I didn't make the top 4. However, like all contenders this year, I dreamed of making it to the big show, and dreamed of being published. I'm not entirely sure what direction to take that dream in the weeks and months ahead, but for right now, I wanted to share my adventure proposal with you. I followed all the round 5 rules for this year, in an attempt to keep the challenge authentic. I wanted to wait a little bit so as not to distract from Sam's win. I know this adventure can't be published. (And it's too Golarion to do it as an indie product.) But I wanted to put it before the masses anyway. Please, comment on it. The more brutal, blunt, and honest the better. I'm guessing that most of the judges have "gone home", but if you have not, I would love for your feedback (though I expect it to be much shorter than what you afforded to the real top 4). Other voters? You've given some amazing feedback and criticism through this contest as well, and I heartily encourage you to rip my adventure to shreds. I'd really appreciate it.
Thank you everyone for all of your support and encouragement through the RPGSS process. It's been amazing to ride the dream. Thank you for given me a chance to have that wild-eyed hope, even for just a couple months. I'll never forget it.
Without further ado:
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Adventure Preview (ie “Back of the Book”)
In faithless Rahadoum, a crisis arises of divine proportions. When a long-awaited ship runs aground, filled not with loved ones, but tales of a terrible curse, it’s up to the PCs to rescue the sailor’s imprisoned souls. Can the heroes track down the clues to lead them to the legendary ghost ship? And what are they to make of these rumors that Aroden has returned to Golarion? A sea-faring adventure for 4th level characters.
Audience (or “who am I trying to sell this to?”)
- Players of divine spellcasters: they get to be part of a secret cabal hiding from government persecution, then get to flex their powers against haunts/undead, and get excited about the Aroden hook.
- Pirate fans: there’s a lot of hunger in the market right now for pirate-themed adventures, and this module has just enough pirate to scratch that itch without having too much to make this a niche product.
- Skill/intrigue players: the majority of the encounters in this module can be bypassed through clever use of skills (social and otherwise), which is an underserved option in the Pathfinder line. However, combat remains a fully viable option (since that is what most players want).
- Golarion fans: this module is heavy with Golarion-specific lore, with Rahadoum, Lirgen, the Eye of Abendego all playing important roles.
Plot Hooks
The GM has to find a way to get the party to be at the dockside homecoming festival described in Part 1. Here are some ways for the party to show up at that festival and keep them engaged after the crash:
- The PCs are allied with the secret Iomedae cult in Botosani, and were invited to the festival: they might even know one of the sailors onboard and are looking forward to seeing him home. Once the boat crashes, they’ll want to rescue their friend.
- The PCs are hired out by the Botosani government to try and root out any followers of Iomedae and they have received a tip that there might be some present at this festival. Once the boat crashes, they’ll want to investigate these threatening rumors of Aroden.
- The party is in Botosani on other business (it’s a major port city) and they happen to notice the open-air festival and join in to grab dinner. Once the boat crashes, one of the sailor’s wives notices that they are armed out-of-towners and offers a substantial goldpiece reward for her husband’s rescue.
Adventure Background
Over a century ago, while Aroden was still a god, a cleric from Lirgen sailed through the Gulf of Abendego and pirates attacked and took control of his ship. Hidden below deck, he cast lesser planar ally to call the help of a bralani azata. The azata, in a foolish act of mercy, decided to waive the usual negotiations needed for the spell. Before the azata could battle the pirates, the century-defining event occurred: Aroden died, and the Eye of Abendego quickly formed and destroyed the boat.
Over the past century, the azata has gone mad, unable to comes to terms Aroden’s death. He now thinks of himself as Aroden. The entire boat (pirates and Lirgenites) became a ghost ship, and still sails the northern edge of the hurricane.
A few months before the module begins, the Shield of the South set sail from Botosani. It secretly doubles as a mobile church of Iomedae: a place for followers to put their faith into action and practice openly while out at sea. One night, while patrolling the Jagged Reach, they spotted the century-old ghost ship, and noticing the fighting onboard, joined the fray. The sailors eventually met with the ghostly cleric of Aroden, who considered worship of Iomedae blasphemous. The cleric captured the sailors and sailed the ghost ship towards “Aroden” for judgment, where he imprisoned their souls. Only one sailor’s spirit escaped, and his actions begin Part 1.
The module starts at a dockside festival for the homecoming party of The Shield of the South. Colored lanterns decorate the wharf, street vendors sell greasy food, and many families are gathered. Eventually, they see the ship and cheer. People panic as the ship rams full-speed into the docks. The PCs have a chance to do some crowd-control skill checks and rescue people knocked into the water.
