The first book of Serpent's Skull is one of my favorite modules of all time. I also quite like book 3, but it needs work.
Books 2 and 4 are among the worst modules I've ever read. 2 is especially painful, as it is just a straight railroad the whole time. I also don't really find the end interesting to compelling.
I have heard great things about Skull and Shackles, and lots of suggestions to transition from Serpent Skull book 1 into Skull and Shackles instead of using the rest of Serpent's Skull.
With interest, I read Skull and Shackles 1 and it looked just awful. I found absolutely nothing appealing about it--it's railroady, it's got really silly breaks of verisimilitude to make it playable, and the whole time, you're basically beating/torturing/breaking the spirit of your PCs. The intention is obviously, "Oh, they'll grow to hate their abusers and drive the story of revenge," but it's far more likely that they'll just hate it and be miserable.
My players are loving Skull & Shackles, but I have no experience with Serpent's Skull, other than giving it a brief read-through.
Skull & Shackles will test you as a GM, mainly in terms of being able to breathe life and character into a HUGE amount of NPCs, most of which matter in terms of their reactions and responses to the PCs.
I really like Serpent's Skull. With a good GM who makes the railroady segments more interesting it's a very good AP.
I also don't mind linearity all that much though, so YMMV.
|
Not played Serpent Skull but Skull and Shackles is not too good for the first part of the first adventure. Options are limited and the party just got beat up a whole load.
The 2nd half of the 1st adventure was good though as they got some freedom and some well deserved payback which was the point of the beatings.
The rest of the AP is very free form however and depending upon your skills and the players it is very suggestive of an evil or at least lawlessly neutral party.
Sic
As a new-ish GM, I would say run Serpent's Skull.
My group just finished serpent's skull and are now on skull & shackles.
As MPL said, modules 1&3 of Serpents skull are great.2 we thought was okay. and 4-6 were meh, that being said the reason I would say you should run it is that Skull & Shackles Module 1 is pretty poor, but then it picks up, though the form is more free-form, sandbox kind of play, so for an early GM I think the structure of Serpent's Skull would be useful.
Also if your players want to be the bad guys, then pirates area better choice than pioneering adventurers, so talk it over with them and see what they would like as as well.
|
|
I'm personally a big fan of Serpent's Skull, but I'm not sure I would reccomend it to a GM who's just starting out. As people have pointed out, part 1 of the AP is very good, but I think it's important to know that it also has a *lot* of book keeping. Unless you want to gloss over certain parts of the adventure (not necessarily a bad idea), you're going to be keeping track of random encounters, npc morale, disease rules, extreme temperature rules, and wilderness survival rules in addition to running encounters and playing several important NPCs. The first time I ran that adventure I made a lot of mistakes and got kind of stressed out, so I'd advise you to spend some time closely reading the adventure and preparing things like random encounters ahead of time.
The AP only gets harder to run from there, as well. Part 3 involves interactions between 5 factions of explorers and 6 factions of "natives," and getting the most out of the adventure can take a *lot* of work. Likewise, pretty much all the adventures after the first can really benifit from at least a little tweaking on the part of the GM.
As I said, I actually really like Serpent's Skull, or at least the themes and settings it contains, but running it is a lot more work than running, say, Rise of the Runelords. On the other hand, I don't really know much about Skull and Shackles, so you could be stuck with two very difficult choices.
From a players perspective Serpent skull is ok, we're finishing book 6 soon.
Book 1 is great, 2 is the railroad, 3 is again great, but 4,5 & 6 have become a grind, same theme, same enemies over and over.
Plus as others have said, it's a lot of work for a new GM, ours has kept it interesting with his doing all the background tasks, but if you're new it might be a pain.
Skull & Shackles, I'm reading it as I'll be running it when we finish SS, first part is pretty much a railroad with powerless PC's getting it in the neck non-stop.
From there though it looks good, lot's of freedom for PC's to have fun and choose their own path, good or bad.
DBH
To the OP's original question: Serpent's Skull would have been outstanding if it had ended with The City of Seven Spears.
