So I recently managed to anger GGG regarding his most recent proposal and thought I should add Greer to the growing list of people who have ill will towards me. Actually I ought to see if I can make all of Dungeon's luminaries angry at me, kind of like a trading card game, I want to collect 'em all.
Any way I just finished with Tides of Dread and I wanted to make a couple of comments regarding the mechanics in that adventure. Specifically the first scenes of the adventure, where the heros arrive at Farshore, only to find it under attack and the last scenes of the adventure where the Crimson Fleet launches a full scale invasion of Farshore.
Now I was really impressed with the whole set up of the first encounter. The way in which about five things are all happening at the same time and it is all spelled out to the players in the boxed text was excellent and a really interesting way to both give the players some choice on what they do in this chaotic situation and to make it clear that there was a lot going down and that battles are large and confusing affairs.
I'll note that this sort of mechanic can be enlarged and it dawns on me that with a little work what Greer has done here can be expanded on should a DM want to create a dynamic feel that still works well within the rules for almost any large chaotic situation such as battles or even something like and adventure in the middle of a massive hurricanes or earthquake.
However while the basic concept works the exact details as presented here could probably use a little fine tuning. For example in this encounter the DM not only has to keep track of one or more encounters that his players are involved in but also has to be rolling dice to figure out what's going on in the encounters that his players are not involved in. Thats a lot of work and the DM is already hard pressed in this scene - making battles seem like battles requires the DM to be constantly describing the scene rapidly switching back and fourth between larger events taking place in the back ground down to individual events that the character can see but are not part of on top of the normal duty to describe whats happening to them immediatly. So the DM is already hard pressed. Hence adding to his workload here is probably not the best plan in the world.
At a minimum some kind of log sheet or check list should have been included so the DM at least knows what rolls he needs to make for the scenes the players are not yet involved in. Probably better would be to average it out (or pick the results for added drama) and then record this on some kind of a record sheet so that the DM knows that Ruby the Weaver will collapse from exhaustion 8 rounds after the players arrive. Hilde Swenton's situation is much more extreme. I'm finding myself using up a fair bit of time understanding it and I'm not running a game with players in front of me right now. That scene desperately needs to be averaged out for DM sanity. Any way kudo's on the mechanic even if its still got a few bugs to work out.
However after encountering this excellent mechanic I was a little let down to se that you did not really do anything with the final battle in the adventure. Its a series of very loose encounters that the players presumably overcome in sequence. There is no dynamism here at all. I'm sure a masterful DM can overcome the limitations of the scene and execute a rousing climax to the adventure but I don't really think the adventure itself helped much in this regard at least in terms of setting the stage for the climax in the middle of a battle. I would have liked to have seen some of the mechanics introduced at the start of the adventure expanded on here. Maybe set it up so that the PCs start in some obvious location, possibly one with some vantage point. It would not be much of a stretch to have the PCs and the Jade Ravens used as trouble shooters meant to deal with the real crisis situations with the DM using a script that tells him that the elite pirates break through the colonists lines on round X and fireballs start hammering the Colonists from the Ships on round Y with results Z on round AA. Have the players running around in the thick of it dealing with a stream of crisis situations cropping up basically with notes on what happens on various rounds if the encounter has still not been resolved and handing out VPs based on how quickly they manage to accomplish the varous tasks.
That's the beauty of it; you can start wherever you want. Any players with more than a few adventures' experience will know when the fleet is nearing, and will already have a plan worked out. A more rigid timeline/framework would run the risk of invalidating this plan by assuming they're somewhere else/doing something else.
Of course, the proof's in the execution. It ran quite well as written when we did it; any other positive/negative experiences out there?
Jeremy, thanks for the nice things you pointed out about Tides of Dread. I'm just going to ignore the criticism parts and pretend they were never pointed out.
::[i]...la-la-la - not listening - la-la-la - can't hear you...[i]::
OK. Now for my official response...
Jeremy, I'm actually really tickled to hear that you preferred the first attack over the last. When my group playtested this adventure in parts, I ran the Zotzilaha encounter and the first pirate attack on Farshore and just didn't have time before the deadline to work out the bugs in the rest of it. I also had never heard of or used the Victory Points system that James asked me to incorporate into the adventure for resolving the end battle with the Crimson Fleet prior to this assignment.
