|
Assuming that my player's characters can be any level required (because we're using different rules) would it be a viable option to chain together multiple APs?
For example, maybe...
Rise of the Runelords > Curse of the Crimson Throne > Second Darkness > Shattered Star
Maybe mix Jade Regent in there somewhere?
Is it doable? Worthwhile?
Are you talking about mixing and matching adventures from different adventure paths? i dont see why not, some might require some tinkering. i don't know anything about second darkness or curse of the crimson throne, but the other three you could with some thought and ingenuity, both of which shouldn't be a problem:)
Jade Regent would be the most difficult as only one adventure (The Brinewall Legacy) is set in varisia, the rest is in Viking lands and beyond. all of them are great adventure paths with awesome adventures so if its fun then its always worthwhile
Shattered Star is the Sequel to ROTRL, SD and CotCT so it might be easier to fold elements or places from any of them together then any other APs :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Getting your players invested in Varisia by playing all these APs is of course a good idea. Sending the PCs to find a small-time criminal after they have faced and defeated one of the most powerful wizards the world has ever seen seems... like a stretch, at best.
My advice would be to play through the Varisian APs in the order they were published but roll up new PCs for each. Your players will still love it and you get an satisfying character development arch each time.
The alternative is to dust off the "dual class" rules from 1e, tweaked for PF. I would start with CotCT, then 2D, RotRL, finishing with Shattered Star.
Keep in mind too that most groups, depending on how often you play and for how long each session is, will take upward of 2 - 3 years to finish just one AP. That makes for a really long time playing just one character anyway.
So yeah, I'm all in favor of getting the players invested in Varisia, but the better way (imho) is to play them in order but with new PCs. Keep in mind though, that the events of the previous AP(s) should affect the subsequent one(s). For instance, if the PCs decide to spare a goblin tribe and work with them in RotRL, make that tribe a notable figure in the next AP, at least in the background if nothing else. Maybe the goblins have come to be valuable allies to the humans of Varisia and act as a first line of defense, etc.
Even better, the PCs should come across statues of the heroes from previous APs. It would be totally cool for a PC to be inspecting a statue only for the player to suddenly realize the statue is of his previous character. In other words, leave evidence of the adventures of the previous PCs.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Since we have to much players/Gm (10), the way we chained AP is unique.
Our campaign setting isn't Golarion.
We started with ''Kingmaker'', on a new world, without magic, in the Stone/Bronze Age. We created two groups and rather to go ''one king and his councillors'', we gone with every player get a baronny and created a kingdom.
At the end of this campaing, magic appeared (only with the Word of Power). And started ''Second Darkness'' 2 century after ''Kingmaker'' in the bronze age. We played heir of our baronny/house.
Then, we did a modified ''Rise of the Runelord'' where one of the player's Baronny became the enemies, 2 century after the preceding campaign. The campaign began the Bronze/Iron Age and spell of level 1-2 could be chosen without the need of Words of Power.
And now we are playing ''Legacy of Fire''. After the rebellion of the Treasurer Baronny, an invading army attacked the kingdom. We're a playing 1 century after the rebellion, in the age of iron, spell form level 4-5 are available.
I think the next campaign will ''Curse of the Crimson Throne'' followed by an inverted ''Jade Regent''... to begin the Age of Darkness.
The link between campaign is that we play heir or member of the first house. Each house has a speciality and power. Every action of the past affect the futur campaign.
We play ''2 groups, 1 campaign'' since we are now 9 players. The whole groups meet once each month to discuss politic and development of the kingdom. But, for the other session, the two groups play the ''same campaign'' but in different way.
Exemple 1:
Group 1: The usual ''Rise of the Runelord''.
Group 2: A modified military ''Rise of the Runelord'' where they defend the kingdom against army of giant
Exemple 2:
Group 1: A modified military ''Legacy of Fire'' where they defend the kingdom against invader.
