After a long discussion yesterday we agreed to abandon the CotCT campaign we'd been planning, having done a couple of introductory adventures but nothing from the printed module yet.
We had two problems:
It seemed incredibly hard to get things to make sense, both in the backstory and in the adventure, and the GM, looking at the summaries of upcoming adventures, felt that this was likely to get worse rather than better.
Neither of us could, despite efforts, develop any liking for Korvosa, especially Korvosa in the grips of the described situation.
He offered to rewrite the whole thing, dropping enormous hunks of the plot, but it just seemed like too much work to be worthwhile--we use APs so that we can spend our limited fun time playing rather than doing game prep.
I am really, really bummed. I'd been looking forward to this for a long time. After SCAP I was resolved that I would never play in another AP, but I was coaxed into trying this one by elements of the early descriptions--I love city adventures where the PCs can build a connection with a single place and not have to move around constantly.
But at this point it looks guaranteed to duplicate a lot of the elements which made SCAP a miserable experience for me, and I'm not willing to do that again.
This is not a blanket condemnation of the AP. I'm sure it will be a ton of fun for a lot of groups. I'm just totally sad that we're not among them.
Mary
After a long discussion yesterday we agreed to abandon the CotCT campaign we'd been planning, having done a couple of introductory adventures but nothing from the printed module yet.
We had two problems:
It seemed incredibly hard to get things to make sense, both in the backstory and in the adventure, and the GM, looking at the summaries of upcoming adventures, felt that this was likely to get worse rather than better.
Neither of us could, despite efforts, develop any liking for Korvosa, especially Korvosa in the grips of the described situation.
He offered to rewrite the whole thing, dropping enormous hunks of the plot, but it just seemed like too much work to be worthwhile--we use APs so that we can spend our limited fun time playing rather than doing game prep.
I am really, really bummed. I'd been looking forward to this for a long time. After SCAP I was resolved that I would never play in another AP, but I was coaxed into trying this one by elements of the early descriptions--I love city adventures where the PCs can build a connection with a single place and not have to move around constantly.
But at this point it looks guaranteed to duplicate a lot of the elements which made SCAP a miserable experience for me, and I'm not willing to do that again.
This is not a blanket condemnation of the AP. I'm sure it will be a ton of fun for a lot of groups. I'm just totally sad that we're not among them.
Mary
That is sad, because many of the elements in an adventure path add so much richness to the RPG experience - as the Styes campaign reaches an horrific climax, with everyone unable to trust everyone else, and villains becoming friends and friends becoming villains, it is great to see the players getting immersed in things, and that makes it extra fun for me to. I have 2 APs in mind next and I can't wait to get stuck into writing them.
If you don't mind me asking, what type of adventures do you normally play in, and what kind of things put you off Korvosa? It's such a rich setting that it's a shame that you didn't get to like it at all, and sad that APs are not your thing -- they aren't everyones I hasten to add...I'm also curious about SCAP and what happened there.
Now for some Danish swirl, dash off an insulting email to Greer and on with Sunday brunch.
Rich
Dear Mary
I'm sorry to hear you feel so bummed. To some extent I can relate. I've DM'ed Shackled City with huge changes to the AP, I'm still DM'ing Age of Worms at the moment, but Savage Tide and Rise of the Runelords will never end up on my gaming table because the adventures don't suit my style and preference of game (nor my players', I suspect).
Luckily our pace of playing is slow enough to allow several new APs to come out, so I can actually pick from those. I'm feeling quite positive about Curse of the Crimson Throne myself, and might run that some day. The only problem there will be the rules, because our group will almost definitely make the switch to 4ed after this campaign.
I hope you can find enough non-AP related adventures to continue playing. After all, APs are not the only way to play RPG. Didn't we all used to run games without Paizo's APs in the past?
Best of luck to you.
MrVergee
After SCAP I was resolved that I would never play in another AP, but I was coaxed into trying this one by elements of the early descriptions--I love city adventures where the PCs can build a connection with a single place and not have to move around constantly.
Wow... what happened in your experience with the SCAP?
In my campaigns, my players built extremely close connections with Cauldron, with one player becoming the Lady Mayor, one established a smuggling operation, the druid took pains to care for the devestation on the local wildlife after the events... and more.
It seems that if you love city adventures, the SCAP seemed like a great fit.
Sorry to hear you didn't like it... :(
Casey
We had two problems:It seemed incredibly hard to get things to make sense, both in the backstory and in the adventure, and the GM, looking at the summaries of upcoming adventures, felt that this was likely to get worse rather than better.
Neither of us could, despite efforts, develop any liking for Korvosa, especially Korvosa in the grips of the described situation.
What aspects of the backstory and adventures were not sensible? What aspects of Korvosa made it unlikable?
I enjoy your posts and your viewpoint on much of the gaming scene. I'm very interested in why you feel this way about this AP.
Now for some Danish swirl, dash off an insulting email to Greer and on with Sunday brunch.
Insulting e-mail received... response coming your way, mangy old dog. ;)
Sorry to hear Edge of Anarchy and Curse of the Crimson Throne doesn't work for your group Mary.
I too would love to know more details, if for no other reason than my own edification and to satisfy my curiosity. I don't always get to playtest things, but I did playtest Edge with a group in New York and it went off well.
Oh well, can't please everyone, all the time. Here's hoping some other adventures work better for you Mary! Good gaming to you and yours.
EDIT: I have a theory based on your earlier posts in the logic in HMM thread about why these paths might not be working for you, if you are interested I'll share either here or over email: nflogue@hotmail.com
I'm very disappointed. I was looking forward to reading about your exploits in CotCT. Good luck with whatever you do in the meantime, and I'll look for you in a few months when Second Darkness is released.
All the best, Mary!
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I am really curious what elements of these adventures you didn't like. I really enjoyed SCAP, and so far enjoy CotCT. However, I am always interested to learn why someone doesn't like something. Just because *I*I like these adventures, doesn't mean everyone in my game group will like them. So I'd love to hear your opinions, if for no other reason than to have a better insight to a different opinion so I can make a better experience for everyone.
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A bunch of things were going on with SCAP. Some of them also showed up in my GM's other SCAP campaign (different player group), others didn't.
SCAP has a structural problem that if you play it as written (as the GM did for his other group) the players' reaction to the endgame tends to be "Who? What? Huh?" For the game I was in, therefore, he tried to foreshadow the main villains earlier and more richly. I'm also a very clue-centric player so I worked really hard on trying to figure things out.
What this does, alas, is to make clear to the PCs early that (a) they are totally out of their league, (b) the enemy knows who they are, and therefore (c) as soon as they actually accomplish anything they should die. So we were fighting that perception all campaign long.
