Legacy of Fire - Complete: A novice GM brain dump

[Athrion]

My group just finished the entire Legacy of Fire campaign, and I'd like to drop a few thoughts here:

We started in August and just wrapped up, so about 10 months of weekly gaming, give or take a few weeks.

The 5 characters were 15 right before they hit the end. I leveled them up by time, and not necessarily XP.

Over all, each individual path offered something unique, but the biggest issue I had was the over-arching storyline did not flow through the series.

Here are some specific thoughts:

Spoiler:

I skipped the puzzle/maze part of entering Bayt'al'bazan, as it would have taken too long, and been very brutal for my group falling into the lava, and they would have gotten very frustrated.

Good idea, but suspect implementation. I also skipped like 3 levels of Bayt'al'bazan as it seemed unnecessary for story advancement

The spinning trap room was fun...as was the carpet trap in the Final Wish...

Kakishon was fun as a setting, and the faction interactions were interesting.

Howl of the Carrion King was the best one, Pugwampi's rule!

Jackal's Price the worst, imo. Didn't fit AT ALL.

House of the Beast was a big dungeon crawl with not much RP opportunity.

There was not too much to keep the characters engaged, other than player determination to finish. one can only use "save kelmarane" one or twice as a hook

To me, and I'm sure it had much to do with my new DM style, it seemed like a big dungeon crawl. Going from fight to fight, averaging two or three (sometimes one)encounters before the party had to rest.

There were a few character deaths, but only one permanent.

If you are planning on running this, I hope you have the time to help the various pieces congeal. It has a really good story, and I'm sure I didn't do it justice, but those are my thoughts.

[Ryzoken]

The overarching plotline for Legacy of Fire seems to work like this:

Act I:
Contracted by Almah, a group of mercenaries (the PC's) travel out to the desert to reclaim a lost city from evil gnolls. Upon taking the city, the mercenaries take the fight to the gnolls' leader, the Carrion King, on his own doorstep, and in the process inadvertently discover an artifact used many years ago to seal a great evil.

Act II:
Investigating the unknown artifact of great power results in it activating, trapping the mercenaries within its confines while simultaneously releasing the great evil sealed within. The mercenaries pursue two goals simultaneously during this act: they seek an escape from one prison after another while discovering all they can about what Jhavul plans and what transpired centuries ago.

Act III: Finally escaping Bayt al-Bazan, the mercenaries return to find all their accomplishments swept away by the evil they've released. They descend once more on Kelmarane, freeing it to serve as an outpost as they confront Jhavul in Xotani's Grave. Jhavul's defeat prevents the return of a primordial evil, one that could redefine the face of Golarion.

Admittedly, there isn't much foreshadowing of what the finale will be during books one through three, but that's intentional. If the players obtained even an inkling of what could occur, they'd never activate the Scroll of Kakishon, and the GM would have to fiat the activation to preserve the storyline (see the other threads made by GMs who had just this happen!).

The Jackal's Price in particular does contain certain elements that don't fit so well (The Captain of the Sunset Ship, among other things), but it also does a good job of giving a sense of finality to the defeat of the Carrion King. Instead of just having a random boss, TJP continues the Carrion King's legacy by introducing the Sons of Carrion. TJP also serves a practical, mechanical role, as it gives the players a metropolis to equip themselves with strong arms and armor to engage in the latter half of the campaign with. My players skipped The Jackal's Price in its entirety, and while the storyline didn't suffer terribly from this, their abilities did, as they missed the opportunity to prowl through Katapesh's markets.