This weekend I'm going to be running The Slumbering Tsar by Frog God Games. Let me start off by saying that it's absolutely packed with quality writing, and a great free-roam framework. That having been said it does look, and is advertised as, being very difficult. My problem arises with this: we wont have 5 players. In fact we will probably only have 3. Now my question is do you think if I allowed each player to gestalt that the game would play more or less balanced? That is to avoid making changes to as many encounters as possible. If not, what can I do to run a smooth and challenging, but not overly challenging, game?
On another note, do you guys have any suggestions or tips for running Slumbering Tsar? Did you tweak anything? Move encounters? Or what? I'm interested in how you guys changed things, or what you found to be useful when running it.
I will say that I'm having a hard time with the free-roam aspect of it. While I love it, my group will probably head straight for city. Obviously they can't enter due to the beast blocking it. My problem is it seems kinda contrived to tell them, "Well you can't defeat that now, you should wander around the desert until you level enough." Off the top of my head I thought of providing them a hook that included investigation of the desolation.
Any advice is much appreciated.