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I just finished running Chap 1 of RotRL and I figured I'd go ahead and share my prep work. I ended up putting quite a bit of time into the prep, but it really helped keep the pace of the campaign fairly quick and I believe it made it more fun for everyone. I have included links to both the ODT and PDF versions within this post.
The Swallowtail Festival portion contains my own festival games along with the (significant) rewards I provided for my players. I am running a group of 6 with a few experienced players, so these early rewards actually helped individual player wealth without having to tweak combat rewards. The Cure Light Wounds wands also were very appreciated by the group. One of my players was even extremely lucky and ended up winning the grand prize in Gorvi's Goblin Fishing Extravaganza!
I should also note that the combats all maximize the monster health. After seeing this in action, I believe that even a 4 player group with experienced players would benefit from maximized monster health. I then scaled the monster hp up (in my head) by 50% for each player beyond 4, since not everyone always showed up. This was a pretty quick and easy way to scale and worked for everything except the Shadow encounter in part IV (which I just used maximized health for... shadows are really scary at level 3).
I didn't use XP, rather I just told them when they leveled. Level 2 was hit after defeating Tsuto, level 3 after the Catacombs of Wrath (2 and 3 were right on top of each other) and level 4 at the end of the chapter. If I were to do it again, I would award level 4 either after Nualia or just before Nualia after clearing floor 2 of the Thistletop dungeon. The shadows, giant crab and greater barghest encounters would be better with a group of level 4 PCs I think. They dragged a bit with level 3 PCs.
So, here is the prep work. Any comments are welcome.
RotRL Chap 1 ODT Documents
Swallowtail Festival
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Spell Reference
RotRL Chap 1 PDF Documents
Swallowtail Festival
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Spell Reference
These should provide just about everything you need to run Chapter 1 of Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. I would still recommend reading the parts (and ideally the whole chapter) before running it, but you probably don't need to do much more than that if you use these prep sheets. Oh, fair warning, it's quite a few pages to print it all out.
I plan on continuing with the same type of prep work for the rest of the campaign and will post additional chapters in this thread as they are completed.
This is awesome! I was wondering if perhaps you could post it in the Community Created Stuff Sticky post. This is exactly the kind of thing that belongs there. Great Work!
Sure, I can add this to community created sticky post.
I should also take a minute to talk about the Alaznist Anvil, an item that I added to the game. Personally, I don't think finding a piece of magic gear that you can't use and having to sell for 1/2 price is fun. So, in an effort to make the game more fun AND to deal with the wealth per player issue in a 6 player party, the Alaznist Anvil was added, which allows players to transfer the magical enchantments from one piece of gear to another. This means when they find a +1 weapon or +1 piece of armor, they can toss it on a masterwork item they already have. Feel free to use it or not. My players love it. ;)
Some things to keep in mind with the Anvil:
1) The enchantment is moved and the source item is destroyed.
2) The new enchantments overwrite any existing enchantments on the the destination item, so you can't stack a bunch of enchants on your item from different sources.
3) Any enchants that are not possible (such as Keen on a bow) are simply lost in the transfer.
To introduce the Anvil, I had the players find a book in Thassilonian that described how to active the Anvil (by deactivating the minor runewell) and how it worked. This book was found in the same room as the minor runewell.
Thank you for this! I wish I had come across it before last weekend, but I've printed off the forms for everything so I have it going forward.
This is a huge help!
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
These are amazing. I am starting prep work to run Runelords starting in March, and with these I can focus more on my terrain.
I am definitely going to make use of these prep sheets, thank you! My group is finishing up Carrion Crown this spring, and I've been elected to GM Runelords. It's been many long years since I've GM'd, and I'm rusty, to say the least. The festival game ideas are awesome!
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Here is Chapter 2, the latest addition to the prep sheets. Once again, enjoy!
RotRL Chap 2 ODT Documents
Part I - No Combat
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Spell Reference
RotRL Chap 2 PDF Documents
Part I - No Combat
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Spell Reference
I have continued to use the maximized monster health +50% per player above 4 system. I generally have all 6 there, but I give them a little break if 1 can't make it or is going to be late. It has worked very well and the Part VII fights were pretty challenging (and fun for both the GM and the players!). As always, comments, suggestions, criticism and praise are welcome.
