I know this has been brought up previously on this board but I'm looking for something a bit more specific.
I need to run a campaign for a group of young(ish) kids. They don't need a totally tame or dumbed down version of an AP, but they can't deal with things like rape, incest, etc...
I am currently running them through Age of Worms, but that's drawing to an end and I need something new. I would normally just write my own campaign, but I am so short on time right now that I need something that's a little more "ready."
I got some REALLY great advice on how to turn Carrion Crown into a Harry Potteresque thriller, and while I LOVE the suggestions, I can't devote that much time to conversion.
I've read plenty of other posts on this message board (including threads that I've started) about making APs more kid friendly. But none of them really get into specifics about WHAT is "mature" about the APs.
I have the RotRL AE and have read the first two chapters and while i LOVE the AP, I just don't want to dive into the serial killer aspect. And I can only imagine what is down the line with the Lust Sin, for instance.
So what i'm looking for is a good SORT OF rail roady campaign that doesn't take a lot of time/effort to convert to something slightly more kid friendly (like I said, this doesn't have to be so tame it's lame).
I know I don't want Kingmaker and the Arabian Nights aspect of Legacy of Fire doesn't interest my players at all. I have CotCT and love it, but it's not a good fit. I also own SD and I don't like it and wouldn't run it for anyone, to be honest. RoW is also something that doesn't interest me what with all it's dimension hopping and fighting real world enemies. I just don't dig that personally. Shattered Star sounds cool but I can imagine it would become problematic around the Lust aspect. What about the latest one? Path of the Righteous or whatever it's called? I like the idea of the adventurers going against a bunch of demons.
So, sorry I'm being such a long winded nag. But I'm looking for specifics. Can you tell me SPECIFICALLY what is "mature" about the remaining APs so I can make a value judgement on what is and isn't appropriate and how much I'd have to rework it.
Thanks in advance. I REALLY appreciate all the help.
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My limited AP experience:
Serpent's Skull: Nothing that stands out in my casual reading of book 1 prior to not running it.
Skull & Shackles: Book 1 has heavy forced drinking, and lots of attempted murder, and some violent pirate punishment. Gaming hiatus prevented us from getting past book 1 so no further input.
Carrion Crown: I know you mentioned some HP conversion stuff, but here is my 2cp anyway. Book 1: Chock full of murder and murderers, general creepiness, and some minor animal mutilation. Book 2: Child murder, body horror (Vorkstag and Grine; the circus folk), lynching. Book 3: War crimes, necromancers, demon worshiping werewolves. Book 4: Occult activities, cosmic horror. Book 5: Moral ambiguities, vampire related violence. Book 6: Kidnapping, disturbing imagery.
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Well...Wrath deals with drug addiction in book two, and a major focus of book 4 is meeting with Nocticula, the queen of succubi, so if you are concerned with the lust sin, that AP is probably a no go. I haven't read the adventure in book 5 yet (waiting for my copy to arrive), nor has the last volume been released.
On top of that book 2 uses the mass combat system from Kingmaker, plus mythic rules are definetly required, so there will be additional layers of rules for young players to deal with, which may be an issue.
Having not even read a single volume of the AP, Mummy's mask might be a bit more kid friendly???
Honestly, most AP's as written are pitched to a teen-age and up audience. What are the ages of the players?
Spoilers abound below, be warned.
Serpent's Skull has a some rather disturbing undead and cannibalism themes in the first module you would want to remove. The rest of the AP is heavy on exploration and discovery which is good, and only has scattered elements you would probably want to remove. A succubus enslaving a couple of native oracles could be toned down to just keeping them prisoner and I would remove the meeting with the Gorilla King entirely.
Skull and Shackles could do with some alterations in the first one to make it more like Pirates of the Caribbean, get rid of the rum ration make the first mate more clownishly bullying than the long term psychological warfare he commits as written. Later in that module i would remove all the ghouls from the island encounters, and make the two kidnapped sailors easier to save. Later in the AP, lose the skinmap elements, and play up the high-seas adventure aspects, maybe have plenty of bad folks for the players to pirate instead of honest merchants.
Wrath of the righteous has some graphic depictions of violence and what happens to people captured by demons you would want to really tone down, but theme wise it's very big on the good guys fighting against evil and redemption, as written above you may want to remove the drug addiction parts from the second module. But i haven't read any farther than the 4th module.
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I would *strongly* advise you against Serpent's Skull if you don't have much time to put work into the AP. Let's just say running it is impossible without completely rewriting part 3 on your own - the publish adventure is just unplayable. And I'm not a minority voice on this issue.
Have you considered Jade Regent? there's nothing overtly sexual, violent or graphic there, and kids like ninjas.
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Carrion Crown seems perfect.
There are only three places where you may want to bland down some material, vol.s 2, 4 & 5. Especially vol. 2. But again, these are minor tweaks.
Of course, keep in mind that when I played through this I wasn't thinking of it in terms of movie rating -- so you'll want to make sure you can run it a a G or PG rating. But from my memory, CC is very PG at heart.
