I'm currently running Savage Tide for my DnD group, but have been itching to try the Shackled City as well. I had an offer to run a second group once a month so I decided on it, but there's one problem: It's too long!
There is no way I will be able to run it and get anywhere near to completing it so I want to run a condensed version. I'm going to run 5 adventures from it and just fill in the group with back story on what happens between each episode.
So starting with Adventure 1, what 4 other adventures would you pick to run?
There is no way I will be able to run it and get anywhere near to completing it so I want to run a condensed version. I'm going to run 5 adventures from it and just fill in the group with back story on what happens between each episode.
So starting with Adventure 1, what 4 other adventures would you pick to run?
What levels does your group enjoy the most?
You could do a relatively low-level campaign with Life's Bazaar, Flood Season, Demonskar Legacy, Secrets of the Soul Pillars, and ending up with something involving Redgorge and Alex rather than with the Adventure Path continuation. Maybe wrap up with the attack on Oblivion, making Vhelantru the ultimate Big Bad Guy. I think this would make a reasonable arc for levels 1-14 or so, maybe even 1-12.
As a player this would be my preference; the later modules seem more problematic to me than the earlier ones. (If your group really craves high level play you'll want to go the other way, but I can't sketch that one out as we broke off the module line by level 13.)
Mary
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I say skip 1-3. Combine some of the aspects of 1 with 4. the PCs could be going into the underdark to rescue the children AND bring back Zenith.
Skip most of 5 - start it with Vaprak's voice and go immediately on to Test of Smoking eye.
Chpt 7 is a must. On to chpt 8, since you didnt spend a lot of time getting to know a bunch of the villains NPCs of the city, this chapter of fighting them all is not nearly as potent. Trim it down significantly.
Chpt 9: trim the fat, narrate most of the explosion of the volcano and the escape of the citizens - thus removing about 75% of the time needed to run the chapter. After the backstory of the narration (that would normally be done via roleplaying and gaming) then introduce the baddies at the end and finish the chapter.
Then run 10, 11, and 12 as much as possible to finish it out. (unless you're travelling down the path of using the Alternate Cagewrights ideas posted originally by Delvesdeep and built upon by many others of us.)
So you'd essentially be running: a modified chpt 4 combining aspects of 1; a small part of 5, all of 7, a small part of 8, a very small part of 9, and then 10, 11, 12. Essentially about 6 chapters worth in all.
So long as you continue to utilize dream sequences as suggested by Delvesdeep to "foreshadow" events and continue to narrate well, the story will be technically fullfilled and mostly whole even by running these abbreviated chapters. Because after all lets face it: by and by, the campaign is written like a novel in that most of the events are going to happen anyways. You just narrate that part that isn't as necessary to roleplay out, and you still have a great game, because luckily the story itself is awesome enough to experience whether its heavy-handedly narrated or not.
Robert
I think I'm going to be disagreeing with Brambley more than once here...
I don't have the experience of running it, but I have made some effort to plot out a condensed SCAP in preparation of running it in conjunction with AoW. The key moments to me, based on plot + fun are:
1) Life's Bazaar: rescuing Terem and the first sighting of the Big O are great moments. I planned on using a smaller dungeon complex than Jzadirune, just selecting the cooler rooms and pasting those descriptions onto another map.
2) Demonskar Legacy: The plot doesn't really need another 'rescue the Shackleborn' element, so I ditched Zenith Trajectory, but the scene in the Cusp of Sunrise and the meeting with Crazy Jared are too good not to use. So I pasted them onto the beginning of Legacy. In effect, there's a riot...heroic characters invited to meet Celeste at the Cusp...Celeste tells them to find Alek...get clues from halfling merchant who gives them the plate and suggests they check with Crazy Jared...Jared says he did see Alek and directed him to Vaprak's Voice...etc.
3) Secret of the Soul Pillars: I'd like to have included the Smoking Eye, but I'm ditching Adimarchus from this arc, so that was an extra chapter I didn't really need. Soul Pillars, though, spells out for the first time the big conspiracy and access to the Pillars allows the party to figure out what's at stake. The assassination attempt, the search for who sent the assassins, the show-down at the temple and the exploration of the Spellweaver ruins are all good stuff.
4) Lords of Oblivion: I don't think you need the meeting at what's her name's place (Thifirane?), so I'd be content to run just the confrontation with Big O. (After showing him off in Chapter 1, the players had better get a chance to confront him, by gum!) The magazine versions I have are pretty vague on how the PCs are supposed to figure out who the beholder is and I don't know if they cleared that up for the hard back. The end result, though, is that you'll need to make the connection between Soul Pillars and figuring it out.