The party will eventually explore the ruined ship. The danger of exploring its damaged hull will be handled with the rules for mechanical traps. Eventually, they discover a haunt who pronounces a curse upon them: that great ruin and death will befall them in six months’ time. This is both to set the mood, as well as communicate a timelimit for the module (which is probably longer than the PCs were expecting). The haunt will then go on to tell them the story of what happened to his comrades and how their souls were ferried away by a ghost ship and delivered to Aroden. The ship’s log can help point the party in the right direction for where to begin searching the Jagged Reach.
This is an interlude section. It serves two main purposes: to introduce the players to the “sailing mechanics” subsystem used in this module, as well as chance to let the PCs interact with their NPC crewmembers to gain information on the lost sailors, the region, and the legend of the ghost ship.
Every player will be given a “sailing role”: this is a combination duty and skill check that will make each of them feel like they are part of the team when it comes time to operate the ship. There are 5 roles, (examples include “crows nest -> perception” and “man the sails -> climb.”) The subsystem is very simple (merely counting number of success and applying blanket results), but the party should have one or two easy “sea encounters” as an in-game tutorial. These roles will be relevant in Part 3 and Part 5.
The NPCs are all level 1 commoners, and the GM should make clear that they are just there to fill extra roles on the boat and aren’t fit for adventuring. They exist to infodump, and to provide a mouthpiece for giving hints if the party gets stuck in the next section.
This is the most freeform part of the module. The PCs’ goal should be to get enough information that they can locate the ghost ship. It sails through the islands in a predictable course over the course of a month. It resets its journey each new moon. One of the inside covers of the module book should be dedicated to showing the path that the ghost ship takes through the archipelago, and the dates it can be found at each location.
It bears repeating: for a given day of the month (and thus a given phase of the moon) the ghost ship can always be found in the same location. This is important because the ghost ship is dependent on the level of moonlight for how physically substantial it is. Therefore, it is not enough to simply encounter the ghost ship and board it at the first opportunity: the party must be careful to choose when and where along its voyage they want to make their assault. This is why “mapping the ship’s path” is an important goal. This described more fully in Part 4.
The following islands may be encountered in any order, and revisited any number of times.
Barren islands: Many islands off of Jagged Reach are barren. They exist primarily to create patterns on the map for NPCs to reference, and to fill out the region. A wandering monster table will be provided for these islands.
Ruins with carvings: At least two islands have some stone ruins with cryptic carvings and odd stone formations. One set of ruins has no inhabitants; the other is the home to a grauhir. These puzzles can be solved to reveal what were the safe waterways a century ago, before the hurricane changed the location of the reefs. This is thus the path the ghost ship takes now. The ruins will be presented as a puzzle that the players could solve with their out-of-game wits (inspired by the Myst games), or for groups uninterested in such old-school puzzles, there will be an optional sidebar describing the use of skill checks to provide the answers instead.
Haunted ruins: One island has some scorch marks and remains of building foundations if visited during the day. At night, the foundations spectrally reach up to form a tavern and brothel run by a murderous pimp and his terrified girls. A century ago, when both were still of this world, the ghost ship stopped by this brothel before heading on. The ghost ship still docks here on the corresponding night (which is too early in the moon’s phase to be boarded: see Part 4). This will be handled as a series of interconnected haunts, and a chance to use social skills.
Tribe: One of the low-lying, reef guarded islands is home to a tribe of boggards. Their chieftain is currently engaged in an extended ritual using his nightflame orb that he hopes will bring an everlasting darkness to Golarion. It will do no such thing, but for his efforts, he has managed to make the area surrounding Jagged Reach much more overcast, which is enough to conceal the nighttime moonlight. The boggards know nothing about the ghost ship, but stopping this ritual (either through violence or diplomacy) will be key to finding it. See Part 4.
Smuggler’s hideout: A group of smugglers have converted a washed-ashore shipwreck into their hideout. The smugglers themselves don’t know much about the ghost ship: they provide meager hints at best. The real advantage is that they have a map of the Jagged Reach, and have clearly labeled the ruins as well as the boggard tribe. The players could barter for this map, but it is just as likely that they will kill the smugglers to take both the map, as well as their store of plunder.
Sea hazards: A shallow reef. Unexpected waves. Chased by a large sea monster. There will be a few encounters that take place on the water. These are to break up the pace, show the area is dangerous, and give the party a chance to exercise their “sailing roles” from Part 2.
The ghost ship is a minidungeon with three stories: deck, main hold, and storage hold. One of the inside covers of the module should be given over to its map. The PCs goal is to make contact with the ghost of the cleric of Aroden who is hiding in the storage hold.
