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So, some feedback and comments and ideas and musings and ball-busting (aimed at Lou, of course) based on my experience working on the project and getting my group started on a Razor Coast campaign.
That said, there are some issues with the adventure as written that didn't help. For one thing, Jalamar's stat block isn't reflective of the buffs he commonly casts on himself prior to battle. It's easier for me as a GM to subtract buffs as they expire or are dispelled than to add them (especially when my own knowledge of divine spells isn't as up to snuff as my understanding of arcane ones). This is why barbarian stat blocks--and often other casters--presented in published material already have their rages and other abilities baked in from the start. I really wish Jalamar had been treated in this way.
Additionally, by 9th level, most parties have access to some pretty useful spells, like air walk and fly (or flying mounts, in the case of our group's necromancer). Guys with swim speed vs. guys with fly speed is a no-contest match in most cases: The fliers win. Never mind the extreme level of buffs the PCs had coordinated among themselves.
The first is interesting - as a GM, I prefer the opposite: I want the base stats, and I'll add whatever modifiers I need based on spells, potions, class abilities, etc. Now, that said... if the PCs are going to always encounter the NPC with the buff active, then it should be baked into the stat block. For an easy example (that may or may not ever happen): a 12th level wizard with Extend spell and extended mage armor prepared should just have the +4 armor bonus added to her armor class. but if there's a chance the spell isn't cast, the potion isn't consumed, etc. then I just don't want them in the stats. (As an alternate, again speaking as a GM and not a designer/developer, mentioning, "If Billy Bob casts all these spells, his armor class increases by +6, his melee attacks increase by +4, ..." and so on is a good compromise for me personally. I always put NPC stat blocks onto a Word doc, so I can just make those tweakes eaily.)
I don't have my books, or even my "working files" handy at the moment. So I don't recall specifics of Jalamar's stat block. But if there is a chance (even small) he couldn't cast his string of buff spells, that would be why they aren't baked into his stat blocks. That doesn't mean it's the right way to do it, of course.
On the second point, I will completely take that one on as my shortcoming. I typically account for that when building NPCs (and even monsters). Flight is definitely a game-changer, and even in groups that don't min-max, it's available no later than 5th level or so (wild shape, fly, etc.) Now, that said, my answer to "the PCs can fly" isn't always to make it so the NPC or monster can also fly. A strong ranged attack, the ability to summon a strong flier (demon, devil, etc), special attacks such as breath weapons, spells, and so on are all ways to deal with flight on some level.
So, Jalamar should have had something. If he didn't, that's my design failure - even though Lou is good enough to stand here and absorb the heat from it.
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So, now I have a few months off to concentrate on my writing... but who am I kidding, I'm already planning the next story arc of Razor Coast. When we come back to play through Ring of the Kraken, there will also be an expedition to find Tarath-Vreen's laboratory and a grand hunt for Garr Bloodbane's treasure; remnants of the cult of Dajobas will still haunt the Razor Sea; old enemies will arise as new perversions against the will of the gods; and many, many more grand adventures will doubtless be had on the high seas.
(emphasis mine)
Don't forget that Dajobas will likely seek out a new dalang to serve his interests in the Razor. It won't happen immediately, of course. But if enough time elapses you can bet he'll have found a new dalang and will begin rebuilding his cult. :) What better way to shock the PCs.
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c. Organize the bulk of the hooks for each adventure option, by NPC and level. If the party is 6th level and talking to Old Craw, the following hooks, rumors and whispers can be learned. Turn these into NPC reference sheets (the Old Craw sheet, the Bonedeuce sheet), the GM can pull out and keep handy as a guide to playing the NPC -- and any given level of the adventure -- to drive the story at the same time. A sort of cheat sheet for playing the NPC depending on what level the party is currently. One for each major NPC and a few blanks for NPCs the GM creates.
I just found this yesterday, actually. If you download the community use package from Paizo that has the character sheets, in there is an "NPC Sheet." It was bloody brilliant! It had all sorts of places for the GM to record hooks related to the NPC, his/her allies and enemies, boons the NPC can give, his/her back story, and so on. I'm shocked I somehow didn't see it before - I know I've downloaded that package previously. But it'll be making its way onto my gaming flash drive so I can use it regularly.
So the point of mentioning it here is that there's no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel. (Though, of course, it could possibly be improved.) Go grab that kit and take a look, because that sheet right there is your starting point.
Any other thoughts or suggestions? Have I gone mad (again) or does the above sound like an improvement building on the current approach?
Again? That implies you were mad and got better, my friend. ;)
As somebody who opted to run Razor Coast from 1st level - because this is actually my first chance to GM a Pathfinder game, amazingly, and I wanted to see the game play from the start - I'm wishing the books had more hooks, tidbits, etc for 1-5 levels. Sure, I can make up my own stuff or plug in other stuff from other publishers. But I'm a lazy son of a b@#!@, and if I can have my published product do 80% of my work for me, I find that preferable.
And so, if you're thinking of revisions and/or new material I think that's a place to explore.
