what's wrong with wake of the watcher, that one is actually one of my favorites in carrion crown (and i've never even read h.p. lovecraft).
what's wrong with wake of the watcher, that one is actually one of my favorites in carrion crown (and i've never even read h.p. lovecraft).
I agree, my players really had fun with this.
The Weavers (Dungeon 138) or The Styes (Dungeon 121)
Both excellent Richard Pett scenarios and can be adapted to fit the town Carrion Hill easy
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As someone whos replacing both wake and ashes, here's what i'm planning:
General premise is the same: Sausage Effigy to be delivered to other faction in return for ingredient #4. However, the location is different (Redleaf in Varno instead of Thrushmoor in Cthululand). The cult isn't a Cthululand cult, but the Church of Razmir, and they were last seen heading to the haunted ruins of Bastardhall together. The Razmirans are led by a Vision who has caught on to Adrissant's plan, and is subtly trying to subvert it (AKA steal the Carrion Crown to make Razmir truly immortal) to the glory of Razmir. Also, the Razmirans have the Way cultist they met with piked up outside of Bastardhall as a warning to the Way.
Anyway, Bastardhall is basically on top of a catacomb complex where the Vision is doing research, and below the catacombs is a lost Urgathoan necropolis with the big-bad being a leveled daughter of urgathoa. Add flavor in notes, etc. for the group to head to Caliphas next for the vampire shennanigans.
... Sausage Effigy ....
lol...awesome
What about Chapter 5 of the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, "Skeletons of Scarwall"? You would have to scale it back considerably to avoid TPKs, but in terms of setting & mood it fits WAY better into Carrion Crown than WotW.
You would have to do a bit of plot adjustment to get them there, but once you're inside Scarwall, just replace "legacy bastard sword" with "legacy mace" and you're laughing.
What about Chapter 5 of the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, "Skeletons of Scarwall"? You would have to scale it back considerably to avoid TPKs, but in terms of setting & mood it fits WAY better into Carrion Crown than WotW.
I would actually warn against inserting Skeletons of Scarwall as Chapter 4 of the AP. SoS and Shadows of Gallowspire have way too much in common as adventures -in particular hordes of bolstered undead in a secure location that needs to be assaulted -to be run so close together.
By the time the party was done slogging through it, then parts 5 & 6 of Carrion Crown, they would be so sick of undead their eyes would cross. I'd strongly suggest sticking with an alternate flavor than more undead. There is plenty of that to go around as the AP comes to a close. =-)
I agree, Wake doesn't really fit the flavor. I was going to suggest a scaled-back Skeletons of Scarwall as well, but Brandon Hodge is probably right.
Here's my idea: since each book gives the spotlight to specific monster (ghosts, flesh golems, werewolves, C'thulu, vampires, and liches) why not stick with that theme? Instead of C'thulu, I suggest hags.
A coven of hags would fit just fine in Carrion Crown thematically, you could give them levels in Sorcerer (Accursed bloodline), Witch, Druid, and/or Cleric to beef them up, they fit just fine in Versex, they could easily have made a deal with the Whispering Way, and they can be downright scary.
You could also tie this in with the next adventure by having the coven lead by/affiliated with the annis hag Oothi and the witches of Barstoi. If the witches hide their motives, you could have it be quite a shock when they're revealed as the villains of Ashes at Dawn.
I agree, Wake doesn't really fit the flavor. I was going to suggest a scaled-back Skeletons of Scarwall as well, but Brandon Hodge is probably right.
Here's my idea: since each book gives the spotlight to specific monster (ghosts, flesh golems, werewolves, C'thulu, vampires, and liches) why not stick with that theme? Instead of C'thulu, I suggest hags.
A coven of hags would fit just fine in Carrion Crown thematically, you could give them levels in Sorcerer (Accursed bloodline), Witch, Druid, and/or Cleric to beef them up, they fit just fine in Versex, they could easily have made a deal with the Whispering Way, and they can be downright scary.
You could also tie this in with the next adventure by having the coven lead by/affiliated with the annis hag Oothi and the witches of Barstoi. If the witches hide their motives, you could have it be quite a shock when they're revealed as the villains of Ashes at Dawn.
what would make the hag scenario absolutely awesome is if someone in the party had a changeling and one of the hags was actually her real mother!!! da da dum!. would that require a sanity check?. good stuff :)
Wake of the Watcher is the one adventure of this AP that my PC (singular) is looking most forward to. But I can see how it'd seem off compared to the rest of the adventures.
There are multiple ideas you could use as a replacement adventure. It really depends on how much you're willing to write. Personally I'd recommend replacing the undead in Castle Scarwall with something else. The artifact in the basement aspect is there as well as this whole pre-designed castle. You can populate the castle with abberations, cultists, aristocratic machinations, deep ones, hags, or make it a monastery to Urgathoa or whatever else. But that's just me.
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If the mummies idea sounds good, you could crib the Blakros Museum from the Pathfinder Society modules, and plop it in either Ardis or Karcau.
