What have you created for your players after RotRL? (GMs only)


Rise of the Runelords

Dark Archive

My group is nearing an end to the campaign and WHAT a RIDE it' been!! This has been such a memorable AP, including my wife's first D&D campaign EVER and she LOVED it (and is STILL loving it)!!

So what have all of the GMs out there created for after Karzoug was slain (or not slain)? Other Runelords? A plot arc with the Leng Machine? Something else?

Do tell!

Liberty's Edge

I never got to finish the campaign, but it seems to me that after all of the struggles and trials of the PCs, saying "well, 1 down. You guys have 6 more to tackle." kind of takes the wind out of their sails.

They players I had when we started the campaign always talked about settling down at a high level and becoming big figures in the campaign world. That's generally the way it works with our campaigns. Once a group retires, I have the players describe what they get up to. Then when a new campaign starts, the former characters are important figures in the world for the new PCs to meet if they wish.

Dark Archive

Darkeyes777 wrote:

I never got to finish the campaign, but it seems to me that after all of the struggles and trials of the PCs, saying "well, 1 down. You guys have 6 more to tackle." kind of takes the wind out of their sails.

They players I had when we started the campaign always talked about settling down at a high level and becoming big figures in the campaign world. That's generally the way it works with our campaigns. Once a group retires, I have the players describe what they get up to. Then when a new campaign starts, the former characters are important figures in the world for the new PCs to meet if they wish.

Yes. Fighting 6 more Runelords after Karzoug COULD be overwhelming. But how about relating to just 1 or 2 Runelords, or a plot arc relating to Leng and Mhar Massif?


Partially-Undersea campaign in Bakrakhan. Hollow mountain, Alaznist, Skum, Aboleths. Magnimar and Sandpoint threatened. Awesome!


While it will be sometime yet before I reach the end of this AP, I've already begun brainstorming plans for an Expedition to Sarkomand and the nefarious plots of the Denizens of Leng. Towards this end I seeded the campaign with character hooks and vague mysteries that involve the machinations of the Black Ships in the Varisian Gulf. And part of their plans will undoubtedly include Bakrakhan, the Polymorph Plague, Hollow Mountain and the major runewell secured there.


I was thinking of taking my Runelords characters (and players ;)
through Kingmaker after... So your 15th level and you want to build a kingdome and settle down...

So they head out to a likely place to do so and find the Swordlords wanting people to take the Stolen Lands. So they sign up, and start a kingdom, and higher their own adverturers to get things going :) so the mega heros are the pupets behind the heros or something...


Darkeyes777 wrote:
I never got to finish the campaign, but it seems to me that after all of the struggles and trials of the PCs, saying "well, 1 down. You guys have 6 more to tackle." kind of takes the wind out of their sails.

I thought this might be the case when we finished this AP. However, when I presented some ideas for continuing the same PCs, they wanted to hunt down the remaining Runelords. I'm hoping to have an adventure ready by the time we're done with LoF.


William Bryan wrote:

My group is nearing an end to the campaign and WHAT a RIDE it' been!! This has been such a memorable AP, including my wife's first D&D campaign EVER and she LOVED it (and is STILL loving it)!!

So what have all of the GMs out there created for after Karzoug was slain (or not slain)? Other Runelords? A plot arc with the Leng Machine? Something else?

Do tell!

The player of the elf wizard in my game wants to hunt down Treerazer in Kyonin. He doesn't seem particularly concerned about the other Runelords. Of course, he also doesn't seem to grasp just how nasty Treerazer is.

The fighter's player pretty much wants his character to retire as lord of Fort Rannick. And the priest's player wants his character to retire as chief banker of the new temple of Abadar in Turtleback Ferry.
Knowing the players of the rogue & sorcerer, they'll go with the elf wizard.


We didn't ever get too much further than the close of the published campaign (I think they were around 18 to 19th level when we got distracted by shiney objects). In our continuation I allowed them to figure out that Karzoug was simply the first to come near his goal of re-entering Golarion. They then had to start down the path of determining where and when the other runelords would arrive and if there was anything they could do about it. To do this they had to begin down the road of assembling the runelord of gluttony's artifact since he had the best knowledge of his enemies. His tome would invariably have information that they could use to thwart the other runelords (and they didn't know about the delightful little side effect *insert evil GM laugh* of doing so).

They quickly went planar and were bargaining with a powerful aristocratic devil when we last saw our intrepid band of heroes from Sandpoint. Some day I hope we'll revisit it to see what they come up with. I have a feeling that the victory (if indeed that is possible) will be pyrrhic at best just like all epic adventuring I throw down on my PC's.

Dark Archive

Epilogues, detailing the changes their exploits have wrought in the world.

We didn't continue the campaign after the sixth volume, but decided to move on to Serpent's Skull. However, I had each of the players write an epilogue about the exploits of their characters and whether they settled down or not. In addition, I wrote about the different locations they had visited and how these had been affected by their successes and failures. This was all enshrined into a campaign website (in Finnish), and forms a base for continuity when we run the other adventure paths.

The party's druid and cleric went on wandering, but the paladin took over Fort Rannick and formed it into a bastion of civilization, the barbarian went to become the chief of his Shoanti tribe, and the wizard stayed in Xin-Shalast, perhaps to become a new Runelord of Greed...

Dark Archive

I actually used RotRL as a base for the real adventure arch which involves a deposed Lord of Hell from the Fifth layer....

I have decided that Geryon needs the souls gathered in the Runewell to open a gate to the Prime for his army of minions to spread all over Varisia and create a new Realm for him since he cant have the Fifth layer anymore. Plus, his old buddy Amon is helping him along the way as an advisor-type role to Karzoug. Geryon needs to have the PCs to defeat Karzoug so that his soul goes into the Runewell making it powerful enough to power up a gate from Hell to Varisia.

From there, the PCs have to find Geryon's lair, stop the former Lord, and make sure the gate doesnt open....

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