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They complain about not enough role playing with RA so stick them in Razor Coast where they have to role play and they complain they aren't doing anything. Go figure. They have at least a half a dozen leads and just needed to decide which one to track down first. Some players are to used to "read the text to the players in the box" type of gaming.This is my big fear when I start the new campaign. Very few of my players have ever been of the "let's see what's out there" type. I worry I may have to lead them around by the nose, which totally defeats the purpose of a sandbox style campaign.
I have mix of "lets go kick everything and see what happens players" and "where's the plot hook? i dunno what ta do without a plot hook" players. So I picked a starting thread and jammed it in their faces. As they work that, I'm pouring other whispers and hooks in their direction so they get the idea "ooh, I get it! any string I pull rings a bell. I don't have to have a light up, colored string to pull if I want to ring a bell!"
Also I try to emphasize the whispers and rumors that fit their backstories best. Just cause those should be a no-brainer for them to follow.
When I had my players make characters, I insisted they add one thing in their back story: a specific reason they had journeyed to Port Shaw and made everyone share that, round robin, at the table. Then I asked everyone to pick something about the other player's reason for coming to Port Shaw and connect to it in their back story. Any way: love, hate, common interest, common person...
Wound up with things like, "Coming to Port Shaw because my dad was supposed to send for us, but never did. Rest of the family died in the old country and I'm the only one left."
Then another player said, "I've come to find my fortune in the new world, but my uncle and his dad met on the boat over and were friends."
Unbeknownst to my players
Stuff like that. In other words, I created a trail that at least two players have an interest in following. Other player's backstoroes connect up as well. When they were done, I chose which hooks/whispers/etc. to trawl in front of them first based on which ones had the most backstories connected to them.
Hope that helps.
Oh, my players have back stories, not that it helps much! One is a Halfling bard named Prince Poppycock who wants to be the cabin boy, one is a half-elf pirate looking for her human merchant father and keeps wanting to get a ship to go after him, another is a retired army officer gunslinger, and Inquisitor who is here to seek out anything that haunts sea travel.
Thanks for the suggestions Lou! I had planned on being a bit obvious with at least one or two plot threads, but I really like the idea of tying some back story plots together. Great idea!
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So Bonegnaw's Cove almost turned into the beaches of Normandy tonight.
The party hopped onto the rogue's dinghy and sailed down the coast. A lucky Perception check found the cove, and they sailed in.
The sentries spotted them and sounded the alarm, kicking off a running battle that took up the rest of the night and still isn't over.
Stinking cloud incapacitated the three on the cliff as the party sailed in, spotting the chimera being released and mauling the two smugglers on the barge. Then they passed the edge of the tunnel and saw the full scale of the cove.
The cockatrices were handled and sent flying to the party. The chimera joined after finishing his handlers. The dwarf monk took to the water with slippers of water walking, leaping to strike the cockatrices as they approached. This attracted the chuul.
A massive battle of exotic monsters ensued, allowing the smugglers to get organized. By the time the party finished that fight and turned toward shore, crossbow fire was raining on them. The wizard flew ahead on his summoned dire bat, accompanied by the dwarven monk. The cleric, ifrit monk, bard, and rogue waited while the boat sailed in to beach on the shore.
Meanwhile, the wizard throws down a stinking cloud and rain of peat to hinder archery while the water-walking monk moves to melee.
Bonegnaw strikes, blasting the elven wizard with favored enemy damage, as the monk is ganged up on by the enforcers. The rest of the party finally arrives just as the wizard takes a 3d8+24 crit to the face.
Now the party is pinned down, using the dinghy and stinking cloud for cover from arrow fire, trying to handle the enforcers before the rest of their buddies recover from the stinking cloud. The wizard gets back in the fight after remembering he hadn't sold the gloves of arrow snatching yet.
The night ends with the party retreating to the slave cave to regroup. Next week we see how they manage to escape.
Brilliantly horrible encounter all around. :)
My PBP party is heading to the Midnight Deal now so I may be dealing with this myself soon! Sounds like a real fight!
