Some of you may have already read my previous posts, but in case you haven't, here's some background info:
I am an experienced GM who has just been asked by a small group of friends to run them through a Pathfinder campaign.
I don't really have time to make up a campaign, so I want to go with a published campaign and then just change it as I need to.
I was interested in a campaign that had little RP oppurtunity (at least at first...since these players are completely new, I wanted to test the waters with them before seeing how they liked RP) and one that was full of classic monsters, locales, encounters, etc....
After a long discussion on the board I think I've got it narrowed down to Shackled City or Age of Worms.
I've started reading Shackled City and I'm enjoying it so far but I'm finding quite a bit I want to tweak.
I've read through a lot of the posts on the message boards but I'd like your opinion on which is better, SC or AoW, and why.
Thanks for all your help!
I played through Age of Worms and had a blast as a player, I think everyone at the table loved it. Its what sold me on Paizo and the Adventure path model
Is there any other way of getting the collected Age of Worms? Paizo doesn't seem to have it for sale and I can't get all the back issues of the magazines it ran in.
- Senator
Nope; back issues (or PDFs? are there PDFs of the Dungeon issues?) are your only hope.
My two cents: I own Shackled City, and it requires a bit of tweaking to make sense, IMO. It's still pretty good, though. I suspect Age of Worms would require less tweaking, but I've only heard bits and pieces about it.
Hey,
My group is doing Shackled city first, then age of worms, last Savage tides. I know that all of these are connected (even if in a small way). I would start at the beginning and if they like it you can move forward. I have played age of worms and had a lot of fun with it. I loved the arena, the zombies, and the ball you get to go to. Just starting savage tides now and i love it so far also. Each ones of these brings something different to the table. I would say again start at the beginning Shackled city.
Hi!
Well, in fact, the link between AoW and SC is so tenuous that it is almost irrelevant.
They share only two things : 1) Cauldron destruction is hinted at in an AoW prophecy, and can easily be replaced by something else (it's more a nod than a true link); 2) the Ebon triad, which appears in only one of the SC modules, and can (should!) be deleted from AoW for reasons detailed in this thread (link).
There is no real reason to play SC before AoW: just go for the one you like most (for me, it was AoW: it was planned from the start as a long campaign, and has much more atmosphere. On the other hand, SC was written on the fly by various authors, and sometimes it shows).
They are both very difficult, unless you plan to hold back you might want to help the newbies make characters. They are both filled with potential TPK's.
I like AoW better, but SCAP is not bad.
I had to make the same choice not long ago, also with a bunch of new players, and went with Shackled City. We're not too far in yet, but so far I think it was the right choice for us. Part of that is the tone: AoW has a much more macabre feel overall than SC, and I wasn't sure how all my players would react to that. Some would probably have preferred it, but others I think would have been uncomfortable. I've been using the first chapter as a sort of tutorial, so I've been giving them lots of advice, helping them explore the different tactical options the game allows, and talking with them about party survival basics. (For instance, they learned the hard way to make sure someone is carrying a rope when they met their first Tilt-a-Pit trap.) It's true that the overall plotlines in SC can be a bit disjointed, so the DM has to do some adapting to make it work well as a narrative, but there's a lot of ideas as to how to do that already out there in the SC community. And it's really just convenient to have everything pulled together between two covers. I hope to run AoW someday too, but SC was a good place to start.
By new players just how new are you talking about? If its absolute newbs I really think Whispering Cairn is nearly the perfect introduction to High Fantasy Role playing out there. It may have not been intentional but it almost perfectly ramps up in complexity from a little initial exploration (should get them to understand the basics of skills) to a fight with wolves (the basics of combat) to a complex room with a sarcophagus (here is problem solving - with some traps). A few more complex fights and then one underwater (layered complexity in encounters, problematic environments). Oh look now you need to go outside to continue (role playing, town exploration, outside the dungeon combat). This one adventure will teach newbs nearly every basic skill they need to play D&D and it'll do so in an awesome adventure.
I ran pure newbs through it using a 4E conversion and they really understood most of the major aspects of the game by the time they completed the adventure. I have no doubt that, because of the adventures design, it would do exactly the same thing under any high fantasy combat heavy rules system including PFRPG.
I also really like how Age of Worms just takes players to a ton of cliche classic fantasy type environments. You get to be a gladiator, there is a ball with evil people, A mythic city caught in a war between Giants and Dragons, some fallen angels and the list goes on.
