I posted something a little while back asking for input on the AP series and someone posted a great thing about 'outs'. I liked the concept quite a bit and now I plan on doing outs in all my campaigns.
To put it simply an out is a place that a DM could end a game and have a certain amount of satisfaction and closure to the story. Places where the story resolves some major plot thread or shifts focus that things could be tied up easily and the campaign doesn't feel abandoned. Sure there may be more untold but the immediate threads are resolved. An out should be able to occur every six sessions or so. With 11 chapters in this path an out should occur every two or three chapters though I don't know if that's feasible.
I have been adapting Shackled City but have only completed Life's Bazaar (I've moved a lot of stuff around). There is an obvious out at the end of Chapter 1 but I was wondering what everyone else thought would be good places to call it quits if the game is dragging or going downhill.
For folks who have played or know the whole story shoot me some pointers.
-Josh
When published in Dungeon magazine, every one of these adventures also needed to work as a standalone adventure. So, basically every adventure has an out at the end of it.
The thing is, is that the episodic nature of the series is a good thing. The players feel they have accomplished something significant at the end of each adventure. The "grand quest" type of campaign can be unsatisfying for players because the game is delaying any sort of significant satisfaction until the very end.
The first few adventures don't feel tied to each other, until secret details are revealed later on. Although there are clues here and there, it's not until several adventures are played do the players get a strong sense about what's really going on and what to do about it.
Again, I think this is a good thing. The first three adventures is about exploring Cauldron and becoming familiar with the home city. The next three adventures has the players go off to explore alien environs while taking care of problems at home. It's at the seventh adventure where "it is ON" and the players are on a path of destruction to the big bad evil threat, during which they discover why the unrelated first six adventures were actually all symptoms of a greater problem.
My players decided to end the campaign at the tenth adventure. At this time, all of the players have achieved their goals. They have ascended to Cauldron nobility, one was Mayor and has met her god, one was the high priest of the new church of Pelor which her followers have built, the gold-digger finally claimed the wealth of her deceased husband while starting a new thieves guild, and the fourth player was playing someone else's character as a favor to all of us, although his character had the new high priest of Wee Jas as her cohort. So, I declared that they have taken out all of the big bad evil threat and all is good in the world.
So, chapter 10 was our "out".
The Shackled City is a little different from the later APs in that they didn't really tie the story together as soon as any of the others. So you could choose to have an out just at the end of any of the first few adventures with no issues.
Life's Bazaar
[out]
Drakthar's Way
[out]
Flood Season
[out]
Zenith Trajectory
[out]
The point of the previously mentioned adventures was really to just introduce the players to the setting of Cauldron and make them love the city. By the end of these three adventures the players should know the NPCs and feel some attachment to Cauldron. As a result there isn't anything more than hints to overarching story line. I would suggest that Flood Festival enhancement by Delves Deep could be a VERY good out point and used to wrap up a campaign arc with some changes.
Of course you also have to take into account how much foreshadowing you are doing in your campaign as to how much wrap up you can do. In my SCAP campaign we are just finishing Flood Season and I have already started throwing in the beginnings of grumblings about raising taxes, the PCs briefly met Celeste as she arrived in town, and one of the PCs has started having dreams of the ancient history that led up to this campaign and seeing visions of the sign of the Shackleborn. Depending on your group, they may or may not care that these introduced foreshadowing have been wrapped up or not. I suppose if you have decided to take an out then your players will be happy just to see things end, I guess.
The point of Zenith Trajectory is that Vhalantru is setting up the PCs for failure. He fully expects the PCs to fail and not come back. And if they do, they come back with something that gives him a big bonus in his plans... win / win. However, if the PCs do come back ok and then decide to move on and leave Cauldron anyway... well, he will throw them one hell of a send off party... he got his bonus AND they are leaving... he is a happy camper. To the Players this type of send off party will be a good ending.
Demonskar Legacy introduces some larger themes that would need resolution. However, if you change the prophecy the PCs hear from Alek/Nidrama at the end of this adventure you could easily wrap up this adventure by running the Siege of Redgorge enhancement found on the boards here and calling things good. Fortunately the changes you need to make to the adventure are right at the end, so you should know at that point if you want to opt for an out.
Test of the Smoking Eye, is the first adventure after which I think it would be tougher to take an out. I suppose it depends though, if you know up front this will be your last one you can not give some of the plot drops that the players get from Kaurophon in the beginning of the adventure... but you need to know up front. If that were left out though then coming back and running the Siege of Redgorge would again work as a great wrap-up.
Secrets of the Soul Pillars would be a tougher time to end things. I think at this point you have introduced enough things that need wrapping up that I would really go to the end of Lords of Oblivion. At the end of LoO you can easily have all the loose ties wrapped up. Make sure that if you have foreshadowed the Cagewrights you simply have them present as the characters presented at 'meeting' that takes place and change the speech that is given a bit. Should be a good wrap up point... I might throw in the Lord Mayor as one of the statues in Oblivion to wrap that up as well since they won't be doing the follow up stuff in Foundation of Flame.
