Although I enjoy the entire STAP I must admit that I hate running a long campaign. High Levels get to be such a hassle to DM. I'm considering tweaking the Adventure Path and featuring only a few of the adventures. Has anyone else tried this? Has anyone else trimmed down a few adventures and tried to include a few home brewed encounters?
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Well, I'm not doing this, but I would think that a good stopping point might be the arrival of the party at Farshore, and the successful defense of that city from the Pirate attack. You could really play up the voyage, and turn THAT into the focus of your campaign, and play down the demons and shadow pearls and such. They get to save Farshore, and most importantly, kill Vanthus, which is a great arch-enemy for the early part of the campaign. That makes a good closure point.
Lavinia is vindicated, her parent's memory and life's work restored, Vanthus is vanquished, Farshore becomes a nice colony that earns a ton of profit for Lavinia and the PC's, the Pirate threat is defeated, and so on. I should think that to be a solid campaign, and if you played up the sea voyage and upgraded all the challenges after that, you could have it wrap up anywhere from 10th-12th level, which might be satisfying if that's what your're looking for.
Just a thought. We're playing all the way through, most of my party has their character's progression planned through Lvl20 and would be MOST disappointed to not get there (even if it ends up being another PC that lives that long) :)
Well, I'm not doing this, but I would think that a good stopping point might be the arrival of the party at Farshore, and the successful defense of that city from the Pirate attack. You could really play up the voyage, and turn THAT into the focus of your campaign, and play down the demons and shadow pearls and such. They get to save Farshore, and most importantly, kill Vanthus, which is a great arch-enemy for the early part of the campaign. That makes a good closure point.
Lavinia is vindicated, her parent's memory and life's work restored, Vanthus is vanquished, Farshore becomes a nice colony that earns a ton of profit for Lavinia and the PC's, the Pirate threat is defeated, and so on. I should think that to be a solid campaign, and if you played up the sea voyage and upgraded all the challenges after that, you could have it wrap up anywhere from 10th-12th level, which might be satisfying if that's what your're looking for.
Just a thought. We're playing all the way through, most of my party has their character's progression planned through Lvl20 and would be MOST disappointed to not get there (even if it ends up being another PC that lives that long) :)
This is spot on and as a side bonus one can easily play with it and keep the next two adventures by having the pirate attack come after everything else on the island is dealt with. That would get the player up to mid high levels without the madness that ensues when large numbers of 8th and 9th level spells come into play.
Has anyone else tried this? Has anyone else trimmed down a few adventures and tried to include a few home brewed encounters?
Short answer: not yet, but planning to do so. Main criteria will be originality (of setting, encounter) and what seems to be the most fun.
Some more details:
After summer I will start with somesort of a "Savage Tide light" campaign. (there are usually several weeks between sessions, making it difficult to run a long campaign; there are other very nice adventures/settings in dungeon; I'm not that familiar with high level play).
So far, I'm thinking about doing the following:
- Introduce Lavinia, start with the chase of "Mad God's Key"; the vault of the Vanderborens (somewhat modified).
- search for Vanthus: parrot Island, lotus dragon hide out will presumably be the thiefs' hide out in "Mad God's Key"
- the stilt walkers assassination (attempt)
- Perhaps I'll expand the search for Vanthus with some additional encounters (the Kenku hide out in one of the Styes adventures seems a good one; perhaps tie the Vanthus story with the story line of the first freeport adventures; I also like the tomb of everflowing blood (MGK) - seems a memorable location, but probably needs some reworking)
- Kraken's Cove
- (sidetrip - Forsaken Arch: fits nicely with the kenku, demons and pearls theme)
- go to the isle of dread & defense of farshore - which will presumably conclude the campaing
Hagor
Wow, cool thread.
I am doing almost exactly the same thing.
I wish I had thought of that. In our group, DMs rotate between campaings and I am itching to play again. I probably won't get to for another 6 months. We just ended ToD.
Plus, the independent and power-hungry nature of my players is bleeding into their characters. They are all old-school, and its hard to keep NPCs alive long enough to provide plot-hooks.
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I like this idea! I need to figure out a few sea-voyage adventures and I need to let the PCs explore the Isle of Dread a bit though, maybe have them shut down the Shadowpearl production but use a different setup than Dungeon had for that, then finish up with the fight with Vanthus and the assault on Farshore.
Anyone know of any good Sea-voyage adventures or maybe small island based adventures that I could fit in on their journey to the Isle of Dread?
FH
I'm glad I'm not alone on this one. While the entire campaign arc is wonderful it looks to me like it might become very tough to run after Scuttlecove (even the adventure under the Isle of Dread looks tough in MHO). I know my players and they want details and story. If I can slice up the content and blend it with few character themed mini adventures then I think it will work for us.
Who knows down the line we can always return to the STAP and complete it.