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3) This does make it a lot less sandboxy. To be honest both games have stagnated to a certain extent and are progressing very slowly. Part of that is from player turnover but it is partly from the design. The flow doesn't seem to be there at least at the beginning levels.
4&5) These kind of go together. Yes, it does create a lot of page flipping with the manner in which things are organized especially when dealing with a specific NPC. One can do searches on the pdf, but that doesn't help when trying to run from the book at the table. I think your ideas on reorganization are good ones.
Right now I am looking for a way to revitalized my campaigns so they don't fall apart under their own weight. I think this is a great product, but somehow I am not getting it done for them? I am trying to get them go out and get the information, follow up on leads and not lead them around by the nose. Maybe I have to give more direction?
Did that the first several sessions. Problem is we are now about around session 14 or 15 and all but one are still level 5 with only one original character who is level six. Several have died and others have left the game.
So, a few things here.
First, a lot of players just aren't used to the "sandbox" idea. They expect, at some level of planning, that the GM has a set of tracks they need to follow. And when those tracks just don't exist, a game can break down to the players waiting for the GM to nudge them a certain direction. I'm finding this with my group, to an extent, even though they're only 2nd level now. I toss out various hooks and tidbits through interaction with NPCs and such and wait for them to take the bait so I can reel them in. (My group is 7 PCs, some vets and some newer; some "power gamers" and some "beer and pretzel, just wanna hang out" players.)
My players were, really, paralyzed by their options. Even the vets. They were waiting for me to dangle the ultra-obvious hook of "here's where you go next" and it just didn't come along. Finally, one of the more experienced players messaged me and asked what we needed to do to get moving. I told her just grab a hook and sound confident that she thought it's what the group should look into. Don't discuss if it was where to go, or what others thought. Simply state, "I want to go investigate X."
That worked. Her confidence in X being "right" lead to other players jumping on the bandwagon. So part of your solution for stagnating might be to put the tracks back into the game, just for a bit. Find a player you trust and get that player on-board with moving without rails. It might be enough to get the game flowing again to just have one player make a decision.
Second, the other thing I find that helps is to re-state all the current hooks they have out there. First, I try to send a game summary a few days after a session wraps, to document who they met, what they did, and so on. (One of my players recently took over this task for me - on his own - which is fantastic. Now all I have to do is make minor edits (spelling of names, slight tweaks to what he remembered as facts, etc) and they have their game summary.) It serves as a neat little campaign journal, but it also serves as a place to remind them of what options they had.
The other thing I do is spend the first 5-10 minutes of any game session reviewing the previous action. "Last game, your captain sent you as part of a boarding crew to investigate the wreck of the HMS Hubris. There you met an odd elf, but you couldn't tell if the goblins you fought worked for him or if they were somehow holding him captive. The elf thanked you for rescuing him, regardless of what the situation really was, and told you he was searching for the fabled star of the sea. His captain, who commands the Icy Moon, dropped him here to search the Hubris and will be returning in a few days. He informed you the captain of the Icy Moon had bad intentions for the weird - and supposedly powerful - gem, and that he wanted your help to overthrow the captain and search for the gem without him. After discussing it with your capatain, her gunnery mate told a tale that the Icy Moon is cursed - that the captain of the ship cannot leave her decks. Ever." blah blah blah.
We seem to only be able to play once a month or so, thanks to various schedule conflicts. So this summary helps bring them back to where they left off and I can use it to remind them of various hooks that were dangling previously, making that bait fresh in their mind. It's still up to them to take the hook, but at least now it's fresh in their mind.
And then my last suggestion for you: force the action. If you can't get a player to build the tracks for you, and summarizing doesn't lead somebody to grasp a hook, then simply bring the action to the players. A bar fight. A bloody corpse washed up on shore, with signs of shark bites but also other wounds. A ghost ship spotted a mile off shore. Angry Tulita protesting some new rule meant to supress them. Whatever. Find an inciting incident in the book, or devise your own that leads to a path you think they'll enjoy. Basically, if they won't build the rails, you need to do it and hope they then pick up the tools and keep building from that point.
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The reference sheets are a really good idea. A comprehensive index would be much, much better, though. There were times running this when I'd've killed for an index, especially when I had to conjure up a scene on the fly because the PCs took a turn I wasn't expecting and I couldn't find some crucial supporting information that I knew was right there in the book.
Well, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Make Lou work on both for you! :)
Page references for the adventure options would have also helped out greatly. Yes, you can achieve this by reading through and adding sticky notes/tabs, but if you're like me, you cringe at the idea of marring such a beautiful book with potentially-damaging adhesives.
The only problem with page references is keeping them accurate as layout moves around. It's not impossible of course. But I can't count the number of times I've seen complaints about a product like, "The section on elf mating habits on page 37 that directs you to see the spells on page 98 is wrong! Those spells are actually on page 99! OMG! You ruined this product for me!!!11!!!one!!" So adding them is a double-edged sword, really. They're a lot of work to maintain, and if even one is wrong people will complain - loudly - about the error. But if they're done right, they're a godsend to somebody who needs to reference material.
Of course, getting it to work right is Lou's issue, not mine. ;)
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I refrained from laughing at that as they were not in really serious danger except for the first fight which had them split into three groups and spread out all over the ship in two battles.
