Looking for any tips or advice before starting to run chapter 2 of RotRL. I have 3 PCs a Catfolk Rogue, an Assimar Paladin, and a Gnome Summoner. Yours truly has feelings for the Summoner who is relatively new to playing so that should be entertaining. One thing I feel I should do is help invest them in the town some more as I really didn't work that hard at it in chapter 1 and I felt they almost raced through it and didn't even understand who Nualia even was. So I guess what I am looking for is 2 things:
Tips/advice on things I should pay close attention to for the chapter
Tips on gettting players invested into the townspeople
My players do tend to prefer combat so it can be tricky sometimes to get them into their characters and their environment.
I would suggest really playing up the messages left by the murderer, and his obsession with one of the PCs. This obsession will put a spotlight on one PC, which should intrigue them. Conducting a murder investigation leaves a lot of room for interaction with the mayor, the sheriff, and scared merchants. If you skipped some of the social challenges with Sandpoint NPCs before, why not throw them in now?
The AP suggests to keep the pace up for the beginning of the book, when the players have no idea who/what is causing these murders. This should help keep combat-lovers satisfied. Try to make the reveal of the murderer exciting, and make sure that after the book's conclusion, the PCs have pieced things together enough through letters and enemy exposition to know why they were marking people with this rune and murdering them.
I believe I did run most of the social challenges and such in the first part like the Inn with Ameiko and I definately played up the boar encounter quite a bit. I believe they were getting very annoyed with him as he would ask them all about heroing to the point where I think they wanted to be done with them but he flourished the Gnome with gifts like the horses and once they left him they were like wow finally. My thing is I don't know if the town has had enough flavor but maybe it is just because I see everything we get in the book and it is hard to deliver everything in a couple of sessions.
Another question then to perhaps spark more interest. How have you guys who have run the skin saw murders handled the reveal?
Lols my bad didn't notice. I make the joke all the time and probably just wrote it.
Be warned that the final encounter in Ch 2 is incredibly difficult (unless you have the recent reissue, where they might have fixed it). I nerfed it severely and STILL had a PC death.
Yes, the end fight in the Anniversary Edition is not as deadly, though still quite threatening. Clever PCs who gain information about the hideout and use it to their advantage (flight comes to mind as being useful) are rewarded greatly. PCs who simply stomp their way through will have a tougher time (those bells hurt!).
I worried that my PC's would jump right to
Advice-wise, I would suggest picking one or two Sandpoint residents and making them greedy in a way that the PC's notice, in case you need another victim. I used the jeweler's wife. She was always vocal, etc., anytime they went in to sell off loot, or infrequently, buy something.