I have heard great things about Skull and Shackles, and lots of suggestions to transition from Serpent Skull book 1 into Skull and Shackles instead of using the rest of Serpent's Skull.
How do you make the jump from Souls for Smuggler's Shiv to Raiders of the Fever Sea?
Issues as I see them:
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Dead easy. You run smuggelers Shiv up to the cannibal camp and have them recused by a ship...the Wormwood...part 1 of skull and shackels then starts with no problems. It means chopping certain parts out of the shiv adventure though
Or you could just carry on with the island and then have them rescued as above but chance the sub plot of the temple. Of course if you did this the players would be 3 levels higher than they should be when they start wormwood.
I have run serpents skull and hated it form book 2 onwards. Im running skull and shackels and both me and the players love it.
Dead easy. You run Smugglers Shiv up to the cannibal camp and have them recused by a ship...the Wormwood...part 1 of Skull and Shackels then starts with no problems. It means chopping certain parts out of the Shiv adventure though.
Or you could just carry on with the island and then have them rescued as above but change the subplot of the temple. Of course if you did this the players would be 3 levels higher than they should be when they start Wormwood.
I have run Serpents Skull and hated it from book 2 onwards. I'm running Skull and Shackles and both me and the players love it.
Sounds like an idea I could use in the future.
|
I think it really boils down to what you and the players want in a game.
If you want to play heroes fighting a world threatening menace, heroes that will make a difference, then play Serpent's Skull.
If you want to play villains, self centered killers on the high seas, then Skull and Shackles is definitely your choice.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sounds like an idea I could use in the future.Dead easy. You run Smugglers Shiv up to the cannibal camp and have them recused by a ship...the Wormwood...part 1 of Skull and Shackels then starts with no problems. It means chopping certain parts out of the Shiv adventure though.
Or you could just carry on with the island and then have them rescued as above but change the subplot of the temple. Of course if you did this the players would be 3 levels higher than they should be when they start Wormwood.
I have run Serpents Skull and hated it from book 2 onwards. I'm running Skull and Shackles and both me and the players love it.
Or, how about ...
Dead easy. You run smuggelers Shiv up to the cannibal camp and have them recused by a ship...the Wormwood...part 1 of skull and shackels then starts with no problems. It means chopping certain parts out of the shiv adventure though
Or you could just carry on with the island and then have them rescued as above but chance the sub plot of the temple. Of course if you did this the players would be 3 levels higher than they should be when they start wormwood.
The entire point of swapping Wormwood Mutiny out for Smugger's Shiv is to avoid the Wormwood; starting with Smuggler's Shiv only to have them picked up by Harrigan places the PCs in exactly the position you were running Smuggler's Shiv to avoid in the first place.
I really like Lord Fyre's suggestions; an important addendum to them is
Something I've considered doing for running it, since not everyone in my group was into the first adventure.
1. Start the campaign on the Wormwood as per normal. Play out the first day so players can meet with NPCs. At the end of the first day, have someone sight a ship to steal. This'll get players right in the action, ignoring the swabbing and learning for a week.
2. Second day. Invade pirate ship. Have it chaotic but fun, with PCs boarding and kicking ass. At the end of the second day, divvy up the loot and have Plugg prepare to take the second boat off for scuttling.
3. Play out a couple of days of pirate life, but adding in some encounters or roleplaying moments to liven things up.
4. Shipwrecked! At this point you can either do the normal shipwreck in S&S or the shipwreck on SfSS.
Personally, I don't have the issue of an NPC like Plugg for the players to hate. However, I felt that it took way too long to get to the part everyone wanted to do. Raid a ship. So I fast forward things a bit, maybe assume that the players are salty enough to know their way around the pirate ship. Maybe even have them established as Harrigan's crew. Anything to speed to the action.
I don't know much at all about Skull & Shackles, but I'm running Serpent's Skull and haven't really been impressed.
Here's my take on the books:
1) As mentioned above, a great little adventure, although the players found it difficult and a bit of a grind with all the disease.
