Before I ask my question, I should preface it with an explanation concerning my weird players. They played Rise of the Runelords as goblins. They played Curse of the Crimson Throne as members of the Korvosan aristocracy. They played Second Darkness as agents of the Winter Council. They're playing Serpent's Skull as serpentfolk. They like to play the difficult option.
I've been warned that they want to play Way of the Wicked as an all-paladin party.
I'm up for a challenge, and I'm going to try to make this work. The thing here is that I have to be true to the AP. If you talk to any of them about their campaigns (or read the play logs) you'll see that all of the events happened as written, but often the PCs were on the wrong end of things or otherwise just bizarrely interacting with their environment. I'm just not sure whether that's going to be possible this time around.
As anyone who's been at an organized play table has probably experienced, paladins (particularly PC paladins) can be serious jerks. They get an idea in their head and nothing else whatsoever matters. Collateral damage becomes irrelevant, and killing everyone so that the gods can sort out the virtuous from the evil gets routinely suggested as the best tactic. My question is: will taking this to its logical extreme be enough to justify the assault on Talingarde?
|
No. Or at least, very, VERY doubtful to the point that you'd probably have to re-write a lot of it. There's no way that it could. Maybe if they were anti-paladins (and they are LE in WotW). To be honest, that's the ideas that's going around for why the evil people are killing the paladins in the first place. They're not Lawful Stupid, they're Lawful "FU You're Evil if you're not a LG Paladin like us and therefore you die". Granted some are actually Lawful Stupid, so there's that too, but the majority are just pricks. Namely those who still praise the previous King, The Zealot. He's why Mitra's essentially the one and only god now.
Other than that, hopefully Gary sees this because I personally couldn't see this working in anyone's favor.
...
It won't be the same adventure at all, you would be changing the basis of the adventure among other things. Which quite honestly defeats the whole purpose.
Can you do it, sure. But the better question is why would you? For the amount of work you would have to do, you could make up another adventure all together...
|
You could make it work, but there may be some DM fudging.
Essentially, the NPCs are the "PC" villains and they go through the adventure. Your players will be the "NPCs" to the villains.
There will be frustration on the player's parts if they don't understand that they are *meant* to lose. They are meant to confront the villains at every stage, and lose. The Kingdom of Talingarde *will* burn.
It will be a complete tragedy. Quite fun if everyone is on board with that.
It could work. Do the adventure path where the PCs basically get to play...
Sir Richard Havelyn. Have one of the PCs be the son of Lord Thomas Havelyn.
The paladins get to hunt down and capture the ogre Grumblejack. Their orders are to capture him alive so that he may be justly tried. They put him in Branderscar, a job well done.
But he escapes during a murderous prison break along with some other fugitives (make up a band of villains to be bad guys). Thus begins their hunt to learn about and try to thwart the Knot of Thorns...
Hope that helps,
Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow, talk about a bunch of problem children. As a DM, when someone (never mind a whole group) goes out of their way to circumvent the intent of the adventure like that, that often, I usually tend to think they're doing it just to make my life difficult.
To keep it polite... what is the intent behind this? Do you and your players think you are smarter than anyone else? "We played the only evil adventure path out there... but we played it as paladins. Why? Because we can!"
For me it seem just dumb. Sure you can play this with good aligned pc´s. But its a lot of work - in fact I think it´s more work than whatever you and your players promise yourself from this.
Why would anyone want to do that, is something beyond me. It's like playing The Shackles with a bunch of characters that hate the sea and can't stand being in a ship. What's the point? No, I mean... honestly... what's the point?
Why would anyone play in a Samurai Campaign with a mixture of medieval knights and zulu warriors? Why would anyone play a "tarzan-like" savage adventure with a bunch of alchemist, noble engineers and techs? Why would anyone play a viking adventure with a group of space robots?
|
The bare bones of the adventure might be usable. (I haven't read it, but I'm playing in the beginning part.)
Move it to a version of Talingarde that is more like Nidal or Cheliax, and have the current regime be the wicked evil oppressors, and a small force of Paladins either smuggled in or part of an underground resistance movement could be focused on overthrowing the wicked overlords and returning the country to the side of good (or, at least, not so very much evil).
I'm sure a lot of the specific details will need to be changed, but, for example;
Spoilers for Way of the Wicked
But, Paladins for Way of the Wicked as written? Fuggedaboutit.
