By my estimates, my group is going to finally finish crossing the Crown of the World in the next 2 or 3 sessions, so it's time I kicked my planning into high gear for Forest of Spirits. One thing I know for sure is that I want to run the Ruby Phoenix Tournament. Nothing says 'Welcome to the Orient' like a martial arts tournament, plus, I've statted up some Avatar-inspired teams to it them against, and running the tournament will allow me to abbreviate the long slog of the Pagoda of Withered Blossoms/Munuskaru's Penance. But I'm definitely going to have to do some integration work.
Currently, my idea is to have the tournament occur during their stay in Hongal, with Prince Batashaikar recruiting them to replace a team he had sponsored--whether on an idle whim after the outlanders impress him when he requests their entertainment, or because some 'accident' has befallen them--most likely, there's a prize in the Ruby Phoenix's horde that the Five Storms want, and their agents are working to rig the tournament. Perhaps the item in question can be tied to the Pagoda and Munuskaru in some way, to tie the adventure together. That way, I can still play up Batashaikar's caprice, and even if the PCs feel uncomfortable, Miyaro can show up to give them an idea of what's going on, and explain why they need to win the tournament. But what item would that be, precisely? Maybe something which would allow entrance to the Pagoda of Withered Blossoms? Perhaps Munuskaru was not simply abandoned, but left with the instructions to breed an army to rise up and support the Five Storms once their plan comes to fruition? I suppose the prize I point the PCs too, and the one the Five Storms are trying to acquire need not necessarily be the same.
As to the setting of the tournament itself, it could be analogous to the Olympics, with different nations of Tien Xia hosting every year. But one idea I've been playing with is the concept that it's actually held on a demiplane created for the purposes of testing would-be champions.
Thoughts, anyone? Any suggestions for the tournament, or for how best to abbreviate Munuskaru's Penance?
I just ended the Ruby Phoenix Tournament last weekend with my players!
The events at Ordu-Aganhei were left as is (a blast!), and I had the Prince secretly enroll them in the tournament. After all the encounters at the Crown of the World, I had *no* encounters on the road through Hongal.
The tournament took place in a small fishing village near the Spirit Road at the border between Hongal and the Forest of Spirits.
The Tournament held a several functions for Jade Regent. First, by this time the Five Storms know of the heroes existence and want to observe them, and with the Golden League ans Aspis Consortium in the way, it's easy to add some additional oni interference.
Secondly, the heroes need some cred (Miyaro's idea). Book 5 has them gathering allies left and right, so having a reputation of legendary champions doesn't hurt. And there are several NPCs in the tournament who are from Minkai who could be recurrent characters.
Finally, the victory loot. Though I have each character a prize of their choice, I also gave a special item I created: one of the missing imperial family's ancestral weapon. A yari long spear I named "Dawning Harmony", which has powers of Calm Emotions and Zone of Truth. Suishen recognized the weapon immediately, even though the weapon is "dormant" as no scion of the original family is around to awaken its full potential.
The original family gave it away as a token of peace, and years of war gave way to a century of prosperity. The weapon eventually got stolen, and centuries later found its way in the Ruby Phoenix vault. Though "Harmony" has disappeared centuries ago, its reputation as a symbol and omen of peace and prosperity lives on.
I also kept Ordu-Aganhei (comedy gold, with The Golden One being alternatingly hilarious and scary crazy) and integrated the Ruby Phoenix Tournament by having the local qualifier going on during the parties stay in the city. The home team lost to some adventuring mercenaries so when the group heard of that, they suggested to The Golden One that they might bring in the win for him. The Prince, being The Light Of Heaven And All Below was of course excited by the brilliant idea he just had of using these curious foreigners to bring glory to Hongal (and of course having some good deniability if things went wrong), so he graciously suggested this course of action to them.
The party of course won and much later, when they had just arrived at the glen where they were supposed to meet the kami, a representative of the tournament teleported in and had to take them urgently to the opening celebrations via Greater Teleport. So, while the party was away, the NPC's stepped up to the plate and cleared the Penance. ^^
Later when I get my second group to this point, where Koya is a player character, I'll rework Miyaro into an Oracle of Battle, so that she can accompany the remaining three NPC's into the Penance, while the player characters are doing the tournament. :p
My concern with using Teleport to get them there is that they can't bring the Seal with them, and they probably won't want to be that far separated from both the seal and the NPCs. I figured placing the festivities in Hongal or in a demiplane accessible from thence would let them take part without feeling like they abandoning anything in the process...
My concern with using Teleport to get them there is that they can't bring the Seal with them, and they probably won't want to be that far separated from both the seal and the NPCs. I figured placing the festivities in Hongal or in a demiplane accessible from thence would let them take part without feeling like they abandoning anything in the process...
