...I've heard a lot about Director's Cuts concerning the whole Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path. What exactly ARE all the things that have been cut off from the final product?
All the way from Burnt Offerings to Spires of Xin-Shalast, I'm interested in seeing some stuff that I may or may not suggest for the DM to use. Then again, from what I've heard, it's mostly needless grimdark fluff, which in my opinion is a load of bull excrement but that's just my opinion, and it doesn't make me any less curious about these removed segments of the Adventure Path.
Thanks in advance.
LOL. If I were a RotRL developer, I certainly wouldn't be moved to post my "needless grimdark fluff" and "bull excrement" for your consideration following that eloquent request!
Diplomacy fail.
Oh, well. Unfortunately I can't go back and edit my post (I still wonder how the keeps happening), but if you guys seriously took offense over the fact that I have a differing opinion (and read too much into it as well), then tough luck for you. Too bad you're not really contributing to the thread =P
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Ah, your first post was like serious and stuff? Sowwi!
For what is worth the biggest DC part that's floating around the web is Nick Logue's uncensored Hook Mountain Massacre which is full of ogres using [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] their [REDACTED] and then [REDACTED].
Given your delicate sensibilities, reader discretion is advised.
Hahah, I've heard mentions of that before. But is that really the only one?
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I dimly recall Greg Vaughan posting about his original notes for Xin-Shalast being more extensive but I don't think that ever got posted anywhere and I believe it was integrated into Lost Cities of Golarion.
James did post that several things left on the cutting floor (eg. map and details on Turtleback Ferry, one wing in Runeforge) are coming back in the hardcover.
Aaah, yeah. My DM planned on getting the hard cover and running that for us when it arrives.
I still wonder what the uncensored Hook Mountain Massacre is like, even though I'm sure it's nowhere to be found, and would just offend me in how nasty the ogres are (though the Bestiary says enough), amuse my with its absurdity, or just do both by the end of the day. Also, I hope I never run into a DM who, without warning, decides that if the group loses to ogres and doesn't die, suffers that one fate. Then again, the people I play with all agree they would never play with that kind of DM again, and surprise changes in how to treat players and their characters is just being a bad DM anyway. *End rambling*
Not sure if joking or serious, because that sounds like a terrible design idea.
Unfortunately I can't go back and edit my post (I still wonder how the keeps happening)
We only allow editing/deleting of a post for an hour or so.
Creative Director
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The closest analogy that a Pathfinder product has to a director is the developer. In this case, that's me. And in the case of Runelords... that "developer's cut" is going to be pretty apparent soon enough in the hardcover Anniversary edition that's coming out soon.
What you've probably heard the most about was from "Hook Mountain Massacre." Nick kind of overwrote that adventure—to the tune of about 20,000 words (that's about 32 pages of content). So obviously a big chunk of that had to go. A relatively small amount of that was some over the top X-rated stuff involving antics between the ogrekin... but in the grand scheme of things, that acounted for maybe a 100 or 200 words of that 20,000 words I needed to cut. And I would have cut those 100 to 200 words even if the adventure was 20,000 words UNDER word count, frankly, because it just wasn't appropriate. The ogrekin are already plenty horrific and push the R rating here and there as it stands. No need to bring a nuclear bomb to a forest fire, in other words.
It might be interesting though to lay out what my original outline for Nick Logue was for Hook Mountain Massacre:
Of course, that's not what got published. Because Nick came up with several EXCELLENT subplots—four, in fact. The Graul Homestead, the nymph/commander love affair, the whole scene at the giant dam of Skull's Crossing (this MAY have been in my original outline, but I think that it probably was Nick's idea even then) and the shenanigans aboard the gambling barge Paradise. Those additions were great, but they bloated the adventure into something 150% the size we had to publish.
So I had to do some fixing. The whole nymph/commander story angle got shrunk down (It's expanded back up a little in the anniversary edition), and the "help rebuild the fort" element got kicked out of the adventure entirely. The largest cuts came to the bit with Paradise... that was in the original adventure a relatively sizable portion where the PCs infiltrate the barge and search it while playing the role of "interested gamblers"... sort of a stealth-infiltration adventure. It ended with the barge sinking and the PCs having to scramble to not only save themselves but to save as many innocent patrons of the barge as they could.
