Scenarios to build up a good Shadow Lodge story

[Black Powder Chocobo]

Hello,

I'm somewhat new to the PFS and I'm the sole DM for a group of friends that I've been playing with. They just completed the First Steps scenarios, but I wanted to run some of the older missions from Season's 1 and 2 (despite the fact there's more factions and different heads for some). Thus, I wanted to choose some scenarios that reflect the Shadow Lodge, why their influence caused an increase of major factions, and why the Society feared them so early on.

So far, I've grabbed Year of the Shadow Lodge and The Dalsine Affair. What other scenarios work well to either show the building up of the Shadow Lodge or the aftermath of the Year of the Shadow Lodge scenario?

Also, chronologically, when does Year of the Shadow Lodge occur compared to other scenarios?

Sincerely,
BPC

[Dan Luckett]

Year of the Shadowlodge requires a 3 table minimum. So, minimum you're looking at 1 Overseer GM, 3 Table GMs, and 9 players, and this is a bare minimum. Your best shot unless you have a lot of friends, is to find a convention offering it. We ran it at M-Dog because we couldn't hit the 5 table requirement for Blood Under Absalom last February.

Year of the Shadow Lodge was the first "event" in the shadow lodge storyline.

Will say more later once I have a chance to look at season 2 scenarios again.

[Black Powder Chocobo]

I saw the extra rules for YotSL; I figured I could make any changes necessary to run it as a home game.

Spoiler:

Mostly with lowering DC's to be capable by a single group, setting the number of times to kill the final boss to 2, etc).

If the 3 table minimum is required, I assume then running the game as suggested would make it invalid for PFS Chronicle credit?

[Eric Clingenpeel]

Yeah, if you don't run it as written (min 3 tables) then you can't get PFS credit for it.

[Perry Snow]

Black Powder Chocobo wrote:

I saw the extra rules for YotSL; I figured I could make any changes necessary to run it as a home game. ** spoiler omitted **

If the 3 table minimum is required, I assume then running the game as suggested would make it invalid for PFS Chronicle credit?

Yes, it would be invalid for PFS credit :(

You can check with the Venture Captain or Venture Lieutenant for your region to see if something special can be set up to meet the requirements (maybe a mini-con or special event).

-Perry

[Black Powder Chocobo]

Meh, I don't think I'd pull it off in my area as of now. I may just run it sans credit just for the story if my players are willing, then if things pick up they can be the table GM's and I'll overseer GM.

Thanks for the info.

[Drogon]

Black Powder Chocobo wrote:

Hello,

I'm somewhat new to the PFS and I'm the sole DM for a group of friends that I've been playing with. They just completed the First Steps scenarios, but I wanted to run some of the older missions from Season's 1 and 2 (despite the fact there's more factions and different heads for some). Thus, I wanted to choose some scenarios that reflect the Shadow Lodge, why their influence caused an increase of major factions, and why the Society feared them so early on.

So far, I've grabbed Year of the Shadow Lodge and The Dalsine Affair. What other scenarios work well to either show the building up of the Shadow Lodge or the aftermath of the Year of the Shadow Lodge scenario?

A little bit of shameless self promotion here: Have you seen this thread?

And don't sweat not running Year of the Shadow Lodge. It's actually kind of out of place, considering how the rest of the Shadow Lodge story arc feels.

[Black Powder Chocobo]

Thanks for sharing your thread, it'll save me a lot of overhead coming up with this stuff on my own :P

I guess I can skip the YotSL and play things as when the Lodge was created, it splintered into good Lodge (under Torch) and the bad Lodge (everything the PC's will come across, a shadow Shadow Lodge if you will).

Spoiler:

Will still make the Dalsine Affair somewhat interesting for (there is a Taldor affiliated Pathfiner, but perhaps I can say Baron Jacquo was retired, but still a figure head for the Taldor empire.

[Kelly Youngblood]

Don't forget that the shadow lodge showed up even before season 2 in the season 1 scenarios

Spoiler:

City of Strangers parts 1 and 2

These are important scenarios to the Shadow Lodge arc, and should probably be run before any of the others.

[Drogon]

There were hints of the Shadow Lodge in quite a few scenarios before Season 2.

Spoiler:

Both the Eyes of the Ten and the Echoes of the Everwar series were influenced by the beginnings of the Shadow Lodge conspiracy. If you want to impart the whole story, make sure you include the characters and motivations that appear in those series as part of your presentation.

Also, make sure to read the article that appears in Kobold Quarterly #21 this month. It gives a very good run-down of how the story played out.

I've tried to tie together a complete story in that thread. I also plan on doing a rewrite of the sequence of events to make it fit with the level progression of a single group. I will be moving around the fluff, essentially. I promise to get that posted as soon as I have played the last two modules I need to play for this story (the Shadow's Last Stand series), and figure out how to work that in to the whole campaign.

[VanceMadrox]

You try this list:

It's a Campaign Path I plotted out that primarily uses multi Part Scenarios and as many Shadow Lodge Mods as Made sense:

Scenario:
Level 1:
MFF Master of the Fallen Fortress
4 The Frozen Fingers of Midnight
1 Silent Tide
Level 2:
37 The Beggar's Pearl
29 The Devil We Know, Part 1 - Shipyard Rats
30 The Devil We Know, Part 2 - Cassomir's Locker
Level 3:
41 The Devil We Know, Part 3 - Crypt of Fools
48 The Devil We Know, Part 4 - Rules of the Swift
14 Many Fortunes of Grandmaster Torch
Level 4:
51 City of Strangers, Part 1 - The Shadow Gambit
52 City of Strangers, Part 2 - The Twofold Demise
45 Delirium's Tangle
Level 5:
2-15 Shades of Ice, Part 1 - Written in Blood
2-17 Shades of Ice, Part 2 - Exiles of Winter
2-19 Shades of Ice, Part 3 - Keep of the Huskarl King
Level 6:
2-06 The Heresy of Man, Part 1 - The First Heresy
2-07 The Heresy of Man, Part 2 - Where the Dark Things Sleep
2-09 The Heresy of Man, Part 3 - Beneath Forgotten Sands
Level 7:
2-23 Shadow's Last Stand, Part 1 - At Shadow's Door
2-24 Shadow's Last Stand, Part 2 - Web of Corruption
2-21 The Dalsine Affair
Level 8:
2-20 Wrath of the Accursed
2-08 The Sarkorian Prophecy
2-26 The Mantis's Prey
Level 9:
56 The Jester's Fraud
27 Our Lady of Silver
31 Sniper in the Deep
Level 10:
36 Echoes of the Everwar, Part 1 - Prisoner of Skull Hill
42 Echoes of the Everwar, Part 2 - Watcher of Ages
44 Echoes of the Everwar, Part 3 - Terror at Whistledown
Level 11:
53 Echoes of the Everwar, Part 4 - The Faithless Dead
28 Lyrics of Extinction
20 King Xeros of Old Azlant