After many years away from rolling sacred dices, due to adulthood, trips to Afghanistan, and all sorts of real life nonsense, my old group is getting back together. I discovered Pathfinder on accident and fell in love with the feel, look, and just gamery vibe it has. Our group started with AD&D, played Shadowrun, most of the White Wolf games, 3.0 and 3.5. Pathfinder has the best feel to remind me of the fun vibe and look of the earlier days we used to like. Magnificent job.
Now to stop rambling, I love the adventure paths, and I decided to run CC for my guys, 3 vets and 1 newbie. I picked up, core book, players guide, rule of fear, the ustalav map pack, bestiary 1, and the first two CC books. Do you guys think I need anything else?
Reading over CC, I love it, but I do need some ideas for keeping the interest level of my players high. My main concern, and huge anxiety is that I have to run a fantastic opener game. My players are all working professionals, with very little time, and we all decided to take one weekend day every three weeks or so to game. Seeing that its our first game in over 8 years, I feel like this has to be pure awesomeness.
My main concern, after reading HoH is that it starts rather slow. I don't want to spend the first session with some rather meh encounters, talking to locals. I need some ideas to spice things up around town. I would love and appreciate any ideas. Of course I have a few of my own, that I will run by you guys.
P.S. Pathfinder, CC, and the whole line in general is by far the best gaming product I have ever come across. Reading through the books, brought me back to that giddy feeling I got when I first came across this hobby. Awesome.
One thing posted on the Carrion Crown boards? Run the actual prison break as a one off from the point of the guards.
Then next session is 50 years later. Queue the characters.
Otherwise go with the Gumshoe approach - give them the data rather than have them roll for it (or lower the DCs). It removes some frustration.
At its core HoH/TotB has a HEAVY investigative component. Its hard to make that action centric.
Why not ask what sort of game they want to play? If they want this sort of game they will stick with it. If they want action and combat and blood? Try another AP... if time and regular attendance is an issue? Try running the Pathfinder Society Stuff... their modules go for a mere 3.99 a pop. A bargain.
First Steps (3 episodes) is free even.
Thanks for the replay Helaman, I will look into those.
The reason we picked CC is due to the heavy investigation approach. We played a lot of WW games, and tend to be really heavy on the RP, mood, theme in the past. I prefer it over huge dungeon crawls(I enjoy those sometimes.)
I think I will just amp up the creepiness in the first opener, throw in some creepy side stuff while they are investigating. I want to keep them on edge the whole time they are in Ravengro.
Im looking at HoH at being similar to Ghostbusters 2. The prison is like the museum, and all the negative energy is attracting all sorts of nonsense and spiritual activity to the area.
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You probably need bestiary 2.
One thing to bear in mind is that the BBEG of the campaign Adivion Adrissant doesn't actually turn up til book 6. The writers themselves said that this was a mistake. Try to hint at his involvement early on without revealing his name. There's plenty of advice on how to do this on these boards.
Also be aware that the encounters in Harrowstone can be quite deadly. Particularly the last one. Also get up to date on how haunts work, the first and last module are both full of them.
Having said all that, this one is a really good AP. You should have some real fun with it.
After a real life issue where I had to move rather suddenly and work taking a lot of my time(active duty military) we are finally playing session 1 of HoH today. I have pretty much gone through the entire message board, read every piece on Carrion Crown, wrote and printed my own cheat sheets, we roll 20s today... Im super excited.
I will post a session summary and my own notes in the next few days.
I have pretty much gone through the entire message board, read every piece on Carrion Crown, wrote and printed my own cheat sheets, we roll 20s today... Im super excited.
I will post a session summary and my own notes in the next few days.
Nice! Good luck Alexandru. Hope you all have a blast! Can't wait to hear how it all went!
I just have to say, you guys outdid yourself with this adventure path and Pathfinder in general. I was nervous at first, returning to GMing after so many years, but we all had a blast, by far one of the best nights of gaming I have ever had. My group is made up of my childhood friend who used to roll dice with me years ago, another long time roleplayer friend, and two newbies who jumped right in and had a blast. Im looking forward to continuing HoH, and eagerly await our next session.