Don't they know the first rule of gaming is Don't split the party? Sheesh!
I'm a fairly harsh GM - PCs die in my game; there is no fudging of dice to save somebody. But far and away, even though my groups rarely split up the majority of deaths happen while they do so. My wife is so traumatized by it that she even suggests everybody stay in one room at the inn whenever possible! :)
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Much like Lou, I've enjoyed reading what's been shared in this thread - even though I've been way quieter than him. Despite the fact that I'll willingly bust his balls any chance I get, I'll say that what he did with RC is downright amazing. Nick's original adventure was good. Very good. Lou very much took it to 11, so to speak. Maybe even 12. The fact that it can be improved doesn't surprise me - group think is a powerful tool, after all. But I think it's fantastic that even folks who are offering suggestions on improving the organization are recognizing the work and effort Lou put into this. He deserves all the plaudits he gets for this one!
(Also: I see via peview that the "Contributor" tag has finally shown up on my name. Yay!)
Jalamar should have had something. If he didn't, that's my design failure - even though Lou is good enough to stand here and absorb the heat from it.
And in all fairness, it's entirely possible that there WAS such a catch and I just glossed over it in the rush.
The only problem with page references is keeping them accurate as layout moves around. It's not impossible of course. But I can't count the number of times I've seen complaints about a product like, "The section on elf mating habits on page 37 that directs you to see the spells on page 98 is wrong! Those spells are actually on page 99! OMG! You ruined this product for me!!!11!!!one!!" So adding them is a double-edged sword, really. They're a lot of work to maintain, and if even one is wrong people will complain - loudly - about the error. But if they're done right, they're a godsend to somebody who needs to reference material.
Agreed 100%, and I have seen some good products become very poor ones as a result of this (the reprint of the AD&D 2E PHB springs to mind first and foremost). Which is why an index, no matter how daunting or detail-obsessed, is probably the better option for Razor Coast.
A quick update on party progress.
The party is heavily invested in flying resources already so they circumvented the whale by flying to the beach from several miles out. They did try a lot of aerial scouting that allowed the ambush to get into place.
Heading into the forest tracks they got badly mauled by a random encounter with a shambler and hunkered down for the night with a few bad dreams for their pains.
Heading up to the altar they made short work of the hags on the drums but then grabbed the captives and ran - they are very strong on avoiding mission creep, they were there to rescue the kids so they upped and left actively ignoring the big baddy in the ancient lab (and then complaining at the lack of treasure!) Huanapoki sicked the whale on them as they left but creative use of weighted cargo nets slowed it down enough for them to get clear. Not sure I really made much of a job making the environment feel real to them.
Back in Port Shaw they jumped at the kidnapping hook on the Hargrove estate. They headed out into the Blacksink so I made sure I had lots of descriptive 'vignettes' ready to add colour this time. (I opted on a theme of unnatural hunting and red/black e.g. a spasming sallow butterfly on a branch being slowing penetrated by tendrils of a crimson slime mold or a black egret stalking through lily pads before being abruptly engulfed by a giant catfish.) That combined with the varied encounters worked very nicely for the journey.
We're currently part way through the temple with the sacrifice - they looked to break in via the roof but are rapidly realising that their eidolon mincing machine can barely hit the Big Bad.
On the more general discussions above I'll share a few thoughts.
The sandbox nature of the adventure has rather confused my players too - about three weeks in the other regular DM remarked that he'd finally realised that they really could chose any one of the hooks rather than waiting for the big plot to bite them. They still tend to be a bit scatter gun, which probably reflects on me more than the campaign. I need to be a bit more proactive in trying to create a more cohesive theme.
I know nothing about electronic publishing but I do find it strange in these days that indexing references can't be made to auto-update as content is moved about. They really would be a boon with this product. I'm doing all my prep with the search function on the pdf and lots of sticky note bookmarks in the real book for actual play.
The focus on NPC's to define the setting (e.g. the Waveriders) probably doesn't play to my strengths as a DM although I loved the reading. My players have repeatedly declined to investigate off their own bat - as suggested above I may have to force that issue when they get back to town.
Other thoughts - perhaps vignettes for other 'out of town' locations might be nice to help convey the unique setting to the players would be nice.
All in all this a great product with a unique feel and I'm having a fun time running it - just sharing my experiences in the hope that others can learn from my mistakes.
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My third session is up, and I think the party is beginning to get the concept of "we can do whatever we like." As you will see, they have taken the Ship Action mechanic that Richard Pett invented for The Wormwood Mutiny and ran with it. I'll be doing a review of the AP volume when I'm done running it and I must say it is a work of genius. I highly recommend it as a way of building a party up to the appropriate levels for Razor Coast. It really does a great job of introducing sandbox concepts on a small scale and grows them as the adventure progresses. You can read the session summary HERE.
And may I say in regards to one of my player's actions that playing with the emotions of an escaped psychopath may seem like a funny thing, but it can really come back to bite you in the assets. ;)
My own party originally started on the Wormwood although only one of them remains from that crew. The rest are either dead or left the game unfortunately. Actually, there are three but the other two stayed on to continue the Skulls & Shackles game which has gone on hiatus.