Mount bomb?
Gamey, extremely gamey. Such things would invoke the wrath of Pele if not the wrath of the DM in my game. Lightning and fire would rain from the sky.
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It took him casting levitate to get height, summon monster (dire bat) to get positioning, and then mount to actually drop the horse. After all those rounds, I didn't see the harm in giving him something, especially since it wasn't even enough damage to finish the one guy he hit. (The fighter even failed his Reflex save and it was still only 56 of his 66 HP.)
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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/partypooper
Unfortunately against the rules too, summoned things have to appear on the ground (or a medium that supports them, so our mild house rule is in a square they have a move speed for).
Magic (conjuration):A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.
partypooper/
So Bonegnaw's Cove almost turned into the beaches of Normandy tonight.
The party hopped onto the rogue's dinghy and sailed down the coast. A lucky Perception check found the cove, and they sailed in.
The sentries spotted them and sounded the alarm, kicking off a running battle that took up the rest of the night and still isn't over.
Stinking cloud incapacitated the three on the cliff as the party sailed in, spotting the chimera being released and mauling the two smugglers on the barge. Then they passed the edge of the tunnel and saw the full scale of the cove.
The cockatrices were handled and sent flying to the party. The chimera joined after finishing his handlers. The dwarf monk took to the water with slippers of water walking, leaping to strike the cockatrices as they approached. This attracted the chuul.
A massive battle of exotic monsters ensued, allowing the smugglers to get organized. By the time the party finished that fight and turned toward shore, crossbow fire was raining on them. The wizard flew ahead on his summoned dire bat, accompanied by the dwarven monk. The cleric, ifrit monk, bard, and rogue waited while the boat sailed in to beach on the shore.
Meanwhile, the wizard throws down a stinking cloud and rain of peat to hinder archery while the water-walking monk moves to melee.
Bonegnaw strikes, blasting the elven wizard with favored enemy damage, as the monk is ganged up on by the enforcers. The rest of the party finally arrives just as the wizard takes a 3d8+24 crit to the face.
Now the party is pinned down, using the dinghy and stinking cloud for cover from arrow fire, trying to handle the enforcers before the rest of their buddies recover from the stinking cloud. The wizard gets back in the fight after remembering he hadn't sold the gloves of arrow snatching yet.
The night ends with the party retreating to the slave cave to regroup. Next week we see how they manage to escape.
Brilliantly horrible encounter all around. :)
Bonegnaw Cove was the most epic encounter I've ever run with my 12 year old players. In a five hour session, we only were able to run through about 75% of the main battle in the cove.
I had the kids spend a long time coming up with a plan. They sent an invisible imp familiar to scout out the cove who scored low on its Perception check and so told them about the presence of ships and caged magical beasts and sleeping smugglers, but not much else. The party made the mistake of splitting the party (I did not intervene!) as I droned on about how I was not going to pull punches and they should think very carefully.
They sent one squad with water breathing cast on them walking at the bottom of the water. This group consisted of their cleric, a summoner and his angel eidolon, a buccaneer fighter, and the imp. They reached the cove, sent the imp teleporting back to the group's wizard, who then dimension-doored himself, the archer ranger, and the ninja/assassin to the far end of the beach. The buccaneer fighter was to swim to the end of the beach opposite them (which took forever of course).
After the party made the summoner and the cleric invisible, the summoner cast enlarge person on the angel, who then carried them out of the water, only to be surprised by the three smuggler watchmen. The smugglers on the ships released the chimera and the cockatrices (three of which attacked their masters). The ninja used vanishing trick and crept toward the smugglers on the beach, as the archer ranger pelted the smuggler in the crow's nest in the large ship. The wizard cast black tentacles on Bonegnaw and the other smugglers around him, and cast ice storm to block the ships off from the beach.
The first squad had knocked out the smugglers, when the chimera flew toward them and breathed fire. The healer cleric fell immediately. The angel flew out toward the chimera and engaged it, as the summoner took a healing potion and revived his ally.