Leaving the NPC's and the seal with the Kami is about the most secure location you could conceive of in the entire campaign. That the NPC's then agree to go and clear the Penance... well, what the PC's don't know doesn't concern them, eh? :)
no offense magnuskn but how you wrote out the house of withered blossoms is even more egregious then me turning the npcs into oversized luggage maybe you shouldnt be so high and mighty with how others change an AP when you yourself rid yourself of 2/3 a book.
I don't feel that Magnuskn was condescending to me, Captain, so I don't think calling him out is necessarily called for. That said, I don't intend to cut out the Penance entirely; I only want to abbreviate it and cut down on the slog. Still want to see them going up against a crazy oni at the end of the path, for one. I am trying to think of cool rebuilds for Munuskaru, though, to tune her up for my high-powered party. Certainly going to give her some allies. I'm toying with Summoner, since she's got a bit of a 'Mother of Monsters' vibe going on...
well he's jumped on me before for not including the npcs in things so it was just a bit of release for me:) i really don't have a problem with him:) he seems to take it a bit personally when it comes to Amieko is all (for the record i like the npcs enough, but i got enough going on in my game)
like i said just a bit of release not to offend or say anyone is doing anything wrong, when i get paid i'll most likely include the ruby tourney, but we are currently on hiatus while i battle a pest problem:)
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no offense magnuskn but how you wrote out the house of withered blossoms is even more egregious then me turning the npcs into oversized luggage maybe you shouldnt be so high and mighty with how others change an AP when you yourself rid yourself of 2/3 a book.
Yes, because changing out a dungeon for another fight-intensive scenario is the same as missing the entire point of the AP. But if you needed your "release", go ahead and shake your fist at me. :)
i get your point on swapping adventures i was taking my son downtown on a bus and bored so just thought id poke a lil fun shoulda used a few smiley faces or winky eyes in my first post but its a new phone so im still working on things. In counter to your argument tho the point of jade regent if you will is removing the jade regent and installing a rightful heir what does it matter if said rightful heir has others do the fighting for her. Thats all i got, its been fun
I'm sorry if it seems like im pestering you, i rather like the back half of jade regent and forest of spirits and tide of honor especially. as a kid i was a fan of dungeons and asian and russian mythology but i never got to run any published adventures as my older brothers had those and i was forced to get the PHB and unearthed arcana with whatever little money i got then saved (them being jerks never let us younger kids theirs) so now that i get to run both jade regent and reign of winter im quite happy:)
however i guess i come across as a tad of a forest of spirits homer, which might be because after being misunderstood and or picked on alot i tend to defend those i also consider misunderstood and picked on. nothing against you or anyone else personally just an inner mechanism that kicks in from time to time. and for the record the ruby pheonix tournament does sound awesome any extra Tian Xia in a campaign is a plus in my book:)
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i get your point on swapping adventures i was taking my son downtown on a bus and bored so just thought id poke a lil fun shoulda used a few smiley faces or winky eyes in my first post but its a new phone so im still working on things. In counter to your argument tho the point of jade regent if you will is removing the jade regent and installing a rightful heir what does it matter if said rightful heir has others do the fighting for her. Thats all i got, its been fun
The difference is between that heir being an annoying piece of luggage you need to protect or someone who actually seems worthy of assuming the throne. And the other NPC's also are a very important part of the AP (although I myself have been annoyed that we GM's only got the bare bones in the first adventure as to how to play them... I've been struggling a lot with Sandru and Koya, while Ameiko and Shalelu have been more easy to find good "voices" for. Thanks to "The Legend of Korra" for that!).
I'll freely admit that taking out the Penance may impact negatively on conveying that the Oni are bad, bad beings, given how much of their cruelty is on display in that dungeon. It may even have led to Oni being underrepresented as actual opponents until the final module.
On the other hand, "Oni are bad news" is conveyed powerfully due to the always present paranoia of being found because of the Seal and smushed like a bug by a strike force equal to the one which took out Brinewall and that feeling is present throughout most of the AP. And the cruelty of the Oni is presented well in the final module in Kasai and that Oni are only really present there also helps conveying that they are in a category which the player characters can only really deal with when they are also quite powerful themselves. So it works out well in that regard.
All in all, sidelining the four main NPC's is more of an issue than changing out that one single too long dungeon.
My main concern in adventure paths pretty much always is that the "combat to roleplaying" ratio is set way, way too high in favor of "combat". The Penance is exactly one of those dungeons where not much happens aside from seemingly endless waves of samey-samey opponents, which also mostly are too weak to effectively do much against a high-level party. The roleplaying elements in the Penance are really weak, with about one page of exposition about the Five Storms and Oni in general scattered throughout the dungeon.
The Aranea in the upper levels could potentially give some roleplaying opportunities, but to be honest, evil opium addicted spider-people are not really the kind of beings that most groups want to deal with, especially since they will inevitably betray you (which is one of the other pet peeves I got with evil NPC's in adventure paths. You can set your clock that you can curse their sudden, but inevitable betrayal).
There are some prisoners you can free, but aside from then providing some good feels about freeing long-term prisoners, they have zero personality to them.