Group 2: The usual ''Legacy of Fire''
|
|
Getting your players invested in Varisia by playing all these APs is of course a good idea. Sending the PCs to find a small-time criminal after they have faced and defeated one of the most powerful wizards the world has ever seen seems... like a stretch, at best.
My advice would be to play through the Varisian APs in the order they were published but roll up new PCs for each. Your players will still love it and you get an satisfying character development arch each time.
One of the things that may make it work, though is the lack of levels in my chosen game system. The power levels aren't going to be as disparate and that small criminal is still very deadly in combat.
To put it in a d20 context: What if we were playing E6? Do you think it would work then?
|
|
Keep in mind too that most groups, depending on how often you play and for how long each session is, will take upward of 2 - 3 years to finish just one AP. That makes for a really long time playing just one character anyway.
We'll see, for sure. But one thing I have that most groups may not is a very rapid system for handling combat. Particularly against minor foes. So Thistletop, for example, will take about half a session - I'm guessing.
You know how in Final Fantasy (or similar) how you're wandering around the world, touch a mob, the screen spins and you switch to a combat view? D&D is like that in comparison, while what we're doing is more like Diablo.
If that makes sense...
If you're going to chain AP's and respective levels aren't an issue, it seems like the ones that would work best would be Rise of the Runelords and then Shattered Star or Rise of the Runelords, then Jade Regent, then Shattered Star. Those three AP's involve many of the same NPC's and reference many of the same situations, sometimes even referencing each other. Going more than three would be too great of an undertaking to be practical in my opinion.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you wanted to get really gonzo...
Start with Curse of the Crimson Throne. In the Sunken Queen, they discover the first of the sihedron shards which lead them to Shattered Star. After these two, your players will have experienced Korvosa, Magnimar, Kaer Maga, the Cinderlands, and heaps of Thassilonian ruins.
If you want to spread out from there...
After dealing with Xin, the PCs are motivated (somehow) to hop a ship to the former Chelaxian colony of Sargava where they participate in Serpent's Skull. From there, their alliance/conflict with the Shackles Pirate faction leads them to take to the seas again and claim their own fleet in Skull & Shackles. As they settle into their new domain, they receive word that their old friend Amiko is looking for companions to travel to Minkai in Jade Regent.
I'm not too familiar with Jade Regent, but I've heard there's a possible outcome of one of the PCs becoming emperor there(?), so you could conceivably end up with PCs acting as king of Korvosa, Hurricane King of the Shackles, and Emperor of Tian Xia. Assuming a standard party of four, your one remaining non-ruler PC could set out to find his own kingdom and decide to claim some land in the Stolen Lands for Kingmaker.
|
If you wanted to get really gonzo...
Start with Curse of the Crimson Throne. In the Sunken Queen, they discover the first of the sihedron shards which lead them to Shattered Star. After these two, your players will have experienced Korvosa, Magnimar, Kaer Maga, the Cinderlands, and heaps of Thassilonian ruins.
If you want to spread out from there...
After dealing with Xin, the PCs are motivated (somehow) to hop a ship to the former Chelaxian colony of Sargava where they participate in Serpent's Skull. From there, their alliance/conflict with the Shackles Pirate faction leads them to take to the seas again and claim their own fleet in Skull & Shackles. As they settle into their new domain, they receive word that their old friend Amiko is looking for companions to travel to Minkai in Jade Regent.
I'm not too familiar with Jade Regent, but I've heard there's a possible outcome of one of the PCs becoming emperor there(?), so you could conceivably end up with PCs acting as king of Korvosa, Hurricane King of the Shackles, and Emperor of Tian Xia. Assuming a standard party of four, your one remaining non-ruler PC could set out to find his own kingdom and decide to claim some land in the Stolen Lands for Kingmaker.
This sounds like a hell of a campaign. I wonder if it could be condensed down to something more manageable for the average group. Perhaps each AP distilled to a single adventure spanning a handful of levels creating a campaign dealing with levels 1-20, or even 1-20 plus 1-10 mythic for essentially 30 levels of play.
