walter mcwilliams |
This past Friday, April 18 2014 - The group I am lucky enough to have gamed with on a weekly bases for the past 5 years or so succeeded in placing Ameiko Kaijitsu to the throne. We had a blast and special thanks to DM Anthony who did a wonderful job over the past year (about average for our group to finish an AP). This is my groups fourth completed AP the others being (Second Darkness, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Savage Tide)
Final group composition:
Ingvar "Bloodtooth" Ingvarson - Ulfen, Shielded Fighter 16
Ishida Katsumoto - Tian, Monk of Many Styles, Samurai
Aiyoko Katsumoto - Tian, Geisha 16
Taslan - Samsaran - Wizard 16
Yuka - Tengu - Ninja 16
We still have some cleaning up to do, our caravan and its friends are missing, presumably still in the grasp of the Jade Regents surviving supporters.
As a special gift - we earned Mythic Tier I!
magnuskn |
Congratulations. :) Speaking for myself as a GM, module five was the best one of the bunch, although the start of module four (Ordu-Aganhei) counts as the most entertaining thing I've ever done in an AP. :D
walter mcwilliams |
Congrats! I hope some day our group is able to achieve this mantle of success. My players are still in the arctic. They are getting ready to go "talk" to the dragon Vegsundvaag.
Vegsundvaag was one of my PC's highlight. Big crit with my longsword Heartripper for the kill!
walter mcwilliams |
Well done
Start part 5 in two weeks
Which was your favourite module?
My PC was an Ulfen fighter, heavily inspired by Bernard Cornwell's Uthred character, so I really enjoyed the earlier installments better the later. I also tend to like lower and mid level play over high. Here is how I ranked them from most favorite to least favorite.
Night of Frozen Shadows
Brinewall Legacy
The Hungry Storm
Forest of Spirits
Tide of Honor
The Empty Throne
Matthew Downie |
Book 5 is really the one book where the concept of Jade Regent has a chance to flourish. You get to explore Minkai and deal with ronins and ninja clans and geisha.
If you're not so keen on the Japanese stuff, or if the game balance starts to fall apart due to the usual problems of high level play, then you might not enjoy it, but it's pretty well written.
Rogue Eidolon |
That's pretty sad, thenovalord, part five is the best written book of the six.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to starting my expanded Part 5. They're about to finish off Part 4 maybe this week, and Part 5 is looking cool. I put in a bunch of other options for gathering support, including choosing the Ruby Crypt ninjas over the Three Monkeys, two rival orders of martial artists, and a quest to that weird hidden Nalinivati hot springs temple mentioned in the back of Part 5 to reawaken the powers of the Thundering Blade of Sugimatsu (which in my campaign was originally intelligent, like Suishen, but the oni managed to smother out the intelligence, if not destroy it completely).
FallofCamelot |
If there are 3 worse than hungry storm, that doesn't bode well
Enjoyed 1 and 2 a lot, 4 was somewhat disappointing and a big dull dungeon, 3 was not good
Well I loathed book 2 and loved book 3. So there's that.
My issue with the campaign is that it got to Minkai waaaaay too late. Book 2 was a horrible grinding halt that took way too long and had nothing to do with the theme of an epic journey. How can it be an epic journey if you handwave hundreds of miles of said journey and instead spend 1/6th of the AP stuck in a boring, uninspired, artificial roadblock? Ugh...
Book 4 is OK and as dungeons go it's fine but again it does not really feed into the overall theme of the AP. Yeah I suppose there's some stuff about the origins of the big bad and it gives you that background but there were quicker and easier ways of doing that.
The actual overthrow of the evil rulers of Minkai takes place in the last 2 volumes. That's not enough time. In Curse of the Crimson Throne and Council of Thieves the whole AP is the build up of the resistance to the evil ruler. By comparison in Jade Regent it's so rushed that it feels like the locals are there going "Rebel? Really? Y'know we never thought of that! That's a great idea! Please lead us to victory random stranger who has zero knowledge of our current situation and has lived her entire life thousands of miles away! It's a flawless plan!"
What's worse is that the plan works. Amieko turns up and wins without much difficulty. It's a bit of an anti-climax.
That said for all my criticism it's not a bad AP it just could have been better.
magnuskn |
The actual overthrow of the evil rulers of Minkai takes place in the last 2 volumes. That's not enough time. In Curse of the Crimson Throne and Council of Thieves the whole AP is the build up of the resistance to the evil ruler.
Yet in Curse your party is sent out of town before the real rebellion even starts and only returns to bail out the failing rebels in the last book, which is mostly handwaved, too.
By comparison in Jade Regent it's so rushed that it feels like the locals are there going "Rebel? Really? Y'know we never thought of that! That's a great idea! Please lead us to victory random stranger who has zero knowledge of our current situation and has lived her entire life thousands of miles away! It's a flawless plan!"
What's worse is that the plan works. Amieko turns up and wins without much difficulty. It's a bit of an anti-climax.
Yeah, the rebellion part could have had another volume, totally agreed. Still, it is way better than what we got in Curse in terms of the party actually building a coalition to topple the Jade Regent.
And since much of Ameiko's qualifications come from her being the last member of the divinely ordained bloodlines of rulership, her getting accepted as new ruler of Minkai makes more sense than you portray it having. The AP also explains why there hasn't been a large-scale rebellion before.