After 18 months, the players (one of which we lost to Paizo) and one hard working DM are done with the CoT AP!
Okay.
Now that you're done, how was the AP?
Congratulations! Any further thoughts you'd like to share? What did you think of the AP?
I've yet to manage to hold together a game for an entire AP. Unfortunately, my last long running game ran out of gas around 2001.
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I am the DM who is guilty as charged with just wrapping CoT. This is my second Paizo AP DM'ed to completion in the past six and a half years, the first being AoW. For the bulk of that time I have hosted the game at my gaming pad in NYC. We have met weekly, except during summer vacations, with sessions lasting 4-6 hours apiece.
I thought the main challenge of the CoT campaign was trying to breath life into the city of Westcrowne itself. The entire AP takes place in and around Westcrowne and by the end of the AP the city itself has become one of the major NPC's. Creating depth and continuity in the PC's experience of Westcrowne is the DM's biggest hurdle in pulling off a successful CoT campaign in my opinion. I would give myself a C or C+ in this regard.
My favorite parts of the campaign were the after party at the Mayoral mansion, the Delvehaven vampire storyline, the guildhouse at Wallcourt's treasure vault, and the siege of the Maggot Tree in the Hagwood. My PC's highlights include their early defeat of the Hellknights. By using a combination of nonlethal damage, the color spray spell, and the intimidate skill my PC's were able to rout the Hellknights whenever they encountered them without causing any actual blood shed. It was a beautiful way to start the campaign. The other campaign highlight was the party's use of a pair of Lyres of Building to great roleplaying effect. They spent many hours using the Lyres to rebuild and beautify the streets of the city. They took over the evil monks' creamatoria and turned it into a bakery, "Just Biscuits", that daily distributed bread to the poor. They rebuilt the destroyed plateau, where the mayoral mansion once stood, and turned it into a shining jewel of Westcrowne, with public parks and theater space. In was fun to see PC's turn their hands to creation rather than destruction, which is so often the case.
My least favorite part of the campaign were players who argued endlessly and inflexibly about rules. Any player at my table will tell you that I am a PC's DM. I want my PC's to be heroic so I don't mind giving them good starting stats or extra class features etc. That's why I find rules lawyers at my table almost an affront to common decency. If they are such sticklers for the rules why don't they insist on standard 20 point builds for the entire party? Or refuse to use non-standard class features, spells, or magic items? Because they're frauds, that's why. In my experience rules lawyers do not seek justice, fairness or the spirit or letter of the rules. The only thing they seek is to take advantage for themselves and their party and to endlessly argue, if only to satiate their monstrous egos. (Too harsh?)
In any case, a DM is only as good as his players so I would like to thank all the players, rules lawyers or not, for a fun and memorable campaign.
WDM4f
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I just wrapped up CoT... at the end Chapter 5.
The game felt like it had dragged for a while since the Chapter 2 banquet... a series of one dungeon crawl after the other...
So having killed the BBEG at the end of Chapter 5 and lifting the curse over Westcrown, I felt this was a good ending point. Now the citizens have hope, can come out at night, and without the veil of shadow creatures under their command, the Council of Thieves is now relegated to a simple thieve's guild organisation, as the Hellknights and Dottari can now patrol by night and severely restrict their movements.
The future of Westcrown looks bright and Wescrani traditionalists can once again step out of the darkness and shape their land the way it used to be, or better!
Congratulations!
Did you run the modules 'as is' or did you add anything to them?
I am also about three sessions away from ending my CoT campaign, and I've found that out of all the APs I've ran, this one's taken the most work.
Where do we go from here?
Tomb of the Iron Medusa from Paizo.It's level 14 and iirc takes place in Cheliax. It might even be considered PFRPG's Tomb of Horrors.
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Congratulations for concluding the AP misterakko! Your players will become some rather high level Pathfinders, For the Glory of Cheliax!
Regarding the AP directly, as they say,'milage will vary.'
After our year long Council of Thieves campaign the all the PCs are very well invested land owners (who by very different routes) own everything from a private book shop to the near majority of the Mayoral grounds.
With the conclusion of the campaign, my character is now is an advisor on the small council of the Lord Mayor of Westcrown, an Ambassador-at-Large, as well as the Signifier of the Hellknigts of the city, our Paladin (who was intelligently and very well role played by my friend Jason) is both Lord Mayor and Para Lictor of the Order of the Rack by the Writ of House Thrune, as well a loving newly minted father and of course husband to a key npc in the campaign.
You forgot to mention that the paladin's new baby was a Werebear! Talk about a difficult delivery!