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I'm glad I'm not alone on this one. While the entire campaign arc is wonderful it looks to me like it might become very tough to run after Scuttlecove (even the adventure under the Isle of Dread looks tough in MHO). I know my players and they want details and story. If I can slice up the content and blend it with few character themed mini adventures then I think it will work for us.
Who knows down the line we can always return to the STAP and complete it.
Ditto here. I'm thinking that the PCs find the cache of shadow pearls in the Crimson Fleet treasury and then have to
- Find out how to destroy them without setting them off- Until they can destroy them, protect them from theft, retrieval, or actual destruction
- Actually destroy them
This would necessitate a change of some of the info in ToD, otherwise just casting anti-magic shell and stomping them would work. I'm thinking of something like the artifact destruction methods from the 1E DMG.
Tom
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- Actually destroy them
This would necessitate a change of some of the info in ToD, otherwise just casting anti-magic shell and stomping them would work. I'm thinking of something like the artifact destruction methods from the 1E DMG.
Tom
Maybe there is a location on the Isle of Dread that fits the bill for disposing/destroying the pearls. A volcano, an acidic ooze pool under the central plateau, feeding them to the large dragon that resides on the isle, etc.
FH
Feed it to the dragon and then you can give it a breath weapon that gives victims the savage template. Of course, before you do that you'll want to make sure that you have a clear path to your car just in case things get ugly with your players and they end up manifesting the template in real life.
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To be honest I love the STAP, its a wicked cool campaign and has a feel to it thats somhow diffrent from other typical d&d campaigns and feels very diffrent from when we played Shackled City.
The only thing Im not overly looking forward to is leaving the Isle and heading into the abyss to put the smack down on Demogorgon. Im not a big fan of the plane hopping stuff.But Im sure it will be cool.
I know what you guys are saying about long campaigns Shackled City took us 2 years of playing, and now we are doing Age of Worms. (almost finished Whispering Cairn, I think)So its going to be at least another 2 years until I can run the STAP.
Anyone know of any good Sea-voyage adventures or maybe small island based adventures that I could fit in on their journey to the Isle of Dread?
FH
Adventures I DM'ed:
Tammeraut's Fate (from Dungeon) was good, although I feel it has some similarities to the Journey's End encounter.The Vaka's curse was a really nice adventure as well (from Dungeon a loooong time ago).
Hagor
I have to run the entire STAP, I have never DM'd characters above 14th, and this one is so well done that I don't want to miss it myself. that being said I would like to play again sometime in my lifetime.....
Although I enjoy the entire STAP I must admit that I hate running a long campaign. High Levels get to be such a hassle to DM. I'm considering tweaking the Adventure Path and featuring only a few of the adventures. Has anyone else tried this? Has anyone else trimmed down a few adventures and tried to include a few home brewed encounters?
...The only thing Im not overly looking forward to is leaving the Isle and heading into the abyss to put the smack down on Demogorgon. Im not a big fan of the plane hopping stuff.But Im sure it will be cool....
Me neither, but the prison break that begins the hopping IS cool, so I will have to decide when we get there how much of this we do. IMHO the Isle of Dread and Farshore are the best parts and have the most potential. How many parties have wanted to take over their first enemy's local as their homebase? (lots for my groups) In Farshore you have a burgeoning city to rebuild and a lost island to explore. My party is expecting a lot of pirates (and the assault on farshore is one of the coolest, most original adventures I have seen in a while) and I want more dinosaurs. I am likely to spend more time there than plane-hopping but ultimately it will be what the players are into.
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...The only thing Im not overly looking forward to is leaving the Isle and heading into the abyss to put the smack down on Demogorgon. Im not a big fan of the plane hopping stuff.But Im sure it will be cool....Me neither, but the prison break that begins the hopping IS cool, so I will have to decide when we get there how much of this we do. IMHO the Isle of Dread and Farshore are the best parts and have the most potential. How many parties have wanted to take over their first enemy's local as their homebase? (lots for my groups) In Farshore you have a burgeoning city to rebuild and a lost island to explore. My party is expecting a lot of pirates (and the assault on farshore is one of the coolest, most original adventures I have seen in a while) and I want more dinosaurs. I am likely to spend more time there than plane-hopping but ultimately it will be what the players are into.
Its a relief to hear that ther are others out there that arnt as keen on the planer adventure stuff. I know its a staple of d&d and all, but it stretches my fantasy a little to much.
The reason why plane travel hits me a little off is that all the other planes tend to look and function much like our plane. I guess I always imagined them to be more alien.
Plus running at such a high level makes it very difficult to keep the details and content fresh.
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The reason why plane travel hits me a little off is that all the other planes tend to look and function much like our plane. I guess I always imagined them to be more alien.