5) Foundation of Flame: Do not pass up the chance to run a non-dungeon crawl in this Path. The meeting of the nobles is great roleplay and story development and the volcano rescue is a fairly unique concept/experience as well. I'll be ditching the derro, but the rest is solid gold.
6) Thirteen Cages: Sorry, I had to go to six chapters. For me, this was the grand finale. The Cagewrights' plot was as originally stated: the opening of a gate to the prison plane of Carceri (I got the feeling that the Adimarchus plot was added as time went on). Stop the Cagewrights, stop the tree, save the city.
My plan was to adjust all the levels and encounters to allow this arc to run from levels 1-10 (or so) to allow me to pick up AoW from Champions Belt to the end. You can just arbitrarily level up your players if you don't want to deal with the hassle of that.
Hmm... I think I'd be more tempted to run most of the path, but just make each adventure shorter and more condensed. Ie, trim out anything that's even remotely a random encounter, use off screen text between sessions to motivate from one hook to the next.
I mean, how long is reasonable for things to run? I'm assuming it would take, say, 20 sessions to run 5 adventures at the normal pace, so is splitting it out to 20 sessions of shortened adventure a problem? (say 1 level each, to make it simple and keep folks jumping)
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I think I'm going to be disagreeing with Brambley more than once here...
I don't have the experience of running it, but I have made some effort to plot out a condensed SCAP in preparation of running it in conjunction with AoW. The key moments to me, based on plot + fun are:
1) Life's Bazaar: rescuing Terem and the first sighting of the Big O are great moments. I planned on using a smaller dungeon complex than Jzadirune, just selecting the cooler rooms and pasting those descriptions onto another map.
2) Demonskar Legacy: The plot doesn't really need another 'rescue the Shackleborn' element, so I ditched Zenith Trajectory, but the scene in the Cusp of Sunrise and the meeting with Crazy Jared are too good not to use. So I pasted them onto the beginning of Legacy. In effect, there's a riot...heroic characters invited to meet Celeste at the Cusp...Celeste tells them to find Alek...get clues from halfling merchant who gives them the plate and suggests they check with Crazy Jared...Jared says he did see Alek and directed him to Vaprak's Voice...etc.
So far we dont disagree. I suggested combing the best elements of both Life's Bazaar and Zenith Trajectory. Furthermore Encouter with O is definitely good as is the meeting as the Cusp. Combine other elements as one sees fit in their own style. Similarly, I suggested keeping a good portion of the Demonskar as it is truly the first chapter that you really start to learn what is behind it all.
3) Secret of the Soul Pillars: I'd like to have included the Smoking Eye, but I'm ditching Adimarchus from this arc, so that was an extra chapter I didn't really need. Soul Pillars, though, spells out for the first time the big conspiracy and access to the Pillars allows the party to figure out what's at stake. The assassination attempt, the search for who sent the assassins, the show-down at the temple and the exploration of the Spellweaver ruins are all good stuff..
So your suggestions are valid primarily if the DM is planning on removing Adimarchus from the ultimate story.
4) Lords of Oblivion: I don't think you need the meeting at what's her name's place (Thifirane?), so I'd be content to run just the confrontation with Big O. (After showing him off in Chapter 1, the players had better get a chance to confront him, by gum!) The magazine versions I have are pretty vague on how the PCs are supposed to figure out who the beholder is and I don't know if they cleared that up for the hard back. The end result, though, is that you'll need to make the connection between Soul Pillars and figuring it out...
Again we agreed as I suggested that this chapter is unnecessary especially if you didnt spend a lot of time getting overly friendly with a lot of the NPCs.
5) Foundation of Flame: Do not pass up the chance to run a non-dungeon crawl in this Path. The meeting of the nobles is great roleplay and story development and the volcano rescue is a fairly unique concept/experience as well. I'll be ditching the derro, but the rest is solid gold....
Alright here we do disagree indeed. Although for the reasons you give for wanting it in the game I don't disagree with. I think you make an excellent point for its fun-factor. I was commenting initially on trimming the fat that dont actually apply specifically to the ultimate storyline. By removing it, you save a lot of time if time is of the essence.
6) Thirteen Cages: Sorry, I had to go to six chapters. For me, this was the grand finale. The Cagewrights' plot was as originally stated: the opening of a gate to the prison plane of Carceri (I got the feeling that the Adimarchus plot was added as time went on). Stop the Cagewrights, stop the tree, save the city.....
