RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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So, I'm signed up to GM The Sarkorian Prophecy next weekend, and one of the first things that I noticed was that the mission briefing is given by Venture-Captain Thurl. This is the same Venture-Captain Thurl who betrayed the society back in Siege of the Diamond City and whose lair some of my players explored in The Traitor's Lodge.
I have a feeling that my players will be pretty badly jarred by the appearance of the traitor, and will likely attack him on sight if he shows up to give the briefing. What do you all think about the idea of rewriting the mission briefing to come from VC Jorsal instead?
Do any of you have tips for getting Jorsal's voice down, so he is consistent between this mission and the others where he gives the breifing?
I think swapping out the intro would go a long way toward making the scenario mesh more easily with the rest of Season 5.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Do not change the scenario.
Heck, thurl isn't the worst problem you have, trying to set this adventure during Season 5. The Wardstone defenses are still in place! (Oh, and the Shadow Lodge is an active concern.) Explain to the players that this adventure is set a couple years in the past.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Well, once you start "Eyes of the Ten," you're out of tier for all earlier scenarios.
But the same issue arrises for an adventure like "Delirium's Tangle," where you have to do a favor for a character you might hate after "Rivalry's End." Playing much of season 4 scenarios, after successfully completing "Waking Rune," wouldn't make much sense. (Would you replace the defeated Krune with a different Runelord?)
The design team for Pathfinder Society has a choice: either never move characters' storylines forward, or accept the difficulties that playing scenarios out of season might entail.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Flite has an excellent suggestion....That is what I would do, say the characters are getting together for a drink at their favorite Tavern in Absalom and they are recalling their adventure from a couple of years ago.
Except that most of them were lower level then. To me, at least, that strains credulity.
Honestly, I don't see how swapping out the VC giving the briefing is a problem. Thurl doesn't have any impact on the story or the mechanics; he's just the one giving the initial intro. As long as the same information gets conveyed, I think that putting it in the mouth of the current Venture-Captain for the region enhances continuity without affecting the adventure itself.
As for the Shadow Lodge plot, to be honest it doesn't really have much to do with this particular story. Sure, they are agents guarding the MacGuffin, but to me at least makes more sense to cast them as "former Shadow Lodge agents who quit the Society when Torch left and are still working for him" than to do weird timey-wimey stuff to preserve the original setting with no real benefit.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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The design team for Pathfinder Society has a choice: either never move characters' storylines forward, or accept the difficulties that playing scenarios out of season might entail.
I absolutely agree, and I would much rather see active story development. That's why I'm suggesting that a tweak like this could be a good way to bring the adventure more in line with the current plot, without significantly affecting the story or changing any of the mechanics.
Obviously, it wouldn't work for something big and plot-heavy like The Ruby Phoenix Tournament, where the whole premise of the later scenarios assumes that one has already happened. But for most of the "go get the artifact" scenarios (which, honestly, is most of them), *why* the PCs are after the artifact is less important than what they face along the way.
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Straining credulity or not, playing time sequenced scenarios out of order requires some level of buy-in and a break in verisimilitude from the players. They should be willing to accept that this us an earlier scenario.
You also don't have stats for Thurl.
You'd be well within your rights as a GM, to warn the players that if they attack Thurl in that scenario that they would be branded as traitors to the society and marked as dead.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Tamago,
I know that you have the wisdom and discretion to revise the identities of NPCs and modify backstories for scenarios so that they feel like they're in the current season.
For example, if you were running "Silent Tide," you'd swap out one information broker, maybe replacing him with the Sczarni leader, and change the Venture Captain, since he won't be giving PCs missions this side of Eyes of the Ten.
If you were running "Dalsine Affair," you'd use the current Qadira and Taldor faction leaders. If you were running "Drow of the Darklands Pyramid," you might tie the demonic theme of Season 5 adventures into the demon-worshipping drow, and make the adventure seem more contemporary.
But thread after thread indicate that the campaign leadership spend a lot of time dealing with the aftermath of GMs who do not have your sense of proportion. GMs who add encounters, or change up what gear is provided on the Chronicle sheets, etc. If one of those GMs were running "Sarkorian Prophesy," they might rearrange the notes in the propesy (which really do make the Shadow Lodge subplot front-and-center) and switch them out for maybe some propesies regarding the Worldwound. Or they might drop the Wardstone field around the Worldwound, which would allow PCs to just teleport out to safety.
So the campaign leadership has asked, again and again, that we don't make changes like that. Nobody's going to knock on your door and double-check on you. If you want to revise the adventure so that it's set in Season 5, nobody can stop you. But that's not what we're asked to do.
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Straining credulity or not, playing time sequenced scenarios out of order requires some level of buy-in and a break in verisimilitude from the players. They should be willing to accept that this us an earlier scenario.
This. I know this is a roleplaying game, and some people take breaking verisimilitude differently, but I think the sheer nature of organized play makes it so we have to accept what we have.
Developer
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Thurl only shows up once prior to Season 5, so I believe it would be a disservice to take away players' lone opportunity to meet him in his element.
This is really no different to playing the Grandmaster Torch based scenarios out of order or the Blakros ones.
By the same token, are we okay to infer that the Scenario objectives tie in to the accrual of resources/ favours for finding the Sky Citadel?