Ditto. Especially the idea of towns and markets on the outer planes. Would Red Shroud's town have Fiendish Street Sweepers? If the Outer Planes are the afterlife for the Prime Material, are evil barmaids sentenced to be barmaids on the Abyss? Some of these sound fun for one-off instances, but not for a cosmology. (My image of the OP is more influenced by Milton or Dante. )
That said, a demi-plane like The Bazaar at Deva would work just fine, as would "settlements" on say, the Astral Plane.
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Some of the best RPG campaigns I've ever played in have been planescape campaigns back in 2nd ed AD&D. One of my friends loves the system.
The thing is there's a trick to Planescape campaigns, and it takes a good DM to pull it off. The setting is so vast and so varied that it's easy to fall into the trap of letting the setting BE the story. What the DM has to do is remember that the setting needs to be just that, the setting, the backdrop, and nothing more. You need a compelling story ON TOP OF the setting, or else the setting seems false, flimsy and superficial.
I don't think I could do it. I'll probably never ever run a planes-hopping adventure like that because I know I wouldn't do it justice.
I too don't think I can create the horror that a PC would face in the Abyss. Since I use a ton of minis and terrain it would be difficult. I might be unpopular but I don't like running high level games (above level 14). My Players even tend to bicker more and have a hard time running their PCs (currently we are in a 18+ campaign). The story looses focus and the 'kill things and take stuff' seems to be the MO.
More importantly something about the Savage Tide to me just screams out to detailed, less combat focused but heavy role-playing PCs. This adventure path just seems perfect for those fun characters that can't dish out a load of hurtful damage per round but have unique flavor and personality (I'm thinking Bards, Jesters, Scouts, Swashbucklers, etc).
What do you think?
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I too don't think I can create the horror that a PC would face in the Abyss. Since I use a ton of minis and terrain it would be difficult. I might be unpopular but I don't like running high level games (above level 14). My Players even tend to bicker more and have a hard time running their PCs (currently we are in a 18+ campaign). The story looses focus and the 'kill things and take stuff' seems to be the MO.
More importantly something about the Savage Tide to me just screams out to detailed, less combat focused but heavy role-playing PCs. This adventure path just seems perfect for those fun characters that can't dish out a load of hurtful damage per round but have unique flavor and personality (I'm thinking Bards, Jesters, Scouts, Swashbucklers, etc).
What do you think?
On of the things that has surprised me so far in this campaign is how much the PCs can use diplomacy to solve alot of the encounters and not have to resort to combat.Its also a great campaign for druids and rangers. This is compared to Shackled City where a bard PC would have been great and strangely druids and rangers not so.From what Ive been told from my DM Age of Worms has very few diplomacy encounters.
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I think you can continue to have good roleplay in high level games, if the people running them are good. It's also key to have the PC's build themselves up naturally from low level to high level in terms of roleplaying. If the character was "always" high level, the players have more trouble remembering that they were not always such superheroes.
I also think the Abyss will carry itself over just fine here. In my previous message, I pointed out that the key is to have a good story on top of the setting to bring the setting to life. I think we have that here, so to me it won't be much harder to run the feeling of dread and terror in the Abyss like there was in Kraken's Cove. You just have to have a little bit of flair for colorful descriptions.
But having said all that, if you don't like running high level campaigns, don't let any of us talk you into it. I think the cutoff I described in my first post to this topic (end campaign after dealing with Vanthus at Farshore) would still be a really solid, satisfying campaign for all involved.
I'm glad I'm not alone on this one. While the entire campaign arc is wonderful it looks to me like it might become very tough to run after Scuttlecove (even the adventure under the Isle of Dread looks tough in MHO). I know my players and they want details and story. If I can slice up the content and blend it with few character themed mini adventures then I think it will work for us.
Who knows down the line we can always return to the STAP and complete it.
Ditto here. I'm thinking that the PCs find the cache of shadow pearls in the Crimson Fleet treasury and then have to
- Find out how to destroy them without setting them off
- Until they can destroy them, protect them from theft, retrieval, or actual destruction
- Actually destroy themThis would necessitate a change of some of the info in ToD, otherwise just casting anti-magic shell and stomping them would work. I'm thinking of something like the artifact destruction methods from the 1E DMG.
I agree with those that think it should be played out. 2 nights ago we finished Scuttlecove and the PC's have the Wakeportal. It always ifs tough to run games in the Abyss but the Adventure is well thought out and with a little extra attention from DM game is great even from my stand point as the DM. One of the Best and PC's should get that opp to finish it off.. If they show lack of interest in it.. sure take it another way no problem even if you want to stop as the DM Scuttle Cove is a good place to find new ties...
Tom
I must admit that I do like the entire story of STAP. It has been the only one of the 3 to capture my total attention and make me buy the entire path in Dungeon.
I just see a creative fun role-play focused bard not dishing out the big damage to make him fun to play in the Abyss. And this same bard would rock and be great in Sasserine and in other parts of the path. Just me i suppose.