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... the Pactmasters forced my group to have a Dinner Party.
A year after starting the campaign and running it as a converted Pathfinder RPG campaign, my group is about to start book 6. Their most memorable moment ( and objection ) to the plot is when they're forced to hold a dinner party over the Scroll of Kakishon.
I kind of concur in a WTF kind of way. =)
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... the Pactmasters forced my group to have a Dinner Party.
A year after starting the campaign and running it as a converted Pathfinder RPG campaign, my group is about to start book 6. Their most memorable moment ( and objection ) to the plot is when they're forced to hold a dinner party over the Scroll of Kakishon.
I kind of concur in a WTF kind of way. =)
By coincidence, I just ran that section last night. My PCs totally blew off the whole dinner party suggestion from Rayhan. Their "plan" is to get into Kakishon, kill Jhavul, clean the place out, and then maybe sell the Scroll. (heh heh heh)
So Tamir went ahead and raided the villa anyhow.
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... the Pactmasters forced my group to have a Dinner Party.
A year after starting the campaign and running it as a converted Pathfinder RPG campaign, my group is about to start book 6. Their most memorable moment ( and objection ) to the plot is when they're forced to hold a dinner party over the Scroll of Kakishon.
I kind of concur in a WTF kind of way. =)
By coincidence, I just ran that section last night. My PCs totally blew off the whole dinner party suggestion from Rayhan. Their "plan" is to get into Kakishon, kill Jhavul, clean the place out, and then maybe sell the Scroll. (heh heh heh)
So Tamir went ahead and raided the villa anyhow.
A good way to run it =)
I had the city council be insistent upon the dinner party, even if they weren't going to sell it. ( ridiculous, but they eventually went along with it )I hope they have some item crafters with them. I found the Kakishon and Impossible Eye to be very stunting for my players. with no place to go and sell items, or buy new ones, they're largely stuck with what they have. luckily I'd house ruled disenchanting items, so they could spend time and re-craft things a little. Good luck!
I just ran the dinner party encounter a couple of weeks ago and it went pretty well. I had Rayhan bring it up as a suggestion rather than forcing the pcs to have the party. The party, along with the shopping the pcs did in the markets, were some of the best role-playing encounters that we have had.
By coincidence, I just ran that section last night. My PCs totally blew off the whole dinner party suggestion from Rayhan.
Mine did the same thing.
They were like: "That's the worst idea we've ever heard. We certainly won't be doing that!"
In my game they had the party, but they had the option of skipping it. It was a suggestion on protocol for the city and Rayhan said if they did not do it he would not be comfortable with them staying in his house and they would be welcome to stay at the CLiffside Inn. So to let the host feel better they had a dinner party and put on a show.
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Our group was given a "strong request" from the Pactmasters to hold the dinner. The players took it as an opportunity to learn more about who wants it and roleplay a bit. It went well, until later that night...
My players didn't have a huge issue with the dinner. The harder pill to swallow was going from book 4 to book 5. That didn't sit as well.
My players didn't have a huge issue with the dinner. The harder pill to swallow was going from book 4 to book 5. That didn't sit as well.
Same when I ran it. I tried to make the Pactmasters seem extremely powerful and boogy-man-ish in a pre-campaign level 0 vignette. So when their involvement in the dinner party came up it was more of a...well I suppose we should take our armor off and start making some soup because I don't want to disapear for ever. That kind of bit me in the rump later on because my most experienced and meta-y player was convinced they were the big bads and when they didn't turn out to be he threw an eraser at me (poor me, I get abused a lot as a GM).
Adventure 4->5 was where things got real shakey for us. They made ample reference to the movie Groundhog Day and asked if rolls and checks they made in the "dress rehersal" adventure could count. The remainder of the campaign was a little teeth-pully and it diminished the events of Part 6 a bit (although the last encounter was quite fun and left everyone at least content).
Well my group didn't have much problem with it, the girls liked that part more than the guys did but I kinda glazed over it. But all in all the assault on the house was much more fun.
The more I hear about the problems with the dinner party in book three and boook five being a mirror/repeat of book four, I think I'm going to run Legasy as a 2-book mini campaign.
My players are having the time of thier life with the gnoll village in book #1, and they've already started collecting legands and info on the larger gnoll citadel in book 2.
What do people think about that idea? Any suggestions?
We are on book five and loving the game. I really do not get why everyone hates the dinner party, but to each his own I guess.
I started dropping hints in Book 4 about book five. Via Divination and dreams sent by the cat. Basically that they would have to pass through fire before they could return home.
It worked for my group anyway.
My quick shoot-from-the-hip comments about Legacy of Fire:
- Book 1 is great, I agree. My only complaint is that it levels you up a bit too fast. I'd shave a bit of the difficulty off of the BBEG so that you can end it at level 4 rather than 5.