I think I will let Lou answer that one.
Best you have a hot toddy :D
On that note I need to get some sleep also and recommend you to do the same Lou. Get better of will turn you over to my wife, the white witch.
My players have FINALLY (8 months later) hit the point they are going to visit the Razor Coast next session. Lesson learned: prepping sandbox campaigns in Roll20 is REALLY hard. The opening encounters in the docks were rough. Not knowing which one they would want to drop into, I prepped all 7 of them, with a unique map, handouts, icons, and pre-entered stats/notes. I have a feeling this'll get easier as they make specific kinds of trouble for themselves and start to form agendas of their own that I can predict, but it really made me wish my group was happy with a crudely-drawn whiteboard map.
My party finished up Sinful Whisper today. They fought the ghost captain and found the old ship. With the ambergris in hand they were able to flag down a passing ship eventually and get back to Port Shaw. As they had already defeated Hawanapoki it was somewhat anti-climactic for them, but such is the nature of a sandbox environment.
Derrigeur, the new Inquisitor met with Zalen Trafalgar and they had a good conversation about what has been going on in the city. He is not all that trusting of the rest of the party yet.
This brought up a question for Lou. The 70 lbs of mithral ore is stated to only have a value of 700 GP meaning that it is only 1.4 lbs when smelted down? Seems to be very poor grade ore and can't really make anything with it.
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Finally got another tabletop session in.
Started out with interrogating Barrett through half the group being good cop to allow for diplomacy checks. They failed to find out who was directing the Ring of the Kraken, but did discover how the Ring are marked. They promptly killed him and then started to try and figure if they could take charge of the Barnacle.
Heading back into town after disposing of the bodies they came across Drango escaping, who they helped surreptiously until they could get out of sight and then attacked the remaining Dragoons. Drango was fairly injured and they helped get him to the Tulita enclave where they also wanted to see Miliauka.
They had picked up rumours about Karskor Thul and when talking to Miliauka, after handing over both Jessica and the Blood Orphan to see if he could cure them, he told them about the theft of the Jawbone. The party made the connection and started figuring going into the sewers.
With Drango also present the party offered an alliance of getting the pirates to support the Tulita throwing off the corrupt rulership of Port Shaw. They offered to help get Drango a new ship and to make him a 'Pirate King'. He was dubious and told them what happened with Garr Bloodbane, but was willing to accept aid. Miliauka felt that without the Jawbone it was difficult to look for a future and would not contemplate moving his people whilst it was missing.
So they started to propare to go into the sewers, made contact with Captain Farrows, and also met Old Fish selling him some doctored Dragoon items.
NOTES - an equipped version of Drango would be useful. Information on the Nightslink itself as it seems clear that it's still reefed and not sure why players would not go look.
Including Karskor Thul's name with the description would be useful given you have to make the connection yourself and I don't think he's even named when you find the body. Clearly the Tulita know his name otherwise how have they been asking after him.
Some info on where Barrett actually lived would also have been good as no sign of a bed in the Barnacle.
Next time it's Sewer activity. I had planned to do Lacedon stuff, but they weren't at the docks at night. I also think we'll be doing Still Waters as they have to deal with what is being done to the Tulita, meet Hargrove and also make a choice on whether to go with Drango or help save the innocents.
GV - I agree with Vaughan. Your numbers seem pretty reasonable as a ballpark. You probably could go even a little bit larger than that.
Harthy should be able to easily muster up all the sahuagin tribes in a pretty wide area, so if you needed more cannon fodder you could raise those numbers, or even the number of skum and scrags. (Side note: "skum and scrags" would be an awesome band name!) So 2-3K combined of sahuagin, scrag, and skum seems reasonable, but I also think you could go as much as 4,000 and still be reasonable.
I think the real question in the "other" category you mention. That's where things can get interesting.
Some very quick Googling tells me that scientists estimate there are about 3,500 great white sharks on Earth, but those numbers are reduced due to hunting / fishing. Using that as a ballpark, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say Harthy has several hundred sharks at his disposal.
Then you can mix in other sea monsters - drakes, aboleth, other kraken, sea serpents, sea hags, etc - and you couild build an interesting army. And that doesn't even factor in his potential reach back to the abyss to pull in demons and other outsiders.
I think if you were to add up everything that could fall into the "other" category, you could be approaching 500 - 600 creatures without being unreasonable.
And none of that takes into account his influence on land. The Ring of the Kraken doesn't need to be confined to just Port Shaw. Harthy could have his tentacles in other land-dweller settlements as well.
All told, here are some real quick numbers for you. But I think it's reasonable to give Harthy an even larger sphere of influence:
Sahuagin: 1,750 - 2,500, mostly "standard" but it would include several hundred with various levels in classes. (note that you might also have a case here of several tribes, and potential issues with those tribes working together.)
Skum: 500 - 750, again mostly standard but a few dozen would have varying levels of PC and NPC classes.
Scrag: they don't seem to live in tribes, which may reduce their number. Call this 100 or so, with only a small handful having any class levels.
