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First, some background. I've been running and playing in Paizo campaigns for many years now: Shackled City, then Rise of the Runelords, and now Crimson Throne and Kingmaker in alternating sessions.
But Crimson Throne was the first game I started after moving to a new part of the country, and with a new group of players. It was a substantial risk; if the game had gone sour, I could have alienated my players, leaving me without a gaming group in my new (very small) hometown.
The risk paid off, for the most part. CotCT is far from perfect, but it suffers more from the sin of hubris than from any inherent design flaws. That hubris, or over-ambition, caused the AP to stumble under the weight of its own ideas. But for me, playing with a fresh group, it was a great way to illustrate what Pathfinder is capable of. Even on a bad day, the game is big, bold, and rife with exciting possibilities.
Here follows a lot of spoiler-iffic observations, mostly intended for those who might be thinking of GMing the campaign.
The setting is rich with detail. Korvosa is a fully-fleshed out high-fantasy urban environment, with loads of NPCs, organizations, and locales for PCs to explore. Since the campaign's ultimate goal is to save the city from its own despotic tyrant, it's important that the PCs have a genuine affection for the city -- if they don't love it, then they won't feel invested in saving it from itself.
As written, the character hooks listed in the CotCT Players' Guide do NOT provide this connection, so a GM needs to work a bit harder with her players at the start to establish good, clear reasons for them to care about Korvosa. If this works, Chapters 1-3 can show the city at its best and worst -- or, at least, what the PCs THINK is "worst" (see Chapter 6 below). The city can begin to feel like a character unto itself. Saving Korvosa = saving the princess.
A savvy GM will listen & watch carefully during early sessions, to see which aspects of the city intrigue the PCs the most. She can tailor future encounters to involve specific settings, NPCs, etc., to give them more weight and importance.
One simple example is the range of law enforcement agencies in Korvosa: the City Guard, the Sable Company, the Hellknights, and in Ch. 2, the Gray Maidens. You don't need all these different groups, but you should keep them all around anyway, to see which ones your PCs consider "good" or "bad." By Ch.6, some of the less relevant groups can simply disappear, while the ones which the PCs care about can be repositioned to form the "allies" and "axis" of the AP's final confrontations.
This is a splendid kick-off adventure, but be careful not to place too much weight upon the first encounter with Gaedren Lamm, or it will seem like too much of a cake-walk. In my game, I made the mistake of using the Lamm-related player hooks (from the Players' Guide), and as a result, my players almost couldn't believe how easy it was to defeat their "nemesis." (As a result, I decided that the WASN'T defeated, and eventually merged him with several other evil NPCs...but you can save yourself some work by simply changing up the hooks).
Instead, focus more on Zellara and the Harrow Deck, since her involvement can infuse the first chapter with a useful sense of destiny. When the PCs see their city in anarchy, Zellara can be used to give them the added nudge they might need, to step up and be heroes. From there, Chapter 1 is a nicely designed semi-sandbox romp through a rough-and-tumble cityscape, with a pretty decent mini-dungeon crawl to round it off.
Meeting the Queen is important. She shouldn't seem like a big bad right from the start, but it's nice if the meeting can somehow foreshadow the troubles to come. In my game, I had the Harrow Deck fall out of a PCs' backpack as they were leaving, with the "Tyrant" card face up. This made Ileosa suspicious of the PCs, but it also gave the PCs a reason to keep a close eye on the Queen.
Last bit of advice: if there are no Shoanti characters in your PCs' group, make sure to use Thousand Bones to fill in the history between Korvosa and the Shoanti. Other instances of anti-Shoanti violence might help as well.
"Seven Days to the Grave" is about as close to perfect as any Adventure Path installment is ever likely to get. I made a number of changes to suit my PCs, but they weren't fixes, just adjustments. It's a brutal, high-stakes race against time. With vampires! What's not to love?
For the introduction, I rearranged the order of events (while keeping a close eye on the timeline). In my case, it made more sense to open with Trinia, then deal with Ishani and Brienna; then I delayed them outside the city for a couple of days to let the outbreak get into full swing.
I also set the events during Abadar's Taxfest, so that the circulation of tainted gold became a bigger plot point. I also made the Bank of Abadar a central locale (one of my PCs was a Paladin of Abadar); before the adventure began, the plague conspirators hired a quintet of thieves to break in to the Bank and install a death's head coffer in the Taxfest vault, infecting all the redistributed gold. Four of these thieves were then turned into vampire spawn (in Racker's Alley); the fifth, Vendra's brother, stole a wand of remove disease from the Bank and escaped. Lots of backstory, but they helped seed the different events with clues that led the PCs back to the Hospice.
