I am curious how many people ended Thirteen Cages with the peaceful shutdown of the tree.
My group decided to chop it down, even after finding the manual indicating the existence of a shutdown mechanism.
So, the volcano blew up, and many of the cultivated relationships and fleshed out city locations are gone. Oh well... They are still going after the remaining Cagewrights.
Most of my group was blown up. After that we started a new campaign.
CEO
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I decided to add an element into the campaign that would allow them to save the day entirely. My paladin of freedom had Alakast which I made into an intelligent, self-motivated weapon of power. Early in the battle, Alakast told the paladin that it could sense the artifact energies moving through the tree and if the paladin could buy Alakast some time, it could study those energies and then if it was placed into the tree's energies, it could absorb them into itself, effectively destroying everything around the tree, but saving Cauldron. Of course, this would demand that the paladin sacrifice himself and Alakast would be destroyed, but they both decided to do it and the plan worked to perfection in a gut-wrenching climax to the whole campaign (I ended up ending the campaign with Thirteen Cages).
-Lisa
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That is an excellent idea Lisa. I might use it if my party misses the collar. However, I rather like the idea of Cauldron getting messed up no matter what, considering the magnitude of the event. And the Rift is just a cool place to continue the campaign afterwards if the players are up to it. I'm looking forward to showing them the map of the aftermath. Should hit them hard.
I decided to add an element into the campaign that would allow them to save the day entirely. My paladin of freedom had Alakast which I made into an intelligent, self-motivated weapon of power. Early in the battle, Alakast told the paladin that it could sense the artifact energies moving through the tree and if the paladin could buy Alakast some time, it could study those energies and then if it was placed into the tree's energies, it could absorb them into itself, effectively destroying everything around the tree, but saving Cauldron. Of course, this would demand that the paladin sacrifice himself and Alakast would be destroyed, but they both decided to do it and the plan worked to perfection in a gut-wrenching climax to the whole campaign (I ended up ending the campaign with Thirteen Cages).
-Lisa
That's a good ending to the campaign. Did you skip Occipitus as well, or did you leave that as an open end?
What are you going to do now the campaing is over? Run a new one or take a break?
That is a cool ending, Lisa.
As an alternative, something where the PC with the smoking eye template could make a sacrifice to stop it--perhaps using the alter to Adimarchus in the earlier room.
However, my PCs never came close to that, adhering to a strict policy of "Always take secret doors. Once those are exhausted, always go left first." Turns out, if you find the first secret door, and always turn left, it takes you almost straight to the Tree.
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CEO
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That's a good ending to the campaign. Did you skip Occipitus as well, or did you leave that as an open end?
What are you going to do now the campaing is over? Run a new one or take a break?
We actually did Occipitus. My Paladin of Freedom, being the selfless person he is, sacrificed himself in the Skull and got the Smoking Eye template. We actually had quite a bit of fun with that. Some of the denizens of the lower planes identified him as a Lord of Hell, which totally screwed with our demon-hunter Cleric of Kord. But since the Paladin of Freedom was using his new found power to try to return Occipitus to the angels it originally belonged to, everybody went along.
What am I doing next? Running Rise of the Runelords with the Pathfinder RPG rules. We start on the first Tuesday in June, giving me enough time to digest the Alpha rules before we start. Should be a blast!
-Lisa
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This is good info, keep it up. I'm running SCAP for my family. My son returns from UW in a couple weeks so we'll start back up. We're only on Zenith Trajectory but I plan to pick up the pace a bit. I've been trying to figure out the right ending and these ideas work well. My only isssue is I've got a Swashbuckler/thief, dwarven defender, and elven wizard, with an NPC cleric hanging about. Not sure which of them (if any) would pick up the smoking eye. Yet.
Looking forward to hearing about the upcoming RotRL game! Hopefully we'll get a few game logs or something. It's good to hear you're continuing your Tuesday game with everything you've got going on. Continue maintaining that "playing"/"working" balance. :-)
Pete
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CEO
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Looking forward to hearing about the upcoming RotRL game! Hopefully we'll get a few game logs or something. It's good to hear you're continuing your Tuesday game with everything you've got going on. Continue maintaining that "playing"/"working" balance. :-)
Pete
I am not sure I will get game logs or anything. But I will probably start posting in the RotRL section as we move along. The only reason we had a break was to get the PRPG rules set so we wouldn't have to retrofit the PCs right away.
I do have one question, I was thinking about recapping my SCAP campaign, highlighting things that I did to tie plotlines together, and also areas where I colored outside the lines. Would anybody be interested in that?
-Lisa
Yes.
I do have one question, I was thinking about recapping my SCAP campaign, highlighting things that I did to tie plotlines together, and also areas where I colored outside the lines. Would anybody be interested in that?-Lisa
I, for one, would be interested. We're near the end of Test of the Smoking Eye right now and I'm still reading and absorbing as much as I can from everyone to make the game better for my players. Your input would be appreciated.
Very yes.
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I do have one question, I was thinking about recapping my SCAP campaign, highlighting things that I did to tie plotlines together, and also areas where I colored outside the lines. Would anybody be interested in that?
-Lisa
Yes Indeedy. Normally I make up my own campaigns (using homebrew + adventures/modules from dungeon and paizo). This is the first instance where I've had a "serial" adventure laid out. It's actually been a bit more difficult in some ways because of that. I'm not free to just "let them go their own way".
The primary difficulty I'm having is with the foreshadowing. For example at the end of Bazaar a beholder pops up at the end. This, of course, caused a great amount of interest/concern with my players and they wanted to pursue it but I directed them elsewhere. Then the next few adventures didn't even touch on this, so my players seem to think it was just something random and have forgotten it at this point. So whatever "outside the lines" coloring you did tying things together would be interesting.
Pete
Yes as well.
I am always up for seeing how people may have done things differently. Anything that adds to the collective pool of knowledge and perhaps I can take something from is a good thing.
My group will be raiding the Malachite Fortress tomorrow so my Shackled City game is still in it's infancy and can only grow from here.