SCAP was blisteringly hard, and it just got harder and harder. We started with +2 levels and +2 PCs over what the book called for; we hoped that would make it easier. It was still way too hard, and in the end (because we didn't increase treasure and EXP enough) the extra PCs were actually a severe liability. The PCs reacted to their weakness by recruiting NPC helpers, which made the treasure situation even worse. It was a kind of death spiral. Also, the advancement was so fast that the player was less and less able to play in a tactically competent fashion. In our game this showed up by level 6; in the other game, only at level 10. (Both games were abandoned in module 10, about halfway through the endgame.)
The other thing that went wrong for me--this was not a problem for the other group in the same way--was that the whole tone of SCAP seemed to be "Good is weak and ineffectual." Everyone powerful in the city is actively evil. Good people other than the PCs are portrayed mainly as victims. The PCs are railroaded into working for the bad guys much of the time. (And because I spent so much effort on clues, my PCs tended to find this out fairly quickly, though not quickly enough to avoid doing it.)
The GM had asked me for PCs who connected strongly to the setting and NPCs. I did this, which added a lot of personal betrayal elements to the general corruption in Cauldron--the PCs had to deal with family and church leaders who were villains. Most of the non-villains they cared about were killed during the course of the adventure. Almost every rescue they attempted failed.
Good people were frequently corrupted, but evil people were never redeemed. (The GM did some good work on softening this, but in the AP as written it's pretty clear. I think it's particularly sad that the symbolism in the ending suggests the possibility of redemption but the module explicitly shuts it down.)
Finally, the PCs were repeatedly railroaded into leaving Cauldron, which they would never have willingly done, and every time things got worse in their absence. The whole into-the-Abyss sequence was particularly bad here. Even the GM's other group, which is generally much more railroad tolerant, flatly balked at this; they bailed from that adventure without completing it.
So the whole thing was just incredibly depressing: the PCs were out of their league, slowly becoming weaker and weaker compared to expectations, watching people and institutions they cared about being destroyed. And it was dead clear to me as a player that only incredible carelessness and stupidity on the part of multiple villains allowed the PCs to live at all. (There's a good-guy organization in SCAP which has been hopelessly crippled by despair and paranoia. Realistically, that's what the PCs should be like too.)
There was a lot to love about this campaign. It had some really great moments. But with a single player, if you break the player's morale the game really suffers. (It took a lot longer for the other campaign to break the morale of its four players, though it finally did so.)
After that I just couldn't play for a long time. I'd lost all sense that the game could be fun.
Mary
Answering "Why won't CotCT work for you?" as best I can:
When my GM got EoA I happened to be in the room when he was reading it, and got to hear an almost continual stream of "huh?" and "well, I guess" and "no **** way!" and "how on earth is that supposed to work?" I don't know what all of those issues were, as I haven't read the module. But the message came across clearly that it wasn't making either dramatic or logical sense to him. He explicitly advised me *not* to use the hooks in the Player's Guide as in his opinion they'd dead-end the game immediately.
We spent some time trying to think if there was *any* way the overall AP plot could be made to work; but the Big Events of #1 and #2 were just incredibly hard to envision as making sense. I accept that the modules will eventually give explanations, but it's too hard for me to establish characterizations against a backdrop so full of apparently illogical and counterintuitive events. (It didn't help that the last time I queried the author about logic in one of his modules, he made it clear that he regards the issue as unimportant.)
We'd expected this, based on experience with RotRL #3, but had hoped things would improve after #1. But the GM (who has read the summary of #2--I haven't) was deeply pessimistic that things were *ever* going to make sense without major surgery.
The other problem: I wanted to like Korvosa. The GM told me to come up with PCs who would have very strong ties to the city, as otherwise he felt that they would just leave when things got bad. (And neither of us believed that high-level PCs could actually be prevented from doing so.) But when we started to read the city-guide, it became clear that, even more than in Cauldron, every major institution is either evil or completely ineffectual. Furthermore, whatever nice things there might be about Korvosa are about to be trashed by the ongoing situation. So loving the city will be a ticket to disappointment. Probably, just as in SCAP, the odds are that anyone the PCs care about will be murdered early on.
A tiny but symbolic example from the city-book: when the city was being undermined by ankheg, an adventuring party went down and dealt with the beasts, but lost a member. They built a statue to her. This shows that (a) the city can't see to its own wellbeing even in a desperate situation, and (b) the leadership are the kind of people who won't pay for a Raise Dead even when their bacon has been saved. What a nasty place! All the disadvantages of a lawful-evil government and none of the advantages (effectiveness, orderliness, functional law enforcement).
What I really want in a city adventure is a base of operations with established NPCs around it--a kind of social terrain that I can learn and navigate. I liked Sandpoint very much, but RotRL wasn't in Sandpoint often or long enough for me. I hoped CotCT would be better in that regard, but instead it offers a base which is (a) evil and repellent, and (b) about to get much worse. I had a character who ought to have a relationship with the Academae, but the Academae turns out to be Hogwarts under Voldemort. I had two members of a noble family; the GM felt that their house was unlikely to survive more than a module or two.
And finally, I was really looking forward to low-level play; to learning a neighborhood in Korvosa and becoming part of its power dynamics. The GM ran a side adventure as a lead-in, and asked how it was going. I said, "I wish you hadn't set things up so we would come into conflict with the major crime boss so soon. It's really over our heads." He looked distressed and said, "I did that to foreshadow EoA, where you kill him in a very early scene. I know, I know, I wondered about that too, it seemed like a terrible idea. But that's what it says."
That was somehow the last straw. This game just isn't going to give me anything I'd want out of a city adventure. The starting PCs may be 1st level on paper, but they are treated as if they're already well along that unbearably fast escalation railroad: the people they ought to be forming long-term emnities or alliances with are slated to be bumped off in an early scene, and by module's end the PCs are supposed to be *stopping a war on behalf of the City Guard.* There *is* no low-level play, not in the sense I would mean that term, in this campaign.
Basically, I wanted CotCT to be something it wasn't. I was thinking of a place like Sandpoint but big enough to support a whole AP. Instead, we get Alhaster again (the evil city in AoW). My player in AoW refused utterly to connect with Alhaster, and that's what I'd see happening again here. And without that connection, I really don't want to play in it.
Mary
Answering "Why won't CotCT work for you?" as best I can:
I accept that the modules will eventually give explanations, but it's too hard for me to establish characterizations against a backdrop so full of apparently illogical and counterintuitive events. (It didn't help that the last time I queried the author about logic in one of his modules, he made it clear that he regards the issue as unimportant.)
We'd expected this, based on experience with RotRL #3, but had hoped things would improve after #1. But the GM (who has read the summary of #2--I haven't) was deeply pessimistic that things were *ever* going to make sense without major surgery.