I didn't use the Direption encounter, since it didn't seem like it provided any necessary information. In retrospect, it would have been a lovely atmospheric encounter -- harder to run than the wererat chapter, but maybe more in keeping with the tone of the chapter.
In any case, GMs should ensure that the PCs get breadcrumbs, so they feel like they're getting somewhere as they search for the source of the plague. And it's even better if you can give them the sense that there might be a *cure* for the plague out there. You want the PCs to end the chapter feeling like they've SAVED lives, as opposed to just preventing more deaths -- it's a fine distinction, but a useful one.
And yet, I'm not sure I agree with the "Saviors of the City" ending (p.56). If the PCs have broken any laws during their quest, and especially if they killed the Gray Maidens guarding the Hospice (and they probably will), Queen Ileosa should greet them with cold gratitude and a strong suggestion that the PCs should consider relocating...soon. If this isn't strong enough, Ileosa could come right out and banish them.
Banishing the PCs will create frustration ("we just saved your city, and now you're kicking us out?"), but it's the only reliable way to get them to leave at the end of Chapter 3. It also positions Ileosa as a bad guy -- in my game, I gave them a glimpse of a "fang" tattoo on her arm as she issued the banishment (they didn't learn what it meant till later, but in meta-gaming terms, it was an instant tip-off that she's evil). Best of all, it makes their rivalry personal.
I had a lot of problems with this chapter, but in some cases they came from changes I tried to make -- many of them attempts to extend the grim & ghoulish tone of Chapter 2 -- so here, I won't list the changes, but instead just talk about the adventure as written.
Anarchy is a difficult foe to role-play. PCs won't know how to fight it. In addition, PCs around this level (6-8) receive a power bump that leaves them (a) unsure of how much damage they're capable of, and (b) eager to find out. The bottom line? If the goal of Chapter 3 is to quell anarchy, PCs can easily become part of the problem, not the solution.
The greatest difficulty came when confronting Pilts's mobs, and to a lesser extent Pilts himself. If you see your PCs are tempted to behave in ways that promote chaos or evil, consider making Laori *more* evil, *more* unstable, to show the PCs what they could become if they're not careful.
Alternatively, they might be able to enjoy the crazy, pig-flinging underworld a bit more if they mobs, and Pilts himself, are down-played somewhat -- ie. not presented as genuine threats at all, but mere pathetic parodies of real tyranny. I generally don't advise making encounters seem too easy; but it's more than made up for in the second half of the chapter.
I found the Arkona dungeon to be a bit out of character with the rest of the AP, but it's well designed, and has a nice range of potential outcomes, depending on the PCs' luck and bravado.
But as I said earlier, it's not enough for the PCs to have Neolandus (a PC they've only just met & rescued) tell them they need to leave Korvosa. They need to NEED to leave Korvosa. This is a potential "break point" in the campaign, so it has to be handled very carefully.
For all the wonderful world-building Michael Kortes et al. did in this chapter, it runs the risk of feeling like a runaround if the PCs aren't invested. The Shoanti are fascinating creatures -- neither enemies nor allies, they are a culture-puzzle for the PCs to untangle in order to get what they need to move on.
But what DO they need? They don't really know...the "cut scene" from Chapter 3 only tells them that Ileosa is immortal, apparently. Lots of nudging from the NPCs at Blackbird Ranch sent them up to the Cinderlands, but they still didn't really know what they were after. And, after a looong series of chain-quests, they get...sent along to Chapter 5, with instructions to collect a sword. Not much payoff.
My suggestion: make the Shoanti themselves the payoff. Instead of having the Shoanti already mustering for war against Korvosa, use the Blackbird NPCs to convince the PCs that they need the Shoanti as military allies if they’re going to usurp the Queen (maybe this directive can come from Neolandus, or it could be Zellara ex machina). They may not relish the idea of waging war on their own city, but they WILL love the idea of getting their own army.
If you don’t want to make the Shoanti army into a prize, then see if you can find something else to provide the PCs as story awards for their long trek through the desert. Physical objects work best; only one PC will be able to wield Serithial, so the other party members will appreciate any relic-y swag you can toss them in this Chapter.
Once you’ve overcome these conceptual problems, there’s plenty to love in this chapter. I played up Shadowcount Sial a bit more than the other factions, but Cinnabar, Krojun, and the Cinderlander are all terrific recurring NPCs, providing both flavour and challenges aplenty. I changed the “Totems” challenge up, and instead created a big, juicy rumble in the desert, with Red Mantises and gargoyles galore, and the PCs trying to save Akram (their only ticket into the Sun Shaman’s tent). In a long chapter without a lot of combat, it let the PCs vent a lot of steam.