Sharks: 350 - 500 seems reasonable. A dozen or so of those will be advanced, have the giant template, etc.
Sea Hags: Somewhere between 25 and 50 seems decent.
Other sea monsters: A catch all for aboleths, kraken, giant squid, sea serpents, etc. Somewhere between 50 and 100 seems OK here, with most of that being squid, giant moray eels, etc. Maybe 10 or so aboleth and another 5-10 kraken in that mix.
Demons: For this category, you have to ask yourself how much Daddy wants to help in your version of the world. That's going to influence how many - if any - demons Harthy can pull from the Abyss to join his army.
Land Lubbers: As above, it depends on your version of things. Does the Ring of the Kraken extend into other port cities and towns, or is there something special about Port Shaw? If Harthy has influence elsewhere, this could be several hundred people - and potentially their ships as well. Call it, say, 400. I'd peg about 325 of them to be low-level sailors or soldiers. No higher than 2 levels in an NPC class. The remaining 75 would be various levels of competent, likely going up to - or even exceeding - Gregory B.'s level.
So that's 2,750 on the low end and 4,000 on the high end - without counting in demons or land lubbers. That would likely include a fair number of combatants who aren't exactly loyal to Harthy, but fighting on his side is a better option than not fighting at the moment.
I keep thinking I'm gonna get my PCs to the RAZOR COAST. Then I come up with an open ocean "wilderness encounter" and things get all wonky.
One pontoon canoe full of Tulita, led by a low level cleric of Quell, appear coming out of a storm on the horizon, a couple hundred miles from the Razor Coast. In my campaign, the Tulita (as a subrace, not as a culture) are the human slaves of the aboleth. These are escapees. The cleric has stolen an Orb of Storms, which is why the aboleth sent a yithian, carrying a Pearl of the Sirines, riding a mutant (aquatic) destrachan, and leading a small squad of 5 skum, to catch them. My PCs HATE slavery and HATE aboleths. Antics ensue, including a critical hit on the yithian from the ship's one cannon.
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Hi Guys, my PC's have really bought in to the Tarath Vreen side of things....
The phrase 'teeming with un-dead' has been on my players lips for several weeks - the expectations are pretty clear. The halfling rogue's narrow escape from the bone portcullis was certainly met with great delight.
Whilst it feels like a large necromancer's dungeon filled with traps and un-dead is a much over-done trope of the game I have been struggling to find many examples I could convert. At the moment I'm toying with using the upper levels of Lost Caverns of Thracia to get the antique feel of ancient ruins but it'll need a fair bit of tweaking to up the CR's appropriately. Still needs some thought on the various factions within the Lost Caverns - I don't want to distract from the core setting with extra layers of history.
I'm also thinking that I need to work in some evidence for the players to find that the surface dwellings associated with the ruins were obliterated in a volcanic incident at Pele cleaned house.
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Dude - you're inspiring me to write an adventure set in the ruins of a Pompeii cognate.
Do you have Heart of the Razor? There is an above ground adventure by Owen Stephens you might adapt to an underground adventure that threatens Port Shaw.
Or what about adapting Mike Kortes, J1: Entombed with the Pharaohs and reskinning it Gothic-Hawaiian instead of Egyptian?
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Hmm, Pett's adventure in "Heart of the Razor" relies on Great Pele backstory in the Tulita age the last great dragon.
Heading inland toward Dreadsmoke Mountain, Great Pele's habitat, would definitely make a fine addition to Razor Coast!
Pester John Ling over at Frog God. Maybe he can get Nick (or me) to write one.
*whispers* Pssst it's always "Great Pele" ok? Don't piss Her off again now that we finally have Her off our backs, right-o thar matey?
EDIT: check out the menehune in the Freebooter's Guide and the monsters Owen Stephens created in HoTR. There are some great volcano-esque beasties, IIRC, that you might feed your creation machine.
Thanks for the suggestions Lou - Entombed was actually the first adventure I played with the pathfinder play-test rules with one of my players as the DM. (My mage saw the last rune in the middle of the last fight - the party won through but it's tricky to say if he 'survived' or not.) I'm sure a few locations can be pilfered - a necromancer should always have plenty of canopic jars, plus lots of eyeballs in glass bottles that watch you round the room :) I do have HotR but haven't read that story - I'll take a look. Incidentally was Tarath Vreen intended to be a local or outsider? I had been assuming the later as the name didn't strike me as very Tulita
Hmm, Pett's adventure in "Heart of the Razor" relies on Great Pele backstory in the Tulita age the last great dragon.
Heading inland toward Dreadsmoke Mountain, Great Pele's habitat, would definitely make a fine addition to Razor Coast!
Pester John Ling over at Frog God. Maybe he can get Nick (or me) to write one.
*whispers* Pssst it's always "Great Pele" ok? Don't piss Her off again now that we finally have Her off our backs, right-o thar matey?
EDIT: check out the menehune in the Freebooter's Guide and the monsters Owen Stephens created in HoTR. There are some great volcano-esque beasties, IIRC, that you might feed your creation machine.