The small barge was sailing around the ice storm -- the wizard cast ice wall to create a dome around it, preventing it from getting closer. Meanwhile, Bonegnaw retreated into the southern cave containing the girallons.
After what felt like an eternity in realtime, the buccaneer fighter finally reached the shore, only to have the chuul attack and nearly grapple him! He ran toward the battle on the beach. The chuul caught up to him and grappled him. Only because of a low roll of 3 by the chuul to maintain its grapple was the fighter able to escape certain death and the party able to knock out the chuul. Meanwhile the large ship was finally making its way around the ice storm, with four tough enforcers waiting to join battle. The wizard was out of spells...
You can read this tale in one of the kids' own words at our website.
THANKS to the makers of Razor Coast! My players are having a blast.
Always enjoy reading your kids adventure exploits Rotgrub! They sound like they are having fun!
I'd never allow it, but I can't stop laughing about "mount bomb".
I can totally see one of my players trying this.... :)
It is kinda funny when you think of it!
A previous gaming group of mine told me how they once found a world in which the creatures were highly intelligent, hostile, extremely powerful, and were planning to invade their world.
They went to another world where they had discovered earth-like prehistoric dinosaurs, snagged a few, shrunk them down, polymorphed them into mice and carried them to the hostile world.
There the proceeded to drop them over the hostile creatures' cities and cast dispel magic on each "dino bomb" such that they reverted to original size and shape. Evidently they had a few T-Rexes and similar type carnivores in the group.
Those that survived their drop were extremely upset at this treatment and did a lot of damage before the native denizens did them in. (high level 1st ed. DnD)
Some groups are very good at thinking outside the box and using magic in ways perhaps not originally intended.
We did a lot of strange stuff back in 1E. I remember my party battling a Terrasque and having to get the wish spell from Tenser himself!
Last week's session was pretty short.
Their descent into the Engineer's quarters was where the evil GM inside me came out. Archibald steps into the beam of light, getting dropped down the shaft and taking fall damage. I did a silent count to 6 after asking what he did next (he just shouted up at the others to be careful), and then had the beam reactivate, slamming him into the ceiling and then dropping him to the floor again. Next time I asked him what he was doing, he said he'd step out of that square. =D
They explored the northeast chamber of the lower level next, triggering the release of the jellyfish in short order. Lucin was stuck outside trying to open the lock (I made it a biomechanical lock like the one on the light beam shaft into the lower deck) while the others climbed onto tables and did what they could to fight the swarm. Orm summoned a dolphin; it lasted about a round. Lucin, meanwhile, decided to shoot the lock off the door, releasing the water into the main chamber of the lower deck. Archibald then ran out and opened the door to the Engineer's room, causing the water to safely drain away and render the swarm harmless.
The Engineer's illusion ruse worked well, allowing him to get direct hits on at least three PCs with a lightning bolt every round. It also tried to dominate Archibald after exhausting its lightning bolts (who was infected with a black leech), but died before the necromancer could carry out his commands. This combat did kill off Esquire, however, and that player has decided to retire the character and make a new one.
The rest of the night was some simple role-playing with the natives of the Pearl Eye Atolls as they sought sea krait venom and bartered with the Tulita, and then a jaunt back to Port Shaw to give the cure to Jessica and check in with Brother Zalen. Archibald decided to hire himself out as a crafter to Sagacious Samuel, discovering his map manufacturing business in the process and also uncovering some information about Tarath Vreen's sanctum in the sewers. This week I'll be trying to steer them toward either the sewers or other encounters in Bonegnaw's Cove and Barrett's Barnacle.
The inset map on page 137 shows the only means to get from the dock level to street level being ladders. This would make it very difficult to unload ships without ramps to street level would it not?
@Power Word Unzip Glad to see your group was successful on the Black Spot. My group gave up with the slashers per book and headed back to port. They are now going into the sewers after information on who killed the old priest.