I'm not following your question, Matthew. Are you asking about Season 5 scenarios contributing to Season 5 objectives, or are you asking about earlier seasons' scenarios contributing to Season 5 objectives?
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John: Sorry, I went a bit off topic.
I was in a PFS game (I think it might of been season 2) when the VC said that due to out efforts in helping out X it would be beneficial to the society as it would help our ongoing mission to resource the expedition/ get to it (Skycitadel in Worldwound). It didnt affect the plot of the scenario so much as tie it to the season 5 goals. We didnt have to do anything more than we would have to do to complete the scenario.
I liked it , as it referenced the Season 5 overarching plot.
Are we okay to add things like this to the mission Briefing that is normally given?
I want to start by apologizing for necromancing this thread, but after playing this scenario last Saturday, something is really bothering me. Also, I realize that changing/updating a scenario takes time and a lot of work, that the campaign leadership is aware of problems like this in a story line that advances forward, and that compared to other projects on the horizon, this isn't anywhere near the top.
I played in this scenario because a friend suggested I play in it after telling him how my -2 character is getting ready to one day play in Eyes of the Ten, and that this character has played in a lot of season 5 scenarios. After hearing the suggestion from my friend, I read the blurb, saw something about The Worldwound, and suggested it to a local GM to run via Roll20 to get more peeps involved. It's worth noting that my -2 is my character who has a lot of GM cred applied from when I first started GM'ing and organizing in libraries, around the middle/end of season 5, made a point to, and did, kill the Venture-Captain of this scenario as well his buddy/business partner/boss/whatever you want to call the other. Like, sure, he killed a Giant King, and a Runelord, but neither of those two victories are as important as killing the jerks who were thorns in the Pathfinder's side for most of his adventuring career. This character is also possibly one of the Society's and Grand Lodge's biggest fanboys, because this seems like a great organization for those who like adventures.
So there I was, the guy who suggested this scenario, at a table of 4, party tank, and the GM was a local 2 star GM. As soon as I found out who the Venture-Captain was I was lit. It would make 100% sense for my character to say no, receive a chronicle sheet with all 0s, and go have a chat with Valsin about a zombie Venture-Captain. But, that would leave the table with only 3 players remaining, one of which was out of subtier playing up, all whom set time aside to play this game, so I didn't want to ruin it for them. I was well aware that I was coming across as a jerk as I openly called out the Venture-Captain in front of the other players, without spoiling anything, felt both bad and yet justified for doing so, given this character's story. The GM was also doing the best he could and I've since apologized after the game to him and explained things the best I could without giving spoilers, because he doesn't even know of the scenario I was referencing where I killed the Venture-Captain.
Heck, if it wasn't for the problem stated above, I was even ready for my most cherished PC to get kicked out of PFS if it meant he killed a bad guy and did what he felt was right.
Before I play Eyes of the Ten, I now need to have a chat with my peep Valsin about an undead (probably zombie?) Venture-Captain to make sure PFS is cool with this, or if we should go kill that before going onto other missions.
What I'm asking, much like asked above, is that the name of the Venture-Captain be changed to Venture-Captain Jorsal of Lauterbury, who also/now gives missions from Nerosyan. It wouldn't change the time it takes from the PCs to get to the place, it's a fix that makes sense in the story.
Again, I repeat, my character cannot forget the most important scenario he's been involved with (and actually got to play) as it would have also affected most of the rest of his adventuring career. I think my idea of swapping to Venture-Captain Jorsal of Lauterbury is a simple and reasonable fix I wish would get taken into consideration. Thank you for your time, sorry for the long post and if I've come across as a jerk.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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VCs are (usually) chosen with a reason. Either they have knowledge about the subject, or advance some metaplot. For you, it would've made sense to kick his ass as soon as you saw him, but for other people who haven't played that scenario yet, he's just a VC. In the bigger picture, it's important to know that this guy was part of the Society before he turned coat. Erasing him from the scenario undermines the effect of that reveal. Your reaction would've been totally different if you had played these scenarios in the "intended" order.
Speaking of which, the nonlinearity of PFS is just a thing you'll have to put up with. Events are supposed to unfold in a specific order. The fact that the character doesn't necessarily follow the story the same way but the player might, is just something you have to live with. As alluded to above, the Eyes of the Ten arc will put certain people in a different light, but it's simply not done to act on that information when playing older scenarios. Like Billy Pilgrim, PFS agents are "unstuck in time," experiencing bits of story semi-randomly. You have to imagine your character is in that specific point in time, without knowledge of the future that the player might have. Attacking a VC because "he does something in the future" isn't a thing. To you, at that moment, he's just another VC, despite what your chronicle sheets might say. It might've been a transformative experience for you, but this is exactly the reason why you can't bring information from a different scenario to your current scenario. You can't act on information you're not supposed to have, even if it's supposed to fit into your backstory. That's also why my characters don't refer to past scenarios in their backstory, as it might spoil something for other characters.
I guess that's where we are different. I run and play scenarios as a campaign, as a story, not as, "One shot," adventures. My characters generally don't give spoilers, except when faced with evil, dead, Venture-Captains. Usually I'll be vague like, "I once killed a Giant King".