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I'm thinking of proposing to my group that the next campaign that we embark on should be round-robin GM style with everyone taking their turn.
Since there are 7 of us in the group, and 3 of us are regular GMs, that would mean 3 of us would run three modules each, the other 4 two each, for a grand total of 17 modules, one at each level.
The assumption would be that maybe a month or two passes in game time between modules, with the PCs doing non-adventuring stuff and then gathering together at the place where one of them has researched the next adventure.
Whoever GMs gets a "bye" for their character to the next level.
That's the background, anyway. What I'm looking for is a list of modules to use.
So far I've thought of this:
1
2
3 feast of ravenmoor
4 the midnight mirror
5 carrion hill
6 from shore to sea
7 realm of the fellnight queen
8 cult of the ebon destroyers
9 the harrowing
10 curse of the riven sky
11 the ruby phoenix tournament
12
13 academy of secrets
14 tomb of the iron medusa
15
16 the moonscar
17 the witchwar legacy
As you can see, though, I've got holes in 2, 12 and 15, and I'm still not entirely sure what module we should kick off with, as I don't want to use anything which is part of a set.
I've tried to pick the modules which are best thought of, and which are Pathfinder rather than 3.5. I'm open to ideas now, as I don't think I can fill 2, 12 and 15 without converting a 3.5 one, which I'd rather not do if I can avoid it.
Any hints, ideas or comments?
Richard
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I recommend browsing this as a good place to fill gaps.
For my input, Crypt of the Everflame was a fun module to run and it does a good job of introducing the elements of the game as it goes. It is part of a series but dropping the connection material is very easy to do. It's a bit hard to find in print now, but might be a decent place to start.
When it comes to higher level stuff, you may have some more difficulty since there is so little printed. Ultimately, you may end up having to scale something to fit.
The Godsmouth Heresy is an awesome 1st level adventure.
Also, the 3.5 adventures D0 (1st) Hollow's Last Hope and D1 (2nd) Crown of the Kobold King are part of a series but the other two in the series are for levels 5 and 6 and can be easily ignored. I highly recommend them. I liked them so much I dropped them into Kingmaker under Candlemere.
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Hollow's Last Hope was a lot of fun but it's really quite short. However, it's free so you can't beat the price.
Speaking of free, though, Master of the Fallen Fortress is a pretty good intro module and doesn't require a conversion from 3.x. I've run it a few times and it's quite fun if a bit linear. You could easily use this then run a longer 1st level module, scaled up slightly, in the second level slot.
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I actually own all of the adventures Paizo's ever published so I don't have a problem getting hold of them.
We've already played Master of the Fallen Fortress. It's good, but short.
I was thinking I would convert Crown of the Kobold King for the 2nd level slot, possibly with Hollow's last hope before it.
For the 1st level slot, it's either Crypt of the Everflame or Godsmouth Heresy. The former gets better reviews but it might be a shame to run it outside of the set.
Alternatively we could run Crypt, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden death in the 1, 3 and 5 slots - but I'm not sure about interspersing other modules in between and having them all run by different GMs.
For the 12th level slot, I shall have to convert and raise The Demon Within and for the 15th level slot convert Blood of Dragonscar. Both of these get very good reviews.
Richard
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We actually did something very similar a while back, with rotating GMs. We had 5 people, 4 of which could GM, the GM's character was the table PC. We ran Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death with three different GMs. It worked fine, there isn't that many links between them, we then placed From Shore to Sea in the same region.
We are looking at doing something very similar with Emerald Spire, with each GM taking a level (or two or more)
Edit: Thinking about it, we also have done a similar thing with the Thornkeep levels in our game with our kids (3 adult GMs, four kids). That also worked quite well...they are quite easy to run as individual pieces....and they have flip-mats :)
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IMO, rotating GMs is where the future of the game lies.
But anyway :-)
I think if we do this again we might go for the longer modules that are now being published, like Wardens, and just do one module each.
Thanks for the advice about Crypt/Masks/City. It seems a shame to not do Carrion Hill but I think I might still go for that trio.
One other point thst's been mentioned elsewhere but never answered is whether there is a level up point somewhere in the middle of each of these modules.
What I'm thinking is that we wont level up, however since we're running with 6 PCs I expect things will be easy at first, harder later.
Richard
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With 5 PC (including the DM's table PC) and giving out Exp, we leveled up about half way through Crypt, and similar with the others. We were the right levels for From Shore to Sea at the end of the three.
For our group, rotating PCs are good....we all work and it is hard to commit to running a whole campaign. We found that we were quite often getting to book 2 of an AP then the DM would run out of MoJo.
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My Friday group rotates GMs between myself and a friend but we swap whole parties so we have two APs running concurrently. It works out pretty well as we get a month or two off each time.
Running a campaign with the longer modules would be fun too. My old group I ran 3.5 for used to like that style of shorter story arcs that could be strung together. The only problem that might arise is Paizo's preference for low level modules may make this kind of campaign difficult to arrange. Right now there is nothing to fill the 8-12 gap, yet we have two that fill the 1-5 range. Then getting something that goes past level 15 is nigh-impossible.
Crypt levels partway through iirc, and frankly, the BBEG is a bit too tough for 1st-level PCs, imo.
If you can come up with a reason they don't feel like the hostage is in imminent danger so they rest and replenish before going in, they can probably handle the final battle (CR 4 + 4 CR 1/3s) at 1st level. Maybe if you rearranged the dungeon so they meet the ghost of Kassen before fighting the BBEG, he could warn them to rest before opening the doors and give them the boons to use during the final fight instead of at the end of the module?
To try to answer in a non-spoilery way: The final battle is a CR4 +4 CR 1/3s. The real issue is the way the module is set up, it discourages resting (the party's kind of "on a timer") so they're likely to hit the end battle already beat-up. If the DM were to tinker with the motivation so that the party felt like they could rest and replenish resources before the last room without Bad Things happening, it's doable, I guess. (You could dump the mooks, but with action economy, that might make it too easy for 6 PCs, depending on the way the dice fall.)
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Crypt of the Everflame seems to have a real 3.5 design philosophy with just about enough encounters to level a fast track party half way through. Thankfully that philosophy seemed to change as time went on. Really though, provided the party plays it smart there is no reason a group of level 1 characters couldn't tackle the whole thing.