My group's been going at AoW since '05 now, and we are just finally getting past AGoW. I know some of my players are going to be leaving in the next half-year, so I want to accelerate the pace (we can only play every other week).
To that end, I'm contemplating gutting a lot of the latter half. I realize that will require some redesign on my end (leveling down things specifically), but I'm curious on folk's thoughts.
The plan is as follows:
- Run "Prince of Redhand" next instead of SoLS; have "our friend" direct them to the Spire instead of after the phylactery
- Run Spire next, which the death of the Spell Weaver needed for our friend's plans (I'll think of something)
- Then run a toned down Dawn of a New Age.
This essentially cuts out the Dragotha arc of the campaign, which is fine by me---I wasn't looking forward to running all those combats anyway. My group is mostly newbies, so Dragotha doesn't resonate with them (nor does Vecna, etc., etc.)
So, my questions to y'all are:
- Any major plot dangles anyone foresees?
- Any suggestions on how to tweak the mods for the appropriate new levels (13th for Prince....)
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I haven't begun AoW yet but this is a topic I have been thinking about as well. My players and I do not really enjoy alot of the things that impact how the game works once the characters get past ~15th level.
I am trying to figure out how to modify the campaign to shorten it and make it a 1st to ~15th level (instead of ~20th level) campaign. I am really interested seeing peoples' suggestions.
Alternatively, you could modify the very mechanics of the game beyond 15th level (e.g. do 20d6 damage plus 15 with an arrow strike? Take minimum of the upper-half on the dice - in this case 4 x 20 = 80 + 15 = 95 damage). Streamline gaze attacks and aura effects as well (i.e. one roll at the begnning or the encounter and thats it).
This may take a lot of work on your behalf, but still a viable solution. I believe there are a lot of very good modules in the later half of the AP and would hate eliminating most of them.
This may take a lot of work on your behalf, but still a viable solution. I believe there are a lot of very good modules in the later half of the AP and would hate eliminating most of them.
The main issue (for me) is not so much the combat (though that is part of it) but the time constraints as mentioned above.
I do use such dice tricks at home, however.
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I believe there are a lot of very good modules in the later half of the AP and would hate eliminating most of them.
Reading through them I agree. I was thinking more of trimming a bit out of each one (to greater and lesser degrees) and reducing subsequent EL's. All while trying to keep "plot dangles" to a minimum as the OP asked.
I would prefer not to cut all of the cool moments out of the end of the AP myself, but if I had to cut it to bare bones I would do the following:
1. Either eliminate the Spire of Long Shadows or shorten it drastically. Eliminate: have some of the knowledge from the various visions turn up in a musty tome in the temple-library at Magepoint, or in Tenser's personal collection, or in the Great Library at Greyhawk. Then send the party to Alhaster looking for Balakarde's trail. Shorten: Run the encounter with the Kyuss knight outside the temple, then have only one entrance to the spire: a shaft angled downward into the earth, emptying straight into the room with the sea of worms. Kill the remaining Kyuss Knights and the Harbinger and you have the visions.
2. Run Prince of Redhand more or less as is. It's great fun and has several key elements that tie the AP together.
3. Eliminate the Library of Last Resort or shorten it drastically. Eliminate: Have Lashonna tell the party where Dragotha's phylactery is or drop some other clue about it in Alhaster or nearby. Shorten: Run only one encounter on the beach of Tilagos Island, have the Watchers assign only one task to the party (the feather from the Roc King works best), run the fight with Darl Quethos and the final dream-sequence battle.
4. Cut down Kongen-Thulnir. Basically, eliminate everything except the tower in which the phylactery is hidden. Have the PCs arrive in the midst of a fierce siege in which Brazzemal's dragons are fighting the giants. The PCs have to fight their way in and smash the phylactery, eliminating all the detective work. Obviously the numbers of both giants and dragons need to be reduced to a manageable level here, but the challenge is to get through/past them, not kill them all--like running an obstacle course while being shot at.
5. The tabernacle of worms is a bit too cool to cut out, IMO, but there are quite a few superfluous elements that can be eliminated without destroying the flavor. I'd keep the quest for the fragments of Balakarde's spirit intact. I would eliminate many of the encounters inside the tabernacle--I'd probably just keep Mahuudril and maybe the wyrmdrake, and cut down on the size of the lower level. I'd also set it up so the objective is to blow through or bypass encounters and take it straight to Dragotha. An alternative to running Into the Wormcrawl Fissure would be to have Dragotha come out to take revenge on the PCs. This would give Lashonna the opportunity to breeze into the Tabernacle and steal the obelisk of Kyuss.
6. Dawn of a New Age is very climactic--but the dungeon under Lashonna's house can probably be eliminated. I'd run enough of the other encounters to give the flavor of a city under siege, modify the victory point thresholds for disrupting the planar rift effects and then take it straight to the spire.
Of course you'll either have to come up with scaled back stat-blocs and encounters, or just ditch XP and level the party up by DM fiat to face each new group of encounters.
Wampuscat43 abridged the last part of his Age of Worms, for much the same reasons mentioned above. Personally, I'm looking forward to running every bit of it, though it will probably take a couple more years to finish.
I was down to only 2 players towards the end, and trimmed it a bit to save time. But as the post above says, it's a shame to cut out whole pieces (except the druid's island, there wasn't as much fun to be had there, it seemed way too much like "do this quest, then this one, then..." and the combats were mostly all against a single creature each day so not overly hard).
I definitely cut out XP at high levels, and we all moved to simply using average damage (pre-calculated, including various power attack, smite etc options). I also cut out various encounters that were not critical and/or not overly fun (compared to others). Doing this, you can get through each adventure in 2-3 sessions, definitely 2 sessions if you work hard to press the pace. I'd recommend that approach over deleting whole adventures - each of the adventures is very fun in its own way (except the druid's island - Darl's crew was about the only fun bit there, and half of the fun there was the players wondering what he was doing and evading him until the very end - hard to pull off if you cut the rest of it).