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@Power Word Unzip - thanks for the play report. Awesome. My next session is tomorrow night. I fear they will all die in Blacksink. :)
@brvheart - accurate observation. the ladders are there permanently. mobile ramps get raised/placed from dock up, as needed when boats unload, but its a detail of commerce we missed mentioning.
Now that I think of it ('cause you raised it), I wish I'd put in some block and tackle boom cranes to pull cargo up to street level. Boom cranes are very fun battle environments.
The manual nature of shifting cargo up to street level does imply a robust bazaar like environment on docks. That odd bag out of spice being sold right on dock instead of delivered up above. Damn. Now I want to go expand that section. :/
Thanks Lou, as we are doing the Midnight Deal at present it makes a little difference.
We are barely into round 2 and so far one pusher is dead, one is swimming having failed his check to jump to the barge, four ran with Garreg and three are pretty well surrounded! The barge is 15's out but can still be reached from the wharf. The dragoons are arriving as soon as the next player goes.
Bonegnaw's Cove has been cleaned of scum.
Clearing the way for brand new scum to move in. >:D
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Both parties had retreated to the separate caves at the end of last session. The PCs took some time healing up and freeing the slaves before determining a plan of action. Some arrow fire was exchanged to keep people from coming out until they were ready.
The plan enacted began with the rogue drinking a potion of invisibility and scouting Bonegnaw's lair out. He was able to spot the remaining smugglers and enforcers hiding in the wings, but missed Bonegnaw in the back. After reporting back, he got in position using the last of the potions time and threw an obsidian grenade into the middle of the cave to signal the rest of the PCs.
For those of you who have not read the Freebooter's Guide, look in the magic item section. :) 5d6 damage in a 10ft radius and the entire area becomes caltrop covered.
A mad dash across the sands ensues as the thugs move out to gang up on the rogue. The ifrit monk moves to grab the crates on the beach to use as kindling for a fire across the front. Then Bonegnaw reveals himself and begins sniping PCs with his 1d8+6 damage, and I was rolling a lot of 8's.
The rest of the party begins to join the melee as the ifrit tries to bullrush the minions back inside and start the fire. The party wizard starts filling the cave with hindrances like grease and glitterdust. The dwarven monk is tanking the fighters and rogues for the most part.
Then the ifrit gets his crates in position and ignites them with burning hands. The wizard drops web into the cave. So there were a rogue and a fighter in the cave, blind, webbed, greased, and choking on smoke. All around a bad day.
Bonegnaw isn't having any of that. He comes walking through the burning web thanks to his resist fire spell.
And takes a gravity bow critical hit to the face for his efforts from the wizard. Hurt, but still standing he resumes shooting back. This is about the same time the ranseur-wielding fighter nails a crit on the dwarven monk, taking him to -37 HP. Faces fall all around the table.
Until the bard, played by my wife, remembers she picked up a scroll of breath of life. A quick handoff to the cleric, while the ifrit monk is grappling the fighter, and the dwarf is saved in the nick of time, bringing him back to -8.
At this point the battle became academic as the party gathered around Bonegnaw to duke it out. Or they would have if the wizard hadn't crit AGAIN with his gravity bow.
Slaves are freed, the one surviving smuggler is taken captive and offered new employment, and the party now owns the Dragon's Tail. (The dragonsmoke was dumping into the water.) We ended the session with a montage of people getting a much needed bath and checkup by a bewildered Zalen, before a huge Tulita welcome home party.
What level is your party? Also breath of life is a 5th level spell and per RC RAW there are not a lot of places to buy magic items. There is Sagicious Samuel for arcane and he charges 20% over book, but that doesn't help with divine. That leaves Zalen who does not have scribe scroll as a feat.
"Owner Sagacious Samuel offers any
potion available in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core
Rulebook, Chapter 15, “Magic Items.” He also offers scrolls
of any 7th level or lower wizard/sorcerer spell. Being the
only reputable magical outlet in Port Shaw, Samuel can
afford to charge 20% more than the listed price for his
goods."