Ardis, because of the Evercrown Cemetery and Our Lady of Lanterns. Both could be logical sites to include.
If you'd rather play up the idea of the Whispering Way needing to trade the Effigy for what they really want, there's the cult of Alichino in Karcau. Maybe the EOPE offers to put them up as guests at Starling House, the diabolists mess with the Order's mummy ritual, and the PCs have to work from there.
Basically, I'd keep the part of WotW where the WW is trying to trade the Sausage Effigy for something else they really want.
Oh, I read Seasage the first time, but after the first mention to my group, we have taken to calling it the Sausage effigy. Too bad book 4 had to spoil what it looked like, otherwise I would have continued to think it was a rotted (its green) log of Jimmy Dean sausage.
Huh-huh. Huh-huh. You said "log."
Rise of the Runelords 3 "Hook Mountain Massacre" has a hillbilly-horror theme. You might have to scale it up--the suggestion of hags, upthread, sounds like a good match--but I think the tone would work. (If your players are sticklers for logic, though, you should draw up a timeline and make the visuals conform to it, as otherwise some things do not make sense.) It's 3.5, not Pathfinder, though, if that's a problem for you.
Kingmaker 3 "Varnhold Vanishing" is horror-themed, it's Pathfinder, and it would also be fairly easy to scale up. I didn't find it exciting when I ran it, though. Again, watch for logic if this is an issue for your players.
i agree im two steps away from also throwing out wake of the watcher.
its not just that lovecraft is an ill fit for gothic horror, lovecraft himself felt the same way of his own work. he was known for famously walking out of the theater when universal's dracula was playing, calling it garbage.
if not for his association with robert howard i would dismiss him utterly.
i was thinking of putting in expedition to the demonweb pits in its stead.
Speaking as someone who only knows WotW from the description here on the Paizo catalog, could you run the mod and just say "demon" instead of "Elder God?"
It sounds like people have enjoyed the module on its own merits, but if you think your players will object to Cthulhu, you could just say its demons (or even daemons) and carry on.
As the title says looking for suggestions for replacement module's/adventures for wake of the watcher and idea's would be welcome.
Wake of the Watcher was also my least favorite adventure in the AP. This is not to say that we are not fans of Lovecraft, we are. The problems with WoW involve a lack of coherent narrative transition from the prior AP's as well as mediocre story development through the course of the AP, relative to the other adventures in this path.
That being said, there are a number of adventures, which, with a little work, could replace Wake of the Watcher and fit rather nicely into the Carrion Crown storyline. My recommendation would be to take a look at the Ravenloft module "The Evil Eye" by Steve Kurtz and Steve Miller. It is an outstanding adventure which fits nicely with the themes of Carrion Crown and atmosphere of Ustalav and is well worth adjusting and updating from 2E level 4-6 to a compatible replacement for Wake.
As the title says looking for suggestions for replacement module's/adventures for wake of the watcher and idea's would be welcome.Wake of the Watcher was also my least favorite adventure in the AP. This is not to say that we are not fans of Lovecraft, we are. The problems with WoW involve a lack of coherent narrative transition from the prior AP's as well as mediocre story development through the course of the AP, relative to the other adventures in this path.
That being said, there are a number of adventures, which, with a little work, could replace Wake of the Watcher and fit rather nicely into the Carrion Crown storyline. My recommendation would be to take a look at the Ravenloft module "The Evil Eye" by Steve Kurtz and Steve Miller. It is an outstanding adventure which fits nicely with the themes of Carrion Crown and atmosphere of Ustalav and is well worth adjusting and updating from 2E level 4-6 to a compatible replacement for Wake.
I neglected to mention that you would want to modify the storyline somewhat, integrating the Whispering Way for purposes of storyline consistency et al. We play at a slow exp pace, so the path I took was integrating The Evil Eye into the campaign rather than replacing Wake with it. I altered the Dukkar's story to a Twilight Cult/Old Ones prophecy and used the entire adventure as a segue into Wake. I worked Carrion Hill in after Wake, very similiar to how was suggested and this all came together quite nicely as a mini Lovecraft trilogy within the context of the larger campaign.
WotW is one of my favorite installments that will not be played at our table. From our group's POV it does not fit well at all with the feel of rest of this adventure path. The problems are partly in flavor and continuity with the rest of the AP, which has had a Gothic Medieval feel otherwise. The sudden shift to Call of Cthulu seems jarring. As the ranger of Pharasma put it: "Great Scott! The sheer, indescribably horrific, obtuseness of it has given me a nose bleed."
Further, the characters are finally on the heels of an antagonist that has plagued them since TotB only to be derailed by this. So we are giving WotW a pass and will likely do something with a hag covey (much as OmegaZ suggests) or something. And yes we have a changeling... :)
However, I should point out that other than that, I really like the adventure. I like it enough that I feel the concepts in Wake of the Watcher really deserved their own full AP instead of being tacked onto this one.