I'm running Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale as an interlude to give my PCs a chance to replenish some resources and get some more experience. Have any of you done this? I'd be interested in hearing your experiences.
I put my comments about CoBV itself in its thread, since they seem off-topic for this forum.
Hey tbug,
Although I'm running a more classical CotCT with the heroes being professional adventurers, I'd like to know what you are doing with Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale.
I'm sure the rest of the CotCT community would appreciate it if you posted up your notes, findings, etc. I know I will. Thanks!
Hey Cesare,
Sure. The other thread is about issues specific to the module regardless of whether you run it as part of CotCT (eg the problem with the polluted lake and the fort being upstream), so it makes sense to discuss specifics of integrating the module with the AP here.
The first issue was to reconcile the dates. I just said that nobody had answered Sir Gyrad's call for adventurers yet. He's thus been sitting in the vale for the past year, rather than the past few months. This also gives more time for Fort Thorn to have been built, plus have the dire boar hunt, and stuff like that. King Eodred sent him out during the tricentennial, and it's taken him this long just to get this much done. I haven't decided if this should mean that Oakbrow and Kassmak should have contacted the fort already. I think that they have, months ago, but that Sir Gyrad has not responded.
The second issue was to figure out who Gyrad Tolgrith was. I decided that he was some strong dumb guy with a great Charisma. The king liked him so he knighted him. I'm pondering also giving him a bit of a cowardly streak, to explain why, even though he's got more levels in PC classes than the PCs, he still stays behind when there's trouble. I want him to be likable and even a good leader, but not very motivated to put himself into dangerous situations he doesn't understand. I think I'll add an aide, formerly a sergeant of the Korvosan Guard, who makes sure that things like wages and food supplies get properly handled.
Third, I wanted better motivations for the PCs. My group looks down a little on Korvosan knighthoods, since they see them as ways for peasants to claim to be nobles. (My PCs are all members of Chelish noble Houses.) Being offered knighthoods themselves isn't much of a motivation then, and really they just want to get back to the city and deal with issues there. The only reason that they're in the vale is that Queen Ileosa told them that Sir Gyrad wasn't getting the job done and asked them to go deal with the problem. I think that the queen will send Sir Gyrad a note saying that he has two months to complete the job that he's been stalling for a year, and if he fails then Fort Thorn and the Bloodsworn Vale project will be given to the PCs. Even if this still doesn't motivate him I think that it will motivate the PCs, since they'll see it (rightly) as a ploy by the queen to keep them out of town. This will also get the crews working again (since they've stalled out due to problems such as owlbears and lizardfolk).
My group has gotten used to looking for problems to solve rather than waiting for assignments. For example, I've completely abandoned having Field Marshal Kroft ask them to do jobs for her and instead started relying on their information gathering to give them enough information to advance the plot. This has led to some really interesting innovations on their part, and they ended up fighting the plague in a couple of very different ways than suggested by the AP. I suspect that they'll continue with the same pattern in the wilderness.
The first implication of this is that I need to be prepared for Leutnant Serai Leroung of the Sable Company to be doing aerial sweeps on her hippogriff. This means that she'll probably find Oakbrow's home and the old druid circle, and might see "Lord" Vardak's citadel (which was even spotted by a generic Fort Thorn scout). If I keep the bugbears as written she could see their base too, but they seem really out-of-flavour for Golarion bugbears and I probably ought to rework them.
The second implication is that I need to figure out what's happening with the wandering monsters of the vale. There's a hill giant living there, for instance, but we don't know exactly where, nor do we know what he eats or anything like that. Similarly, there are hobgoblins and ogres and howlers and minotaurs and trolls and an ettin and a chimaera and a harpy and a hydra and a hag and a medusa. Shouldn't some of these critters show signs of living nearby to a marine on a hippogriff? I'd love to prepare a backstory for each of these, but I haven't yet. I think that the hill giant ran away from Mokmurian's recruitment drives, but that's all I've got so far. The chimaera and the harpy are probably the most important, since they're the two capable of intercepting Leroung when she's flying. At the very least I'll establish where they hang out when they're not wandering so that I can give them spot checks when she's above them.
Finally, I'm trying to stay completely on top of the timeline. For example, if the bugbears attack (as written, assuming that I don't rewrite them) on Day 40, what are they doing before that? And are their activities visible from the air? What do the flame drakes do between ear-gathering missions to the druid circle? Will they attack a lone hippogriff rider? There's no way that my group wants to be away from Korvosa for two months just now, so I predict that they're going to try everything they can to deal with the vale as quickly as possible, and that means I need to know what benefits they'll have for confronting people before they're ready.