Ghost Ship properties
The ghost ship phases between the material and ethereal planes based on the amount of direct moonlight shining upon it.
- New Moon: the ghost ship is entirely on the ethereal plane and beyond the ability for the PCs to observe or interact with in any way.
- Crescent Moon: the ghost ship is mostly on the ethereal plane, but projects slightly on to the material: it is visible, but wholly insubstantial and cannot be interacted with.
- Half Moon: the ghost ship straddles the planar border. All walls are visually transparent, but are solid if interacted with (however a difficult Escape Artist check could be used to penetrate the walls), and all native passengers gain the “incorporeal” subtype.
- Gibbous Moon: the ghost ship is mostly on the material plane. It looks and functions mostly like a real ship.
- Full Moon: the ghost ship is entirely on the material plane and the light empowers the spirits on board: all native passengers gain the advanced template.
- Cloud cover: persists over the region until the boggards are dealt with. The ghost ship’s presence is muted: treat all phases except for new moon as crescent moon instead.
- Darkness spell: supernaturally concealing a section of the ship from the moonlight will shunt that section of ship back to the ethereal plane. This does not hurt the ship’s structural integrity, but it does allow the characters to perform some interesting tricks. For example, a darkness spell cast on a wall essentially creates a hole in that wall for the PCs to step through. (This bit of extra rules will require a sidebar to fully explain.)
Throughout the ship there are battles against the pirates that have taken over the ship, battles (or truces) with soliders of Lirgen, and a few haunts. The boss battle of the ghost ship is against the cleric of Aroden cowering in the very bottom of the ship. He is paranoid and aggressive. He opens with a monologue where he reveals what he did with the sailor’s souls. He attacks immediately after he’s done ranting about how the PCs’ souls will be taken as well. He no longer receives spells from his dead god, but he can manifest spell-like effects. One of his trickier tactics is to cast darkness at the feet of heavily armored PCs: causing them to fall through the bottom of the ship and into the ocean.
For the conclusion of the module, the party points the ghost ship straight into the Eye of Abendego for a cinematic battle against wind & rain. The motif here is that the spotlight shifts from player to player, focusing on their personal battle against the storm. This section should be played out as a series of response-based vignettes, rather than the traditional game flow.
This section is broken into six “legs”: a fuzzy unit of time that can be roughly equal to an hour. Each character will have the spotlight on him or her once per leg.
Leg 1: Here the storm is strong, but navigable. Each character receives a moderate check relevant to their “sailing role” as described “Part 2: the Voyage Out”.
Leg 2: The storm comes in full force now, making it so that it is difficult to see from one end of the ship to another, and the sky is now dark. Each character makes a higher DC check according to their role.
Leg 3: Monsters attack! Every character gets into a 1:1 fight with a CR 2 monster. There will be a small encounter table provided, mostly with water & air elementals, and some small sea monsters. At the end of the fight, make the sailing check again. For every round they spend fighting, take a cumulative -2 penalty to their “sailing check.”
Leg 4: Something breaks. Each player is faced with a dilemma such that they have to make a choice, and then resolve with a skill challenge. For example: the jimmy holding the anchor in place gives way, and the anchor begins falling: you can either attempt a Strength check to haul it back up, or cut it loose with your weapon. (There is no “sailing check” this round.)
Leg 5: The storm reaches extreme heights. Each player faces an effect similar to a haunt as they perceive horrible omens and shapes in the rain. (Each with its own evocative and horrific read-aloud text.) At the end of their haunt, each player does a “sailing check”, with a possible negative modifier for failing the haunt.
Leg 6: Suddenly there is a bright light! The wind & rain remain at peak intensity, but the whole sky is filled with a white light, brighter and more stark than the sun. A voice booms louder than even the hurricane.
Who are you, that you would seek the face of Aroden? Why do you seek my broken soul amidst this throne of wind and rain?
The white silhouette of a man is visible through the storm as the source of the great light.
The PCs have a chance to parlay with “Aroden” for the sailor’s souls. No matter how loud they speak, Aroden can hear them through the hurricane. If there is a character specialized around religion and social skills, it should be possible through a series of extremely difficult skill checks to convince the bralani that he is not Aroden and to cease his charade, thus defeating the final encounter and “winning” the module without resorting to combat at all. However, most parties will be itching for a final showdown, and Aroden will gladly fight them to “punish them for their insolence.”
Aroden is brash, and despite his superior mobility, chooses to swoop on to the deck and principally engage in melee (though he is not shy about using his Sp and Su abilities if he sees a good opportunity). He stays in Wind Form the entire time, hovering just inches above the deck of the ship, as he moves from opponent to opponent.