It was pretty cool... but it also had VERY little to do with the main adventure's themes of ogres. And so that section got cut entirely.
But it didn't go away.
Four volumes later, Nick wrote us another adventure—"Edge of Anarchy," to kick off Curse of the Crimson Throne. The barge that was originally going to play the role of Paradise in Hook Mountain got reskinned and rebuilt to serve the role of Eel's End in Korvosa. Where I think it's themes and role are MUCH stronger.
In any event...There's a lot of new material in the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition—some of which is stuff we didn't have room to do the first time around but that I'd wanted to do (such as have a fully explorable Festering Maze of Sloth), but others of which are just new expansions to existing elements.
One thing I didn't do, though, just in case folks were wondering, was to "soften up" the "grimdark" elements or the "sexy" elements of Runelords. Those are still in there. In a few cases, they're even MORE in there now than they were before. The maturity level of the anniversary edition, in other words, remains the same as the original publication.
Alright, thanks for the feedback James, and sorry if my first post seemed rude and such. I think most people hyped the "sexy" and "grimdark" as somehow inherently better, even though I found the notions either absurd, disgusting or both, when I find people who agree that consentual sex is good and all, but rape is somehow "more mature" or just somehow a better story element (which I know is not always true).
Either way, my DM plans to get that Anniversary Edition when it does arrive here in Finland, and I am sure we will enjoy playing it and my female Wizard (who happens to start out Neutral Evil, being a Daemon-spawn Tiefling and having some justified reasons) will enjoy casting Create Soul Gem on some hapless Ogres and Ogrekin, maybe getting some bad looks from our resident Neutral Good Cleric of Desna, even though I hope he manages to redeem her in the end.
Every little sneak preview I hear of the upcoming anniversary edition increases my anticipation. It is really sounding stellar.
I'm not sure if I still have it, but I wound up with what was supposedly what was cut from HMM. We'll see if I can't find it, but to be honest it's not some ground breaking, mind blowing, sensibility breaking work of horror and disgustingness. The biggest thing that stands out in my mind from reading it was one of the ogres had a vestigal twin on his shoulder, pretty sure it was just a face/head and maybe an arm...with one of the other ogres having developed a bit of a crush on the twin. For the most part it was all additions like that, things that most groups of PCs would never pick up on, and would likely rufle someone's feathers enough they'd complain.
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The largest cuts came to the bit with Paradise... that was in the original adventure a relatively sizable portion where the PCs infiltrate the barge and search it while playing the role of "interested gamblers"... sort of a stealth-infiltration adventure. It ended with the barge sinking and the PCs having to scramble to not only save themselves but to save as many innocent patrons of the barge as they could.
It was pretty cool... but it also had VERY little to do with the main adventure's themes of ogres. And so that section got cut entirely.
This is one of the things that bugged me in Runelords and something I re-added in as a DM. Sure it may not have had anything to do with the "adventure's theme of Ogres" but it played so well into Karzoug and and the AP overall that cutting it was a disservice to the AP I think. RotR lacked a strong theme that IMO if it wasn't the first AP under the brand name it wouldn't be so fondly remembered.
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This is one of the things that bugged me in Runelords and something I re-added in as a DM. Sure it may not have had anything to do with the "adventure's theme of Ogres" but it played so well into Karzoug and and the AP overall that cutting it was a disservice to the AP I think. RotR lacked a strong theme that IMO if it wasn't the first AP under the brand name it wouldn't be so fondly remembered.
How did you include it back in? Did you have to change the hook (haha!) to get the characters out there? I could see how having this in there would change the timing of things, how did you get it all organized? Thanks!
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How did you include it back in? Did you have to change the hook (haha!) to get the characters out there? I could see how having this in there would change the timing of things, how did you get it all organized? Thanks!
This is one of the things that bugged me in Runelords and something I re-added in as a DM. Sure it may not have had anything to do with the "adventure's theme of Ogres" but it played so well into Karzoug and and the AP overall that cutting it was a disservice to the AP I think. RotR lacked a strong theme that IMO if it wasn't the first AP under the brand name it wouldn't be so fondly remembered.
I ended up altering rotr so much it is hardly recognizable, find the thread on this board called DM's cut
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