Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)
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I haven't seen either yet, but I'm betting Valais will show up in the season 6 plot. It mentions in her backstory that her team was reassigned from Numeria.
This (the Numeria expedition) was actually brought up from Seeker of Secrets in the background on Thurl. I worked with John to use this nugget so Valais had an existing background. Odd that it does work into the upcoming Numeria theme... like it was planned. :)
I've run this four times, and each time they've talked her into returning to the Spire.I've run it three, and ditto.
I would like to reiterate here that I love this scenario.
Bless all of you! I'm glad you enjoyed the scenario.
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I played this last week. We had a blast! Man, this dungeon was creepy (kudos to our GM for RP-ing Valais as well). We managed to get out with 7 evidence points, running for our lives after the 39hp paladin was hit with one 52 dmg attack from the BBEG. (she survived)
Points worth noting:
-We never encountered Aislinn
-The Bull left us alone because we took importance evidence with us without reading it after sifting through the library for an hour+
-BBEG was depicted as a little girl crying blood while speaking in a low voice
-I fell into the cauldron and barely survived
-because of our caution and thirst for lore, combined with lenghty roleplay, the session took nearly 9 hours (!)
All in all, would play again.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Amusing note about the cauldron.
Our group (playing up) spotted the demonic snouts sticking up out of the cauldron. They had also found the Wand of Ice Storm...
Their immediate reaction was to sneak into wand range, and barrage the cauldron with ice storms. The surprise round and a good initiative roll later and the Imps were down to a quarter of their hit points, and the cauldron was rapidly cooling. (I ruled that since the spilled cauldron seemed to be roughly equivalent to a level 4 spell, and Ice Storm was a level 4 spell, the cauldron prevented the ongoing effects of Ice Storm within it, and after 3 hits from Ice Storm, the cauldron stopped providing them with hot lava to throw.)
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I played this last week. We had a blast! Man, this dungeon was creepy (kudos to our GM for RP-ing Valais as well). We managed to get out with 7 evidence points, running for our lives after the 39hp paladin was hit with one 52 dmg attack from the BBEG. (she survived)
Points worth noting:
-We never encountered Aislinn
-The Bull left us alone because we took importance evidence with us without reading it after sifting through the library for an hour+
-BBEG was depicted as a little girl crying blood while speaking in a low voice
-I fell into the cauldron and barely survived
-because of our caution and thirst for lore, combined with lenghty roleplay, the session took nearly 9 hours (!)All in all, would play again.
This seems familiar, Sup Vincent. :) Don't forget that dwarf that stuck his head pretty much in the ooze-like thing. :)
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*Was that hunter* :P My character is a bit of a spontaneous dude.
My hunter determined it wasn't poisoned or diseased, and since he is always dirty and used to bad smells he was like 'better take a look'. *plop* "Waahhh not the beard!"
It was classic. :)
I think my character has learned not to stick his head in unknown waters. As a player, duh, but my character isn't the smartest of the bunch.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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So I played this last night with Carla as GM. Great game, good matchup with the GM. Carla can be a bit of a bloodthirsty GM, and he definitely got his jollies with the minotaur chasing us around the maze. He also hammed up an absolutely awesome Valais.
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KLAATU BARATA NIKTO, RRRRISE
Yeah, raising this one ssso fffine.
I'm prepping this for next week in the hopes of introducing Aslynn before running the Blakros Connection in TraCon Hitpoint.
Sev'ral thingz:
1. In The Maze Restored section, the scenario goes "The PCs emerge in the 20-foot-square area from a spiral staircase that occupies the centermost 5-foot area." but I can't find the anaphora for this section. What area?
2. Running the maze will see my brain slouch off in rage and hunt the night for virgin flesh. Any pointers to make it run smooth? Particularly the interaction with illusions. There's a lot of effects in play and I usually preroll saves when I run illusions, but this is just way too many to do thst. I'm running tabletop and offline so no electric doohickeys.
3. The water area seems like a missed opportunity. Globsters with their interesting immunities might be the only challenging combat in store for my party so is there a way to point them to that direction?
