
Olaf the Stout |

Hi all,
After 3 years of play my Shackled City campaign is coming to an end. In preparation for my next campaign I'm putting together a list of various options for my players to look at to help decide what they want to play next.
I have the AoW adventures but haven't really looked at them in years. I'm just after a general overview of the campaign, the types of adventures (i.e. dungeon crawls, travel, urban) and what monsters the PC's will face off against.
Here is an example of the sort of thing that I am looking for.
Shackled City AP
Summary: The campaign is largely set in and around Cauldron, a city built in the mouth of a dormant volcano (which totally won't erupt at some point during the campaign! :-D). An evil organisation is trying to open a gate to a plane of Hell and it is up to the PC's to try and stop them
Levels: 1-20
Adventure Types: A mix of dungeon, city and planar adventures, as well as a number of roleplaying encounters. Relatively light on wilderness adventures.
Creatures Likely To Encounter: Demons and dragons feature prominently. Undead, orcs, half-orcs, kuo-toa, dark creepers and various humanoid NPC’s are also encountered.
I've had a look around here on the boards and online but I haven't been able to find much on what types of adventures to expect other than dungeon crawls and what creatures besides undead. So any help would be greatly appreciated.
Olaf the Stout

Jeremy Mac Donald |

AoW tends to be reasonably heavily dungeon orientated with a few urban and wilderness adventures. I actually found it less dungeon heavy then Shackled City which, in some sense, turned everything into a dungeon.
AoW is much more conscious of what its doing IMO So when its not a Dungeon that is a bit more clear cut.
AoW features undead heavily (though you may not want to emphasize this...undead can be a real push over when facing down a class build specifically to clobber them).
The Campaign moves around a fair bit while the campaign explores and elaborates on the mythology of a God straight out of 1st edition. The campaigns strong point is epic look and feel. Battle THE Undead Dragon, participate in the gladiatorial games to fight for the purse in the capital in front of huge crowds, attemnpt to retrieve an item of immense power and ancient history while all around flights of Dragons do battle with an army of Giants in a show down 1000 years in the making.

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Currently, my characters just got to the last module of AoW and we have been playing it for almost 2 years.
I would warn the players before starting the campaign that it is undead heavy. Also, I would inform them that this campaign is more geared towards good aligned characters... Almost the entire party started off neutral and evil.... Didn't work out so well. Only 2 original characters have made it the other 3 players have gone through 2-3 characters total. However as a DM there are many encounters where there aren't undead too. I had to throw in some non-undead encounters to throw the characters off. I recommend throwing in some homebrew side adventures into the game. This was actually brought to my attention by one of the players, because he grobled that there were too many undead.
Also, I would keep track of some of the earlier villians that the characters fight and figure out which ones you want to introduce later in the campaign. One of the strengths of the adventure path is that it allows the DM to be creative but maintain the epicness feel.
I would say it is heavily set around a central location. The major areas the players will be are:
Levels 1-5
Diamond Lake: The adventures here are primarily dungeon crawl with a few outdoor adventures. The dungeon crawl parts are going to be the toughest part.
6-9
The Free City: This area is is primarily an urban adventure, where the characters participate in gladiatorial games, which can be very fun for the players to get loose of the undead feel. There are 2 dungeon crawl ares in here. You can get creative in this area and throw in some homebrew stuff in order to get the characters away from undead. Read the possible endings for this area, because it can cause DRAMATIC changes in the entire game world... Or at least that's what happened.
9-15
Mage Point/(some major city can't think of name off top of my head): This is where a huge arch happens in the story. There are numerous roleplaying adventures and not so much of a dungeon crawl. After some RPing a major festival there is a huge outdoor adventure in another plane. Which has less undead and mixes things up
15-20
To the enemies territory: This is a mix between a huge outdoor warzone and a dungeon crawl. Plus opportunity for roleplaying and diplomacy. The wormcrawl fissure is open, but at the same time dungeon-areas within for fun.
I think the AoW offers a wide variety and allows much openess for the DM to add on to make the AP their own. My players have loved it, minus the heavy complaints on how undead heavy the beginning was - even after I warned them. It's definitely the best campaign I've had the opportunity to play/run as the story-line offers an epicness that's hard to find!