I didn't say logic wasn't important in modules. I said it didn't apply to monsters so much, as being monsters and not human beings, they have an entire different outlook on the world. I referred you to Grendel by John Gardener for example.
Since you are not going to play CoftheCT, I'd love if you read Edge and told me what you though was illogical.
I have a theory as to why your group has these problems with modules, but I'm not certain and don't like to suppose too much. It has a lot to do with logic always trumping human (or monster) foibles and emotions in your group's view.
Look at our world today, if logic really played into reality as much as some people think it does, wouldn't the world be a far better place without the problems of over population, constant warfare, racism, classism, religious strife? Logic is a nice little idea, but is not functional in human practice. People make bad choices in real life all the time, and they even make them for the wrong reasons. I assume so when I write a module.
Should the Queen poison the king? Probably not. But she does. Why? Cause she's petty and possessed of a vile vicious little malformed soul.
I am really curious what didn't make sense in Edge though, continuity was pretty important in that one.
I just want to say that the early boss in EoA is NOT the major crime boss at all, but a very old and not very powerful little leaguer. So there is not real "1st level pcs killing big baddie" feel to it.
Word. He's a dweeb in the scheme of things. He's a nothing and the module makes that as clear as clear can be. He never amounted to anything.
You want a crime boss. Wait until Rich's excellent installment (PF#9 Escape From Old Korvosa). Now there's a friggin crime boss. You can check out an illo of him on the blog. Naughty kitty!
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Well, thank you for the insight. I personally could not tell you any ways to correct the problems you experienced. But I can offer something for building a character who loves his city, regardless of how evil it may be. Read three books, The Three Musketeers, and The Man in the Iron Mask, and A Tale of Two Cities. I especially recommend the last.
I look forward to hearing some ideas in this thread, as I expect they will enhance our own game play when we get to it.
Let me preface this by saying that I actually know nothing about Curse of the Crimson Throne, but one idea I had for it when I first heard about it was to use it in Eberron, a setting that my players are rather fond of.
I was imagining using Stormreach instead of Korvosa. Again, I know nothing about the AP, but might having it take place in a popular setting (like Stormreach, Waterdeep, or Greyhawk) make it a town worth saving?
I can see there being a hard time caring about a brand new town that was made up exclusively to be put in danger...
Basically, I wanted CotCT to be something it wasn't. I was thinking of a place like Sandpoint but big enough to support a whole AP. Instead, we get Alhaster again (the evil city in AoW). My player in AoW refused utterly to connect with Alhaster, and that's what I'd see happening again here. And without that connection, I really don't want to play in it.
I'd say you were kind of in trouble on that hope the moment The Styes became a runaway success in Dungeon.
The other problem: I wanted to like Korvosa. The GM told me to come up with PCs who would have very strong ties to the city, as otherwise he felt that they would just leave when things got bad. (And neither of us believed that high-level PCs could actually be prevented from doing so.) But when we started to read the city-guide, it became clear that, even more than in Cauldron, every major institution is either evil or completely ineffectual. Furthermore, whatever nice things there might be about Korvosa are about to be trashed by the ongoing situation. So loving the city will be a ticket to disappointment. Probably, just as in SCAP, the odds are that anyone the PCs...
As to Korvosa...so it's a bad place, so it's corrupt. So is your state legislature. So is your police force to some extent. So is your president. Does this make you hate your hometown/home country?
I love America. That said, it's got a big dollop of evil and a plethora of horrible problems. But I was born and raised here. I'm connected to this place. I intend to make it better if I can, so do my friends.
Your PCs would be connected to Korvosa. What kind of pathetic person hates a place just cause it's not spit-polished perfect? If anything I think good aligned PCs would want to make Korvosa a better place, more than they would feel disappointed in it. That's why we chose to put Korvosa in a bad position - to allow the PCs to become its heroes. They have a destiny to fulfill...quite literally, it's in the cards so to speak (the Harrows). People who abandon a sinking ship are not the stuff of heroes. It's the people who bail water over the side, fix the rigging and get her sailing again that are true exemplars of humanity. Thus it should be for your PCs in Korvosa.
Oh, and there are a few people who area all about helping the PCs out, people whose belief in Korvosa cannot flag or wither...
Blackjack. Blackjack has fought for the city since its founding, and he'll be fighting for it long after your PCs abandon her to misery and corruption. Don't you feel bad now. ;-)
jk!
Seriously though. I HATE playing campaigns in a happy happy joy joy b+*&!+@* city. I like a place that needs a Big Damn Hero. Look at Firefly...there's a verse in the crapper. That's why Mal and his crew are such inspirations.
"Don't think it's a good spot sir, she'll still have the advantage over us."
"Everyone always does. That's what makes us so special."
Look at our world today, if logic really played into reality as much as some people think it does, wouldn't the world be a far better place without the problems of over population, constant warfare, racism, classism, religious strife? Logic is a nice little idea, but is not functional in human practice. People make bad choices in real life all the time, and they even make them for the wrong reasons. I assume so when I write a module.
But they rarely make them for reasons they feel are wrong or illogical. A villain or hero can do something thats wrong or stupid in an adventure but its best if there is some logical reason why they are doing something wrong or stupid. If their reasoning is flawed then its best if the adventure makes it clear why their reasoning is flawed and better still if the PCs can come to understand this during the adventure if they are paying attention.
Maybe even more important from my perspective is making sure that players that are paying attention don't damage the game. If the whole house of cards just crumbles if its scrutinized then I think this is a significant issue.
Look at our world today, if logic really played into reality as much as some people think it does, wouldn't the world be a far better place without the problems of over population, constant warfare, racism, classism, religious strife? Logic is a nice little idea, but is not functional in human practice. People make bad choices in real life all the time, and they even make them for the wrong reasons. I assume so when I write a module.But they rarely make them for reasons they feel are wrong or illogical. A villain or hero can do something thats wrong or stupid in an adventure but its best if there is some logical reason why they are doing something wrong or stupid. If their reasoning is flawed then its best if the adventure makes it clear why their reasoning is flawed and better still if the PCs can come to understand this during the adventure if they are paying attention.
Maybe even more important from my perspective is making sure that players that are paying attention don't damage the game. If the whole house of cards just crumbles if its scrutinized then I think this is a significant issue.
I agree. There's nothing that happens in Edge without a reason. Seriously. That's why I'm so confused by this thread. I want to know what makes no sense to Mary's GM.
A bunch of things were going on with SCAP. Some of them also showed up in my GM's other SCAP campaign (different player group), others didn't....SCAP seemed to be "Good is weak and ineffectual." Everyone powerful in the city is actively evil. Good people other than the PCs are portrayed mainly as victims. The PCs are railroaded into working for the bad guys much of the time. (And because I spent so much effort on clues, my PCs tended to find this out fairly quickly, though not quickly enough to avoid doing it.)