This is appropriate in a game that has removed Adimarchus from the plot as you pointed out. On the other hand if you're running the story as written, both of the following chapters are vital IMO to the satisfactory conclusion. In order to do all of this on the trimmed fashion as I suggested you would need to start PCs out at about 5th level and start in Zenith Trajectory (with a little of the Life's Bazaar thrown in), and of course throw out some additional XP along the way for PCs to catch up the level suggested to start each of the later chapters. Trying to rewrite chapters 10 - 12 to fit lower level characters would be alot of work.
Robert
In hindsight I guess it looks like I was calling you out, Robert, but I was mostly just apologizing for back-to-back conflicting advice.
You're totally right about having to make a decision about the importance of Adimarchus. For what it's worth, the shifting form of Adimarchus and the backstory gleaned from Smoking Eye makes for a brilliant enemy(?). I could be tempted to use those adventures in another campaign as a mini-arc of some sort.
What it really came down to was realizing that the AoW ends with a fight with a big baddy and I didn't want any feeling of sameness about both conclusions.
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What it really came down to was realizing that the AoW ends with a fight with a big baddy and I didn't want any feeling of sameness about both conclusions.
Fair enough. However, if you are indeed running both campaign in entirely you're talking about a year of running AoW before you meet the baddie - enough of time has elapsed to remove any recent memory of "sameness"
Otherwise, visit the Alternate Cagewrights threads and the haunted dreams in which you fight Adimarchus' "inner-demon" that Delvesdeep and I (among others) were writing about. Yes its true you still fight a big-baddie, but the ultimate end-game is so cleverly executed, that it has no resemblance to the other adventure path end-game; because the ultimate goal is to "cure" adimarchus and return him to his home plane as opposed to just "killing the evil simply to kill it."
Robert
Lots of conflicting answers so I will narrow down what I need. Thanks to everyone who answered so far.
The group I'm running it for has 3 females and 3 male players so interesting dynamics. They are fairly creative and experienced. Their previous DM was a "Killer DM". One player remarked that in all her years of playing she has never actually leveled up a character. They die to soon! In my few tries playing in his group, he would adjust encounters on the fly any time I used good tactics to gain an edge. Ogres mysteriously sprouted extra HP in the hundreds on one occasion, Magic items he gave that I was abusing began to fail to work, and monsters autosaved against just about anything that would slow them down/hinder them.
I plan on running it over 1 summer/fall playing every 3 weeks or so. Each session is about 6-7 hours, so most adventures I will try to make last 2 sessions. So 5 adventures should be about 10-12 sessions.
I can't really run bits from each adventure as it would require the players to constantly level up. I feel like that would blur things a bit. Running 5 adventures means they only need to level up their characters 4 times.
With 3 weeks down time between sessions I plan on writing a 1-2 page story of what the party is skipping past. I can sum up the important parts and make them feel like they are in a movie trilogy (pentology?). Stuff happens between, but they just get filled in on what they miss in the beginning of each movie and continue on.
I've already started them on adventure 1, so that's a must. I'm greatly reducing the Gnome City and will cut out most of the fighting in the dwarven keep. They started slow in session 1, so I want to finish chapter 1 in session 2. Getting enough XP won't matter as they will be jumping ahead to chapter X in the next session and will get to level their character up to a certain level. I just want them to experience facing some more skulks and creepers and weird gnome stuff, then go into a very intimidating slavers camp, then meeting the beholder in the end.
Events I want them to experience:
Gaining power/prestige in Cauldron- most of this can be just summed up.
Battling hookface - I can fit this in anywhere by advancing/reducing him so don't really need the whole adventure.
Learning about and battling the cagewrights
Traveling to a different plane and battling demons/outsiders - this happens in a few different spots so leaves options open.
Experiencing high level play At least 1 session somewhere around the 14's and one 19's-20's
Events I want to avoid:
Getting bogged down in investigations - while fun they can take up a whole session.
spend a lot of time dungeon crawling- with only 10 -12 sessions and the first 2 taking up a lot of that, I want to keep it to the minimum later on.
It's a tall order, so can you guys come up with the ultimate condensed version? :D
It's going to be really tough to make high-level play work with players who haven't done it before and haven't had time to get there incrementally. Spellcasters are a particular problem: playing a 17th+ spellcaster halfway capably is *hard* if you come to it cold. But even a fighter can be hard with the profusion of feats.
If your players haven't experienced anything past the first few levels, you might want to redefine your "high-level play" goal as 9-12. It's plenty different from 1-3, the PCs have lots of capabilities, but it's not as rules-intensive as 15-20.