If it were adjusted to serve as a standalone module, “Scarwall” might just outpace “Seven Days to the Grave.” It is, pound for pound, the most satisfying dungeon crawl I’ve run in a long time. Some of my PCs complained about the number of save-or-die encounters, but that’s the nature of the beast at this level, and especially when dealing with undead.
Did I say undead? Make that undead, and devils, and a dragon. There’s so much juicy gothic goodness in Scarwall, it’s as if Ravenloft made a house call to Golarian. Even if the PCs only explore a fraction of the castle, they’re guaranteed to get their money’s worth.
And yet...and yet “Scarwall” is NOT a standalone module. It’s part of a long quest, and unfortunately that makes almost all of its atmosphere irrelevant. The goal is Serithial; from what I can tell, PCs have no real reason to purge the castle of its ancient curse, and especially with time running out in Korvosa, the rest of Scarwall’s encounters become flavour at best, distractions at worst.
The solution is simple, if inelegant; make ending the curse a necessary step towards accessing Serithial. There are probably lots of ways to do this; my first thought is to have a struggle between Mithrodar and Zon-Kuthon’s curate, such that the curate won’t help the PCs until they’ve dealt with the Chained Spirit. Maybe your PCs won’t need this sort of overt urging; but if they’re feeling any “campaign fatigue” at this point, it’s best to give everything they do a reason.
Role-playing Sial and Laori’s deceptions and rivalries was fun (albeit challenging for me, with a paladin in the party). Make sure they both get their comeuppance by the end of the adventure (becoming curate should NOT seem fun), unless you want the Brotherhood of Bones to play a role in Chapter 6. But that chapter has a LOT of twisted bad guys, so it may be cleaner to write them out here.
In general, I tend to speed up and streamline the final chapters of adventure paths. Once the PCs have Serithial, they will want to get their hands on the Queen as soon as possible. But there’s a risk in letting them off the leash, as well; in my case, I let the PCs return to Korvosa, described the changes, and then said “What next?” Several sessions of dithering ensued.
So, linger on the changes—remind them of why they loved Korvosa, and how much of that has been tainted by the Queen. Put some of their beloved NPCs in minor jeopardy, so they can be big damn heroes to the citizens for awhile before they charge on in to the castle. I didn’t use the Rebellion Points system (p.46) – I generally don’t use the scoring systems in Paizo APs – but it would be nice to give the PCs a chance to raise a resistance.
Depending on where the PCs decide to enter the castle, rearrange the encounters as you see fit, to throw whatever bad guys you think will satisfy them the most. After they defeat the fake Ileosa, give them what they need to find the Everdawn Pool quickly and directly. I cut the Sunken Maiden entirely, and put the Pool on a demiplane, with a gateway underneath the castle (the Queen laid a few traps at the door, of course).
I loved the Harrow Deck of Many Things idea, so I made sure the PCs got a chance to access these powers. But then, of course, the cards they drew threw enormous wrenches into the campaign.
In my case: one of my players drew “The Marriage,” and was immediately courted by a powerful Efreet. She rejected him, and so he opened up a gate to the Plane of Fire and began invading the city with azer and fire giants. After killing the Queen, the PCs allied with the Shoanti army (arriving in the nick of time!) to defeat the fire armies – I used the whole encounter as a test drive of the Kingmaker Mass Combat mechanics (verdict: meh). It was kinda fun, but Korvosa ended up getting trashed in the process, which sort of defeated the purpose of the campaign (ie. saving Korvosa). In retrospect, I would have held the Deck of Many Things back until after they dealt with the Queen. That way, the cards they drew could serve as just rewards...or else open up the doors to new adventure possibilities.
Now, on to Carrion Crown!
Yep, great report.
Couple of questions
What did you do to make them feel they really needed to get out of Korvosa at the end of chapter 3?
My plan is to have Neolandus only believe that Ileosa got great power from a Shoanti relic that they had hidden and were afraid of, and that it makes her invincible and that maybe the Shoanti would know how to help. This will hopefully lead them to the Shoanti with questions and will allow me to breadcrumb chapter 4 by giving them the info they would otherwise have got at end of chapter 3.
I really struggle with the logic of bahor arkona's double-cross and was thinking of just making it a straight prison break. Or maybe that bahor is worried about Ileosa but hasn't been able to get any info from neo so decides to let him out - but neo is so untrusting he has to make it seem like a prison break so bahor disguises as someone else who gives the pc's the way in.....as you can see I am struggling with this bit. How did you deal with?