The scary thing is you just sold SCAP to me like nothing else I have read on it.
Thats it, my current campaign is over, I'm running down to the game store tomorrow and picking this up. My players will make characters for this next week...
OK I'm exaggerating but you have actually gotten me excited to run this as soon as possible.
I have a theory as to why your group has these problems with modules, but I'm not certain and don't like to suppose too much. It has a lot to do with logic always trumping human (or monster) foibles and emotions in your group's view.
Look at our world today, if logic really played into reality as much as some people think it does, wouldn't the world be a far better place without the problems of over population, constant warfare, racism, classism, religious strife? Logic is a nice little idea, but is not functional in human practice. People make bad choices in real life all the time, and they even make them for the wrong reasons. I assume so when I write a module.
This is actually one of those points that I think DMs miss out on quite frequently. There is a tendency, I feel, for DMs to run their NPCs as intelligently and logically as possible, whether minion thugs or BBEGs. In "reality" (using this term loosely) though, intelligent beings do all sorts of things that are not to their advantage driven entirely by emotion, prejudice, etc. I think that the Pathfinder writers in general play up to this "illogical" behavior in their writings. An example that leaps to mind: the ogres in the tannery room under Jorgenfist. In their tactics, the writer suggests that the ogres will try to humiliate the PCs and bull rush them into the tanning vat, because it's funny to them. With just a little sense, though, it's clear that the ogres should simply surrender to any group powerful enough to invade a fortress full of things way tougher than ogres and, further, that the AoO provoked by that bull rush is going to get these ogres mopped up by an 11th level party. It's an "illogical" tactic, but it makes some sense, based on ogre psychology (I imagine), and is a damn sight more interesting than, "Okay, you mop up the ogres in about a round and a half."
Anyway, Mr. Logue's spoiler is a great example of emotion over logic, and there are many others. I have always liked giving my BBEGs something to care about that can force them to act "illogical," by the way: like a partner in crime who is a childhood friend that he will sacrifice himself to save or a tendency to use an exotic weapon just because it looks cool.
All that said, this might not be what Mary meant by "illogical," but I felt that Mr. Logue's comments deserved a little support.
O
I can see there being a hard time caring about a brand new town that was made up exclusively to be put in danger...
The thing is, Korvosa isn't brand new to your PCs. They lived and loved and lost there (if you go by the hooks in the Player's Guide). So when it goes to pot, there's a big stake for the PCs to make sure it doesn't slip off the Edge into Anarchy.
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I was a little put off by the early boss in EoA as well. The characters are supposed to be built with an eye toward hatred for this guy then he's most likely killed off in the first act?? It would be like the Joker getting killed 10 minutes into the upcoming Dark Knight movie. I can see my players having a real problem with this - taking the time to write up a detailed history on how they hate this guy, then offing him very easily in the initial encounter. It just doesn't make for a compelling encounter for me. I know I plan to re-write this section to hopefully give said boss a little more facetime in the first couple installments. I still have high hopes for the overall AP, but the initial volume did not reach my expectations.
All that said, this might not be what Mary meant by "illogical," but I felt that Mr. Logue's comments deserved a little support.
Yeah, this is true. I'm operating on my understanding of Mary's idea of "logic" from the old HMM thread around the holidays. If that is not what she's talking about then it's a different discussion.
Thanks for the support Arcesilaus. You're take on my style of NPC is spot on. That's what I am shooting for.
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I just want to say that the early boss in EoA is NOT the major crime boss at all, but a very old and not very powerful little leaguer. So there is not real "1st level pcs killing big baddie" feel to it.Word. He's a dweeb in the scheme of things. He's a nothing and the module makes that as clear as clear can be. He never amounted to anything.
In the words of my character after we killed him. "Wow, he was much scarier when I was 12"
I was a little put off by the early boss in EoA as well. The characters are supposed to be built with an eye toward hatred for this guy then he's most likely killed off in the first act?? It would be like the Joker getting killed 10 minutes into the upcoming Dark Knight movie. I can see my players having a real problem with this - taking the time to write up a detailed history on how they hate this guy, then offing him very easily in the initial encounter. It just doesn't make for a compelling encounter for me. I know I plan to re-write this section to hopefully give said boss a little more facetime in the first couple installments. I still have high hopes for the overall AP, but the initial volume did not reach my expectations.
I can see how this might be off putting. In truth Lamm isn't supposed to be a BBEG. He's a way to get a party of diverse characters to unite against a common threat (whom they all have their own reason to hate) and then forge the kind of bond you need to adventure together against horrible odds by defeating that threat together.
I personally think the hated BBEGs have to be built up IN GAME and not just in backstory, for them to be effective.
Think how much the PCs will hate Queen Ileosa when they realize they've been playing lap dog to that b$*%@ for an entire adventure and even helped her round up an innocent scapegoat...now that's some BBEG hatred build-up.
In the words of my character after we killed him. "Wow, he was much scarier when I was 12"I just want to say that the early boss in EoA is NOT the major crime boss at all, but a very old and not very powerful little leaguer. So there is not real "1st level pcs killing big baddie" feel to it.Word. He's a dweeb in the scheme of things. He's a nothing and the module makes that as clear as clear can be. He never amounted to anything.
Ha! Great! :-)
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This was one more thing that struck a bad chord with me - when the PCs go into Gaedren's lair, the city is fine and when they exit the city has gone out of control. I know other posts have suggested giving more lead up to the event in the introduction, but as written it seemed very contrived - like we'll send the PCs here to keep them occupied then spring the plot hook on them when they come out.
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I have to agree the "crime boss" is rock bottom for a boss. Basically I get the feeling that he once could have been a true player. However he is well past his prime and the only thing he has going for him is intimidation of his "gang" which don't take that much to begin with.
Mary if you could have your DM to hop online here and let us know what he felt was out of place maybe it could be salvaged for you.
Also I haven't read the guide for korvosa but from EoA I didn't get the feeling that every major part of the government was evil. I know that some places are but to be honest I think it shows real life effectively. Because I know that more than a few cities could be labeled LE. The powerplayers are almost always out for themselves and keep the little people relatively happy just so they won't revolt.
This was one more thing that struck a bad chord with me - when the PCs go into Gaedren's lair, the city is fine and when they exit the city has gone out of control. I know other posts have suggested giving more lead up to the event in the introduction, but as written it seemed very contrived - like we'll send the PCs here to keep them occupied then spring the plot hook on them when they come out.
Check out the end of Gangs of New York for a great presentation of how someone's drive for vengeance might blind them to monumental changes gripping their landscape. I love how that movie plays out.
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Hi, Mary.
Let me ask: what has been your most positive role-playing adventure? What's been the best for you, and why?