2) Mediocre. The players I think enjoyed it much more than I did as a GM. The start was the best part - the remainder was very railroady and had quite a few bits that just didn't seem to make sense (story-wise).
3) Unlike others above, we found this adventure very poor. On the plus side it was incredibly sand-boxy, on the downside, it was to the point where the players kind of lost motivation/interest. The set-up of the city (pre-PCs arriving) doesn't make a lot of sense, and with one notable exception the PCs really weren't encouraged to take any approach apart from "kill them all and sort it out later". If you're the kind of GM with lots of time to take a skeleton of an adventure and flesh it out into a good adventure then it could be right up your alley, but that isn't what I buy APs for...
4) Mediocre. Added a bunch of stuff into a supposedly already largely explored city, which left the players (and me) head scratching a bit. The players again became very frustrated with the madness mechanic (much like the disease mechanic from the first adventure). Had some good bits though (rival faction encampment, final fight and gorilla king being most memorable).
5) Very Poor. Suffered from everything that the 3rd adventure suffered from, with the addition of the second half being a horrible dungeon crawl with very little to challenge high level PCs. It relied on the PCs finding an non-obvious needle in a haystack to proceed, which even with high level magic proved to be difficult given the protections in place. The only thing saving this from being a "terrible" rating was the Urdefhans.
6) Good - we're only half way through it, but so far it seems to be "high level adventuring done right". Still suffers compared to the first adventure just for being high level Pathfinder play, with all the craziness that implies, but one of the better final modules for an AP I can remember.
So, in summary - two good adventures bookending a crap sandwich from our perspective. Ok, that's probably too harsh, but even with the little I know about Skull & Shackles, I'd recommend it over Serpent's Skull. Probably the worst Paizo AP I've played run (and I've played or run most of them) - it seems great in theory, but is actually pretty poor in execution.
I'm running Skull & Shackles. My wife is running Serpent Skull.
We're really enjoying playing Serpent Skull.
Sadly, we've hit this hurdle in Part 3. I haven't read it, obviously, but my wife has shared with us that it seriously drops the ball as far as encounter prep goes. Part 3 is intended to get the characters from levels 7 to 10. To do that, the GM is armed with multiple cool NPC groups, a vague description of the lost city that is the arena and virtually zero maps or encounters. It is on the GM to prep and scale three levels worth of encounters. Maps? What maps? For maps, there's an add for one of the map packs. There's apparently a particular tomb of so-and-so NPC hero tied to the central plot. Left for the GM's discretion to flesh out. My wife was very cross to find that out. So if you don't want to DIY a campaign, this may be a warning.
Pity, too, because there are a lot of cool Indian Jones-meets-Horror stuff in this explore the Dark Continent campaign that we're otherwise enjoying.
So far so good for Skull & Shackles though we're just in Part 1.
It does bear explaining to players *before choosing to start this AP* that they start "naked" and abused in this AP and go from there, biding their time for the opportune moment. That's not everyone's cup of tea. If they buy it, I say go for it. Especially if your group would like to try a supposedly nautical campaign where you actually spend time on a ship at sea. It's not all sea-faring, mind you but a good portion is.
Every step along the way in Part 1 that *doesn't* end up in physical/emotional abuse/discipline is a strongly-felt victory for my players. Especially if you show other NPCs getting punished, too.
The PCs don't have to be evil killers for the rest of the AP if they don't want to. It's still very possible to play the whole campaign as goodly roguish heroes if they'd rather: most of the killing/stealing would be against evil pirates/slavers anyway.
Whatever your choice, good luck - hope you have fun. :-)
Dead easy. You run smuggelers Shiv up to the cannibal camp and have them recused by a ship...the Wormwood...part 1 of skull and shackels then starts with no problems. It means chopping certain parts out of the shiv adventure though
Or you could just carry on with the island and then have them rescued as above but chance the sub plot of the temple. Of course if you did this the players would be 3 levels higher than they should be when they start wormwood.
