So I've got a fun little group, and we've been playing for 2 or 3 years now. This all started out very casual, with no real long-term plan on my part and has evolved into a weekly, ongoing campaign.
I ran them through some 3.5 conversions of classic D&D adventures, including "In Search of the Unknown," "Keep on the Borderlands," "Isle of Dread," "White Plume Mountain," the giant/drow series, parts of "Night Below," and they just finished up "Kingdom of the Ghouls." Now they are in the City of Brass while I figure out just what the heck to do next.
The party is currently 15th level. I never thought the game would last this long, nor did I think the players would want to play at such high levels, but there you go.
So I want to finish this campaign with a bang, and I've been thinking about using the end pieces of one of the three Dungeon adventure paths. Obviously, this means jumping into a story mid-stream, but the reality is I will probably never run all three paths in this lifetime. (It took me 20 years to finally run D1-2-3!)
My questions are, is this idea even feasible? And if so, which of the adventure paths would be the easiest to jump into at 15th level? Which path would best fit my ad-hoc retro-campaign?
Well, 15th level would take you to Serpents of Scuttlecove in the Savage AP. At this point, the PCs patron has been kidnapped and taken to the city of Scuttlecove. Rescuing her takes you through Serpents of Scuttlecove and Into the Maw which makes a nice, little stand-alone arc leaving you at 18th level.
Or search the adventure list at Wyrm's Hoard:
http://www.paladinpgm.com/wyrm/default.wws
I was working though this exact same "problem" with planning for my last campaign. Unfortunately, the campaign fell apart before we got there, but I was planning on running the Age or Worms end game. High level gaming should be about saving the world, and it doesn't get much more saving the world than stopping the ascension of an Evil God.
A good "in" to the AoW is "The Spire of Long Shadows" (Dungeon 130). It contains a nice summary of what has been going on so far, and also it is during this module that a lot of the information is revealed. Unfortunately, it is for level 13 parties, but it has a reputation as a bit of a meat grinder, so that may be a good thing (as always, it depends on your group).
You could also remove the XP they get for triggering the visions, which would help to get them back on track level wise.
If they are still too high a level (and you don't want to scale all the adventures), you could probably drop, or at least simplify "The Library of Last Resort." All they really need from this module is to find the location of Dragotha's Phylactery. Shouldn't be too hard to just give them this info (even have Lashonna just tell them).
Hope that helps. Any more questions, just ask.
Its doable but currently I don't think it would work all that well with SCAP which leaves you with just Age of Worms and Savage Tides. Honestly I think these two are so good that ruining them by just playing the last few adventures seems like a bad idea to me. Furthermore I don't think they'll feel as epic and exciting as one might suspect without the long build up. You loose to much just jumping this late IMO. Better to either start a new campaign or work out something specifically for these adventurers. You've mentioned that your something of an old hand at conversions - there are some pretty good higher level adventures out there that you could convert for your players and there are loads of high level adventures in Dungeon (1 per issue really). These options could be looked over to build a compelling end game for your current campaign without making it impossible for your players to enjoy the full experience of Savage Tide or Age of Worms.
Its doable but currently I don't think it would work all that well with SCAP which leaves you with just Age of Worms and Savage Tides. Honestly I think these two are so good that ruining them by just playing the last few adventures seems like a bad idea to me. Furthermore I don't think they'll feel as epic and exciting as one might suspect without the long build up. You loose to much just jumping this late IMO.
I think there's no question that the adventures will be somewhat diminished by not having played through the entire sequence start to finish, but there's also no question that I will never have a chance to run all of these APs from 1-20 level. If I were going to restart a campaign tomorrow, I would probably go with Pathfinder. I wish I had time to run them all "the right way," but that's just the way it is.
That said, while it may be suboptimal, is it *reasonable* to start one of these APs 3/4s of the way through? Or are the first 75% of the adventure paths crucial for what follows -- either by establishing an essential mesh of background, or setting the characters up with critical abilities, contacts, or items that are necessary for completion of the adventure path?
I actually don't agree with Jeremy. Just modify them to suit yourself. Draw what ideas you want from them.
I know what you're saying, Jeremy, but I don't think he's looking for the excellence of a drawn out other story, rather for elements that can put a cap on his own. I actually do recommend Age of Worms' last few adventures of Savage Tides because they mainly feature jaunts to other planes and could be with some modification about anything.
However barring all that you could seriously level up Seed of Sehan or just take the higher level dungeon adventures like Lost Temple of Demogorgon, Bright Mountain King, Hellfire Mountain and so on.
I think there's no question that the adventures will be somewhat diminished by not having played through the entire sequence start to finish, but there's also no question that I will never have a chance to run all of these APs from 1-20 level. If I were going to restart a campaign tomorrow, I would probably go with Pathfinder. I wish I had time to run them all "the right way," but that's just the way it is.That said, while it may be suboptimal, is it *reasonable* to start one of these APs 3/4s of the way through? Or are the first 75% of the adventure paths crucial for what follows -- either by establishing an essential mesh of background, or setting the characters up with critical abilities, contacts, or items that are necessary for completion of the adventure path?
I suppose its possible but I'm not even really thinking completely about what you could potentially run. Players move, fall in love etc. Who's to say that a player of yours might not in some future date have to veto a DMs plan to run Age of Worms because he's been through the last part of it? I've encountered this myself and been frustrated. I've got a player that has never really done Ravenloft but has done something along the lines of the last few elements in it so he knows the to much to easily run him (and therefore my entire group) through it and yet will never have the chance of actually experience what Ravenloft is like.
Even beyond this I have to wonder if the last parts of it will really seem all that cool and epic without the build up. Into the Maw is a dungeon romp without some kind of emotional attachment to Lavina and a burning desire to kill Vanthus. The talk-O-thon with varous Demon lords looses a lot of impact if some of the major reveals like Malcenthet's plotting don't have any real meaning to the players.
I think you could sort of get away with Age of Worms from Spire of Long Shadows but if your PCs are 15th then I think your actually jumping in more around Library of Last resort in either case I feel that you miss out on the rising crescendo feel of Age of Worms as well as many of the interesting sub plots. Instead of it coming off as cool and dramatic as it reads I think it might well feel like a complete disconect - and now we go kill an undead dragon and after that there is a God on our hit list. It strips out so much to start so late and in turn turns this into something that feels more like 'kill the big monster' instead of the last epic scenes of a band of hero's finally taking the fight to the heart of darkness and smashing their ultimate foes.
If one reads a book and thinks its great it does not help to decide that the last quarter of the book was where it really got cool and tell someone to skip over the first three quarters. This is sort of the same thing. Its great in part because of what has come before not in spite of what has come before. On the other hand high level stand alone adventures are crafted to tell their stories within the specific adventure so it should play out as cool as it reads.