I like your suggestions for helping DMs to determine what is happening in the complex Farshore battles. I think, given more space, I would have probably done something like that. The way I ran it, in the initial pirate attack I got everyone involved on the clock and using minis, I kept every part of the big picture moving so the party knew what was happening with Rosie, they new what was happening with Slipknot, and they knew what was happening with the Church Crashers each round. The point of entry for the PCs was intentional so that they would have a chance to get a fairly good look at their immediate "field of battle" while I alluded to sounds of other battles being fought deeper in the colony under a veil of smoke and a screen of interposing buildings. That was the simplest way of laying everything out in front of the PCs and not bogging the encounter down with Listen and Spot checks to see every little subencounter involved. This also meant no having to write too much details about what is happening each round in these separate areas. They are self-evident given the PCs' location and the initial read-aloud text.
The final battle... That was a really tough thing to write for me. Honestly. The whole fish out of water thing applies here since it was a new rules system and I generally like to resolve everything head on instead of assigning values that equal X result. However, the system as interpreted and put to paper by yours truly is very easy to use and created a neutral point from which inexperienced DMs could simply run it by the book or even simplify it down further OR veteran DMs could take a more ambitious approach by actually running the entire battle and disregarding what the Victory Points say will or should happen.
I'm surprised there aren't more criticisms about the end battle, to be honest. I was fully prepared to take some heat on this. Most DMs don't like having new rules thrust on them or having the outcomes of encounters taken out of their hands and replaced with a preset result.
With that said, it worked really, really well for this adventure and I can't imagine a more effective and less verbose way of going about it. A sidebar with suggestions on how to track various combats happening at once like you've mentioned could have improved on it, sure, but enough crunch was provided already that DMs like you, Jeremy, can basically come up with that on your own, as you've obviously done.
As far as scripting round-by-round events with their results or possible outcomes in such a large battle, as you've suggested in the Crimson Fleet attack, you're looking at a very wordy approach at it and as always words are at a premium until Dungeon finally becomes a bigger magazine. One of the things we cannot do in writing for Paizo, as well, is provide more than 2 or 3 rounds of tactics. We've been instructed not to. The reasoning behind this is probably due tot he fact that after one or two rounds of tactics things are so drastically different in every different group that it's worthless to script things that far. So we get the first shot or two off for our BBEGs and DMs are left to wing the rest on their own. Which is really as it should be, IMHO.
It ran quite well as written when we did it; any other positive/negative experiences out there?
Cool. That's encouraging. I would also like to hear how it went for other DMs. This was an experiment for all of us and I think James would probably like to know how the execution went overall the same as I would.
Oh, and btw, Rosie the Weaver was my nod to Pirates of the Carribean. The Disney ride, not the movie. It's always been my fav and I can't wait to take my little girl on it for the first time :)
My players got the Pirates refernce with Rosie right off the bat, nice tribute!
The first encounter went well, if anything, an easier to transcribe to battlemat map of the encounter area would have been nice, or mentions of distance in the encounter descriptions between the various encounters. That way, when PCs split up to handle the problems, its easier to track how far away everyone is, in the event of coming to aid each other or such. Not that it was terribly hard to do, just that its easier if it's already done. :)
For the final farshore battle, most of the previous holds, but that one is if anything harder to run, because in the first, the PCs are approaching from the sea, and the encounter locations are already established. In the Crimson Fleet encounters, the pirates are approaching, and the PCs can position themselves anywhere in Farshore, including the harbor. Mine chose to wall of ice the edges of the beach to create bottlenecks to the main docks, where they anchored the Sea Wyvern and initated counter-attacks from there, effectively holding the main enemy force while the Jade Ravens, Olman Zombies, Awakened Dinosaurs, and Phanatons dealt with any who slipped by. They only moved further in to chase the one Vrock that got away after a round of flame strike, cone of cold, and a half-ton boulder.
The tactics of the fleets approach could have been useful, along with a default attack scenario and alternate strategies if certain common tactics are used (fireball, summoned monsters, etc).
Although of particular note was the look of gratification on the druids face when a bombard fired by the Brine Harlot shattered at the feet of the Sea Wyvern's captain, spilling gunpowder around him, unexploded due to it's wick being put out by the fireward she had laid upon the ship.
Creative Director
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Tides of Dread was the adventure I was Most Nervous about. I think Steve and Gary pulled off a minor miracle with it.
Why was I nervous? Because it was HUGE in scope. I wanted an adventure that had the PCs exploring the Isle of Dread, hitting several key locations along the way while at the same time having them help build a colony from a struggling backwater into a successful trading post, all culminateing in a climactic mass battle with pirates.