Two suggestions:
(1) Make the PCs highly racialist non-human paladins whose ethical code mainly applies to their own kind. After all, human paladins are often happy to slaughter goblins or otyughs. Perhaps elf or cyclops or serpent folk (or something) paladins don't consider humans within the circle of "personhood".
(2) Engineer, probably with player complicity, an elaborate deception in which the PCs think they are doing these awful things for an important good cause. We know that Golarionese paladins, and even good gods, can be somewhat flexible--look at the role of the cult of Iomede in Cheliax, for example. So the PCs could go a long way thinking they are on the side of good before finding out the horrendous truth. Of course you will need a plan for remaining on track when that does happen, but it could be "we made this mess, we must fix it". (Regrettably, you won't be able to tell if that can work till you see the later episodes...but I think it's always a mistake to run an AP you haven't seen all of yet. Every time I've done so I've regretted it.)
You might think about Nethys in this context. Paizo doesn't seem to be doing much with Nethys' madness and dual personality, but paladins of Nethys must have a tough row to hoe trying to figure out if they are serving his benevolent side or ... the other one.
Best of luck with it! These backwards-path games of yours have been a very useful inspiration to our group--especially for Second Darkness, where honestly I would never have gotten it to work as written.
|
I suggest you grab a copy of the King Arthur Pendragon RPG by Greg Stafford and run a game of that before trying Way of the Wicked if they want an all paladin party. Perhaps immersing themselves in the Arthurian World will give them a good idea of how paladins aught to be played.
KAP will teach them the proper way of playing a knight in armor. When I play a Paladin, I get out KAP for ideas on how I want to play a paladin. I either choose the Christian Knight as a template or the full Round Table Knight.
I have just committed to running Skull and Shackles 3 and 4, followed by Legacy of Fire 4 (they dovetail surprisingly well) for a party of PCs who do not like pirates, do not want to be pirates--but are part of a Flying Dutchman style ship with built-in ghost pirates, and have to deal with that fact. (The end of Legacy 4 will be their getting out from under this curse.)
I think, tbug, you must have had something to do with this idea.... Thanks!
Before I ask my question, I should preface it with an explanation concerning my weird players. They played Rise of the Runelords as goblins. They played Curse of the Crimson Throne as members of the Korvosan aristocracy. They played Second Darkness as agents of the Winter Council. They're playing Serpent's Skull as serpentfolk. They like to play the difficult option.
I've been warned that they want to play Way of the Wicked as an all-paladin party.
I'm up for a challenge, and I'm going to try to make this work. The thing here is that I have to be true to the AP. If you talk to any of them about their campaigns (or read the play logs) you'll see that all of the events happened as written, but often the PCs were on the wrong end of things or otherwise just bizarrely interacting with their environment. I'm just not sure whether that's going to be possible this time around.
As anyone who's been at an organized play table has probably experienced, paladins (particularly PC paladins) can be serious jerks. They get an idea in their head and nothing else whatsoever matters. Collateral damage becomes irrelevant, and killing everyone so that the gods can sort out the virtuous from the evil gets routinely suggested as the best tactic. My question is: will taking this to its logical extreme be enough to justify the assault on Talingarde?
"If the cardinal doesn't kill the idiot lot immediately I'm finding a different evil overlord to eventually betray and usurp. I hear Cheliax is nice this time of year."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
As anyone who's been at an organized play table has probably experienced, paladins (particularly PC paladins) can be serious jerks. They get an idea in their head and nothing else whatsoever matters. Collateral damage becomes irrelevant, and killing everyone so that the gods can sort out the virtuous from the evil gets routinely suggested as the best tactic. My question is: will taking this to its logical extreme be enough to justify the assault on Talingarde?
What? If any paladin at my table suggest killing a village and letting the gods filter the virtuous from the wicked, he will be fall so hard, that he cant even say the name of his former god without being wracked with holy fury!
Besides, this campaign is not meant for anyone of the good or chaotic spectrum of the alignment rainbow. Chaotic Evil, maybe.I mean, book one is based on the premise that the PC´s are all condemned criminals that has committed some of the most heinous crimes that you can dream up.
Just the premise of the books tells us that the paladins have fallen.
A group of Fallen Paladins, going Anti-Paladins though, that i can see.
Before I ask my question, I should preface it with an explanation concerning my weird players. They played Rise of the Runelords as goblins.
I just want to say that this is awesome.
That is all.
Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts