Further thoughts on running Slumbering Tsar camaign

[Captain Marsh]

The gaming group I'm part of is about ten four-hour sessions into the Slumbering Tsar mega-campaign from Frog God games. This is, I think, the largest single adventure/campaign ever written, and when it arrives in the mail it looks like a brilliant behemoth of highly detailed encounters, amazing NPCs, weird cool ideas, etc.

So how does it actually play? Well, broadly speaking, amazingly well. It's famously sand-boxy, meaning PCs explore, encounter, stumble into encounters, and have to be really flexible to stay alive. That means running away sometimes. That means character death is a reality. If your players aren't into dying sometimes and rolling up new PCs, this isn't for you.

But my players have really committed to the sense that this is an apocalyptic place where things can go really wrong fast. (Three of five PCs died in our last game and while there was a bit of TPK shellshock at the table, guys were really cool about it.) They love the deviant plot ideas that Greg Vaughan cooked up. Basically, I've never had characters get so deeply invested in a campaign.

This is also an awesome opportunity for players to do a bit of power-gaming. DMs should exercise some caution about this (more on this note later) but with some caveats, and some cautions about way over-powered third-party publishers material, Slumbering Tsar is a great place to battle-test awesome PC builds.

It's also truly epic in length. After roughly forty hours of play, the party has explored perhaps 1/20th of the death zone that Vaughan created, and hasn't even dared to go near the actual city of Tsar that lies at the heart of darkness.

That said, here are some thoughts about things I had to sort out at my game table.

First, the 'sand box' ideal only takes a story so far. After allowing my players to drift and explore a bit, I found that it was necessary to introduce a kind of meta-plot that would pull them forward. They still get to make all the decisions, and can chase squirrels whenever they want. But in my DMing experience, players will eventually need some motivation to keep going.

This turned out to be fairly easy to fix. I pulled forward some of the NPCs and gave them a stronger tie to Orcus's larger conspiracy -- and, frankly, I made it clear much earlier in the adventure that there is indeed a scheme by Orcus underway. Not that all the denizens of the adventure are involved...so there's still just a lot of random weirdness.

The second thing I needed to do was keep refreshing the Camp. This jumping-off point for the adventure and home base is a really iconic setting with colorful, ominous NPCs and a kind of cool ecology of stuff going on. But that gets disrupted pretty quickly as the PCs move in. So I found that I needed to cook up new weird NPCs and new weird denizens that could keep it fresh. This was fun, pretty easy...I mention it only because it's one of the few "must-do" fixes I've found.

Thirdly, the power creep in Pathfinder has somewhat surpassed Slumbering Tsar's infamous lethality. So I've had to carefully, subtly boost the adventure's risk factors. I've also tweaked encounters where Vaughan has created enemies that almost literally can't touch the PCs because of an unbalanced attack-vs.-armor class situation.

I think this largely reflects a new reality in Pathfinder. One BBEG and a lot of super-weak minions just isn't much challenge. Instead, you need a BBEG with a handful of reasonably powerful minions to make an interesting encounter.

I've also somewhat slowed level-advancement progression, using various means, to keep the PCs from outpacing the story's dangers. All in all, the power balance stuff is easily handled.

Finally, a very personal opinion. This is the first adventure I've run in the post 3.0 D&D/Pathfinder era where I felt like miniatures actually got in the way.

Vaughan's encounters and settings are so cinematic, so varied and cool and (sometimes) complex that I just feel like the mechanical fixity of little tabletop figures get in the way and sort of reduces the epic-ness.

Obviously, this is extremely subjective. Some DMs will have a ton of fun creating some of these magnificent set-piece encounters (dwarven patriots battling desperately against waves of undead, mutated spiders swarming up out of a crevasse in the earth).

But I'd at least urge you to experiment with it both ways, trying out your minis, but also trying some sessions without them.

Above all else, I'd encourage you to get this book. It's pricey. But if nothing else, it's an encyclopedic collection of encounters, new monsters, awesomely detailed NPCs and captivating one-off adventures that could drop into any world, any adventure. Played as structured, there is a vast saga here for players to act out and attempt to survive.

--Marsh

[DaveMage]

My players are in Tsar and exploring the citadel.

The main issue I've run into is that I allowed the PCs to sell and make magic items in accordance with Pathfinder rules.