It could have easilly been a 3-part adventure arc, but I needed it done as a single adventure. An adventure that, between it and the backdrop on the colony, had to be about 30,000 or so words long.
So if the adventure seems a bit short or rushed in places, that's why; we had to cram a lot of information in there to make it work. Including charts and more detailed tactics would have ceratinly made the adventure easier to run, but those not only cost money (any issue with four features is more expensive than normal, so we were really tight on our art budget this time), but they take up a lot of space (whcih, as I've said above, we were ALSO tight on).
Furthermore, I'm of the opinion that detailed tactics work best when the DM himself does them. We can go a certain length with them, mostly by providing prepatory actions and tactics for the first round or two of combat, but since every group is different, we can't really provide good and detailed tactics for everyone. Better, instead, to start the ball rolling and let the DM finish the job as best befits his particular mix of players and characters.
Well said James, I agree that it is best if DMs do the tactics. Any complaints I might have lobbied are just wishful thinking; I think everyone on the boards is aware that if you all could put what you "want" in Dungeon instead of what you "can" the magazine would be much thicker each month.
Thanks for everything you and the rest of the Paizo crew do, the hard decisions and the tough calls. You've done a right fine job so far, and won my loyalty through the years.
Well we have moved on to talking about tactics and that is not really the issue I was trying to address when comparing and contrasting the first and the last scenes in Tides of Dread as well as discussing a check list or timetable of what is happening.
What I'm actually interested in regarding a time table is a table that tells me when events take place presuming the PCs have yet to get around to intervening. In the first battle we actually had such a sequence of events. It was just not centralized so instead of glancing at a chart in the sidebar to find out what was going down you went from encounter to encounter and checked to see if anything important took place this round. Here my complaint is that this is pretty inefficient though a DM could compile his own chart to keep the action moving. I just happen to think that a chart provided to the DM really would have made an excellent sidebar. To make such a sidebar it would be necessary to decide ahead of time what the results of some of these encounters were. However, especially in the case of Hilde Swenton's this is not much of a loss – her encounter is so complex that it really ought to be decided ahead of time anyway..
I also feel that essentially the same thing could have been done to a fair degree with the final battle. Anything that helps the DM run this is probably helpful. Now it may be that there really was no space to deal with any kind of play by play on the final battle and its moot in any case as the adventure is already written. I'm essentially critiquing this so that some thought might be put toward this sort of thing in future adventures**.
Essentially the final battle plays out with almost no direction for the DM. The Vrocks appear 'at the height of the battle'. Not exactly sure what is really intended here nor is it all that clear where they appear - next to the PCs wherever they are? Or at some other location where they do their thing until the PCs arrive to engage them? If so does it matter how long the PCs take to engage them? Here it might be better to award less VPs for the Vrocks if the PCs let the Vrocks do their thing for long enough before they get around to dealing with them, I'd also like to know what exactly it is that the Vrocks are doing – I mean besides the fact that some of them are going to do a dance of ruin. Also it would be nice to know if their successfully doing a dance of ruin has any effect.
Similar deal with the Yaun-Ti. He's on a ship and blasting away with enlarged fireballs to support pirates who use red flairs to summon the fire support. That's a pretty cool scene but I'm a little disappointed with the idea that no matter how long the Yaun-Ti keeps it up it seems to have no effect on the battle. Eventually presumably the PCs get around to dealing with the fire support and then they earn their VPs. At a minimum it might be nice to have a system in place here where the amount of VPs awarded go down depending on how long this goes on unchecked.
My feeling is that some kind of a time table could tell the DM when these events take place in combat rounds after the battle has started and what their effects are if they are left unchecked for long enough. Hopefully such a side bar could be done so as not to take up to much space and still provide a wealth of information to the DM for running the battle. Depending on how complex the scene is it may be that such a time table saves at least some space in the main text as it means less words have to be devoted to each individual sub-encounter explaining what they are planning on doing and what the results might be.
** Of course if you guys ever make a hardbound version of this AP you might want to take a look at this final battle and try and tighten it up a little.
Well we have moved on to talking about tactics and that is not really the issue I was trying to address when comparing and contrasting the first and the last scenes in Tides of Dread as well as discussing a check list or timetable of what is happening.