Oh yes! Someone should do a "Towards Dreadsmoke" adventurey thing! I was going to write one at some point, I even have the outline for it somewhere, but never got around to it...who knows!
Oh yes! Someone should do a "Towards Dreadsmoke" adventurey thing! I was going to write one at some point, I even have the outline for it somewhere, but never got around to it...who knows!Hmm, Pett's adventure in "Heart of the Razor" relies on Great Pele backstory in the Tulita age the last great dragon.
Heading inland toward Dreadsmoke Mountain, Great Pele's habitat, would definitely make a fine addition to Razor Coast!
Pester John Ling over at Frog God. Maybe he can get Nick (or me) to write one.
*whispers* Pssst it's always "Great Pele" ok? Don't piss Her off again now that we finally have Her off our backs, right-o thar matey?
EDIT: check out the menehune in the Freebooter's Guide and the monsters Owen Stephens created in HoTR. There are some great volcano-esque beasties, IIRC, that you might feed your creation machine.
Send me an email and we can talk. ;)
So, maybe I just haven't looked through my book hard enough (I've only read it several times through), but I can't seem to find artwork for Gregory Bonnaduce.
Am I skipping it? Was it left out for a reason? He's practically the main badguy.
I intend to utilize Razor Coast as supplemental to my STAP campaign, in the Pirate Isles, which my players probably won't reach for like six more years, but I'm still looking forward to it.
If the bastard just didn't get art, that's fine, but it's driving me crazy at the moment.
The only artwork he got was the picture of him on the Pride as the cannons fire during the naval battle. I do not recall the page number off the top of my head.
If your players don't play PFS, I find Major Coulson Maldris' portrait works pretty well.
They don't, and that is a nice suggestion. Pretty much how I pictured him. Thanks!
While I find Boneduce somewhat snooty, I find him more arrogant than anything else and the pic is more his on ship personna to me and as such don't have an issue with it.
As for my game, my rogue has been dominated by the ghost and is exploring the sewers in search of his remains. They just completed section 2 and used the alchemist fire cases to kill the scorpion using cases of vials. They considered using a few barrels of it, but where concerned that if they tried to roll them they might become unsealed and go off. One of my players is supposed to be doing a write up of Saturday's game and if so I will post it up.
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So, maybe I just haven't looked through my book hard enough (I've only read it several times through), but I can't seem to find artwork for Gregory Bonnaduce.
Am I skipping it? Was it left out for a reason? He's practically the main badguy.
I intend to utilize Razor Coast as supplemental to my STAP campaign, in the Pirate Isles, which my players probably won't reach for like six more years, but I'm still looking forward to it.
If the bastard just didn't get art, that's fine, but it's driving me crazy at the moment.
That bastard did get art. He's got a cigar in his mouth on page 321. :)
EDIT: Ninja'd!
EDIT: In the picture on 321, that's Gregory showing his true colors, and he's been at sea a while, ergo... scruffier. :)
Here is the write up from our last game from Richard Aronson, one of our players:
Razor Coast Write-up – 6/14/2014
Lack of Insewerance
The party had traversed a large chunk of the sewers on our way to find, retrieve, shrive, and bury the corpse of the ghost bard currently inhabiting Mercedeh. Balmaroth, Marcus, and DeRigueur had all renewed their spells after defeating the chain devil and the succubus, so we felt ready for action. But not quite as much action as we encountered.
The first mistake of the day, and it was not clearly a mistake, was to not continue straight to the ghost’s body, but to finish exploring all the rooms in this area, avoiding of course the giant scorpion that used tremor sense to ignore blindness. We got as far as the first intersection. The party was strung out back towards the room we had cleared to the north. Mercedeh, stealthy, entered a large room. It had to be large; it was full of small demons; fifteen dretch and three quasits. The quasits vanished.
The second mistake of the day, and this was clearly a mistake, was by Mercedeh; instead of holding the doorway, or retreating to the north where the party was, she retreated to the south, so she could go stealthy and back stab the first opponent that came up. This was a terrible mistake, as demons filled the intersection and cast stinking cloud, forcing Mercedeh to retreat south, separated from the rest of us. For as long as this battle lasted, she would be on her own, and there are reasons why the first rule of dungeon crawling is: never split the party.
Balmorath was caught by the stinking cloud, and never got to cast his prepared web spell to ensnare a large number of demons. He fled to the north. Mercedeh ran out of the stinking cloud, followed by a trail of slower demons.
Marcus and DeRigueur hung back outside the stinking cloud. What could they do? Balmorath came stumbling out of the cloud, retreating behind Marcus and DeRigueur, followed by many demons. Fortunately this was a large room, and the humans were faster than the demons, so we were able to fight while retreating and never getting overwhelmed. Once Balmorath stopped coughing, he was able to do his normal credible damage, and after many rounds we finally defeated the last of the little demons to the (we’ll call it) north.
The South was not going so well. Mercedeh ran and coughed, and ran and coughed, chased by the slower little demons. Unfortunately for her, she ran into a babau. Even more unfortunately for her, it was much stealthier than she was, and she wasted several rounds and most of her hit points learning this. A glance at the Pathfinder web site: it has constant see invisibility, so she could not stealth away from it. It also has stealth, plus at will darkness and greater teleport. And it could telepathically command the trail of smaller demons following her. And it has reach of 10 feet with its long spear.