Gosh. Twenty-nine years of gaming gives a lot to choose among.
Probably the most fun was the _Radiant_ space opera campaign (run in a homebrew) where the PCs started out as crew of a struggling tramp merchant starship, and ended up as major players in two different star systems (one highly civilized and connected, one a "lost colony."
The background and setting became very rich over five years of play; the PCs' home base was particularly well developed, as was the lost colony world. The PCs had enough power to do a lot of interesting things, but they had to use finesse--they couldn't go head-to-head with their biggest opponents, like the demon-possessed AI that turned out to be running the colony planet.
My favorite part was the PC infiltration of a "self-improvement company" (really a dangerous cult which was using demon possession as its road to self-improvement): one of the PCs managed to get himself quite far into the cult leadership, while the others worked from outside to support him and gather the evidence needed to convince the authorities. The insider PC complicated things immensely by falling in love with the cult leader's daugher.... The arc ended with a very tense raid to extricate the PC (and his girlfriend) and try to bag the cult leader; and a lengthy roleplaying situation where the PCs were trying to discover if there was any way to redeem the daughter.
I think fantasy is a lot easier to run, and I've had good experiences there too, but this game really stands out for me. It rewarded thinking, planning, and understanding the setting. The PCs managed to uncover a ring of vampires by tracing a complex series of clues starting with "Why does this class of people on the space station spend more money and drink more fluids than they ought to?" and ending with a PC needing to deliberately bait a suspected vampire into attacking him.
And after five years of play the PCs were pretty complicated people, with friends, lovers, enemies, family, culture clashes, hopes and fears.... The APs go by so fast, farm boy to archmage in 6 months, I just don't get that level of characterization.
I like vivid long-term NPCs and places that I can come back to. I like the PCs to make a positive impact overall, even if they fail at some things. I like the setting to stand up to scrutiny, because it's so much fun to be able to figure things out and come up with clever plans. I like some occult and mysterious aspects (plain SF doesn't do it for me) but I like everyday life to still seem fairly human (4e doesn't do it for me either).
Mary
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Ha! Great! :-)In the words of my character after we killed him. "Wow, he was much scarier when I was 12"I just want to say that the early boss in EoA is NOT the major crime boss at all, but a very old and not very powerful little leaguer. So there is not real "1st level pcs killing big baddie" feel to it.Word. He's a dweeb in the scheme of things. He's a nothing and the module makes that as clear as clear can be. He never amounted to anything.
That is a good approach that I'll have to keep in mind - make sure the characters write Gaedren far into their backstory (10 or more years) then play up how feeble he has become and how he's a shell of his former self.
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This was one more thing that struck a bad chord with me - when the PCs go into Gaedren's lair, the city is fine and when they exit the city has gone out of control. I know other posts have suggested giving more lead up to the event in the introduction, but as written it seemed very contrived - like we'll send the PCs here to keep them occupied then spring the plot hook on them when they come out.
The background is there the King has been sick for months. So he happens to die just as the PC's are preoccupied so what. As much as it seems cliche things like that do happen all the time.
But for a smoke break I wouldn't have met my fiance. I could have just skipped it but it just happened to be a turning point in my life.
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Hi, Mary.
Let me ask: what has been your most positive role-playing adventure? What's been the best for you, and why?
Gosh. Twenty-nine years of gaming gives a lot to choose among.
Probably the most fun was the _Radiant_ space opera campaign (run in a homebrew) where the PCs started out as crew of a struggling tramp merchant starship, and ended up as major players in two different star systems (one highly civilized and connected, one a "lost colony."
The background and setting became very rich over five years of play; the PCs' home base was particularly well developed, as was the lost colony world. The PCs had enough power to do a lot of interesting things, but they had to use finesse--they couldn't go head-to-head with their biggest opponents, like the demon-possessed AI that turned out to be running the colony planet.
My favorite part was the PC infiltration of a "self-improvement company" (really a dangerous cult which was using demon possession as its road to self-improvement): one of the PCs managed to get himself quite far into the cult leadership, while the others worked from outside to support him and gather the evidence needed to convince the authorities. The insider PC complicated things immensely by falling in love with the cult leader's daugher.... The arc ended with a very tense raid to extricate the PC (and his girlfriend) and try to bag the cult leader; and a lengthy roleplaying situation where the PCs were trying to discover if there was any way to redeem the daughter.
I think fantasy is a lot easier to run, and I've had good experiences there too, but this game really stands out for me. It rewarded thinking, planning, and understanding the setting. The PCs managed to uncover a ring of vampires by tracing a complex series of clues starting with "Why does this class of people on the space station spend more money and drink more fluids than they ought to?" and ending with a PC needing to deliberately bait a suspected vampire into...
If the first volume is any indication of the series, I think there will be much opportunity for characters to form relationships and bonds with NPCs in the CotCT AP - volume 1 introduces a number of NPCs that it seems will be recurring characters throughout the campaign and puts the PCs in situations where they can interact with the NPCs. This is one of the main reasons why I love urban campaigns so much - the opportunity for the DM to grow and develop NPCs in much the same way the players grow and develop the PCs.
I have a theory as to why your group has these problems with modules, but I'm not certain and don't like to suppose too much. It has a lot to do with logic always trumping human (or monster) foibles and emotions in your group's view.
I don't recognize my GM's play in this description, frankly. I think of that cult-leader's daughter scenario I described earlier, and it doesn't look to me as though logic was trumping emotion there. (Nor on the PC's side. Falling in love with her was a *very* bad idea. He was already married to the Captain....)
I think NPCs should behave like complicated emotional people. But there needs to be some sense that their behavior really comes from their emotions, rather than "Oh, it has incomprehensible monster-ish emotions" being a cover for "Actually it's cardboard that does what the GM wants." I'm afraid I've played in enough games where the NPCs were plot devices that I don't give as much benefit of the doubt as I probably should. I really need to see that on some level they make sense. Things like the part of Jorgenfist where a single giant sits in a watchtower 24/7 with no relief or food just don't work for me. Sure, he's a monster with inhuman attitudes; but doesn't he need to eat and sleep?
I think we do have NPCs act according to emotion. They lose morale, they pick fights they can't win, they develop stubborn attachments to wrong ideas. But in general, the more you learn about them the more you can understand why they do what they do, even if it's illogical. And if they are really dysfunctional, they tend to get bad results, so highly successful people will usually have *some* kind of smarts going for them.
Mary
I have a theory as to why your group has these problems with modules, but I'm not certain and don't like to suppose too much. It has a lot to do with logic always trumping human (or monster) foibles and emotions in your group's view.
I don't recognize my GM's play in this description, frankly. I think of that cult-leader's daughter scenario I described earlier, and it doesn't look to me as though logic was trumping emotion there. (Nor on the PC's side. Falling in love with her was a *very* bad idea. He was already married to the Captain....)
