The PCs can track the clues back to him and confront him in his home. Clues there lead to the spellweaver ruins with the Soul Pillars. The hard part here will be keeping Vhalantru as a beholder which by all rights would mop up a group at this level. Because I don't want to lose the beholder, I may just fudge the stats and declare my world's beholders to be weaker than others.
Foundation in Flame: I love the meeting with the nobles, but I haven't found a good way to introduce the Stormblades yet. That's key to getting full impact out of the meeting. I like your idea of having them doing the adventures I'm not using. Instead of the derro, though, the meeting will be interrupted by the volcano erupting.
Thirteen Cages: Pare down the Cagewrights to a maneagable size, but otherwise pretty straight forward.
And BAM, by level 8, the characters are the heroes for saving the city. That seems like an appropriate victory condition for that level.
With all that in mind, are there any specific things you think I should make sure I keep? Discovery of Alacast? Death of Todd Vander-whosit? Battle at the Lucky Monkey?
The first third or one-half of SCAP can be left undone; you might be better-suited for low-level PC's running the beginning modules from the other two adventure paths.
What happens if the PC's don't even show up for the first few adventures?
Life's Bazarre: Some people get enslaved, Terrem gets rescued by Vhalantru.
Drakthar's Way: Bad guys have a secret way to get bad guys into the city, abandoned by chapter 8 or so by having them walkin the front gate as hired mercenaries.
Flood Season: Some warehouses flood. The flood season ceases to be an issue after the eruption.
Zenith Trajectory: The cagewrights go get Zenith themselves, or hire the Stormblades to do it.
The whole first third of the module is just there to get the party enough experience to survive the last two thirds of the adventure. If you're going to skip the last two thirds by cutting Cauldron down to just the stuff involving the city itself, and not going down the whole Adimarchus plot line, what's the point?
The first third or one-half of SCAP can be left undone; you might be better-suited for low-level PC's running the beginning modules from the other two adventure paths.
What happens if the PC's don't even show up for the first few adventures?
That's a really good question. I believe that Life's Bazaar offers more to it than you say, I'm in total agreement with the rest of it.
The reason Life's Bazaar is staying put is because it gives the party their connection to Jenya (an important patron NPC), gives them their first foreboding view of Vhalantru (I've never been a 2nd level character faced with a beholder before. I can't wait to see my players' reactions), and it begins the characters' emotional investment in the city (to give a stronger payoff when it starts getting destroyed later on).
I think we'll have to disagree on the importance of Adimarchus, though. While there's some validity to the idea that the 1st third of the SCAP is to get the party to the rest of it, I also get the vibe that the Adimarchus elements were tacked on to stretch the campaign out to level 20. That's what feels expendable to me.
You could always use some form of Gauth for Vhalantru, I suppose. Half-Demodand Advanced Gauth, or somesuch.
Boy would you have to rework his area, though.
What if you make Vhalantru be where they find out about how to get to the cagewrights, instead?
Anyhow, I think the first 1/3 of the campaign primarily makes you care about the city. The point is to care and to get involved. You'll be stripping all of _those_ parts out, most logically, since they're not integral to the act of saving it. It just devalues saving it :)
That said, I just don't see how savage tides is going to start at 15th level, unless you just rip it all kinds of ways. Maybe the later parts will be much higher power, but so far it feels the most 'normal' of the adventures. I mean, pirates and zombies and dinosaurs, oh my, is fairly low level stuff. Stopping an invasion from another plane is fairly high level. If you can't interweave, I think it might be easier to do savage tides, shackled city, age of worms (which from all I could tell was extremely high level threat)
I haven't read much of the AP's, but I'd guess that trying to run all three together, given the plane-hopping in SCAP and travelling to various disparate locales in AoW (plus the Isle of Dread in STAP) might make life difficult.
You could perhaps run a combined SCAP/STAP campaign, in which case I'd recommend scaling XP back to 50% of the DMG values to allow levelling at the correct rate for the adventures.
You could always use some form of Gauth for Vhalantru, I suppose. Half-Demodand Advanced Gauth, or somesuch.
That's brilliant. I'd never even heard of the Gauth before you mentioned it. I can't imagine my players going "waitaminute...HOW many eyestalks?"
But you're right, I would have to reduce the number of oblivion doors (assuming those doors would even fly against that low-level a party)
What if you make Vhalantru be where they find out about how to get to the cagewrights, instead?
You mean have his section of Lords of Oblivion occur after Foundation in Flames? I had planned on the meeting of nobles at the start of FiF to be in response to the death of the Lord Mayor and Vhalantru. However, since I was never clear on how the party found the Tree of Shackled Souls anyways, I'll give that some thought. Thanks for the idea.
That said, I just don't see how savage tides is going to start at 15th level, unless you just rip it all kinds of ways.
You got me here. I don't have a single issue of Savage Tide yet and no clue as to where the campaign's going. Based on the first two APs, though, I'm willing to assume it gets pretty epic in the second half.
The only reason I'm so adamant about running them in order is because I like the way the setting evolves and builds on itself. The opening levels (SC) are in and around a single city. The mid levels (AoW) allow for some travel to other cities and environments and then the last third expands even further to globe trotting (ST). It feels more expansive in that order.
Now, if I could shift gears a little bit, does anybody have any suggestions for what were the most memorable encounters in the SCAP? What scenes, battles, or roleplay sessions really stood out during the course of the Path?
There's an overview of Savage Tides in dungeon a few issues back. It may help you in judging how the campaign goes... and yeah, I rather imagine it'll have some high end opposition at the far end...
probably not a Dragotha/Kyuss level of difficulty, though, I'd imagine.
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Life's Bazaar: cut the dungeon in half, though. No Jzadirune, but keep the skulks and creepers as the antagonists.
If it were me I'd keep Jzadirue and drop the Malachite hold. Jzadirune has the Vanishing and that bit of history/threat is quite cool my PCs became infected a couple of timesand even the players were a little creeped out at not knowing how or why. Also why would Keygan have a passage to the Malachite Fortress in his shop?
So what I would do is remove the Grell and replace it with the scene with Kazmojen. Leave most encounters as they are but sprinkle in a few slaves to rescue and there you go. Technically you can leave the Malachite Fortress where it is the bad guys just aren't using it.
Fletch,
If I may offer some advice: keep the three adventure paths seperate. In other words, run a seperate parties through each of the AP's. If you want to reduce the time it takes the party to get to the end of the AP, you could reduce the number of scenes and increase the amount of XP per scene. For example, you could double or tripple the amount of XP the party gets per encounter if you reduce the number of encounters by half or a third. That way, the party is still at the appropriate level for all the important encounters. It saves you a lot of work and makes the AP feel epic!
Another thing to consider is that most encounters are balanced for a party that has several encounters that day. In other words, they have to ration their resources, such as hp, spells, magic items and once-a-day class abilities. If you cut the adventures short, the party has more resources to spend per encounter, making them easier to survive. So make sure you make those encounters harder, either by making the encounters tougher or by running the encounter when the party is of lower level.