They are therefore decked out to insane levels. The fighter in the party (15th level) does around 50-75 damage/round.

I would suggest anyone running this only allow PCs to make 10% on the gold piece for magic items sold, as the treasure in this adventure is quite rich.

Also, if the players have access to the Death Ward spell, a lot of encounters quickly go from terrifying to a cake-walk.

Still, it's the best published adventure I've ever run, and running it is a lot of fun (and a breeze).

[Anguish]

I actually finished running Tsar after two and a half years, this summer.

In the end, my PCs were about 24th level with 3 mythic tiers. There's plenty of XP if you do basically all the encounters. Since it went on so long, I threw in mythic towards the end to give the guys something new to play with.

I have to warn, my players are clever and have more than a little system mastery. So there were a lot of circumstances where just-the-right-spell was prepared. banishment for instance makes short work of a lot of encounters later in the game. sunburst also deals with large hordes of undead in one fell swoop. There's also an incredibly dangerous demi-lich at one point in the game and it's amusing to read the statblock to find any ability that works in an antimagic field. Hint: you'll find the only functional ability in the Languages line. So, yeah, my group plowed through things.

The story is entertaining but admittedly very thin. Something happened, and here is this place which is the result of that something. Okay, but there's not actually that much to DO, purpose-wise. This is an exploration adventure, not a creation adventure. You don't influence important figures and shape the future. You kill or be killed.

So, well, it was a bit of a grind that way. I threw in a lot of one-shot bad guys and we did a couple side-modules in the middle. One of which involved literally traveling to the moon. I'd recommend being prepared to inject events into the adventure as really, it's structurally a huge, huge dungeon-crawl. That's fine for the first... seven hundred pages. <Grin>

Also, in my game I added a BBEG after the one that's written. I added the big O. Bought a grey-market WotC mini of him and everything. So O lurked on the mantle for nearly a year, and the players never knew for sure when he was going to show up.

Also... random encounters. I can't imagine running this book as written. It'd be a five year job. I mean, the random encounter tables first of all say something like "roll on this every ten minutes of in-game time" and "if an encounter lasts more than three rounds, roll again and make things worse". Seriously? There's just no time for monotonous rehashes of ghoul wolves. Absolutely, positive no criticism of Greg... this thing is BIG, but there's so much time involved that really, adding the random encounters is brutally soul-sucking.

Oh, and my players basically wandered the wastelands on foot (rope trick takes care of all night-time and random encounters and bone storms, BTW) until they hit the right level to get wind walk and then we turbo-blasted through the book, seeking out only set-piece encounters. That seriously helped us not suicide. For what it's worth, that happened something like halfway through exploring the second quadrant, simply due to XP. So yeah, zip, zip, hurray.

As for minis, once the random stuff outside Tsar is done, it's very, very dungeon-crawl and I wouldn't have considered running without a battlemat.

We enjoyed it, bottom line, but like any multi-year campaign, we tailored it to our personalities.

[Captain Marsh]

Thanks for these reviews. Very interesting and obviously worth considering as these DMs are further along the narrative than my group.

I think I agree with everything here - I'm already boosting the plot elements and imagine I'll do more of that as things go along. I think the raw material is in place to make that feel doable.

I also quite agree about throwing Orcus into the mix at the end. I understand why Vaughan didn't. That's Rappan Athuk's climax, if I'm not mistaken.

But I'm just not going to run this AND R-A, so I think I'll probably import him.

I use the random encounters thing just enough to give it the first edition feel and to give a sense that the party is always in peril AND to give a sense that ruckuses in the Desolation tend to attract attention.

More on magic items in my next comment...

--Marsh

[Captain Marsh]

Now, about magic items. The truth is that I'm not much of a rules lawyer. I'm a good solid Pathfinder-familiar DM.

But I don't know the fine print and I don't keep current with what's broken or grievously overpowered the way some DMs have time to do.

So I did the same thing you did initially - allowing PCs to create magic items as per the core rulebooks as written.

About three sessions ago, I called a halt to that. I basically made it clear that any magic item creation needed in-game roleplaying.

I think this is more a commentary on a broken set of rules in PF than on the specific issues of Slumbtering Tsar, but I agree it's something to watch out for.

Now that that's fixed, the ecology of loot inside the adventure is working okay because the players are spending so much money on resurrection spells...