I think NPCs should behave like complicated emotional people. But there needs to be some sense that their behavior really comes from their emotions, rather than "Oh, it has incomprehensible monster-ish emotions" being a cover for "Actually it's cardboard that does what the GM wants." I'm afraid I've played in enough games where the NPCs were plot devices that I don't give as much benefit of the doubt as I probably should. I really need to see that on some level they make sense. Things like the part of Jorgenfist where a single giant sits in a watchtower 24/7 with no relief or food just don't work for me. Sure, he's a monster with inhuman attitudes; but doesn't he need to eat and sleep?
I think we do have NPCs act according to emotion. They lose morale, they pick fights they can't win, they develop stubborn attachments to wrong ideas. But in general, the more you learn about them the more you can understand why they do what they do, even if it's illogical. And if they are really dysfunctional, they tend to get bad results, so highly successful people will usually have *some* kind of smarts going for them.
Mary
Well in this case we are at an impase here Mary. I'd still love to know what about the module your GM found untenable.
I'm sorry, I have given a false impression.
The NPC whom my GM foreshadowed and then apologized for was the King of Spiders, not Gaedrin Lamm. That Lamm was small-time was clear enough from the Player's Guide, though we still felt that trying to motivate the PCs by those very strong vengeance hooks and then having them play out immediately was a bad idea for us. Our experience is that PCs designed around vengeance tend to become uninteresting or infeasible to play once their goal is accomplished, especially if they were not played for very long. In any case bringing the party together was not an issue for us as it was designed together (though with our usual significant inter-party conflicts).
But my reaction to the GM's foreshadowing was "Cool! There's the first sign of the social geography we're going to learn to navigate. I wish it hadn't been quite so strongly brought up so soon, but okay, I can cope."
GM: "Actually you're supposed to kill him very early on."
Me: "Oh. Never mind then."
I know there are other NPCs who do recur, but I'd already run out of morale.
As for Blackjack, I don't know much about that, but I do know that my GM's reaction to that was sharply negative. He was muttering "So they don't have Locate Person, do they? ... Or Locate Object? Or Detect Thoughts? Or ...." I don't remember the whole list. But clearly something was not making sense to him.
Mary
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This whole post is spoilers
The vengeance/Gaedran Lamm thing should've been fleshed out a little better. We seemed to have an odd time figuring out 'why should we take out our revenge now?' We all hated him, but it didn't seem an imminent thing, and most of our characters weren't the 'let's go out and murder someone' type of personality.
Perhaps saying that Zellara's son was still in his grasp as a Lamb or something would've been better.
As far as NPCs being fleshed out and emotional, the whole Grau/Sabine thing is going to be awesome, especially since one of the players is a student at Orsini's school.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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As for Blackjack, I don't know much about that, but I do know that my GM's reaction to that was sharply negative. He was muttering "So they don't have Locate Person, do they? ... Or Locate Object? Or Detect Thoughts? Or ...." I don't remember the whole list. But clearly something was not making sense to him.
Hi, Mary.
In the cases that you bring up, I'd probably find myself on your side of the issues. I'd become notorious among some gaming convention TRAVELLER Referees as the guy who "thinks too hard" about plot holes.
"There must have been some reason that the engines were sabotaged on the same trip where the original captain got incapacitated, which was also the first time in history that these aliens agreed to meet with the Empire's officials," I would ask afterwards.
"No, not really. Just coincidence."
Ghaaah.
So, I think I see where your gaming group is coming from, looking at the plot holes in CotCT. But I have some thoughts:
1) After a point, easy access to powerful spells and monsters distorts any "historical" fantasy setting. There has to be a "willing suspension of disbelief" so that Korvosa still looks like a city from Europe's High Medieval period. Any illogic that keeps Korvosa looking "normal" is easy for me to hand-wave.
2) There ought to be an element of trust here. Maybe there's a reason the adventurer in the sewers was unRaiseable. (They couldn't find her body?) Maybe there's a reason BlackJack hasn't been found. (Everything from a Necklace of Proof Against Detection to an extradimensional lair to an ally or alter-ego highly placed in the Hellknights who keeps baffling the official detection attempts?)
That was one of the main reasons I refused to even consider starting to run a RotRL campaign when the first chapter was released: a belief that some of the mysteries of Sandport would be explained in later issues.
3) I think part of the DM's job in a fantasy campaign is to guide the players' perceptions as to what's odd and what's mearly fantastical. "You see a grey dappled unicorn" may just be wondrous. But if it's a clue, the DM ought to spell out why: "...which is the only unicorn you've ever heard of that isn't pure white." And of course, to successfully do that, the DM has to know what's a clue, and what's not.
I'm sorry, I have given a false impression.
The NPC whom my GM foreshadowed and then apologized for was the King of Spiders, not Gaedrin Lamm. That Lamm was small-time was clear enough from the Player's Guide, though we still felt that trying to motivate the PCs by those very strong vengeance hooks and then having them play out immediately was a bad idea for us. Our experience is that PCs designed around vengeance tend to become uninteresting or infeasible to play once their goal is accomplished, especially if they were not played for very long. In any case bringing the party together was not an issue for us as it was designed together (though with our usual significant inter-party conflicts).
But my reaction to the GM's foreshadowing was "Cool! There's the first sign of the social geography we're going to learn to navigate. I wish it hadn't been quite so strongly brought up so soon, but okay, I can cope."
GM: "Actually you're supposed to kill him very early on."
Me: "Oh. Never mind then."
I know there are other NPCs who do recur, but I'd already run out of morale.
As for Blackjack, I don't know much about that, but I do know that my GM's reaction to that was sharply negative. He was muttering "So they don't have Locate Person, do they? ... Or Locate Object? Or Detect Thoughts? Or ...." I don't remember the whole list. But clearly something was not making sense to him.
Mary
Okay, here I'm really confused. You don't have to kill the King of Spiders. In fact it wouldn't be very easy to do so. There are lots of other routes to take (and really, one should take) to get what you need from him.
As for Lamm. It's not that the vengeance has to DEFINE the character, but they definitely went through something under Lamm's evil hand that makes them want to make sure it doesn't happen to others. Besides, the hooks in the PG aren't ALL about vengeance, some are about in-the-now problems (like a missing kid). Vengeance is petty. Justice, on the other hand, is a major theme in CoftheCT. I'd suggest making PCs that are about Justice more than revenge (and therefore seek out Lamm). These PCs are likely to be highly connected to the goings on of Korvosa and have an ample wish to involve themselves in abating the city's plight.
Blackjack...Locate Person...I don't get it. That shouldn't matter based on the module.
