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Are you running it in PFS mode or home game mode?
In PFS mode, there may be an issue with the Druid in the final part, since the PCs won't know his background.
Make sure you know what deities the party members worship, and if they have a visible holy symbol for said deity on them.
There may be other story knowledge issues, like knowing to look for the BBEG's real name and using it.
In PFS mode, the party would be missing one of the allies that they have a chance of having in home game mode.
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I have a question about the treasure received from the crypt.
I'm running just the PFS sanctioned sections (the first two have been completed, which took about 9 hours with breaks for those who want to know) and am preparing to the run the 3rd and final section. When my players come to start the adventure, do they have free access to the treasure from the crypt?
Not in PFS mode, since they are different Chronicles.
On a related note, for PFS mode, for the auction:
1) Do the PFS PCs get the 7,500 gold matching fund?
2) Are items bought in the auction, since they are potentially at discounted prices, actually going to be available for the PCs to keep after the game?
This won't affect me personally, I am running it in story mode, and going to be playing it in story mode, so this is not anything to worry about, but if the auction section is done in PFS PC play mode, it might be important.
Since it is an auction, they could potentially buy an item for less than book, and then get a 50% discount off that price, to boot.
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I'm considering running this in campaign mode online.
I guess if the party is combat heavy it will go quicker than an RP heavy group, unless many of the encounters can be overcome with diplomacy
gonna make the thread now.
We'll be offering the module as PFS mode at Dreamation 2014 on Feb 20-23, 2014 at Morristown, NJ
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I'm currently running this is in story mode. I'm having serious trouble making the townspeople seem alive and relevant.
Anyone have any tips for turning the townsfolk from a table of names and starting dispositions into something the party would actually care about?
It doesn't help that I have 5 out of 5 characters who are all semihostile antisocial loners to one degree or another. During the first session, they all realized they needed a party face and the highest charisma character was asked to retrain a skill to diplomacy. The character has a 10 charisma.
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I'm currently running this is in story mode. I'm having serious trouble making the townspeople seem alive and relevant.
Anyone have any tips for turning the townsfolk from a table of names and starting dispositions into something the party would actually care about?
It doesn't help that I have 5 out of 5 characters who are all semihostile antisocial loners to one degree or another. During the first session, they all realized they needed a party face and the highest charisma character was asked to retrain a skill to diplomacy. The character has a 10 charisma.
I can't help with the second problem.
For the first one, I basically came up with a personality for the basic NPCs that the party interacts with most regularly. The Baroness, her child, the inkeeper. For the rest of the town, I let the players know some of the mechanical facts of quests. They know there is a quest to befriend a family, a faction, etc... They know there are three factions in town. I basically use the table in the gazetteer section to keep track, and one of the players is basically building the table from scratch by himself for the player's point of view.
From there, the party naturally gravitated towards certain NPCs over another. One of them is a half-orc, so when they were looking for a smithy (to get some MWK weapons and armor) they went for the half orc guy instead of the human. I make up some minor personality quirks on the fly for those npcs. The table in the Gazetteer also has suggestions for that.
Whenever they go into a store, I try to put in one other townsfolk they haven't met in there as a customer, so that he can introduce themselves and let them know where he is. Help them "fill in that table". Also makes the town feel more alive.
That said, I doubt that they will ever meet everyone. We are getting ready to go into the auction, and they have met maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the total population of the town.
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I am currently running this in Campaign Mode, and I, too, was worried about getting the party to interact with the townsfolk, so I integrated the 'business building' rules from Ultimate Campaign for the month of down-time before the auction, resulting in the party building a brewery (and interacting with most of the townsfolk, as they collected goods, building materials, manpower, and the appropriate legal paperwork) :-)
I also recommend trying to find 'stories' for some of the NPC groups...
For example, I had the smith be a big ox of a half-orc, mistreated in his youth because his features were a throw-back to a half-orc grandfather, who had decided to take in all of the half-orc bastards in town; the tailor's place was a sweat-shop were the town's half-elves were worked to the bone; and I had a Hatfields Vs. McCoys rivalry going between the two grain farms, to list a few examples...
Just get creative :-) They don't have to be five-page essays; just a short line that you can run with to hook the party's interest, and give them the impression that the townsfolk actually *do* exist 'off camera'.
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+1 the deck.
The group I ran wasn't that interested in RPing with folks (except to find the Kells. The party of 5 walked through the first 2/3rds, but got beat up heavily in the last third. So much, in fact, after a TPK, they just decided to fail the module and call it a day.
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I was concerned my group might have issue not getting to know anyone in town but last session I tried a different tactic. They had delved into the kobold caves at the end of the previous session so we began with the rescue of the hostages. When they got back to town I slapped down that beautiful map of the town and said, 'you are here' before saying the different buildings they had passed between the tower and the inn. They spent the rest of the session walking along the streets to see what was around. They poked their head in the tinker shop and stopped for apples by the orchard. That one action of setting down the map drew them in and made the town come alive like noting else.
I am so glad I got a hard copy instead of going digital.
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I'm thinking about doing a marathon over the New Year Eve and New Years Day. I can't tell if the other marathon took 14 hours or 38 though, which has me a bit concerned. Doing campaign mode, without a lot of extra fluff, any idea how long this will take?
Took us easily 8+ hours per act. So plan on 24-36 hours for sure.
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I'm thinking about doing a marathon over the New Year Eve and New Years Day. I can't tell if the other marathon took 14 hours or 38 though, which has me a bit concerned. Doing campaign mode, without a lot of extra fluff, any idea how long this will take?
Focused, and in campaign mode, it should take a whole weekend, or through both holidays in your case. 14 hours would be unlikely, 38 would be casual play, and much more likely.
Full speed, low RPing, maybe 2-3 hours/session.(But that's faster than most GMs/groups can go, or even want to.)
One could finish each section in about 4 hours if sharp. There's not much RPing, so think of them as average-to-easy-difficulty (with a few exceptions), combat-only PFS scenarios to give yourself an idea on how long each will take you.
For most groups the monastery will take longer because there are so many rooms, an NPC to engage with, and the combats can be more complex.
With map preparation & monster/rules knowledge, you can still get it to 4.