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I'm planning on starting Rise of the Runelords again, with a new group, to playtest the PFRPG rules. I'll be using medium advancement for XP.
However, what this means is that if the party hits 90% of the encounters previous, they will hit 6th level immediately before the fight with Xanesha. Assuming they survive that fight, that will put them a full level below par for Hook Mountain Massacre, which leaves me worrying about a TPK. Thus, I'd like to slip an appropriate module in there to help them make up the short level.
Carnival of Tears can be dropped in right after Burnt Offerings (4th level) or Skinsaw Murders (6h level), and can be localized to Sandpoint thanks to the Whisperwood, but it seems to me that Skinsaw's serial murders could seem diminished in relation to the mass murder of Carnival. Are there any suggestions to dialing it back a notch so that A) Skinsaw still seems horrific, and B) the entire town of Sandpoint doesn't end up with PTSD from the machine gun hits of Goblin Day-Skinsaw-Carnival of Tears?
Any other module suggestions? An overland/wilderness for the trip to Hook Mountain, or a good urban adventure for Magnimar?
Any help you can provide would be appreciated!
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Well, I'd say you should drop a few hints that they should equip themselves as monster hunters. in the first two adventures in particular, there's alot of combat against classical supernatural monsters (demons, ghouls, the sandpoint devil, ect.) If they spend much time in the Hagfish or another good pub, you could have Jargie Quinn or someone else start telling tall tales about a famous monster hunter; think Van Helsing, or something. Make a big deal out of his cleverness and knowledge:
"and so, with the slavering, stinking demon on top of him, it's filthy claws inches from his throat, he reached to his belt for a cold-forged horseshoe and, with one desperate blow, caved in the dretch's skull! And after that, there was the flying dog. now, he knew that werewolf or otherwise, evil dogs are always hirt by the touch of silver..."
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I was essentially having this exact same problem(my players being 5th level and out of the haunted mansion) and so I ran Carnival of Tears as a bit of fluff.
I made some alterations to it however, setting it in turtlebeck ferry instead(swapping in the nymph from HMM for the one in the module) and used it to introduce a number of things later in the campaing(paradise is still there, though none of the players spotted the marks they did meet lucrecia), the nymph mentioned keeping an eye out for lamatar in case he was in any peril, and they met a few other NPCs around town(the mayor and the like) plus they got a better idea of the surrounding area.
The biggest problem I could see with it is that its a bit tough to get your players there(though you could set it in sandpoint, by the time the AP is over if you do that I can't imagine why anyone would want to live in sandpoint anymore).
I solved this because I had a player who was looking to take a level in the Sperewalker PrC and was a devote follower of desna. So I gave her a dream in which she heard desna talking of her children growing angry at the lands greed and turning away from her(I gave more of a lamashtu catch to it, then the queen of ice, like she was corrupting the fey from following desna). She asked the cleric to stop this and cut out the corruption before it could spread to the rest of her followers.
When the character woke, she had a lyrakin on her chest who flitted up and beckoned for her to follow, leading the player(and the party) to a mushroom circle. When the player stepped inside the mushroom circle she fell asleep and as the others watched the grass slowly grew up over her and she seemed to vanish. With a few knowledge checks the players discovered that mushroom circles are generally fey devices and are used as portals in conjunction with the first world and rarely are seen outside of Sanos forest(no canon for this, so if there are mushroom circles in Golarion they may be different).
The rest of the party stepped inside and fell asleep as well, waking to find themselves on a snow covered hilltop just outside the sanos forest and overlooking turtlebeck ferry, ready to start the adventure.
I was worried that the whole thing would come off a bit contrived, but the players seemed to see it all as a sign of divine action on Golarion, not direct but guided and helping them fight against one of the evils they have battled often thus far(Being lamashtu's minions) and ran well with it.
They interacted well with everything and while they seemed a bit confused by the peace of the place when they expected to find evil filling the carnival, they quickly took to it, hurrying to learn to ice skate and spin the wheel and everything else.
Then when night came it was very suitably creepy for them, and I think that it will serve as a very good introduction for what is to come in HMM, and they also seem to be viewing it as a danger of the frontier lands as I've emphasized how they were much more on guard against the ogre's in the surrounding forest and mountains then they were the fey at their backs.
It ended up being a really good session though and we managed to get all the way through the module in a single run(real long session). Now they players have decided to spend a couple of days there and then try and find a way home and I'm debating whether to allow the circle to still work or if I want to let them walk/riverboat and get a feel for the land better before HMM.
-Tarlane