Chopping & changing: Rushlight Tournament

[Lee Hanna]

I'm apparently unable to leave a module standing as is, I like to move parts here and there. Let me post some ideas, and see what the Kingmaker cognoscenti have to say.

First off, this isn't Golarion, it's the world of the Birthright setting.

I want to move the Rushlight Tournament to the beginning of Book 3, where my players are now.

Option A is that they get to meet & greet the other players in the area, so that they might care when their neighbors are being overrun or switching sides. I think it would be neat if they find out "Armag" is a guy they fought with just the year before.

- I haven't decided on the host yet: Varn, Drelev, or one of two families nearby (Restov or the area to the west of Oleg's) IMC.
- The competing nations become other noble houses from the area.

Option B is that the host is instead the nation that's off to the south edge of the map, and the participants are mostly from that nation and its other neighbors. I still want them to meet Koth and Armag-to-be here, they just won't know who they are, yet.

Opinions?

[Andostre]

It might help if you explained why you wanted to move the tournament.

[Lee Hanna]

Several reasons: - on my map, the country off that corner of the map doesn't work with a tournament at all.

- I wanted there to be a chance for the players to meet & play with some of the NPCs around their land, such as Drelev.

- I really didn't like the idea of Irrovetti drawing the PCs into a trap, setting up another trap at the Abbey, and then launching the war. I want to chop it to just one lure.

- My Irrovetti-equivalent won't be hosting an event like this openly, she's the daughter of the deposed tsar.

- I thought it would be neat if they met the future Armag before he turns.

I'm sure there were others, but they're gone now. I thought I would use it as Option B for a long time, but now I am pretty sure I will go with Option A, with Drelev as the host.

[Woundweaver]

There is really no reason why you can't have multiple Rushlight Tournaments. They are a yearly thing if I remember the AP correctly, it is just that the PCs kingdoms aren't taken seriously enough to have been invited to earlier tournaments.

I remember when I ran it I had the player's learn that a tournament was going on with invitations sent out to all the Kingdoms. Sorry all REAL kingdoms.

[Lee Hanna]

I ran this tonight, and it went rather well. I went with option A, Drelev was the host. I knocked 4 levels off the NPC players, and changed the names to match nearby houses.

I also printed off team sheets and handed them out to the players, so that they weren't watching me roll 5 sets of dice to their 1. That really helped, I think. They had a lot of fun with the boasting in particular, the lascivious natures of some of them provoking laughter.

I was kind of surprised that the PCs only won one event, I thought the archer and log-chopper would have done better than they did. The jousting (featuring a half-dozen Lego knights on the tabletop) went all in favor of the group's cavalier, who was already tricked out to do damage with a lance once Koth showed his colors.

The thing that I most hoped for was that the PCs would take this chance to interact with the NPC neighbors, and some of them split up to do this. I ruled that I would count it as several Diplomatic edicts, and they succeeded at two of four attempts, winning the rights to put embassies in Drelevgrad and Restov.

[Orthos]

Woundweaver wrote:

There is really no reason why you can't have multiple Rushlight Tournaments. They are a yearly thing if I remember the AP correctly, it is just that the PCs kingdoms aren't taken seriously enough to have been invited to earlier tournaments.

Pretty much. My PCs didn't get an invite until they'd proved they could hold their own - defeating Hargulka's army and turning the Talonquake into a giant tree was enough to convince the neighbors to let them into their party, but prior to that no invitations were forthcoming.