Another AP complete

[cibet44]

Over the weekend we finished our RoTRL campaign. Start to finish it took 9 months. We used primarily the core books (no splats, no PFRPG). The party of 6 PCs (3 players) got to 15th-16th level by the end.

Another great AP from Paizo, thanks. Based on the 3.5 game, thanks 3.x designers, you really did make the best version of D&D.

Our next campaign will be "Curse of the Crimson Throne" starting in November 2010. I thought about doing "Kimgmaker" but ultimately I decided I wanted to stick with the pure 3.5 rule-set and not have to worry about converting anything. Also I liked the progression of the APs in general in the order we are doing them: Savage Tide was heavy seafaring transitioning into epic plane hopping, RotRL was heavy overland travel concentrating on the land of Varisia and it's ancient past right through to the end, Curse will be have an urban and dungeon focus. Seemed like a good way to go.

A few weeks ago I purchased the entire Curse AP on Amazon half used half new. One thing I have learned about running the APs is that you just HAVE to have all of the issues in hand when you start them, makes things much easier down the road.

[Elorebaen]

Congrats!!

Once you were done was there any other insights that you were like, "Damn I wish I would've done that!"?

Thanks.

[Tangible Delusions]

Feels good doesn't it? :)

We are three weeks into Crimson Throne after finishing Runelords and it has been great. Not only are they familiar with the region, but there are built in connections back to Runelords and we determined we were going to play this one next and I had put connections to this AP in some of their Runelord's characters. I expect a few "Ah ha" moments coming up over the next few months.

[cibet44]

Elorebaen wrote:

Congrats!!

Once you were done was there any other insights that you were like, "Damn I wish I would've done that!"?

Thanks.

Just off the top of my head:

Things I'm glad I DID do:

-Read the entire AP start to finish several times before playing the first session and reading each upcoming chapter before we started it. I learned to do this while DMing Savage Tide. I think it's a must with the APs.

-Ran the story by the book. The AP is long enough. I'm glad I did not embellish it even when tempted to do so.

-Expose the players to as much Varisian/Thassolonian/Golarian lore as I could along the way.

Things I might have done more of or done better:

-Found more ways to emphasize and engage the Golarian cosmology. Since we ran this AP right off a Greyhawk based Savage Tide the group still had the D&D cosmology in mind most of the time and never really delved into the Golarian gods and their beliefs. I just could not come up with in game ways of exposing the PCs to the Golarain gods. The deities were pretty much just something that was written on the character sheets. I'm still not sure how to do this in the future.

-Dedicated a whole session to the final battle with Karzoug. Instead half the session was finishing off the Pinnacle and the other half was fighting Karzoug. It would have been fun just to have an entire session all about defeating Karzoug himself. In hindsight maybe I could have just left the Pinnacle itself empty except for the Eye of Avarice. The group never had a chance to calculate the XPs from the Pinnacle fights so in the end they served no tangible purpose.

-Found a way to have escaped NPCs return at the end. During the course of the AP many NPCs escaped rather then fought to the death. The players always remembered who escaped and were on the lookout for some of them returning. In hindsight I could have beefed a few of them up and put them in the Pinnacle for sequel battles. In reality I never had the time to do it.

[ThornDJL7]

How many hours of gameplay did it take? I'm curious because my group plays 10 hour increments of time. Not a standard 4-5 hours.

[cibet44]

ThornDJL7 wrote:

How many hours of gameplay did it take? I'm curious because my group plays 10 hour increments of time. Not a standard 4-5 hours.

Our sessions are between 6 and 9 hours. We played 2-3 times per month and the whole AP took 9 months.

[ThornDJL7]

cibet44 wrote:

ThornDJL7 wrote:

How many hours of gameplay did it take? I'm curious because my group plays 10 hour increments of time. Not a standard 4-5 hours.

Our sessions are between 6 and 9 hours. We played 2-3 times per month and the whole AP took 9 months.

108 - 243 hours.

or 10 - 24 of my sessions. Or an average of 17. 17 actually seems like a good number because that's roughly a level a session.