I absolutely adore Valais. I hope my players don't murderize her on sight. Especially since I hate wasting prep time and I'm SO prepping that voice.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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1. In The Maze Restored section, the scenario goes "The PCs emerge in the 20-foot-square area from a spiral staircase that occupies the centermost 5-foot area." but I can't find the anaphora for this section. What area?
Just plop down a maze tile and sketch the staircase in the middle.
2. Running the maze will see my brain slouch off in rage and hunt the night for virgin flesh. Any pointers to make it run smooth? Particularly the interaction with illusions. There's a lot of effects in play and I usually preroll saves when I run illusions, but this is just way too many to do thst. I'm running tabletop and offline so no electric doohickeys.
When Carla ran it he drew sections of the maze onto a flipmat as we explored/fought our way through. If we disbelieved a section of wall, it was crossed out again.
Alternatively, print a big stack of maze tiles. As soon as PCs wander close enough, plop down another one in such a way that it helps the minotaur's tactics. When they disbelieve a section of wall, use a marker to indicate it's now open for travel.
3. The water area seems like a missed opportunity. Globsters with their interesting immunities might be the only challenging combat in store for my party so is there a way to point them to that direction?
I dunno. When we played this we decided that after encountering one globster, it made more sense to continue the "dry" exploration first and save the difficult bits for later.
I absolutely adore Valais. I hope my players don't murderize her on sight. Especially since I hate wasting prep time and I'm SO prepping that voice.
In our scene we don't normally murderize people who are clearly victims or obviously sufficiently characterized to be fit for redemption.
Maybe it's a good idea to open up with her calling out for help, saying something creepy, then asking for help again? And quickly make it clear that at least in the opening encounter, she's not about to attack the PCs or block their passage?
If you have for example hothead paladin players, you want to shift their perception from "look, a demon, we must kill it!" to "are we really going to unprovokedly murder someone we've been talking to for ten minutes?!".
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I play her as very pitiful. She speaks with a childlike voice, and is super sweet to everyone. She knows she's not as "clever" as she used to be. She sometimes cradles herself and repeats rhymes to herself when she's upset ("Don't want to know. Time to go. Don't want to know. Time to go" etc...).
I took a lot of inspiration for her from Salad Fingers, a creepy video series on the internet. It hits that right balance between creepy and pitiful.
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I have ran this with two different times with paladins. Both blasting detect evil before they get in and I say they detect two evil auras in the square she is in. The first paladin opened the door found her. Told me he wanted to charge her. I told him he hears a warning from his god telling him not to. He tells me it is evil he must destroy it. I ask him if he wanted to directly disobey his god a second time. Confirms he is charging. Crits her and outright kills her bam off the bat. I told him he lost his paladin powers the rest of the game and he would need to atone.
The second time I ran with a paladin same thing except I warn him from his god. Listens. Makes friends.
Every party i ran this for had losses at the globsters. Constrict is pretty dangerous to quickly drop and kill someone. With the narrow approach this makes it very dangerous to the PCs.
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Deshi deshi basara basara
Finally ran this on the second try just now. Woah, long time coming. First try saw us at the Torag statue when one player realised they had already played the damn thing earlier and just couldn't recall at first.
So I ran the Diamond Gate cold. Yeahh.
Anywaheys, a few points of interest:
* Once the statue spoke my best Tim Curry imitation, the characters hastily bagged everything that they could but didn't read a thing. Cue exactly 4 points and no boss.
* The flying eidola were so uninteresting a fight that I'm going to be less than subtle about the sneaking option next time.
* Crowe is a titan of the meat industry.
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I finally had a chance to play this a few weeks ago. After bemoaning that all the characters I wanted to play it with leveled out, I ended up playing it with my Magus. This turned out to be the exact right choice, as she had been part of a party that released Koth'Vaul. In fact, we were discussing that before the scenario, with no knowledge of what was to come. The GM picked up on that and played it up during the scenario. It made the 2 year wait to get a chance to play it worth it, as the chance for an in character reaction to his return was fun. Even if it's not explicitly him in the scenario, it just worked so well.
That end boss and that maze, though... brutal. After my magus (CN former Sczarni) spent most of the scenario insulting Valais, Valais had to step up and protect her when she dropped. So she's got a new respect for the "Venture Captain." And, she soon got to show it by playing the follow-up scenario a couple of weeks later.
