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I am DMing Skull and Shackles for a group in college, and come this May our group will be graduating and going our separate ways.
I had been removing bits and pieces of each module in order to speed things along in the hopes that we would be able to complete the adventure path before graduation, but we now have 5 game sessions left in which we tend to play for about 5 hours. The party also loves roleplaying (i.e. spent a full hour talking to Sefina in IoEE), so "blow through as quickly as possible" is not an option. This means that some very major things will have to be taken out.
The party has just begun The Price of Infamy, finished the council meeting and is calling some friends to build their fleet. I am already removing the Tower from the list of to-dos, but I'm wondering what else I'll need to remove to reasonably complete the last two modules of the adventure path in about 25 hours of gameplay. I can't use all of these ideas at once, but here's what I've come up with:
1: Have Harrigan actually be on the Wormwood during the fleet battle, instead of off in his fort preparing for the invasion.
2: Have Bonefist start a fight with the PCs for their "mutinous talk" during the emergency council meeting before the Chelish fleet arrives, giving them the Hurricane Crown before the big fight and avoiding the infiltration of Fort Hazard afterward.
3: When the PCs arrive at Harrigan's fort, the Chelish Fleet has already arrived at Drenchport, and by the time the PCs can re-rally their fleet and call on other pirate lords, the fleet has already begun its seige on Fort Hazard. Bonefist may or may not be killed by Cheliax in the fight.
4: Simply end the campaign at the end of Price of Infamy by killing Harrigan--the Chelish Invasion never happens, and the PCs remain as influential Pirate Lords instead of becoming Hurricane King.
What ideas do you think would work well, and what other ideas haven't I thought of?