EDIT: Another vote against Serpent's Skull. At least for vol.2 and a few parts elsewhere. (But again, maybe that's just my memory playing tricks on me.)
While I haven't played in or run it, Jade Regent could work, I think. One of my current players is getting ready to GM it (and I get to play! =D) so I'll see if he can think of any sort of rated R type stuff in it. Plus, not sure what age you're looking at but if they're around middleschoolish then they probably would like a lot of the Tian aspects (east Asian themes).
However, I'm VERY interested in that Carrion Crown conversion. Could you post a link? Thanks =D!
The kids are 9 and 10 but I don't feel I need to tame anything to G or even a PG rating. A light PG13 would probably be fine. Some gore and violence is no big deal to me. We're running Age of Worms at the moment and they're hacking down cultists left and right and I don't really have a problem with that. I prefer fantasy monsters but morally ambiguous humans are okay too.
Oh, and I'm going to recommend against Wrath of the Righteous if the lust aspect of Shattered Star was a no go. Yeah... Just do a google image search for Nocticula. Should be fine for teens, though, unless they're super sheltered (not judging, just saying), but again, I'm not sure what age range we're really talking about here. I'm assuming older than 8 but younger than 15? Few years in that range but a very wide range of emotional and mental maturity so.... yeah...
The kids are 9 and 10 but I don't feel I need to tame anything to G or even a PG rating. A light PG13 would probably be fine. Some gore and violence is no big deal to me. We're running Age of Worms at the moment and they're hacking down cultists left and right and I don't really have a problem with that. I prefer fantasy monsters but morally ambiguous humans are okay too.
I would then suggest:
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If you're going for PG13, Carrion Crown is nearly there, at least for the first three books. I'd have to reread the last three, as the game I ran didn't continue past the Vrood fight at the end of Book 3.
In Book 1, some of the flavor on the reason the BBEG's were imprisoned could be toned down. The creep factor on the Ghost Priest would need solidified into something more of a classic evil guy trope, and the Lopper and the Mosswater Marauder would need their backstories toned down from serious crime to Law and Order level criminals. I don't think that the possessed guy in town's implied animal mutilation would bump it up to R status.
In Book 2, the carnival folks would be fine for PG13, but I would probably change the Brother Swarm section entirely, or just remove it (afterall, the Beast gets out of jail one way or another). Child murder, while not R, per se, is a bit heavy for children. If they're fine with gross-out stuff, Vorkstag and Grine Body Snatchers Incorporated (Registered Trademark) should be fine, and that's if the party even bothers with them at all. The lynch mob, however, is still a pretty mature theme, whether its adult content or not, and the fact that the party very well may have to kill a bunch of townies for being bigots may be too much for the kids to understand.
In Book 3, really the only thing that you would need to tone down is Feldgrau. The town is basically a war ruin, haunted by the war crimes that exterminated the populace. The haunts are a bit bleak, but if you reflavor it as a town overrun with demon wolves and skeletons without all the genocidal undertones, you should be fine.
If I have time tonight, I'll read back over books 4 and 5 and give some specific feedback.
Reign of Winter - should be rail road enough, and is PG-13 at worst. Also has a strong story and lots "cool" fantasy monsters as adversaries. (Make sure they have good survival skills.)
Just be sure to remove all of the references to child murder that are peppered through out the AP IE the soulbound doll, the children being used for troll food in the clock tower, the hag in Atroska's collection of child scalps, etc....
that being said it not hard to remove all of them completely as they dont have any real bearing on the story. But I know my group of adults found it pretty disturbing....in a good eliciting an emotional response kind of way lol.
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The kids are 9 and 10 but I don't feel I need to tame anything to G or even a PG rating. A light PG13 would probably be fine. Some gore and violence is no big deal to me. We're running Age of Worms at the moment and they're hacking down cultists left and right and I don't really have a problem with that. I prefer fantasy monsters but morally ambiguous humans are okay too.Carrion Crown - this has a strong plot and also stays around PG-13. It has lots of "traditional" monsters as adversaries, and can be very creepy. (Make sure they have a positive energy channeling character.)
Actually part 4 has some VERY disturbing sexual content in it...
The women of Illmarsh are the mothers of all those Deep Ones, remember?
As a kid, this is probably the only thing in all of the APs that would have really bothered me. If something like the serial killer adventure is enough to deter the OP from the entire Runelords campaign, I'd say that this adventure is way more than enough to rule out Carrion Crown.
The kids are 9 and 10 but I don't feel I need to tame anything to G or even a PG rating. A light PG13 would probably be fine. Some gore and violence is no big deal to me. We're running Age of Worms at the moment and they're hacking down cultists left and right and I don't really have a problem with that. I prefer fantasy monsters but morally ambiguous humans are okay too.
Jade Regent absolutely seems like the best option for you. Ninjas, Vikings, plenty rail-roady and not any age-inappropriate content that I recall.