There is no Blackjack when the adventure begins. Vencarlo Orsini has renounced the mask, and given up the cause. It's not until the adventure's end, and in no small part thanks to the party's own inspiring heroics, that Orsini takes up Blackjack's sword once more. If you cast Locate Person...you'd get nothing for Blackjack.
If your GM is referring to finding Blackjack in the past, well for every spell there's a counter spell my friend. Nondetection is a good one.
It sounds like you and yours are looking to play a different story than the one being presented. That's fair, but It doesn't make the story presented in Edge of Anarchy nonsensical or illogical.
If you have such strong expectations for the way everything needs to go to make sense, you're group is probably better off gening your own adventures, rather than buying pre-written ones, projecting your desires on them, and finding they don't do exactly what you hoped they would do.
Okay, I'm done with this thread for awhile. It's bringing me down.
Well in this case we are at an impase here Mary. I'd still love to know what about the module your GM found untenable.
I will ask him, but he is not a keen message-board poster (he does read them).
Okay, he's reading over my shoulder, and he says (following is a quote):
The death of the King. I know, it's the whole premise; and I'm willing to give that, but there's not much give left.
Implication of the death: the churches of, at least, Abadar, Pharasma, and Asmodei (maybe Sarenrae as well--the level of the HP here is not given) must be in league with the villain or see their own ends furthered by this event.
Those three churches at *least* have Raise Dead, and they have Commune. It's beyond my belief they wouldn't ask "Was the Queen involved in the King's murder?" Then they know, and there must be a reason they aren't acting; easiest that they're all in league, but that moves toward the city is all evil, which my player finds untenable.
A sidebar here would really have helped. Set up something about the culture or setting that explains how death is handled in a setting with Raise Dead/Resurrection.
And the head mage of the Academae can *also* cast Raise Dead and Commune (via Limited Wish) so he also has to be in on it, probably.
Then there's the very end. It's a movie. Blackjack does all this cool stuff, but--how? We're given that he's 6th level. Does he have high level items? Then we should know. What if the PCs intervene? What about the low-level mages with Magic Missile and low-level clerics with Hold Person? (This is ignoring the top-level folk!) This works in a low magic setting but we are *not in a low-magic setting.* It's a fine dramatic scene but it doesn't make sense. If he has defenses and the PCs do something, I need to know about those defenses; if he doesn't have the defenses how does he get away? I just don't know. How does he defend against Locate Person/Object?
It seems clear that this is not meant to be run using the same mechanics that everything else is. This is way more dramatist than I'm comfortable running.
And the imp/pdrag thing; if that's just local color it should *not* be in the random encounter chart. Then the PCs are in combat and will expect the combat mechanics to apply, including expecting them to apply to the pdrags.
Maybe part of the problem is that parts of the setting need to be left fluid for the module 6 author to fill in, but gosh that makes it harder.
Those are the two big ones. I can't remember all the little ones. I know I had trouble with the Eel's End guy being so low level, but okay, it's possible (luck, connections?) I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the setting.
Mary
I think there are two different issues that are in play here ...
1) The giants in the watchtower 24/7: I don't think that module writers honestly intend to make it seem like the same giant sits in a watch room, sleepless, without eating or going to the restroom. It is, of course, unrealistically complicated, particularly given word count limits, to give an hour-by-hour rundown of every shift-change, outhouse location, and mealtime necessary for something as complicated as an entire fortress. Add to that the very weird task of being forced to write to a "slice of time" (specifically, the moment in which the PCs actually interact with a particular room or NPC), and you get the static environment that many modules have. This generally only causes trouble when the PCs have time to scout a location over time, and you (the DM) are forced to animate the locale and extend that "slice" into a whole pie. Unfortunately, that's a case where the PCs are putting some work into the DM's lap. No writer has the space or foresight to prepare for every detail, and we DMs are forced to improvise or work out stuff in advance (which sucks when, as we both do, we rely on prewritten modules so we don't HAVE to do this sort of work). Your work on FoSG, for example, was invaluable and is the sort of thing that we poor, under-appreciated DMs must work out (or steal, in my case).
2) Fantasy physics v. fantasy drama: Yes, the government probably has access to Locate Person (as well as the ability to Raise Dead on the ankheg victim you mentioned in an earlier post). Of course, its use of said spells removes a fair amount of the "coolness" of the scenario. I understand that you and your gaming-partner are pretty stickler-y regarding the mechanics of the fantasy world and making sure things make sense, but I feel that sometimes a certain amount of "looking the other way for the sake of story" is required. I personally like the idea of a town that erects monuments to its fallen heroes and has a masked avenger running around righting wrongs, and, therefore, I'm willing to ignore the technical difficulties involved therein. My players would agree, I think. That said, it seems easy enough to come up with "fantasy physics" that justify the same flavor. I assume that the adventurer who was killed by the ankheg was dragged down into a hole by the fleeing bug, and, therefore, the body was never recovered and couldn't be Raised. I'm sure Blackjack could afford some anti-divination magic of his own. Etc.
I'm not trying to cause a fuss. Just trying to lure you back to CotCT so your DM will post all sorts of cool stuff that I can steal.
O
EDIT: I got beat to the punch for point 2.
Nicholas, I'm sorry to bring you down. But if you don't want to know, DON'T ASK. Please. I would never have posted that, but you asked me two or three times for details. Clearly I shouldn't have given them, but it would help if you refrained from asking.
Mary
Most settings break down if you assume that Raise Dead is used too often. It's bloody expensive, and churches might not want to use it for people, even important people, who passed of natural causes, like the King appeared to. Casting raise dead for someone who died of old age wastes a perfectly good diamond.
Limited Wish also costs XP, i.e. life force, so many mages might simply refuse to cast it unless they have a mighty good reason.
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I've read, but not played, the module. IMHO:
Once Lamm is gone, the slightly dubious premise that they can only get rid of Ileosa's jewels by handing them in links them to Cressida (and introduces the queen). And then she gives them orders to do a series of disconnected tasks up to the end, which felt a bit forced. I suspect that a lot of these tasks were there to introduce a series of NPC/villains who will show up later, but if so it feels a bit coincidental - maybe just having them wander by and stroke their moustaches might have been better.
That said, there are lots of good things in the module - I'm just picking on the stuff I didn't like. I'm not bothered by the fact that Korvosa seems full of nasty people - though again it could provide a challenge to motivate the players to save such a place, but that is a challenge for the DM to wrestle with (again, backstory is the key, I suspect). Some of the random encounters are very good - especially the non-combat (well, I assume non-combat) one with the dipso guard and a few others like that. The spider guy is nasty too. I know that Nick said he read and liked the Lies of Locke Lamora and it shows a lot in this module, which is no bad thing at all.
