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Some Spoilers, please bevare!
Well, my group finished Rise of the Runelords! We began January 7th of this year and played 32 6-hour sessions. The campaign consisted of (in order):
PF1 Burnt Offerings
Homemade Boggart Side Trek
PF2 Skinsaw Murders
D0 Hollow’s Last Hope
E1 Carnival of Tears
PF3 Hook Mountain
U1 Gallery of Evil
PF4 Fortress of the Stone Giants
PF5 Sins of the Saviors
PF6 Spires of Xin-Shalast
The players had a complete blast. Golarion has totally hooked them, and most of them now have Companion subscriptions as well as scooping up the Guide to Korvosa, Campaign Setting and Gazetteer.
They ended at 15th level Sunday Night while fighting (and defeating) Karzoug in his lair. Misha the Ranger/Scout Pathfinder, Aidan the farmer hero and Paladin of Erastil, Leland the Binder/Sorcerer and Kitara the Shoanti Spirit Shaman have saved the day!
These are all old-time hacks who immediately felt my enthusiasm for the setting and adored feeling like they were playing anew again with the fresh takes on Goblins, Ogres, Ghouls, Stone Giants, and the new monsters that returned wonder to their game.
Leland the Binder successfully co-produced a play at the Sandpoint Theatre with the book of Ancient songs he recovered from the ship in the swamps near Turtleback Ferry. Misha married Belvin the Shipyard guy and got some journals posted in the Pathfinder Chronicles. Titus Scarnetti is going through massive legal wrangling in Sandpoint. Aidan helped open a new shrine in Magnimar. Kitara was a very antisocial Shoanti who nonetheless won over the hearts of many of Sandpoint during their adventures. I should also mention how Leland, while bound with a particularly horny vestage, wound up sleeping with Justice Ironbriar’s wife disguised as the old elf himself.
Did they have a favorite adventure? It’s pretty much Hook Mountain and the adventures surrounding it. Fort Rannick, in particular, was a real highpoint for the group (and Shalelu stayed behind with her adoptive father figure to restart the Black Arrows).
Now, they have crafted PFRPG characters to tackle Curse of the Crimson Throne, our next game beginning in 6 days using the new rules set as our playtest game. Good times indeed. Thanks Paizo!
-DM Jeff
With Adding in the extra Adventures you guys finished at 15th level? Really
Congrats, Jeff! It sounds like a legendary game!
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With Adding in the extra Adventures you guys finished at 15th level? Really
Very much so. They missed some stuff along the way and that was actually my reasoning for adding the extra advetures to keep them up to date.
Also, I admit to scrapping a few rooms myself. My party and I are not fond of "you enter the 5th room, this one ALSO has 8-10 whatevers, and they come to attack you". Repeat rooms are ususlly scrapped or rewritten. Through sheer dumb luck they missed most of Foxglove Manor except for the end sequence they needed.
-DM Jeff
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How did you use Hollow's Last Hope after Skinsaw? You must have pumped up the monsters quite a bit to be any kind of threat to a group of adventurers that are 6th level or higher.
I did indeed! I was so enamored by the locations and the basic idea that I expanded the whole poisoning thing to be a Sczarni plot backfiring, and ramped up the various creatures to match them with stock stats from other books!
-DM Jeff
Congrats on finishing!I look forward to running RotRLs in 3 weeks.
and thanks for the time table. 192 hours! wow!
I wasn't going to post but I guess I will. We started sometime in November and are playing a little more than two times a month at eight hours a pop. That would be around 130 hours of playing time. Combat goes quickly it's the role playing that uses most of the time. Any guesses on how far we are? Take a second and make a rational calculation than click on the spoiler.
Wow. This is a great thread. I am starting Rise of the Runlords with the Beta rules in two weeks with my gaming group and am super excited about it. I am so greatful for all of the opinions and great extras on these boards.
Wow. This is a great thread. I am starting Rise of the Runlords with the Beta rules in two weeks with my gaming group and am super excited about it. I am so greatful for all of the opinions and great extras on these boards.
Same here. Same sentiments.
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OK, the fast playing bit: I play with d20 veterans who really know their stuff. We play very close to Rules As Written and combats fly fast and furious. They also trust my quick judgements.
Then I bet I didn't count the close to 60 total hours spent doing stuff in email. I bet we all spent about 2 hours a week doing otherwise boring reminders or stat stuff (or dividing treasure) during the week over email (that can eat up a lot of time at the table) so that helped too.
Also, treasure tracking. Everyone had a couple trading card sleeves and we used Paizo's treasure cards to track the entire inventory. It was funny when they turned them in at the last game and I was looking at nearly 60 cards! Christmas Tree indeed!
PDF's: I clip out the stat blocks and print them onto my own page. The format stays, but then I take a few minutes each week to jot down page numbers (specifically of spells or rarely-used feats) right next to the items in question to speed play. It also made capturing NPC profile heads, handouts, and maps a godsend. I can also copy floorplans in the PDFs without having to cut out the text and numbers to enlarge for miniatures.
Overall the quality of the adventures, the PDF, and the general way Paizo writes the way we like to play all helped.
To all those about to start: you should love it. This was the campaign that finally got my one player to admit was more fun than Shackled City (but only just!).
-DM Jeff
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Contributor
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Congratulations, Jeff!
I have been running RotRL as a PbP for almost a year, now (anniversary is 26 September) and the party still hasn't met with the Sheriff about the goblin problem.
Even so, the players are having a good time, I think. PbP is much slower and we've spent a lot of time on character development. I think things will go faster once we get past the initial setup.
Some Spoilers, please bevare!
Well, my group finished Rise of the Runelords! We began January 7th of this year and played 32 6-hour sessions. The campaign consisted of (in order):
PF1 Burnt Offerings
Homemade Boggart Side Trek
PF2 Skinsaw Murders
D0 Hollow’s Last Hope
E1 Carnival of Tears
PF3 Hook Mountain
U1 Gallery of Evil
PF4 Fortress of the Stone Giants
PF5 Sins of the Saviors
PF6 Spires of Xin-Shalast
Could you give a rookie-DM some hints how to interweave these adventures with the path?