- Book 2 begs to be expanded. Lean into that support article, and flesh out the Pale Mountain region. You can have lots of adventuring before you get to the actual House of the Beast itself. Let the PCs get "used" to the idea of Kelmarene as a home base as they do a bit of sandboxing before the big crawl.
The trimmed XP from book 1 makes "room" for this. Also, it's okay to be a bit higher level going into the House, because the House is quite hard.
- Book 3 is neat, and just because the dinner party feels forced doesn't mean you have to scrap the whole book.
- Book 4 is amazing, one of the best in the entire AP line. Don't cut it!
- Book 5 draws a lot of justified complaints, it might be worth drastically cutting down. (Say, remove Bayat-Al-Bazaan altogether and just do the Set Piece in the City of Brass?)
- Book 6 is really elegant in that it ties back to the beginning of the game. You're missing some roleplay gold and real emotional/epic moments if you don't do the re-saving the homeland plot. Revisiting old locations (both Kelmarene and HotB) has never been so much fun!
You might want to cut the Brazen Tower though, it's pretty grindy without too much plot payoff.
If you're cutting big chunks of books 5 and 6, then you'll have to scale down some of the encounters in book 6 to keep things balanced. Again, the awesomesauce that is book 6 is worth this effort.
Forced points in pre-gens can go smoothly, or can really jolt and annoy players. I remember parts of Runelords went like that with the group I was in, and one of the Korvosa books felt way off for our pcs.
The players actually have the real power here and should be able to do what they want, but not without consequences.
In fact, if its a low charisma party of hard-melee heavy classes and a paranoid ranger, yeah, a dinner party doesn't really make much sense.
Someone important tries to push the players into a dinner party, with fine dining! The barbarian asks what is fine dining, and is completely uninterested in what the city-folk do when they pamper themselves.
My quick shoot-from-the-hip comments about Legacy of Fire:
- Book 1 is great, I agree. My only complaint is that it levels you up a bit too fast. I'd shave a bit of the difficulty off of the BBEG so that you can end it at level 4 rather than 5.
I'm not having any problems with too much exp from book 1. I'm running an 8-person party, and they have convinced their boss (through great role-playing and tithing to the Pactlords) to permanently assign them three of the guards. By their decision (done between sessions) I'm giving the NPC's full exp for any encounter they participate in. Mostly, the NPC's have been given safe duties - like guarding the spellcasters.
So, basically, I have an 11-member party!!! I've had to add several encounters just to get them ready for exploring the town and I've got several more in town to get them ready for the battle market.
Despite their bosses complaints, they are alreay looking beyond Kelmarene into the greater Pale Mountain region. This is without any push from me, so I think I'll actually manage to get them to 4th level sometime during the battle market - if thigs go like planned (which they won't).
I'm midway through book 4 and, honestly, I think the whole thing is worth running and a lot of fun. Book 3 is worth abridging/tinkering with a bit, but it still has bright spots.
My only serious complaint about the AP so far is how uneven the difficulty level is from book to book. Book 1 throws the heat at the players like it thinks it's a Living Greyhawk mod and then (so far) nothing in books 2-4 is really on that same order of beat-down. Book 3's combats are arguably easier than Book 2's even though the PCs are a few levels higher, etc. My players have no idea how seriously to take any fight and while I'm sure that sounds great to some people so far it's been really frustrating to them.
I made sure they ran through the Set Piece in book 3. The whole party was not really set up or prepared for undead... and the spectre gave then fits. The rest of the adventure was a little easier, but it let them 'feel their oats' a bit after having to deal with Pugs, Stingchucks, and level drain over the previous books.
Here is what I did for the dinner party quantry.
The encounters travelling to Katapesh specifically foreshadowed to the party that someone or a some organization was very interested in the scroll.
Rayhan suggested the dinner party as a method to find out who the individual(s) seeking the scroll were. Rayhan reasoned that said individuals would attend or send proxies to the dinner and that the party could use the mealtime banter to use diplomacy, sense motive, etc. to try to expose the individual or organization.
Worked well. The party sowed disinformation about the location of the scroll and narrowed down their list of suspects.
The party suspected that however was seeking the scroll would make their move shortly, so they made specific efforts to foil a night raid, since that was the logical time to try to steal the scroll.
Needless to say, the raid went badly when Tamir and his mooks made their play for Rayhan as they were ambushed by the party.
It worked out perfectly, because after that, the party wanted a piece of Father Jackal and went after his organization, despite Father Jackal having no leverage to get the party to come after him.
My players liked book 4 and 5, despite the railroady nature of those two adventures, but that is because for them, as long as the railroad is taking them someplace interesting with challenging foes to fight and treasure to be had, they don't care about being railroaded.
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I find myself wondering sometimes why DM's complain about certain aspects of the AP's that seem railroady.
A lot of the posts in this thread make me believe that part 3 simply crept up and bit many DM's in the ass.
There were so many opportunities to set up the Rayhand events.