I'm certainly not bothered by the death of the king - you can't raise someone who has died from stat loss or old age (which is how you die of poison and disease - it doesn't cure the disease) and divinations can be ambiguous (and maybe she has the priests in her pocket - she is the queen, with lots of money and patronage, and that can easily be worked into the plot). As a plot device, the change of regime is great and reflects real-world history (as it often was a cause of major conflict). It is true that death not being permanent is a pain in plots involving killing very rich people (like kings) but I'm happy that they used an appropiate method. Hey, maybe they tried to raise him and he just died again.
If I run this, I will probably modify it to make the tasks in it hang together better. The problem with reading part of an AP without reading the rest is that you don't know where it is going, what is important and what can be cut or altered. I think that I'll probably wait until I have all of the bits before thinking how I might change it.
Maybe Mary's GM should do the same and then see about how to change it, and determine what makes sense and what doesn't.
The death of the King. I know, it's the whole premise; and I'm willing to give that, but there's not much give left.
Implication of the death: the churches of, at least, Abadar, Pharasma, and Asmodei (maybe Sarenrae as well--the level of the HP here is not given) must be in league with the villain or see their own ends furthered by this event.Those three churches at *least* have Raise Dead, and they have Commune. It's beyond my belief they wouldn't ask "Was the Queen involved in the King's murder?" Then they know, and there must be a reason they aren't acting; easiest that they're all in league, but that moves toward the city is all evil, which my player finds untenable.
A sidebar here would really have helped. Set up something about the culture or setting that explains how death is handled in a setting with Raise Dead/Resurrection.
And the head mage of the Academae can *also* cast Raise Dead and Commune (via Limited Wish) so he also has to be in on it, probably.
Okay. First off, whose to say the Queen even allows someone to cast Raise Dead on the king. She claims the king died of natural causes (he was old and sick) and that rule is rightfully hers. That's her story and she's sticking to it. What are these clerics supposed to do? Politics are messy. Do you go against the Queen and help tear the city apart? How do you get through her LEGIONS of guards or the Sable Company sworn to protect her? Also, what's to say these guys aren't all bought and paid for? Just because someone has the power to do something, doesn't mean they can or even will do it. This is exactly what I am talking about when it comes to assumptions. Why would you assume all the clerics are evil...maybe they are powerless in the face of a monarchy...maybe they don't want to add to the chaos by challenging the Queen and stirring up even more unrest? What good would that do? So they fight her, and win, and bring the King back...hardly matters if the city falls apart in the process. There's sooooooo many ways to shake this situation so that it's perfectly teneble. I'm not convinced here.
Then there's the very end. It's a movie. Blackjack does all this cool stuff, but--how? We're given that he's 6th level. Does he have high level items? Then we should know. What if the PCs intervene? What about the low-level mages with Magic Missile and low-level clerics with Hold Person? (This is ignoring the top-level folk!) This works in a low magic setting but we are *not in a low-magic setting.* It's a fine dramatic scene but it doesn't make sense. If he has defenses and the PCs do something, I need to know about those defenses; if he doesn't have the defenses how does he get away? I just don't know. How does he defend against Locate Person/Object?
Okay. First off, 6th level is pretty badassed in Korvosa. Second off, who's gonna stop him? Who brought their wand of magic missiles to a party? Why would they use it on this hero who is standing up to a Queen most people secretly despise and fear anyway. Classic Zorro stuff. Think of all the times in various old Zorro movies that a guard almost shoots him, but some onlooker "trips" and knocks the guard's rifle off line.
Also, who says he has to get away. It's ideal if he does. But this is a game, not a movie. If he drops like a box of rocks, he drops like a box of rocks. No biggie, doesn't ruin the game, just makes it less interesting later in the path (though not even by too much). I personally fudge mechanics all the time for story's sake. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, then you don't have to. The world doesn't end if Blackjack gets caught or killed. If nothing else, the PCs have MORE of a chance to rise to the occasion by taking his place in the scheme of things. Sure, he figures into later adventures, but you can always just replace him (use Grau...that's what I'd do...when he hears his old master is killed, he discovers a well of potential he had locked away and takes up the mantle of Blackjack, like he was supposed to do all those years ago).
As to how he hides from divination. Give him an amulet of proof against detection and be done with it...not a hard fix really...and definitely doesn't make the adventure untenable.
And the imp/pdrag thing; if that's just local color it should *not* be in the random encounter chart. Then the PCs are in combat and will expect the combat mechanics to apply, including expecting them to apply to the pdrags.
Just adjust the mechanics. The mechanics are not written in stone. The Golden Rule is that you, the GM, can change them whenever you want. That's what makes RPGs fun. They aren't hard-wired like video games. They are organic. Or, if this really bothers you, look at the thread about this topic where SEVERAL options are available.
Maybe part of the problem is that parts of the setting need to be left fluid for the module 6 author to fill in, but gosh that makes it harder.
Sure that's part of it, but really, it's also just that the FIRST installment, can't possibly fit ALL the information you need to know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. So, you have to have a little faith. And yes, or course, of course, you'll have to adapt these modules to your own group. No one can write a module that some one can pick up and run without any adaptation to their own group's playing style, unless it comes with pre-gens and is FILLED with thousands upon thousands of extra words that concern themselves with "What if the PCs ask about so-and-so" or "How come nobody found out who so-and-so really is." Really, module writers can't do all that for you. You have to do a lot of that on your own. If you want us to write modules like this, it means you are getting a lot less bang for your buck, cause we'll have to cut down on the meat of the adventure by half.
I know I had trouble with the Eel's End guy being so low level, but okay, it's possible (luck, connections?) I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the setting.
Chittersnap is the answer. I'd be scared of a guy who can control big ass spiders, and I'd assume he's got tricks up his sleeves I don't understand. Take away Devargo's ettercap and he's a street tough playing king of Eel's End.
Okay, now I'm really taking a break. I hope some of the above proves helpful to people with questions about continuity...otherwise I just wasted an hour of my life I should have spent writing adventures. ;-)
Nicholas, I'm sorry to bring you down. But if you don't want to know, DON'T ASK. Please. I would never have posted that, but you asked me two or three times for details. Clearly I shouldn't have given them, but it would help if you refrained from asking.
Mary
Its fine Mary. I think you and I are just of SUCH different minds about gaming. And that's okay. G'night everyone.
EDIT: Also, I gotta admit I'm bummed and baffled someone would throw out an adventure out of hand based on a couple of things they found weren't explained in detail (when explanations are pretty easy to imagine for all of them).
I also find it funny that every time a module I write is realeased you come along and slam it. That's awesome. It's like your on Pett's payroll. ;-)
::Light bulb goes off in Nick's dusty attic brain::
That's it! I shoulda known! I'll get you PETT! I'LL GET YOU!
Nick