Its mentioned above that AoWs is more Macabre then SC but I disagree - you fight grosser things maybe but you win. In SC every time you leave the city something aweful befalls it. I know of players that started resisting going on the adventures because they new that if they left when they got back something they had grown to love would be badly hurt. Things just get worse and worse and the players start wanting to stay so they can protect it. I know of experienced players who said that this aspect just eventually crushed their moral. Growing attached to the city can be traumatizing - your real life shrink will know all about your D&D campaign.
The other issue with Shackled City is it plays on some pretty deep knowledge of Greyhawk. I'm an old timer and I still found myself searching Cannonfire for info on some elements of the more obscure planes and some of the references. Age of Worms has Greyhawk specific material but it tends to be stuff that actually gets developed during the course of the campaign. Age of Worms took some fairly obscure elements of Greyhawk history and lore and made then the center piece and along the way the players learned about them. Shackled City more often seems to presume players know about things like Ceceri to begin with and then runs with it.
I think Shackled City would probably run better with a more veteran group - one willing to flow with the dark fantasy environment that is Shackled City. This is especially true because, to make it work, Cauldron really needs to come alive for your players. SC needs the DM to go above and beyond to make role playing in Cauldron the centre piece of the campaign with the adventures serving as interludes (even if the interludes take up more campaign time then the centre piece).
I've run both campaigns and tweaked them both quite a bit. Still, I liked Age of Worms more and the AP as a whole is much more cohesive than Shackled City. So it can be run with a lot less tweaking.
Some of you may have already read my previous posts, but in case you haven't, here's some background info:
I am an experienced GM who has just been asked by a small group of friends to run them through a Pathfinder campaign.
I don't really have time to make up a campaign, so I want to go with a published campaign and then just change it as I need to.
I was interested in a campaign that had little RP oppurtunity (at least at first...since these players are completely new, I wanted to test the waters with them before seeing how they liked RP) and one that was full of classic monsters, locales, encounters, etc....
After a long discussion on the board I think I've got it narrowed down to Shackled City or Age of Worms.
I've started reading Shackled City and I'm enjoying it so far but I'm finding quite a bit I want to tweak.
I've read through a lot of the posts on the message boards but I'd like your opinion on which is better, SC or AoW, and why.
Thanks for all your help!
The Whispering Cairn deserves to be ran for almost every group of PC's. Serious.
Jeremy is spot-on. AoW is a heck of a ride, for players and DM. As someone pointed out some time ago on another thread, AoW, beign the 2nd AP, also benefitted from the experience Paizo got from creating the 1st one.
Just be aware that it's going to take a long time to get to the end. That said, AoW would work just fine even if you only got to run a few of the adventures - each new adventure brings something new to the table, as far as what the PC's end up experiencing.
Oh, and every long-running AP needs some tweaking, usually more the further you get on, as continuity errors / ommissions between adventures always crop up, and you often need to tweak the transitions in order to account for how the last one playerd out, your group's motivations and goals, etc etc.
The Whispering Cairn deserves to be ran for almost every group of PC's. Serious.Some of you may have already read my previous posts, but in case you haven't, here's some background info:
I am an experienced GM who has just been asked by a small group of friends to run them through a Pathfinder campaign.
I don't really have time to make up a campaign, so I want to go with a published campaign and then just change it as I need to.
I was interested in a campaign that had little RP oppurtunity (at least at first...since these players are completely new, I wanted to test the waters with them before seeing how they liked RP) and one that was full of classic monsters, locales, encounters, etc....
After a long discussion on the board I think I've got it narrowed down to Shackled City or Age of Worms.
I've started reading Shackled City and I'm enjoying it so far but I'm finding quite a bit I want to tweak.
I've read through a lot of the posts on the message boards but I'd like your opinion on which is better, SC or AoW, and why.
Thanks for all your help!
+1. I have DM'd it twice, and enjoyed it both times.
Age of Freaking Worms!
Erik Mona is too modest to ever seek the proper acolades, but I feel Whispering Cairn is the best designed beginning adventure I have ever seen, and I have been buying D&D modules and dragon since 1980.
As others mentioned, its starts off very easy and then ramps up to more challenging encounters, and with the role playing possibilities provided by the nearby town, has the perfect mix of combat, problem solving, role playing and clue discovery and builing of story arc.
