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With Carrion Crown a month away I'm sure many fellow GM's are gearing up to run it. The obvious tie in products coming out during the AP's run, like Rule of Fear, Undead Revisited, and of course Classic Horrors Revisited, may be essential in fleshing out Ustalav for your group of players. What other accessories or products do you plan on using and why?
I'm picking up the Gobbo-licious Condition Cards for sure with the Bestiary 2.
--Vrocky Horror
With Carrion Crown a month away I'm sure many fellow GM's are gearing up to run it. The obvious tie in products coming out during the AP's run, like Rule of Fear, Undead Revisited, and of course Classic Horrors Revisited, may be essential in fleshing out Ustalav for your group of players. What other accessories or products do you plan on using and why?
I'm picking up the Gobbo-licious Condition Cards for sure with the Bestiary 2.
--Vrocky Horror
RAVENLOFT Campaign Setting. There is no doubt about Ravenloft's influence on this AP, but if something similar is not listed in the first adventure, i will be using the Fear, Horror, and Madness checks from Ravenloft to add more flavor.
(over the years, Ravenloft has been my players favorite setting, so when i read about Carrion Crown, let's just say it made all of us very happy).|
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RAVENLOFT Campaign Setting. There is no doubt about Ravenloft's influence on this AP, but if something similar is not listed in the first adventure, i will be using the Fear, Horror, and Madness checks from Ravenloft to add more flavor.
(over the years, Ravenloft has been my players favorite setting, so when i read about Carrion Crown, let's just say it made all of us very happy).
You know there are Sanity and Madness rules in the GMG and on the PRD.
The 3.5 book Heroes of Horror has some rules for Sanity checks ala CoC AFAIK.
--Electro-Vrock Therapy
RAVENLOFT Campaign Setting. There is no doubt about Ravenloft's influence on this AP, but if something similar is not listed in the first adventure, i will be using the Fear, Horror, and Madness checks from Ravenloft to add more flavor.
(over the years, Ravenloft has been my players favorite setting, so when i read about Carrion Crown, let's just say it made all of us very happy).You know there are Sanity and Madness rules in the GMG and on the PRD.
The 3.5 book Heroes of Horror has some rules for Sanity checks ala CoC AFAIK.
--Electro-Vrock Therapy
The Sanity & Madness rules from the GMG are nice, but they don't "bring enough" - they feel like an afterthought, as if to say, "you lost x amount of WIS, oh yeah, and roll on this table".
If you haven't used them before, the Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio should be exceptionally handy for this AP. As there's a few places where the PCs have to put on the traveling music, there's going to be a big handy, player friendly map of Ustalav in the folio - and the APs will have some handy details on places off the beaten path the PCs might detour to if they're charting their own courses. The map folio also draws off of a lot of the elements in Rule of Fear, so there some handy overlap between it and the guidebook to Ustalav - which is cold rolled brilliance in my totally unbiased opinion.
Heroes of Horror also had some decent things in as far as GMing and how to help set an appropriate mood/tone, IIRC
Riffing off my previous comment and just an FYI, Rule of Fear also has several sections on this. Oh, and if you're into using music in your games, expect thematic playlists in the forewords of every volume of Carrion Crown.
Actually... I'm working on one right now.
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Heroes of Horror also had some decent things in as far as GMing and how to help set an appropriate mood/tone, IIRCRiffing off my previous comment and just an FYI, Rule of Fear also has several sections on this. Oh, and if you're into using music in your games, expect thematic playlists in the forewords of every volume of Carrion Crown.
Actually... I'm working on one right now.
Sweet!
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If you haven't used them before, the Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio should be exceptionally handy for this AP. As there's a few places where the PCs have to put on the traveling music, there's going to be a big handy, player friendly map of Ustalav in the folio - and the APs will have some handy details on places off the beaten path the PCs might detour to if they're charting their own courses. The map folio also draws off of a lot of the elements in Rule of Fear, so there some handy overlap between it and the guidebook to Ustalav - which is cold rolled brilliance in my totally unbiased opinion.
Mmm... love me some maps!
--Vrock of Gibraltar
If you haven't used them before, the Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio should be exceptionally handy for this AP. As there's a few places where the PCs have to put on the traveling music, there's going to be a big handy, player friendly map of Ustalav in the folio - and the APs will have some handy details on places off the beaten path the PCs might detour to if they're charting their own courses. The map folio also draws off of a lot of the elements in Rule of Fear, so there some handy overlap between it and the guidebook to Ustalav - which is cold rolled brilliance in my totally unbiased opinion.
Hello I am gondolin and I'm a adventure pathoholic (hello gondolin)
first a little history,
I received the 3 first instalments in Curse of the Crimson Throne as a birthday gift. So I got the other three along with the guide to Korvosa and the CotCT map folio. Later as I subscribed to the AP's and CS's I got Kingmaker map Folio and Serpent's skull map Folio.
I notice that the latest releases contain no reproduction of the inside maps of the different floorplans. Has this been definitely scrapped?
To be honest, the maps in the Serpent's folio have little use in the campaign while it is being run, after all, the players haven't explored Smuggler's Shiv or the two cities so it's not like you can just slap 'em down on the table for all to see. Whereas the floorplan maps are very handy for GM's and reduce the need to flip back and forth in the book to see where each encounter is taking place on the map in-game.
As for the Kingmaker series in which I am a player, I lent mine to the GM. And he had the same comment. Not much use for the map in-game.