What I'm actually interested in regarding a time table is a table that tells me when events take place presuming the PCs have yet to get around to intervening. In the first battle we actually had such a sequence of events. It was just not centralized so instead of glancing at a chart in the sidebar to find out what was going down you went from encounter to encounter and checked to see if anything important took place this round. Here my complaint is that this is pretty inefficient though a DM could compile his own chart to keep the action moving. I just happen to think that a chart provided to the DM really would have made an excellent sidebar. To make such a sidebar it would be necessary to decide ahead of time what the results of some of these encounters were. However, especially in the case of Hilde Swenton's this is not much of a loss – her encounter is so complex that it really ought to be decided ahead of time anyway..
I also feel that essentially the same thing could have been done to a fair degree with the final battle. Anything that helps the DM run this is probably helpful. Now it may be that there really was no space to deal with any kind of play by play on the final battle and its moot in any case as the adventure is already written. I'm essentially critiquing this so that some thought might be put toward this sort of thing in future adventures**.
Essentially the final battle plays out with almost no direction for the DM. The Vrocks appear 'at the height of the battle'. Not exactly sure what is really intended here nor is it all that clear where they appear - next to the PCs wherever they are? Or at some other location where they do their thing until the PCs arrive to engage them? If so does it matter how long the PCs...
I would say that most of the fight happens at once. discribe various bands of enemies- and let them fight them in the order they choose- while there may not be much chance to rest- this way they can regroup and gain reinforcements from the locals.I would say the Vrocks land and attack the largest group of defenders (from the rear) while they are engaged with pirates- that would be the height of the battle- or when the party goes to assault the ships.. if they split the party up, have them encounter them after a golem fight.
I think it's funny that both people who are posting concerns about this fight are named Jeremy.
My feeling is that some kind of a time table could tell the DM when these events take place in combat rounds after the battle has started and what their effects are if they are left unchecked for long enough. Hopefully such a side bar could be done so as not to take up to much space and still provide a wealth of information to the DM for running the battle. Depending on how complex the scene is it may be that such a time table saves at least some space in the main text as it means less words have to be devoted to each individual sub-encounter explaining what they are planning on doing and what the results might be.
Sorry for not answering this part of your critique more directly. Long answers tend to veer off from the original topic. This would definitely be helpful for such scenarios in the future and I'm sure James is reading with interest. Since ths type of battle was a working experiment, your feedback is exactly what will help "tighten it up", as you said, in the future. Great suggestion.
I had several not as cool encounters scripted in the original draft that were all designed to take place at the same time, but not all of them were designed for the PCs to take part in. DMs were supposed to find out ahead of time where the PCs were going to position themselves and they would get the appropriate encounters based on those choices. I'm happy that James came up with with encounters better than what I originally had written.But, keep in mind, whether it's scripting a round-by-round order of events or giving several rounds of tactics, it stell adds a lot of words to the word count. I'm also a bigger fan of leaving grey areas for DMs to improvise from or alter to their taste over spelling everything out for DMs.
It's been a few weeks since I read this adventure through, but I'd like to put in my 2 coppers for keeping things a bit more vague and flexible.
In war, they say no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and it's the same for DMing a good complex battle. The battle to save Farshore is more or less written in "Heroes of Battle Mode" minus the flowcharts. The flowcharts would be helpful, but really, I think, in such a complex scenario, it is better not to get yourself into a tight script where you're actually trying to track multiple things at once. It is much better to have a basic idea of the various encounters you can throw at the PCs, and use your sense of drama (and PC survivability) to decide when to launch each one. If you set a strict timetable as to what happens when, your PCs might be neck deep in Vrocks when another climactic encounter gets going. This may be exactly how you want to challenge your party, but it may not--you have to judge whether they are in a position to split the party or withdraw from the first encounter in order to take on the second one, and they may just need time to finish, catch their breath and down a couple of healing potions, or whatever. You can't predict that the vrocks will take exactly 6 rounds to dispatch, so it seems to me foolish to do anything but wait until you feel the time is right to throw the next event into the battle. It's fine to overlap events, but you have to be careful doing it, and you want to keep the game's main narrative focused on the PCs. You don't need a spreadsheet to do this, you need a sense of drama.
I personally don't think it's all that fun to run a whole battle--if you want to do that, play it in DnD minis and use unit combat rules, and have your PCs play general staff or act as unit officers. Otherwise, don't bother timing everything down to the gnat's arse, rely on your sense of drama.
For an excellent battle-oriented adventure that relies on these guiding principles, I highly recommend James Jacobs' "Red Hand of Doom," published by WotC, which does a great job of laying out how to run a war-focused campaign that is focused on the PCs and their accomplishments rather than on the armies.