Had Mercedeh fled for her life, not stopping until she reached the wharf, she might have been okay. As we deduced later, it was summoned to guard a location, and probably would not have followed her; she could easily have outrun the smaller demons. But constantly facing flanking by the babau on one side and dretchs on the other, she decided to take a left to force them to face her single file. When the dretch arrived, the babau simply teleported behind her: flanked and no way to run any more. She was wounded below zero, but stabilized as the northern fight ended.
Balmorath decided (I don’t know how; we had no way to know) that Mercedeh, by far the best equipped and most versatile member of our party, desperately needed help. So he left three smaller demons and ran south. It took Marcus and DeRigueur some time to dispatch them. The babau, who was the boss demon, was stripping Mercedeh, preparing to sacrifice her to his deity. IIRC, that deity is Tsathogga, the son of Orcus. The pile of her stuff was discarded for later evaluation, and Mercedeh was being chanted over when Balmorath arrived.
Fortunately for us, the chapter house, and several city blocks, Balmorath was almost out of spells, so he had no more big and showy damaging spells like lightning bolt or fireball to cast. Had he done so, he would have set off all the alchemical fire there. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused on what he could do, things like sleep. Instead, he levitated or flew out of reach of the demons. This might have worked, except for the other babau. It made its presence known as DeRigueur and Marcus finally arrived after finishing off the last of the little demons and started running after their friends.
The battle was not going well; Mercedeh was still below zero, everybody was badly wounded, most of our best spells and abilities had been drained, and we were facing a wounded babau, a fresh babau, and several minions. At this point Balmorath had the inspiration that saved the day: he Suggested that we were really winning the battle and the demons needed to wake up the giant scorpion to help them. One failed will save later, and the fresh babau teleported off.
I leave the realm of the known and enter the realm of conjecture here. The babau teleported in. No doubt the first round the babau cast darkness, to hide from the scorpion. But alas for the babau, the scorpion used its tremor sense to spot him. It grabbed him with its pincer, grappling it and doing a lot of damage. The babau teleported away, leading the scorpion towards where we were, thinking he was out of range. The scorpion skewered the babau with it 20 foot reach poisonous tail. The babau was immune to poison, but still, that tail hit hard without poison. And thus fell the fresh babau.
With only one babau left to fight, and with the badly wounded Balmorath out of range, DeRigueur peppering it with quarrels, and a channel even having gotten Mercedeh back on her feet, the battle was won. Lots of healing spells later (pretty much all our healing, in fact) and there was much rejoicing, except for some poorly considered accusations of attempted theft as Mercedeh did not realize that the demons had stripped her, not her companions.
At this point, it dawned on us that we were in a fairly large room full floor to ceiling with barrels and crates. “Ah hah!” I’m sure someone said “Ah hah!”. The demons must have been guarding this store room. Most of the barrels and crates were inaccessible because of all the barrels and crates in front of them. But a few were accessible. Each was full of alchemist fire. How much alchemist fire was in the storeroom? We tried estimating, but DeRigueur ran out of zeroes once he passed 10,000. Being that close to 10,000 d6 of damage does make it hard to concentrate on higher mathematics.
The crates were smaller, lighter, and held 24 vials of alchemist fire. A plan began to form. We had crates full of damage. We had a long spear from the dead babau. The crate was not too heavy. Mercedeh could push the crate along the floor, confusing the giant scorpion’s tremor sense so it could not detect her. We could put 2-3 such crates in there, lure the scorpion to that section of room, trigger them with a quarrel, kill the 150 hit point vermin. DeRigueur could cast Resist Fire on the person pushing the boxes. The best person for that task, the strongest amongst us, was Mercedeh.
No plan survives contact with the enemy, and in this case, the enemy was Mercedeh. After casting resist fire, Mercedeh said, “Why do I have to push the crate? I can just sneak in there carrying it.”
“The scorpion has tremor sense. It will detect you.”
“No it won’t. I’ll show you!”
“If you go in there carrying it, you will die, and I will say I told you so.”
“Harrumph!”
So Mercedeh, who clearly had zero memory of fighting and barely surviving the scorpion at the prior game session, successfully rolled a 30+ stealth check. She was 20 feet away from the scorpion, clearly out of its reach, when it reached out and grabbed her.
These were DeRiguer’s thoughts:
“If she dies, we’ll never retrieve and raise the body, and I’ll never be able to say I told you so.”
So while she flung the crate at the scorpion, doing it a whole lot of damage and herself (after resistances applied) 24 points of damage, DeRegueur cast “Resist Fire” on himself while shouting at Marcus to get another case out of the bag of holding. Balmorath, still flying (no tremor sense) shot some magic missiles at the scorpion. Marcus got out another crate.
The next round Balmorath dodged, Mercedeh failed to exceed the 35 needed to break the grapple and fell unconscious, and DeRigueur ran in with the second crate. The scorpion, with no need to hold the dying Mercedeh, perhaps more wounded than it had ever been in its life (I would swear it was still on fire in place) flung her aside and grabbed DeRigueur. He was able to fling the crate at the scorpion, hoping it would be enough.