The tournament has also a very high combat ratio, but it provides interesting NPC's to interact with, a conspicously placed Oni which you can plug in as an informant to the Jade Regent or even a source of information for the players. The other fighters in the tournament can be a nice source of roleplaying.
Hell, I even had the rulers of Tian Xia turn up, including The Golden One, Prince Batsaikhar and his grouchy older brother, the khan of Hongal. And the Jade Regent and his entourage, who at this moment still were ignorant of whom exactly the player characters were. Made for some funny and tense moments, although the first group pretty much only kept their heads down in regards to the Jade Regent. I'll be very interested what group two does in that regard. :p
Wow, seems like I'll have to say a lot for my final review about the AP in a few weeks.
Anyone else have suggestions for a prize for the Ruby Phoenix Tournament? Something the Five Storms are after by entering their agents/sabotaging other teams, thus making it the players goal to attain it for themselves and turn it against the oni. Something that could hep reinforce a claim to rulership, maybe?
Has anyone run an abbreviated version of the Penance? It's definitely far too much of a grind as it is, but some of the encounters, like the Swine Shogun, are somewhat cool, and I want to present the Penance to my players in some respect. Partially so the title of the module still makes sense, and so they can face an oni at the end, but also because I have been building up an image of Munuskaru and her 'kingdom'--a product of her wounded narcissism, as she breeds an army of monsters and turns them on each other, obsessed with weeding out the weak, scourging away any impurity, creating a perfect army in the delusion that this could prove her worth and free her. I suppose one possibility might be to significantly reduce the number of rank and file enemies in any given area, boost the levels of those who remain, and have many areas littered with the corpses of Munuskaru's brood, to evoke the brutal natural selection at play...
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I'm working on that problem right now, myself. The current plan is to make the aranea less of a threat (shift them from CE to CN if necessary), and have the NPCs push for the PCs to talk to them (possibly using Miyaro and the kami). A Restoration to cure Akinosa, and the PCs have an army that will sweep through the Penance, taking out the smaller foes and falling back when they hit something they can't handle, like the Swine Shogun. That way, I cut it down to about half a dozen actual encounters, pre-rolling and narrating the rest (probably passing out different write-ups to each player for them to narrate to the group). I can still play out the really fun stuff, and highlight the cruelty of the oni, but skip the grind.
You could say the destrachan invasion of oni/hobgoblin territory has killed off a bunch of the more repetitive encounters.
After cleaning up the events of the tournament, I introduced some new unexpected complications to the heroes.
They won the tournament, but they didn't just beat the champion enforcer of the Golden League, they killed him and decapitated him in front of the crowd and more specifically the representatives of the Golden League.
So basically, the PCs openly declared war on the most powerful underworld organization of Tian-Xia, if not the whole setting.
There will be "consequences" once they arrive in Minkai and there presence is known. The Five Storms won't be the PCs only concern. ;-)
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All right, here's the plan I've come up with: Prince Batsaikhar maneuvers them into taking a qualifying bout at one of the feasts. Upon heir victory, the Ruby Phoenix Acolyte judging he bout gives them magical tokens that will transport them to the tournament, and back at the end of it. Of course, that would require leaving the seal behind with the rest of the caravan. While they're debating the merits of that, a celebration of Ordu-Aganhei's honored guests and representatives in the Tournament is held--cue the ninja attack as written. Miyaro inervenes, leads the party into the Forest of Spirits, where the caravan can take refuge with the kami while the party goes to compete in the tournament. In exchange they are to investigate the House of Withered Blossoms when they return.
At the tournament, I'm slotting agents of the Five Storms in place of the Aspis Consortium--the Jade Regent is courting Golden League support for his regime, offering them a return to Minkai, and aiding the Wu sister's bid for vengeance as a show of good faith.
As for the House of Withered Blossoms, I think that by cutting out the aranea, and a few key encounters in the penance--notably the Destrachan and the Hobgoblin lepers (who my Munuskaru would view as weak and unworthy for their affliction, and destroy), I can abbreviate the slog to a fair degree. I've also placed an Ostiarius Kyton with monk levels in the Celebration of Chains acting as Munuskaru's advisor, the teacher of the Sisters of the Broken Path, and the leader of the kytons. Ochiyo the Messenger is moved to Munuskaru's side, perhaps commanding a force of Warriors or Sisters as Munuskaru's personal guard.
All I have left to decide is any special encouners to enhance the feel of the journey through the Forest of Spirits, and what prize to give the PCs for completing the Ruby Phoenix Tournament. As I've mentioned, one possibility would be an item which could open the House of Withered Blossoms to them, thus further tying in the Tournament to the AP. But I wonder if that isn't a bit of a cop-out. And if I kept the House of Withered Blossoms openly accessible, I could hand-wave the NPCs clearing out the aranea, and thus keep the element of Munuskaru having an enemy to occupy her time and fuel her obsessions...