We'll see if that stays on track...and I hope we can keep our group together long enough to finish this. 2 1/2 years - that's awesome.

--Marsh

[DaveMage]

Oh, it's definitely a Pathfinder RPG issue with regard to magic items - not Tsar.

One thing I will eliminate in the future is the ability to add +5 to the craft DC to meet caster level requirements if you don't qualify. From now on, if you don't meet caster level, you don't get to make the item. My players were walking around with +5 weapons when they really should have only had +3. They've bypassed way too many damage reduction encounters with their +5 weapons.

[Anguish]

I allowed liberal crafting in my game but my players weren't going for cheese. Mostly the crafting cleric produced unique items that either filled a roleplay niche or were just cool.

Quick example... I ran a DMPC to give myself an in-character voice. Now, you're thinking "power!" but he was actually a pseudodragon fighter 15 while everyone else was 20th-level and higher. Anyway, the cleric made him sort of a decanter of endless water only it was really a bag of infinite mice. Because... well... snacks.

So, if you encourage creativity and discourage random statboosting, crafting is fine. There is also PLENTY of wealth in Tsar, much of which is stuff PCs won't want. So you really need to have a way to customize things into what the players want.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Guys, thanks for the extremely kind words. :-) I'm glad you're enjoying it. My playtest ran for 7 years, so yeah...all that stuff is true about grind, length of campaign, etc.

I will say this, if you RAW this then you're probably me (or just crazy). I wrote this and tailored it on playtesting to a specific group of players (some very rule-lawyery) and then extrapolated outward from there to make it more universally accessible to other styles of play as best I could. But you're exactly right, as big as this adventure is, even with its level of detail it is at its heart ultimately a sandbox and requires a certain level of modification to individual GM/player tastes. Playing a single game one-off adventure as written is fine, but this should become a fully developed campaign by the time all is said and done and definitely should be tailored to tastes.

Incidentally I put a strong limitation on magic item creation for my players as well about halfway through. But because not everyone takes advantage of the rules in the same way, and I wanted it to be as accessible to as many different types of players as possible I didn't include anything official about it in the text.

Completely non-canonical from the FGG setting that the adventure is set in, I did a tie-in with the Inverted Pyramid from Ptolus for a lot of off-stage interaction and development (very useful in the magic item creation area) and capped the whole thing off with a tie-in to some of the apocalyptic stuff from Elder Evils to give the campaign that 7-years-of-playing climax.

Honestly, when I wrote this I thought very few people would actually buy it and I NEVER thought anyone would actually run it all the way through. So a great many thanks to you guys for the willingness to take a chance and jump in on this thing and then actually enjoy it...and MAJOR KUDOS to anyone crazy enough to finish it. Slumbering Tsar was such a major part of my writing life for so long I love seeing threads about how people are playing it and modifying it. There are a lot of brilliant GMs and players out there, and I love seeing what you guys do with my big, ugly, overweight, demonic baby.

Thanks for sharing!

Greg

[Greg A. Vaughan]

P.S. For more adventure epicness (though on a slightly more manageable scale) for when you finish Tsar, the print copy of Sword of Air (a campaign adventure dating back to Bill Webb's earliest days of gaming in the 70s and 80s and which includes the regional map of our campaign world that encompasses both Bard's Gate and Tsar as well as all the areas covered in the Sword of Air storyline) should be back from the printer in a month or so and then we'll be introducing three more campaign-level adventures in 2015.
1. Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms. Much more travelly and plot-based and not nearly so large as Tsar, but still a pretty cool 6-adventure path of levels 3-15 and a campaign guide of the Sundered Kingdoms (and a guide of the major evil cults found therein) with an awesome regional map that fleshes out a good chunk of the campaign world south of Bard's Gate.
2. The Northlands Saga Complete. A campaign guide and 11-adventure series to take you from 1st level to near 20 with all things viking--maybe be close to Tsar in size (still working on the final page estimate). Lots of new monsters, archetypes, and Norse flavor (including a table of kennings) included in this one. This campaign guide and the truly epic adventures were all developed and were mostly written by an actual archaeologist who specialized in all things Norse, Kenneth Spencer. So this is not just typical adventures dropped in a setting with guys that have horned helmets (because of course they didn't actually have those!--except in the operas), this is some legit retelling of the Norse culture in a fantasy game setting. If you're interested in your game involving things like wyrd, the holmgang, the Things and Althings of the Northlands, rules of hospitality that have real bite and matter in-game, mind's worth, and the choice to give up the ghost in exchange for a legendary death when you feel your end is nigh, then this will be the campaign/adventure path for you. Bonus: it connects within a couple hundred miles of the northern end of the Sword of Air regional map (mentioned above), so it fits seamlessly with your Slumbering Tsar, Rappan Athuk, Stoneheart Valley, Barakus, and assorted other Frog God Games games. "One world...a million games." Hmmm, maybe that could be a good tagline for our campaign setting. I'll give it some thought.
3. The Blight (no idea how big, but somewhere between Cults and Tsar I'm guessing--still waiting on Rich's final turnover). 10-adventure path 1st to ? level and a campagin guide to the most twisted city ever put in print. Richard Pett is a sick, sick man and if you ever read any of the old "Styes" adventures from the days of Dungeon Magazine, then they give you a hint of what's in store but this will be without WotC playing nursemaid and making sure the more disturbing parts don't make it into print and infect the minds of the innocent* (we're perfectly okay with infecting the minds of the innocent it turns out--just don't ask me about the possible future Logue/Agresta spin-off of Razor Coast called Carcass--shudder, it's too painful to even think about).