The module ends upon returning to Botosani and receiving their reward from the widows, who take solace that their husband’s souls have moved on to be with Iomedae. At this point, the party should have enough experience to reach level 5.
(edited, typo removed )
<Anthea, Byrria, Cynthia, and Daria are away on holiday>
<please leave a message after the captured cleric of Asmodeus screams>
<Aaaaarrrarrrrarrrrghhhhhhhhh-gugh-gugh-gugggg!!!!>
Even Assuming Anthea, Byrria, Cynthia, and Daria were available, would they (ahem) rise to this bait if in the area for the purposes of shopping?
Unlikely. Bad stuff is happening to other people - that's sit back and enjoy the fun time.
Even assuming that they were on the docks at the time the ship pops into view (and by the way, how in Orcus' name is one undead sailor and an insubstantial one at that supposed to rig and steer a heavily damaged ship coming into port?) they're going to stay out of the way of the commotion (given an out of control apparently abandoned ship bearing down on the quay), not having a stake, so to speak, in it. Who's going to be the first people on board the ship? I guarantee you, that unless it's a group of noble knights with exceedingly paranoid dispositions on duty that day on the dockside, it's going to be the nearest and dearest of those expected home on the ship who rush aboard the moment it crunches into the quayside. They're the ones so desperate with worry about their 'loved ones' that they'll dash in irrespective of the potential peril to try and discover any sign of what's happened; they'll be the ones who get hexed with 'you have six months to do this or you die (mwuahahahah!)'.
Going so far as (for a moment) assuming that the ship does not dramatically crash but that there's still a general stampede to get aboard which Anthea, Byrria, Cynthia, and Daria are (incredibly) caught up in, and they do somehow get hexed, would that mean that they'd go rushing off to do whatever the person who hexed them had just ordered them to do? No. They'd be sensible and go looking for a highly experienced cleric or mighty wizard to break the hex for them...
Other Comments?
Neat hex though. Doesn't allow its victims any kind of chance to resist it. What is it? Related to the power word spells or trap the soul? What sort of level of power would that make it???
Ohh, that's a delightfully sadistic thing to toss around in the assumption that there are sorry little inexperienced mortal adventurers around to catch it...
Rating:
Sinks without a trace at the quayside.
Uh, thanks, Ms Succubus. I'll, uh, "wait until voting is over" before I respond to your post?
You want feedback? I'll do my best. :)
Adventure Preview / Audience
The writing in these two sections make this seem like something written after that same deadline you profess to keeping to. You respond to discussion in the boards, and overall that makes it look like you are more trying to 'win votes'. I mean, not that it's a bad thing after the competition, but it's less of a good first impression than you can have made.
As to the contents of these sections, it seems okay. I'm a little worried when you say most of the encounters could be bypassed by skill checks - as descriptions of how to do so will eat heavily into any wordcount, meaning the adventure would have to suffer somewhere else as a result.
Adventure Hooks
I really don't like your phrasing of 'the GM has to find a way...' It makes it feel like the suggestions you give below won't be of much help. And really, they're not *that* much help. The second one is pretty good, but the first and to a lesser extent third rely on extra GM setup, and that's not what the GM wants in this section.
Background
A lot going on here feels a little coincidental, the eye of abendigo forming effectively overnight, and the Azata randomly waiving summoning fees in particular. Also, your writing in this section feels a little weak, and doesn't flow very well. It's worth noting at least.
Part 1:
I'll say it again, but your writing quality needs a little more work. For instance, "People panic as the ship rams full-speed into the docks." isn't a good sentence at all. They were cheering a moment ago, and they're instantly panicked at this. It would be much more interesting to describe how people are panicking, especially if the PCs are going to have to rescue some of them from the water in a few moments.
Also, don't just say this section will be handled by traps - describe at least one of them. And a just-trap dungeon is boring anyways, only the rogue will be doing anything, and if it's a whole section... that means a lot of bored players.
Then there's the haunt that tries to curse them. If I were a cleric and I saw an undead who started to curse me, I'd be turning undead faster than you can say 'make a will save'. There's no reason for the ghost to curse them anyways, he's not being wronged by the PCs or anything. And, from experience, curses and threats and other similar 'bad stuff happens' hooks are really bad at making the PCs want to actually go explore. They want to get rid of the curse, fight back at the bad stuff or go away - not delve deeper into the problem. If you really wanted to go this way, the spirit should at least tell them what's up before cursing them.