I am going to be honest there are a few adventures in age of worms I wasn't as happy with, but on the whole it has a great story arc, and if your players like delving into campaign history, well it is full of great ties to Greyhawk.
Shattered City is much more hit and miss, the start of the plot is interesting, but by lvl 9 or so it gets very disjointed as authors didn't follow up plot threads by previous writers. My players didn't enjoy SC at all and asked to switch to another setting by lvl 4..which was age of worms, and they were much happier after that.
For me, I enjoyed Shackled City far more than Age of Worms. It is more contained than AoW, it doesn't rely on ancient game references, and it follows up on the things it deals with. It also has room for extensive tweaking, which is not as clear with AoW, that reads more like a ready-made adventure series with all the encounter areas making up the scenario. With SC, there are subplots, alternatives and things that require DM explanation. SC is also far less rules-intensive than AoW.
The problem with SC is that the last two scenarios, particularly the next-to-last one, aren't terribly inspired. On the other hand, you can just as well chop them off, and you will lose very little as you end on a high note two scenarios early. That lets your characters have a taste of high-level play, but without the massive headache that is very high-level play for extended periods of time like the last two scenarios of AoW. Oh, and one more thing: cutting out rooms from the first adventure in SC is probably a good idea.
I can only relate to my expereiance with AoW and it was great.
I enjoyed playing it and recommend it to everyone.
Now mind you we did TPK but that was our own fault for not takeing ample time to rest and not noticeing that our only healer was a dopple ganger replacement that healed the bad guys and then turned against us.
We are planning on starting Savage tide soon as our current campaign ends.
I like this thread - especially since I am considering running a long campaign and am trying to decide between the three Dungeon AP's. Age of Worms seems to be more of what I like, from what I've read, so I'm leaning in that direction. Still a lot of planning to do and I know very little of nothing about Savage Tide.
Erik Mona is too modest to ever seek the proper acolades, but I feel Whispering Cairn is the best designed beginning adventure I have ever seen, and I have been buying D&D modules and dragon since 1980.
+1. It was one of the first Paizo adventures I read, and it got me hooked for life. It's virtually perfect, although a little on the hard side (one of the traps is very lethal, and a reduced-health owlbear is still very dangerous).
Erik Mona is too modest to ever seek the proper acolades, but I feel Whispering Cairn is the best designed beginning adventure I have ever seen, and I have been buying D&D modules and dragon since 1980.
+1. It was one of the first Paizo adventures I read, and it got me hooked for life. It's virtually perfect, although a little on the hard side (one of the traps is very lethal, and a reduced-health owlbear is still very dangerous).
I'll agree with that, we lost our cleric to "that" trap.
As far as the owl bear that one was easy for us. My wizard used his body to brace the door trapping it inside( I am the strongest party member in the group) while the ranger and fighter fired at it through the windows, when it ran to one side the person would back up whjen it ran to the other that person would back up, when it tried the door Supermage was braced and ready so we killed it in like 10 or so round with no injuries or losses.
we killed it in like 10 or so round with no injuries or losses.
Heh. In my game, the Owlbear hit the Fighter with a succession of 3 natural 20s :)
In a funny continuance of that story, the next campaign we played after AoW featured an Undead Owlbear, who took out the same player (now playing a cleric) with another natural 20. Lots of laughs were had that evening, as we mused on the Owlbear coming back from the dead to get its revenge :P
I was interested in a campaign that had little RP oppurtunity (at least at first...since these players are completely new, I wanted to test the waters with them before seeing how they liked RP) and one that was full of classic monsters, locales, encounters, etc....
I'm sure you long ago made your decision, but I'll respond in case someone else might be faced with a similar choice. Given what you are looking for, I would recommend Age of Worms. It has tons of classic encounters, locations, and monsters. In fact, the designers at one point said that they wanted to use the adventure path to visit some of the iconic D&D lore.
Shackled City has the potential to be a great adventure, but it won't truly shine unless you work in the role-playing aspect and get the players involved with the city. For completely new players, this may not be an easy thing to do.
As for power level, both adventures can easily lead to a TPK. SCAP might even be more deadly than AoW, and that's saying something! I fall firmly into the camp of "let the dice fall where they may," but you should consider your players and what might happen to the campaign if the worst comes to pass.