(My GM ran SCAP as written through Zenith Trajectory, by which point I was completely incompetent with my PCs. We had to back off and do a bunch of side adventures to rescue the game. Someone with a lot of rules savvy and talent could no doubt do better, but it's a lot to ask of relative beginners. And you're proposing level-ups *faster* than SCAP.)
Mary
Spellcasters are a particular problem: playing a 17th+ spellcaster halfway capably is *hard* if you come to it cold. But even a fighter can be hard with the profusion of feats.
I think he'll just be skipping the "more of the same" levels. You know, those levels where you just get another 2nd level spell or when you don't get a new feat? I don't think the learning curve will be too high on characters who are getting a new feat or next spell level every 2nd session.
In any case, bshugg, it sounds like you've pretty much written your mini-path already just by knowing what it is you want to achieve.
[QUOTE=]Events I want them to experience:
Gaining power/prestige in Cauldron- most of this can be just summed up.
The battle agains the umber hulk in "Zenith Trajectory" and the resulting visit to the Cusp of Sunrise are the best events to show this.
If you don't want to throw in Hookface during "Foundations of Flame" (or aren't running that one), Hookface makes a great replacement for the pyroclastic dragon in "Thirteen Cages".
Let's see if I can spot the clues to the Cagewright plot:
"Zenith Trajectory" offers the first option to spot the Carcerian Eye on Zenith. Because he summons an invisible warrior, and the party found a 'see invisible' scroll or something earlier in the dungeon, they have a pretty good chance of 'happening' to see his mark.
In "Demonskar Legacy", the half-formed soul cage in the giant's forge is a clue, especially when they see the full version hanging in the attic of the church.
"Soul Pillars" is when they finally get a chance to put it all together. Between the unmasking of said church and access to the Soul Pillars themselves, this is the not-to-miss adventure in the series.
Finally, "Thirteen Cages" is the obvious conclusion to the Cagewright plot. "Strike on the Shatterhorn" is just more of the same and, except for a chance to throw-down with the high priestess, doesn't add much to the campaign. If you include her in "13 Cages", you can have the best of both worlds.
This is the part that I left out of my mini-path outline, but if you're keen on it, it's pretty obvious where you need to go: "Smoking Eye" and "Asylum".
So, off the top of my head, I'd say:
1. Life's Bazaar.
It sounds like you've got a grasp on this one. However, since you're pressed for time, I'd make sure to not leave the dangeling plot thread of all the other townfolk stolen. After rescuing the four kids, any reasonable party is going to think they're to go rescue the rest of the townsfolk and there's no reason for them not to. I would say reduce the list of kidnapping victims and have them all found (alive or dead) in the Malachite Hold.2. 1/2 Zenith Trajectory leading straight to Demonskar Legacy.
The umber hulk battle and the Cusp of Sunrise interview could lead to an invitation to find Tercival, leading to Vaprak's Voice. I'm a big fan of Crazy Jared, and you might get some mileage out of running that scene and having Jared cast his illusion to make the attacking dragon (or whatever...I made it a wyvern) look like Hookface, foreshadowing the nastiness of the dragon your players can look forward to fighting.3. Test of the Smoking Eye.
Easy peasy, Demonskar --> Smoking Eye.4. Secret of the Soul Pillars
This can be run as is except that a large part of the adventure is using the party's contacts in the city to find who sent the assassins. This is one of my favorite parts of the Path, but if you're trying to avoid the investigation part (and it's reasonable that you are if you're on a time crunch), plan on having someone just pop up to point the way. Just try not to make it too deus ex.5. 1/2 Thirteen Cages leading straight to Asylum
I'd include Lord Orbi in with the Cagewrights to give the players the final showdown with him (that I assume they've been wanting to since "Life's Bazaar") and put in the priestess. In fact, you might want to really abreviate 13 Cages by having just Orbi and priestess here along with Dy'ryd and, of course, some henchmen. I'd also include Hookface here as the pyroclast dragon to close that thread. If you can swing it to have the priestess steal one of the PCs bodies, you've got an immediate link to "Asylum". I'd have the party appear right at the prison, though, rather than having them search for it.How's that work for you?
That looks pretty good, but I'm not up on all the details on the higher level adventures so will need to read on them and see how they blend in together. I read the hardcover book, but mainly just skip around so all the adventures after the first 3 kind of blend together.
Let me plot it out and get back to you. Of course if someone wants to come up with a counterplan I'm still open to hearing it as well! :)