It just seems as if you are making it too easy for them to obtain magic items, but hey play it the way you want I guess:)
Beyond that it sounds like fun was had by all!
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6th. I'm pretty sure it was bought during character creation before arriving in Port Shaw. (My wife's bard is nothing if not prepared.) Thanks for reminding me about those points. I've been pretty loose about shopping trips, but as far as I know since starting the campaign they haven't made any significant purchases. Still, I can't be too upset that they burned 1125gp on this. :)
That is my only issue with creating characters above level 1. They end up with much better stuff than the characters that played all the way through. I am not sure how to deal with it though. My wife's pirate is the only surviving original member and while she may have a lot of GP worth of stuff, it is a lot of not so useful stuff. Like she is level 6 and still doesn't have a magical weapon as her main weapon but has a hat that turns into a boat! Her character in S&S is the same way with a very nice hammock. I have other players in other games that have played for quite awhile and have less usable stuff than the new players.
Sorry, I am too old school for a lot of players. If they want magic items in my game they either need to find them, make them or have them made by a select few people that have that ability. I don't have any magic Walmarts you can buy magic items off the rack!
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If you've seen mdt around the forums, he runs a really nice set up in his campaign world that basically treats magic items like high end jewelry. You have to put down a retainer to even be able to shop, and the higher you go in the store the more security you have to pass through. This is in a gnomish city of course, featuring high rise buildings with golem powered elevators.
Our table time is very limited. We use the magic Walmart method of magic purchasing because we are more interested in other aspects of the game. But as you say, to each his own.
Our table time is limited also, but I prefer a more moderate level of magic and see other things more important to the game like role playing.
Oh, you can have whatever level of magic the DM wants at MagicMart(tm). But we don't sweat the roleplaying - usually - of purchasing and haggling for gear, including magic. That level of detail honestly consumes too much of our very limited time at the table. (We are all at the point in our lives where RL is pulling all of us in different directions, but this too shall pass.)
Sorry, I'm detracting from the excellent thread you guys have going - more game reports, please!
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Today's game report: The players were going to go into the sewers in section 6, but after learning the depth of the sewage their they decided to go to The RunAground Tavern to get more information about entrances. They ran into the major there and the new sorceress tried to ply her wiles on him, but he wasn't buying. She was only able to learn of his current predicament. The pirate lass decided that such a man was a man of honor and tried shaming him into acting honorably and giving up the drink. He attempted to leave and she drew a rapier on him. Lawrence offered his breast for her to run him through. Xander upon seeing this started to prepare a spell which was notice by the bard, a halfing named Prince Poppycock who went into an immediate oratory to attempt to traverse the room and interrupt his spell. Rolling a natural 20 on his perform he was able to distract Brim at least. The Pirate sheathed her rapier and offered him another sword. Major Lawrence refused and demanded that she let him pass.
The gunslinger told her that "We are not crusaders and cannot save every soul we come across." to which Finney replied, "too bad, we could use some since none have since the Waveriders rode" glancing at Brim. This was observed by the party and two of them approached Brim and the inquisitor attempted to ply him with 20 GP for information. Brim replied, "You want a cantrip?" They decide that they could not afford his services.
While they did get information about Capt. Lester Fellows, the party decided to go back via the entrance in Section 1. They cleared the skum out of S8 and S9 and put the occupants of the cocoons out of their misery. They took personal affects which they will give to Zalen.
We will see what fate befalls them next time....
Kinda figured this would be a slow month or so with the SoW Kickstarter going on.
My PBP game is in round 4 of the Midnight Deal. The Scarred Witchdoctor enlarged and tipped the barge. Those that weren't tossed in the water jumped and now they are attempting to swim to the next wharf. The other three are now surrounded!
With the application of the sea krait venom, Jessica McFarrow's lycanthropy was cured. Brother Zalen mentioned having received a tip that the persons connected to Archibald Noeliss' disappearance might frequent a dive called Barrett's Barnacle in Tide District.