I've just started running this campaign! Since this is literally my first time running ANY campaign and I'm looking for as many aides and resources as possible. This is invaluable! Thanks so much!
Once again... amazing work! You rock sir!
I'm happy that other people will benefit from the prep work. It has really helped keep the flow of my game relatively fast and smooth. :)
Very nice work.
I've done something similar myself and since I use my laptop when GM'ing I've found that producing pdf's in the right aspect ratio (16:9 in my case) makes it easy to see the info when using full-screen/diasshow view, even from a distance. An example can be found here. (Ignore page 2 - it's a danish translation of some flavor.)
Just a suggestion you can choose to use or ignore. :]
Sol_Munch wrote: I've just started running this campaign! Since this is literally my first time running ANY campaign and I'm looking for as many aides and resources as possible. This is invaluable! Thanks so much! Many thanks!!! This will prove invaluable for my current RotR campaign.
Just wanted to say that I just started running the Second Mod, and your sheets have been a great help!
Do you need any help preping the Third Mod? I'm not sure when my group will get to it, but I feel like I'm 3 - 5 sessions out from starting it.
winddrake wrote: Just wanted to say that I just started running the Second Mod, and your sheets have been a great help!
Do you need any help preping the Third Mod? I'm not sure when my group will get to it, but I feel like I'm 3 - 5 sessions out from starting it.
Thanks for the offer. I think we will be finishing Chapter 3 Part II tomorrow. We've missed a few weekends lately due to busy schedules, but we'll get through it eventually. Also, the combats are starting to take a bit longer to complete, meaning less overall progress each play session. That said, I have been prepping each part the same as I have the first 2 chapters and will post all of Chapter 3 when we complete it.
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Ok, so maybe a bit later than expected, but here are the combat prep sheets for Chapter 3. I apologize for the delay, but sometimes things just don't work out the way to expect them to. There's no spell reference document this time and I'm not sure I'll get around to creating one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy them!
RotRL Chap 3 ODT Documents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
RotRL Chap 3 PDF Documents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Trik, I was doing Part IV and V in a couple of weeks!! You are such a life saver!!
Thank you.
Oh my goodness! This is perfect! I was going to buy RotRL and run the first few sessions on a cruise ship, but I didn't want to also have to pack three bestiaries in addition to the prep material. Now I can just bring these!!
I don't think I'll be releasing any more prep sheets. I started using the Combat Manager App on my iPad to run Chapter 4 and it is absolutely AMAZING. Prep work isn't really required and all rules, spells, monster abilities, feats and a lot of equipment can be viewed from within the app. It allows me to run monsters on separate initiatives quite easily, I just use a little Post-It tab with a number on it stuck to the bottom of the mini base.
Anyway, anyone who wants to take up the torch is more than welcome to here. Otherwise, I strongly recommend checking out Combat Manager if you're regularly running games. I believe it's available for iOS, Android and Windows.
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trik wrote: Here is Chapter 2, the latest addition to the prep sheets. Once again, enjoy!
RotRL Chap 2 ODT Documents
Part I - No Combat
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Spell Reference
RotRL Chap 2 PDF Documents
Part I - No Combat
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Spell Reference
I have continued to use the maximized monster health +50% per player above 4 system. I generally have all 6 there, but I give them a little break if 1 can't make it or is going to be late. It has worked very well and the Part VII fights were pretty challenging (and fun for both the GM and the players!). As always, comments, suggestions, criticism and praise are welcome.
Very cool, I'm running this tomorrow. This makes my prep much easier, thank you.
Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Great stuff!
I re-edited the Graul statblocks from 20 pages to 2 pages by clipping out the excess text (power attack text block, etc) and just summarizing the numerical values next to the listed ability higher in the statblocks (and using 2 collumns, with font size 8 <g>). It's much easier for me to use a double-page spread of creature statistics than shuffle through 20 pages.
Kudos to Trik for the helpful work. Guess I'm a luddite, I couldn't imagine looking up this stuff on an app. I need paper I can write on (marking off hp, crossing off used spells, etc).
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