Did anyone have Rayhan make an appearance in Kelmarane after the liberation with items for the PC's to buy or to help enchant their gear? I mean, he is a close family friend...
Quoted from page 9 of Jackals Price:
Once the word “Kakishon” is known, Almah’s
expression brightens. In her time in the city of Katapesh,
she’s made countless contacts with various notables, and
one in particular comes to mind when she hears the word
“Kakishon.” This is an old family friend, a man named
Rayhan, who has made a comfortable life for himself as a
merchant, a scholar of note, and a wizard. She has visited
with Rayhan several times in the past, usually when seeking
his advice on mercantile matters involving the arcane and
bizarre, and particularly with matters involving Katapesh’s
neighbor to the south—Nex.
You also have the pact master angle which was mentioned in this thread already (and it is a good one).
This was one of the adventures that needed to be set up from the begining (IMO), even gpoing so far as to have some of the other guests at the dinner being friends of the PC's already, or aquaintences that the PC's have at least a neutral view of. (also easilly done with the repopulation of Kelmarane after Part 1).
It just appears to me that many DM's seem to get involved in these AP's without reading them all first, then wondering why the hell their players are not really interested in the events taking place. And also posting in these forums that the event is not going well, or it seems to railroady... or the players refused etc.. If you set it up right, the players will go with it. But you as GM are ultimately responsible for knowing your players and the material.
Sure, the dinner can be skipped, and with little change to the ultimate outcome of the AP, but the tension buildup to the attack is what that dinner was all about.
It just appears to me that many DM's seem to get involved in these AP's without reading them all first, then wondering why the hell their players are not really interested in the events taking place. And also posting in these forums that the event is not going well, or it seems to railroady... or the players refused etc.. If you set it up right, the players will go with it. But you as GM are ultimately responsible for knowing your players and the material.
Let me preface this by saying that I did read book 3 before starting to run LoF and I did smooth over the parts of it I didn't like or didn't think flowed well by tying in PC backstory and foreshadowing things and such.
I strongly believe you, as the GM, shouldn't have to.
As a GM it's your job to make all manner of odd things work and make disjointed things work naturally together, but you shouldn't get an AP that, out of the box, already needs that before factoring in your players, PCs, gaming style, etc.
Especially since a GM might start running an AP upon receiving the first book of it and not after having received all six books, it really is Paizo's job to get the parts of an AP to work together and flow reasonably smoothly. (And mostly I think they succeed in that job.)
huh. My players are all about the dinner party. I've been having the merchants come to the PC's bit by bit, and they are full-on feeling the paranoia. One of them even invisibly tracked Tamir out of a ruk game with divination spells and lost him when the invisible gnome flew off and outran him.
My point is, when Rayhan suggested the party, they all JUMPED at the idea. They want intel on these folk. And given that Zayfid is still on the loose they think he's likely pulling at least some, if not all, their strings. And they think they can buy time until Rayhan figures out the scroll.
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I loved the dinner party and so did my players. It's an opportunity for the players to show off and who doesn't like that?
The way I played it is that representatives turned up to Rayhan's house and basically invited themselves. The players have a powerful artifact in their possession and these influential people have heard about it. They therefore assume that the players are in Katapesh to sell the item.
This is after all Rayhan's house and if he wants to have a dinner party then so be it. If the players don't bother to turn up then that will be seen as a major insult to some very powerful people. If the players ignore the party then that's fine the adventure continues but it should have roleplaying consequences.
Basically no-one is forcing you to have the dinner party but it's a very, very good idea to do it.
Basically no-one is forcing you to have the dinner party but it's a very, very good idea to do it.
I think you, as the GM, can tweak things so that this is true but as Jackal's Price is written, it really isn't.
Which is too bad.
I'll most likely expand the dinner party. And host one myself as GM to get the players into the moment. So, we'll have a feast, while the players are in character. Should be fun.
What are you, animals?
It's local custom. Like using restrooms instead of letting waste drop onto the street.
You guys would put graffiti on the statues of beloved folk heroes!
:P
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Given how many parties are having problems with the Dinner Party scene, I decided that a little foreshadowing would be in order. My players have just finished clearing the village of Kelmarane. They were surprised when I told them they had a yuear off to do whatever they wanted to do.
Several wanted to re-make Kelmarane into a thriving market town. They made trips to several of the villages on the regional map in House of the Beast, solving problems, attracting trade, and making sure that the rooute north and south of the village were secure.
Then, I dropped the hint that asking one of the major merchant houses in Katapesh woulsd be the best way to get regular travel through the village. So they took a quick side trip to Katapesh, tried to see the leaders of the merchant houses, got a better look at how tightly the Pactmasters control things, and secured an invitation to a dinner party (as a bidder for the house's trade) so they know about this pleasant little tradition. They were also sucessfull in getting a promise of more trade, but only once the problem of the Carrion King was solved.
Now, they're ready to head into Book #2, and have enough briefing on Book #3 that it won't seem forced. Not a bad night's work.