Section 2
A single module is not a good place to introduce even a single new subsystem, especially with the other things you want to do here. You're clearly going to have a problem with scope of this adventure. And though it's not for everything you might want, there's already a bunch of ship-rules in the PRD, so you're reinventing the wheel a little, tool.
You give a 'bunch of NPCs' on the ship without specifying how many of them there are, names, descriptions or anything. Making so many throwaway NPCs is a bad call, always. Especially with no named NPC to control them. They're not followers, afterall. The PCs will ask for their names, so you did a no-no by saying they'll be there to talk with the PCs and then not describing them. Also, sailors should probably be experts, not commoners.
You also need to be more specific what sort of sea encounters the PCs will have here. Combat? Negotiation? rough weather?
Section 3
An exploring section too? This is a whole book on it's own! You're really not clear what the goal is for the PCs in this section, you say they should be finding out where the ghost ship is, then you say they find out in part 4. Not a well-flowing initial impression.
I'm not really going to comment on the islands themselves, mostly due to how long this is taking. I;ll try and get back to them tomorrow.
The Grauhir sound like a single creature, mostly because you begin describing it as "this foul creature". A very, very niche creature too. Only useful for making clerics mad and then getting smacked down.
In the nightflame orb, you say "like a touch would radiate light", when you mean torch. Bad lack-of-attention-to-detail-author. It also seems like a not-very useful item, or perhaps a cursed one. Not something the PCs would ever actually want.
Part four
What's a minidungeon? It's either a dungeon or not, and unless it contains three plots you probably mean encounters, not stories.
Another side note, it looks like you've also asked for a third inside cover here. You say 'inside covers' when discussing the maps of the ships path, and at least one of the covers is claimed by this too. Don't specify that - let it get decided based on space.
Then, you also go on and describe all sorts of mechanics and then only gloss over the encounters you mentioned, which isn't what an adventure proposal is about - you should gloss over mechanics and detail encounters.
Part 5
This section is really complicated. PCs shouldn't be in the spotlight one at a time, they should be there all at once. One at a time means almost everyone sits around bored for almost all this section. And it kinda feels like one last big encounter too. And adding in 'personal haunts' means a lot of work for the GM.
You make a lot of assumptions about the party here too - like assuming they'll realize this isn't Aroden, or that they'll want to fight him. And since he isn't actually Aroden, you should call him "Aroden" instead, for clairity's sake.
Finally, you don't wrap up the adventure well at all. With the fake god gone, wouldn't the PCs lose their ghost ship? And then drown in the hurricane?
Overall, you could have used a lot more polish. A walk-through with a player would have helped a lot I think, but you need a lot of practice to get to the real super-star level. I mean, I'm no expert, you did better than I did, but this adventure isn't really superstar material.
Not recommended for advancement.
I'm back, and I wanted to comment on those individual islands of section 3.
Barren islands: You really don't need to point out that there will be terrain that doesn't include something exciting on it. Other than the fact that I'd bet this adventure would be a stretch on space already, you phrase it like "I'll add in a little filler to make things look more interesting". It's not an encouraging picture.
Ruins with carvings: You say at least two islands, then describe exactly two. Be more specifc, this is your adventure pitch here, not suggestions for someone else's. You also describe the monster, then refer to a puzzle. *then* state the puzzle that exists. The broken flow of this island really takes the reader out.
I also want to point out that you specifically say the players will be intended to solve the puzzle with out of game knowledge. That's not just bad design, that's terrible design. It's the difference between playing the game, and gaming the game. Players don't play games to be players, they do it to play as the characters. If the puzzle is for the players and not the charcters, it breaks the submersion and ruins the whole session.
Haunted ruins: your phrasing could use a little help - "One island has some scorch marks and remains of building foundations if visited during the day" should be "if visited during the day, one island has some scorch marks and remains of building foundations." But though your flavor for the island is good, you then gloss over everything specific. What sorts of haunts? Are there rewards? You have a decent setup here, it would be a cool adventure location, but as described it leaves too much wanting.
Tribe: making an island chain overcast is a good step in the right direction for this guy, if you ask me. But unless there's a clue pointing the PCs here, this 'important' encounter could be skipped and have players waste days, weeks or even their entire timeline thinking about why it's so dark. I mean, unless you stated it out of character - which you shouldn't have to do - this could wreck the adventure. Not a bad island though, other than it being so miss-able.
Smuggler’s hideout: Another not-bad location, but I'll bring up my point about a bunch of nameless NPCs again. The PCs *will* talk to them, and then the GM will have to scramble to come up with names, descriptions, etc. Always give a name, even if the PCs might not ever learn it. Just in case.
Anyways, sorry for sounding so harsh, but you were looking for feedback. Hope this helps.