The next good out and one at which many people decide to end things since there has been so little foreshadowing of anything that comes after is the end of Thirteen cages. If you do go on after this you are definately shooting for the end of Asylum.
Anyway... to repeat myself... this AP, more than any other, lets you take outs all over the place and still have things cleaned up nicely. In fact, I feel that the extra work is actually in making sure there is sufficient foreshadowing to tie everything together nicely.
Anyway, good luck with this! And make sure you hit up this boards with any questions, comments or ideas you might have... it has been invaluable for me in running the AP.
Sean Mahoney
Okay, thanks. I probably would have seen all the outs once I got further in adapting the path but I figured I'd ask before I got into it. I have only converted Life's Bazaar so far. I've been checking out the boards and the content over at RPGenius as well. Once I get the conversions done and get ready to run the game I'll put up my conversions so that folks can have yet another alternate take on things. I tend to go pretty extreme at times so that the adventure matches the tone and feel I'm shooting for.
For example, in Life's Bazaar I have moved several locations. Jzaderune has been removed from the basement of Ghelve's Locks, I didn't like that element, to a separate location accessible via the city's sewer system. Ghelve can show the way once he is convinced to help. The Malachite Fortress has been removed from the underground and has become some warehouses in the city's docks district. There is still Underdark access and everything, it's just above ground now. I have also decided to change Vhalantru from a beholder to a glabrezu. He still has the same motivations and personality but fits with the demonic theme of the campaign. I like aberrations but there really aren't any others in the game that I have seen.
CEO
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I have been adapting Shackled City but have only completed Life's Bazaar (I've moved a lot of stuff around). There is an obvious out at the end of Chapter 1 but I was wondering what everyone else thought would be good places to call it quits if the game is dragging or going downhill.
My Shackled City campaign is going to be finished after the battle with the Cagewrights and trying to stop the Tree of Shackled Souls. I basically removed most of the Admimarchus stuff and made the Cagewrights the Big Bads for the AP. This will end the AP somewhere in the 15th to 16th level range. The final battle will take the PCs to the Fiery Sanctum and a desperate push through everything the Cagewrights could throw at them to stop the ToSS before it destroys Cauldron. I am thinking a little of "The Dirty Dozen" movie when I am setting this up. Kinda hellbent for leather and leave your fallen comrades where they lie because we don't have time to stop or it could be the end of everything we hold dear. I am taking the Cagewrights from the second to the last adventure and moving into this adventure to up the challenge level. Should be a great ending to the campaign!
-Lisa
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My SC campaign will be wrapping up after Thirteen Cages as well. If I had found the forums here, and RPGenius.com sooner, I could have stolen the ideas there to better foreshadow things for my group, but ah well.
It's been an excellent run, but one of my players had to quit, and I'd like to have a go at RotR before we come home from lovely Afghanistan and family time cuts out our gaming time.
Both SCAP games my husband has run ended at or around Thirteen Cages as well. Not so much a deliberate ending as player exhaustion and distress. High level play isn't really either group's cup of tea.
The end of Flood Season would be a really good early stopping point, I think. I would not go on to run Zenith Trajectory as it has a large chance of ending the game on a down note. (It nearly killed the game I was in, even though we avoided a TPK.)
I would avoid running the Smoking Eye arc at all unless you are planning to do the whole thing. It makes promises which are otherwise not kept. (One of our two groups just refused to engage with this whole adventure. For the other group it was the centerpiece of the game, but in ways that did not exactly make the rest of the AP easier to run.)
As a more radical suggestion, a modified form of Speaker in Dreams from the WoTC AP has potential as a series ending for SCAP, inserted where Zenith Trajectory is now.
Mary
As a more radical suggestion, a modified form of Speaker in Dreams from the WoTC AP has potential as a series ending for SCAP, inserted where Zenith Trajectory is now.
That's a good idea, Speaker in Dreams was a lot of fun and has that urban intrigue feel that most of Shackled City shoots for. However, I ran the whole series that Speaker in Dreams is part of for two of the three players in the group and it was among their favorite moments so I don't think I could get away with this, personally.
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CEO
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I would avoid running the Smoking Eye arc at all unless you are planning to do the whole thing. It makes promises which are otherwise not kept.
You know, I have been using the whole Smoking Eye arc really well in my campaign.
My players, please don't read below:
-Lisa
Good idea there, Lisa.
Since I have a small group, 2-3 players, I'm toying with the idea of giving each of them the Smoking Eye. I have some other ideas about making them a little more powerful and such to make up for the difference.
I've spotted all of the available outs and have told my players, and plan on telling them again as they have horrible memories, that there are several places that we can stop and wrap things up if they don't feel like continuing.