The entire point of swapping Wormwood Mutiny out for Smugger's Shiv is to avoid the Wormwood; starting with Smuggler's Shiv only to have them picked up by Harrigan places the PCs in exactly the position you were running Smuggler's Shiv to avoid in the first place.
I really like Lord Fyre's suggestions; an important addendum to them is
** spoiler omitted **
Also, once the heroes start digging into what he has been doing, which Captain Fairwind sets them to doing in Tempest Rising "Part Two : At a Lady’s Request", Harrigan has LOTs of reason to put a stop the the heroes.
Its a good idea but the only probelm I see (its a small one though) is that in not including Wormwood you have to somehow try and incorporate Harrigan in to the plot as the players nemesis. In wormwood having him as the captain gave a glimpse of how this guy operates and the need to bring him down later, its not big an deal though and is easily done.
The other small issue I see are the NPC cew members introduced in wormwood (Sandara, Conch, Owlbear and Rosie) again not a big problem as you could always either use the castaway NPC (Aerys was a good one if I remember) or the Wormwood NPC's on Shiv with the players as they are washed up on the beach, simple solution.
Personally Lord Fyre I really wish I had used you're Idea as the start but as my group had played through book 1-2 and part of 3 of Seperpents Skull before it folded I couldn't use it.
To Anyone just starting or wanting to start using shiv instead of Wormwood is such a good idea as that book is just so damn good. I also like the idea of using the temple as a Ghol Gan ruin which you could tie in to Emptty Eyes too.
Oh well if I ever get to run it again....
Its a good idea but the only probelm I see (its a small one though) is that in not including Wormwood you have to somehow try and incorporate Harrigan in to the plot as the players nemesis. In wormwood having him as the captain gave a glimpse of how this guy operates and the need to bring him down later, its not big an deal though and is easily done.
Actually, what you lose is not that so much as any connection to the officers, such as "Cut-Throat Grok" or "“Caulky” Tarroon".
What would be needed is the heroes to capture "The Eel" to implicate Harrigan. That should give plenty of reason to go after him.
The other small issue I see are the NPC cew members introduced in wormwood (Sandara, Conch, Owlbear and Rosie) again not a big problem as you could always either use the castaway NPC (Aerys was a good one if I remember) or the Wormwood NPC's on Shiv with the players as they are washed up on the beach, simple solution.
Of the other NPCS, the only one you need is "Ambrose “Fishguts” Kroop," which you can have recruited at Rickety's.
Personally Lord Fyre I really wish I had used you're Idea as the start but as my group had played through book 1-2 and part of 3 of Seperpents Skull before it folded I couldn't use it.
To Anyone just starting or wanting to start using shiv instead of Wormwood is such a good idea as that book is just so damn good. I also like the idea of using the temple as a Ghol Gan ruin which you could tie in to Emptty Eyes too.
I also like the idea of Chelish soldiers moving into the "mostly above ground" Ghol Gan ruin as they would want nothing to do with the Truefang cannibals.
Serpent Skull book 1 is great, book 3 is good if ther GM alters the hell out of it, as written it's not so hot. Book 5 was voted by my playing group as the worst adventure they have ever been through in 30 years of role playing. They hated it so much that they avoid other adventures written by said author of this book. The insanity metric must be changed for book 5 to work so there is a way to get around it, if your part goes insane time after time after time after time the players will hate it. IN book 6 we got tired of fight after fight against the same creatures and stopped the AP due to boredom.
Skulls and Shackles- we have had a good time, my group thinks it the 2nd best AP they have played after Kingmaker. Book 1 is unique the DM has to spend a lot of time developing the NPC's to work and allowing the players the feeling that they control their destinay through NPC interaction. People complain it railroady but my group didn't feel railroaded at all in fact they enjoyed the uniqueness of the AP. Book 2 is very sandboxy which makes it a great Op for a GM to add stuff into the story. Book 3 was OK, book 4 is a meat grinder but fun. We haven't reached book 5 yet.