EDIT: I really hope that by the time she's in the 10-11 tier, there's a scenario with a chance to actually fight the Glabreezu.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I made art of Valais. Since GM's interpret her mix in different ways, I made a few different versions:
Babau leg
Human leg
Mixed leg <- probably best
Close-up 1
Close-up 2
Feel free to print and use them in your games.
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Ok, I'm prepping this for a Con, and I'm a little confused as to...
and...
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Ok, I'm prepping this for a Con, and I'm a little confused as to...
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
For A3, note in Part 2 that 25% of the maze walls are real. Just determine which 10' north-south and east-west sections and 15' diagonals in the first, third or fourth map tile are actually there, then draw the altar in the central 10' x 10' square.
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Ok, I'm prepping this for a Con, and I'm a little confused as to...
** spoiler omitted **
and...
** spoiler omitted **
Yes, they go to/from the lodge above and to/from the labyrinth.
As for that last part, yea, it's a little rough. One of my local GMs was a life saver on this one because he owns THESE which happen to be the perfect size for the maze segments.
Hope that helps.
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But y'know, there is always one.
"The voice wants Thurl. We should explain we aren't him, and negotiate."
The party was not convinced. Especially since I had the mini out as a prop for the statue.
I did that as well, plus used my new voice-changer on my phone to pre-record the "ah, you're back" bit in a rough and deep(er) voice (for those who have met me - even deeper than normal for me heh) - I had them clamoring over themselves to run away as fast as possible!
Edit: Just added my voice files to the GM Prep Site just in case anyone wants to use them.
(made even better by the fact that half of the table I ran this for had played a certain Season 4 scenario and I hinted that they may or may not have heard that specific voice before...)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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Hello, all. I’m getting ready to run this for the first time. After reading this thread I’m still going to need some help here. I’m somewhat of a visual learner, so as much as I love this scenario the long blocks of text to explain how the maze works are killing me. Please forgive some of my more detail-oriented tendencies.
The description of A2 works for me. I assumed a random location in the west wall for the door from A1, placing it so the statue is center-ish as described. I’m also assuming the statue and altar are 15’ x 15’, which allows for a central point of rotation that sufficiently reveals a 5x5 spiral staircase as shown in the lab. I ignored the eventual position of the reconstructed maze in positioning the statue, as the statue was built after the maze was destroyed.
Q1. I’m assuming the statue does not attempt to rotate closed after each PC enters the lab, so only one PC will have to give up their name to Karsos, correct? And then they all pass through?
Then when they exit, assuming they have enough evidence points, the maze is recreated. I’ve tried to lay out my understanding of where things are located with my own picture of A2. This depicts the statue after it has rotated and revealed the staircase.
I assumed the exit point used the upper right maze tile, as that’s the only one with a 20’ x 20’ area as described in the text.
Q2. It says in lower tier Karsos can recreate 3 full tiles, but under upper tier is says “maintain” up to 12 tiles. Which is he actually doing? Does he create 3 tiles as the PCs try to cross the maze, and once he’s created 3 he can no longer generate tiles? (This seems more likely, as otherwise it seems most parties would encounter tiles all the way to the door at either tier.) Or is he “maintaining” them, such that only three tiles can exist at a time? So if the PCs all stayed together, he’d create new tiles as they go, allowing a previous tile to vanish?
Q3. Do those numbers include the tile he’s created around the statue? So he could basically only create two more tiles (low tier) beyond the tile they exit the lab in?
Q4. He populates the maze with an image of himself and some crusaders. This is separate from his incorporeal self. So is this happening where the PCs have a clear view, like just down the hall? Or is this off in the maze, where the PCs can see his head above the walls and hear screams and whatnot? In other words, is this something that is just lending atmosphere, or is it happening just in front of the PCs and is expected to possibly delay them as they try and help—at least until they figure out it’s not real.
Q5. As they flee through the maze, they can disbelieve the walls. If they make an intelligence check, they can get a bonus on “the first saving throw to disbelieve…that round.” That implies they can make multiple checks. Is the mechanic that they make a check, can move 15’ and try again, up to their movement?
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What are the maze walls made of? I can see some players with adamantine weapons just plowing in a straight line, whether the wall there is real or not.