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I notice that the latest releases contain no reproduction of the inside maps of the different floorplans. Has this been definitely scrapped?
To be honest, the maps in the Serpent's folio have little use in the campaign while it is being run...
As for the Kingmaker series in which I am a player, I lent mine to the GM. And he had the same comment. Not much use for the map in-game.
Yes. The days of filling the Map Folios (now Poster Map Folios) with loose carbon copies of what appeared in the AP are over. Mainly because they felt cheap, looked cheap, and kinda were cheap. GMs of the APs almost always had all of that content already, at the same scale. If folks are concerned about elements of these folios not being useful to the PCs, I don't know what could be more undermining to an adventure than throwing down a map of the whole dungeon the PCs have just walked into.
That said, I'm flabbergasted by the thought of the Kingmaker Poster Map Folio (With all the hex exploring?!? Waaaaa?) or the Serpent Skull Poster Map Folio not being useful in game. Aside from being gorgeous wall hangings for all those cartographiles out there, those maps have like 0 spoilers for the actual content of the adventures they're in. And they're jaw-dropping handouts. You get to Smuggler's Shive, climb the big hill to take in the landscape around you, and BOOM here's a huge map players! You crest a rise and take in the City of Seven Spears in all it's sprawling ruin, and BOOM here's a a huge map players! You go deep underground and come out in a big cave and what's that? A HUGE map for the players! You have a mandate to clear out the Stolen Lands, they've been down there for 1 billion years (it's not the New World after all) so good thing your bosses back in Brevoy sent along this HUGE map!
To get to Gondolin's point above:
...it's not like you can just slap 'em down on the table for all to see.
No way, man, it's TOTALLY just like that. Did you play Assassin's Creed or Fallout? You get to a new city or area, don't know the lay of the land, climb up to the top of a big tower (or just wander around a bit), and BOOM, the area around you on the minimap fills up with buildings. You don't know the details or who lives in those buildings or what adventures you might have there, but you know over there is a neat structure, over here's a monument you might want to check out, over there is a lake you could hide in, and right there is a ruin likely to be full up with treasure. It's the same deal with these Poster Map Folios.
And its going to be the same with the Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio. We haven't said much about it yet, but one of the things its going to include is a huge map of Ustalav, and several maps of prominent Ustalavic cities visited in Carrion Crown and Rule of Fear. And if the first time the PCs hit these cities you wanted to throw down the related map, that would work great! Even if the PCs just started the campaign right out with the country map, it's not like you're going to be spoiling the plots by letting them know where the forests, rivers, and other towns are. In fact, there's a few times over the course of the AP where the PCs have to chart their course from site A to site B, so having these details are pretty important.
While I can see that there might be some GMs who want to keep all the secrets to themselves and be the PCs only source of details into the world of his game, it doesn't have to be like that. With a little bit of thought it's pretty easy to come up with a way to give the PCs all of the info on these maps (like the few possibilities I rattled off above). At the same time, I can't imagine a group being upset by landing on Smuggler's Shiv and just having you drop this huge gorgeous map down and say "Okay, you landed on this island. What do you want to do?" That adventure, and many city adventures, are in part built like that anyway, so these poster maps should be super helpful tools.
I mean... at least that's how I've always seen it. Maybe we've been thinking about these wrong. Maybe people are using these totally differently or we may have underestimated the importance of a GM being the PCs' only window into the game world. I'm not trying to one man dog pile on anyone here (especially not Gondolin above) with my many many words, but that's been my thinking on these. In any case, I'd love to hear what other people think and how they're using these products. The Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio (which we'll have a page up for soon) is already set, but if there's something you want to see for Jade Regent or beyond, do let us know!
That's gondolin with a small g...... ;-)
Thanks for your reply. Your answer is not much of a surprise. It is one given by a designer's POV though, not a GM.
It's not a question of the GM being a sole source of information. It's that players don't get all the information they are not entitled to because they didn't work for it. Besides, I don't make the floor plans available to players. They are «my» game aids, not the players. And that is what I enjoyed about the CotCT folio.
Your point about putting the map of Saveth-yhi might be feasible, but only on a district by district point of view. One might want to cut up the poster map, but I still have to much respect for the product and I dont see myself doing this.
A map of a known city, like Korvosa, for example is another matter and as long as there are no location keys on them, it's not a problem. The map of Korvosa worked fine in my CotCT campaign.
I don't think that there are sufficient elevations points in Shiv and Ilmuria to justify a complete map on the gaming table.
There are far too many metagamers out there who try to cut corners already. «Forget all those streets and houses, let's head straightaway for that big round building at the far end.»
This being said, my opinion is only that, an opinion. So far, from what I have seen, the map folio to CotCT is of much more use to me than the recent folio's even if they are of great quality and I still look forward to receiving them.
My only gripe with all of the folios is the fact that Paizo didn't «go green» and print them on both sides of the paper.
In any case, I'd love to hear what other people think and how they're using these (poster map) products.
Well, since you'd love to hear...
I only have the Kingmaker maps, but I like them. My players finished exploring the Greenbelt, so I tacked that poster to my wall; as the other areas are fully explored I'll add the posters until my wall is filled. Should look pretty cool. And they'll be heading to Varnhold soon; I'll likely just plop that one on the table. And I'm planning on adding a bit to Pitax in some way (infiltration, perhaps), if only to best use the Pitax map, 'cause it's so pretty.
All in all, I liked the Kingmaker one, and I plan on picking up the CC one before running that campaign. So good job, folks! :)