Additionally, the replacement PC for the now-deceased Esquire - Ho Kan, an Aizanes-Tulita monk seeking revenge for the enslavement of his family - arrived at the Church of Xarn seeking information on the gnoll slaver Bonegnaw. He too was directed to Barrett's Barnacle for more information.
At the Barnacle, the other PCs met Ho Kan while questioning the waitstaff about Noeliss' whereabouts and learned of Bonegnaw from him. In the process of gathering information, they were approached by Garreg, and they convinced him to hire them on to do some work for Bonegnaw's cartel. He agreed, telling them to visit a nearby shop and pick up a parcel for delivery: a shrouded cage the size of a small dog which they were not to open or look into under any circumstances.
The chimera in this fight is ideal as a blocker for a PC who deals massive amounts of damage--and in my group, that's Lucin the zen archer. While he tangoed with the chimera, Archibald assaulted the gnolls with hold person spells while Orm and Ho Kan engaged the smugglers in melee (Orm can waterwalk, so he was able to easily flank the gnolls from the barge).
Once this group of enemies was disposed, the guards from the ledge made their way toward the starboard side of Bonegnaw's ship in a rowboat, firing pistol rounds at the PCs as they moved. Archibald, meanwhile, was hard at work animating smugglers as zombies to even the odds, moving to the port side of the ship on the PCs' raft with his undead gnoll meatshields blocking pistol shots. Ho Kan attempted a flying kick to the smuggler at the front end of the rowboat (hooray for monk Acrobatics and Bull Rush) but failed his CMB check and landed in the water. Orm dropped an obscuring mist on top of the smuggler's rowboat, distracting them for long enough for Ho Kan to overturn the craft, then waterwalked toward the starboard rope ladder to engage the smugglers.
Lucin took a flying leap from the top of the chimera cage over to the bow of Bonegnaw's ship, triggering the smugglers' release of the cockatrices. (One smuggler failed his Handle Animal check, getting bit for his trouble.) Lucin spider-climbed back down the side of the ship to avoid the cockatrices, while Orm lobbed the mysterious cage they'd been given onto the deck of the boat. The cage housed a baby basilisk that immediately began turning smugglers to stone; the cockatrices turned on the basilisk in frustration, and soon thereafter the enemy forces had been all but decimated.
At this point, a PvP issue arose: Archibald had maneuvered the raft to the port side of the ship and begun channeling negative energy to zap the cockatrices. He and Lucin had already had some testy exchanges as a result of their philosophical differences, so Archibald wasn't very careful about placing himself so as not to also hit Lucin with the channeling. This spurred a bitter confrontation between the two, and while Orm and Ho Kan finished off the cockatrices, Lucin and Archibald did their best to kill each other. Archibald was knocked into negative hp and fell into the water at the end of the encounter.
We're going to resolve the inter-character antipathy off-screen before the next session begins and try to come to a solution that makes everyone happy. Archibald's player would like to continue playing his necromancer if at all possible, while Lucin's player has decided that the LG monk is just too out of place in a party of morally-ambiguous pirates, even if they aren't particularly bloodthirsty.
Call me old fashioned and old school, but in my humble opinion the LG monk is more suited to the campaign than the other two, but hey, it ain't my game! In 1E I had a player play a NE character in a party that was otherwise all of good alignment. It went on all well and good until the cleric put on the final element of the three relics of Mitra and he started to take damage for being evil! The jig was up! I resolved it by changing his alignment as the character had spent so much time trying to act as if she was good, she could no longer be evil. Perhaps the monk can start to redeem the pirates over an extended period of time?
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So it turns out only the bard had area effects for the battle with the Roachlord. And Fort saves are not the party's strong suit, as more often than not they were nauseated by the beast or his roach swarms. It became very touch and go in the tunnel there before the ifrit managed to get off a flurry of hits for a change and bring him down.
Then they explored the tunnel to the catacombs and retreated with a bouquet of negative levels. Turns out darkvision isn't always a boon to a character...