DeRigueur’s first words upon awakening from a healing channel were “What a rush.”
His next words were “I told you so.”
We do not know how many things that scorpion killed over the years. But it had no treasure at all. I theorize whoever summoned the chain devil (to stack all the barrels and crates with its chains and no chance of dropping them leading to a big boom) and the demons had some way (flight plus invisibility) to take out all the loot. Or maybe the scorpion ate everything and absorbed the magic; it was 20 feet long, had 20 feet reach, had 150 or so hit points. But it was worth a lot of XP. And what a rush.
I had plans today for a longish session starting with a sewer trip leading into Still Waters.
So the party hired Lester and went through some preparations for going into the sewers. They are still level 5 but they were going into Section 1.
They went south and the Skum scout headed to warn Urothru. Despite being asked multiple times how they wanted to approach the room they just walked in and stood near the pool. Urothru moved around them invisible before the Skum appeared out of the pool.
We almost ended up with a TPK, but did lose the party mage who got in the path of Urothru when the gun mage moved out the way. They managed to take down the lot and then discussed what to do.
They decided as they had one character to replace they would also replace the halfling Thief who none of them had really warmed to. So the new party becomes:
Rake - Bard3/Ranger2 - Spiked chain using Half orc
Zeragon(?) - Human Female Witch 5 - prehensile hair who is already creeping out some of the others in the party
joining:
Mary Belle - Human Female Cleric 5 of Pekko - who wants to organise brothels and has already looked at taking over the Barnacle
Makako - Human Tulita Female Barbarian - now a hero amongst her people
Four Fingers Flint - Human Gun Mage - grog swilling gun mage
The new party members had come down in the sewers via the nearby grate having seen Timmy the Thief dragging the mage's body out of the sewers - he has since disappeared with all the equipment that Stephen had. The new members joined up as the group looked over the room and started figuring out the lever.
The bard swam down into the pool to establish the rooms were connected and managed to go unnoticed. They then checked to see where the room went to and again managed to go unnoticed in the dark. The plan became pull the lever, confuse the skum in the junction room and lure them out. One scout went to see what was going on and was taken out. The rest realised the room was compromised and moved to split and attack from 3 ways. Unfortunately the group was ready and they took them down, managed to put one to sleep who they interrogated and got very basic information about rooms they would end up not going into.
Then it was down the gas corridor which none of them managed the roll on first time. They grabbed the jawbone off the body and then ran as the swarm chased them. This time one managed the craft check just before the party got blown up in the corridor. They retreated and the gun mage tossed alchemist fire at the swarm in the gas which only managed to kill it when the wall came down on top of it.
Licking their wounds they returned to Lester who had killed the one Skum that had run his way and headed to see Miliauku.
The Tulita were in awe of the return of their artifact and that their people might in fact rise again. But children had been going missing from the Hargrove plantation.
It was close on the TPK, but it may have taught them to actually prepare rather than just wander in. I suspect I will do something different with the Skum that are left.
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@brvheart - I love your write-ups. Great stuff! I've run three groups into that section of the sewer, and NO ONE has thought to use that stuff to
@Silas - I love the way you're connecting that to Still Waters. Very natural. I did it the exact opposite and opened with Still Waters, because I had a 6 person party.
Razor Coast will never play the same way twice.
Silas is a member of my PBP group and yes the two games are going quite different. This is their first foray into the sewers while my ftf group has been there four times, the first three the sewers getting the best of them. The first time being similar to Silas' groups experience. Silas has been a great player and a great contributor to the group. They have yet to meet Capt. Fellows so they are going afoot.
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Mark = Silas
I was actually surprised my party with the new members left the sewers, but a little fear is good I suppose, especially going into the swamps.
Main issue at the moment I have had with my F2F group is how they've dealt or not dealt with the dragonsmoke smugglers and just have avoided properly engaging there. Now they are firmly linked in with the Tulita I see them getting told to go deal with that issue for the good of the people.
I'm also planning on using the ghost to get them back down into the sewers.
But first Still Waters and their first meeting with Hargrove.
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Another thought to get them to sewers: Shrine of Frenzy, but...
Just a thought.
Had a great time running my PCs into the sewers (section 1). They loved Cap'n Lester Farrows and the creepy details of the rooms. Fireball made some encounters a little goofy (when the only skum standing is the named one, and he at -30 HP), but I also have watched my players really enjoying weird encounters with great beasts, so I swapped out a few of the skum in S3 for a siyokoy and its handler, guarding a treasure pile.
My only real gripe with the sewers: those maps in the .pdf...rough, to say the least, for use in a VTT.
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Currently running the Shrine of Frenzy. The party is one round away from the whole place collapsing on them!
They did reissue the pdf in higher resolution that helps out with the sewers map and is at least readable although I have not tried it with VTT.
There is a great kickstarter with ships that are perfect for Razor's Coast!
I am ordering a couple myself. It does bring up an issue with the stats for the ships in FASB though.