I'm considering trying to put together a campaign where Shattered Star is being played by the PC's and Rise of the Runelords is being played as a dream sequence - whenever the PC's fall asleep in Shattered Star they awaken in RotRL and vice versa... the idea being that discoveries in one may help them figure out what's going on in the other.
The characters might be the same, or might be completely different, leaving players to discovered that they were being possessed/influenced by long-dead adventurers seeking to make right what they had unknowingly caused...
This idea is very early in its planning stages - does anyone think that Shattered Star might not be the right AP for this (since it hasn't been fully revealed yet) or are their any suggestions regarding how I might proceed?
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I did something similar to this when I was running Rise of the Runelords. It can work very well, BUT I didn't have the restriction of having to stick to what was given in another AP.
What you are trying is ambitious. What I would suggest is to pick out specific scenes from Rise of the Runelords to run them on. Shattered Star starts in Magnimar, so I would suggest begin with Shards of Sin, now the flashbacks can happen after that. Have the Skinsaw Murders, maybe when they are leaving the Crow pilings, in the Underbridge, they pass by a certain clocktower and flashback two happens.
Maybe you can have flashbacks from Burnt Offerings before all that, but one thing that I would be concerned about is confusing your players. The thing about Rise of the Runelords is that the whole AP is about, what is Thassilon, who are the Runelords?
The thing about Shattered Star is that there is knowledge of Thassilon, you have an expert at your disposal (Heidmarch), you are just learning something new, with the ultimate revelation being the Emperor Xin.
That sounds like a very cool idea, albeit also quite ambitious.
Your plan reminds me of the original Castle Ravenloft / Ravenloft 2 modules for AD&D. They took place in different locations, with one playing out as a dream sequence when the PCs are asleep in the other. There's an element if "which us real?" In that setup.
As for me, I had been planning to run Seven Swords of Sin as a side-quest, in my Rise of the Runelords" game, more as an excuse to GM a few sessions in Kaer Maga than anything else. I'm stealing chunks of The Assylum Stone to get the PCs there.
Excellent idea Wiggz, I might have to borrow it...
Kind of reminds me of the sequence from Final Fantasy 8, whereas yours isn't linear.
From a GM's point of view, it'll provide a good scope for variety by giving the players the choice to have a second character.
Have you considered what happens to the PC's alternates if the current character dies?
I did a dream sequence game once as a set up for a game I would be running later. It actually spanned across a few different game systems, each player decided a system, everyone made a character for each system and all the characters of a character leveled at the same rate. They were playing in each others dreams as characters they had not made yet were in stasis in my homebrew world where their actions in each others dreams where making them the part of the godly portfolio of that world. When a character whose dream they were in would go unconscious everything started to go black and white and fuzzy and slow until they were revived, if they died all the players were forced into another players dream with the player taking penalties while there psyche repaired itself.
I'm doing the opposite... RotRL infused with Shattered Star. Once they learn about big K, Pathfinder society fills them in on some artifact pieces that they want..