...they receive word that their old friend Amiko...
Oops, I just realized that, by choosing Crimson Throne over Runelords, the PCs don't have an old friend Amiko. Oh well.
|
|
There's no reason you couldn't do Rise of the Runelords then Curse of the Crimson Throne. Perhaps they visit the city following their expedition to Xin Shalast for some rest and recuperation.
To continue the ides, perhaps they are settling into their roles as world leaders when strange portals open around the world and begin spilling forth an icy cold. As heroes they delve into the mystery and must save the world itself in Reign of Winter.
The reason I only picked one was mostly to avoid the vaguely duplicating plot of searching for the lost city of Xin-Shalast followed by searching for the lost city of Saventh-Yhi. Since Crimson Throne also touches on Runelord history/ruins, I figured it was safe to exclude RotRL.
mcbobbo *does* inspire an interesting side-quest idea I'd never considered. Heroes of Korvoso could be directed to travel west and explore Vorel's mansion to find the origin (and a cure?) for the plague striking the city.
I also love Joshua's continuation in to Reign of Winter, if nothing else to extend the globe-trotting MEGA-AP off-planet.
Getting your players invested in Varisia by playing all these APs is of course a good idea. Sending the PCs to find a small-time criminal after they have faced and defeated one of the most powerful wizards the world has ever seen seems... like a stretch, at best.
My advice would be to play through the Varisian APs in the order they were published but roll up new PCs for each. Your players will still love it and you get an satisfying character development arch each time.
One of the things that may make it work, though is the lack of levels in my chosen game system. The power levels aren't going to be as disparate and that small criminal is still very deadly in combat.
To put it in a d20 context: What if we were playing E6? Do you think it would work then?
I think it's a stretch in a narrative sense, not a mechanical one. Sure, you could level out the CRs but I really don't see the motivation for the characters.
Since we have to much players/Gm (10), the way we chained AP is unique.
Our campaign setting isn't Golarion.
This is what my group is doing as well. We're running Kingmaker right now, then later we'll be coming back to their established kingdom after some time has passed and running Crimson Throne there.
I'm GMing RotR really soon, and my bf has read CotCT (then his players kind of abandon him, so he couldn't finish even the 1st book), and I would like to play eventually Shattered stars.
It's logical to run Rise --> Crimson Throne --> Shattered stars? I don't know the details of the plot of the latest two, and really don't want to spoil myself, so have you any of you guys run these APs? Also, do you need to put Jade Regent somewhere in there? (Maybe to develop the relationship with Amiko or something).
Edit: also, where would Second darkness fit?
I just read over the plot of Jade Regent: The Hungry Storm for the first time last night (just hadn't gotten around to it), and I got to wondering if it might be a good tie-in or something to Reign of Winter. Given the similarities between the plots of the BBEG in RoW and the BBEG in Hungry Storm, I'd think they might at least come into conflict. These two might be good prospects for chaining together somehow.
I'm GMing RotR really soon, and my bf has read CotCT (then his players kind of abandon him, so he couldn't finish even the 1st book), and I would like to play eventually Shattered stars.
It's logical to run Rise --> Crimson Throne --> Shattered stars? I don't know the details of the plot of the latest two, and really don't want to spoil myself, so have you any of you guys run these APs? Also, do you need to put Jade Regent somewhere in there? (Maybe to develop the relationship with Amiko or something).
Edit: also, where would Second darkness fit?
Shattered Star assumes Rise, CT, and SD have occurred, so yes, that chain works. SD would occur sometime between CT and SS.
Ameiko is really not all that important to SD or SS, and JR wraps up her story (as far as we're currently aware anyway). I'd base it on how your players take to her in Rise - if they want more out of her, JR would be a good way to give them that. If they don't much care, you can run SS without having JR as a prequel without any problems.
Great, thanks! Well, it seems I've got myself a plan for the next ten years >.<