Anyway, just throwing that out there because I got books to sell and kids to feed...plus I think they're cool and you'll probably like them. ;-)

Thanks again for taking on the Tsar challenge and/or inflicting it on your players.

Greg

*This is in no way a challenge of the decency standards required under the PRD. Just saying it's way more "Hook Mountain Massacre" than "Into the Haunted Forest" is all. :-)

[justmebd]

I am waiting to run my kids and their eventual group through Tsar. They are far too young at the moment, but I already have this in mind and really hope they want to do it in about 8-10 years. (My kids are very young at the moment)

[Greg A. Vaughan]

justmebd wrote:

I am waiting to run my kids and their eventual group through Tsar. They are far too young at the moment, but I already have this in mind and really hope they want to do it in about 8-10 years. (My kids are very young at the moment)

Clearly for you to be considering this, your children must be changelings and you haven't yet given up hope on finding the hag who stole and replaced the actual children and recovering them. So hopefully by the time you plan to run this you'll either have recovered the real children or you'll have finally embraced these poor, innocent changelings as the gift they truly are and grown to love them as if they were you own, thus sparing them the torment and cruelty of going through this adventure. On the other hand if not, meh, who cares about changelings...;-)

Good luck, and have fun!!!

(poor little tykes)

[justmebd]

I PMd you, Greg.

And my oldest looks far too much like me to be a changeling, but the younger one . . . . :)

[Chris Mortika]

Excited for the Blight.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

justmebd wrote:

I PMd you, Greg.

And my oldest looks far too much like me to be a changeling, but the younger one . . . . :)

Just responded. It's always the younger ones...

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Chris Mortika wrote:

Excited for the Blight.

I know, right. It's certainly been a long enough wait for the definitive Styes.

[DaveMage]

I'm really glad Bill gave you the ability to keep the high word count on Tsar. The background info that you provide in so many of the encounters has helped me bring to life the atmosphere (and the evil) of the place.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

DaveMage wrote:

I'm really glad Bill gave you the ability to keep the high word count on Tsar. The background info that you provide in so many of the encounters has helped me bring to life the atmosphere (and the evil) of the place.

One of the writers I admire is Stephen King. His ability to have endless asides about all these fully fleshed-out cool back stories is something that really appeals to me and that I try to emulate when I can. Anyway, I'm glad that you enjoyed that too. I think the story really makes the adventure most of the time, and multiple side stories can make it even better.

[chaoseffect]

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

DaveMage wrote:

I'm really glad Bill gave you the ability to keep the high word count on Tsar. The background info that you provide in so many of the encounters has helped me bring to life the atmosphere (and the evil) of the place.

One of the writers I admire is Stephen King. His ability to have endless asides about all these fully fleshed-out cool back stories is something that really appeals to me and that I try to emulate when I can. Anyway, I'm glad that you enjoyed that too. I think the story really makes the adventure most of the time, and multiple side stories can make it even better.

My players gave me such a look of contempt when they realized the King Kroma was the great, great, great, etc. grandfather-or-something of the dwarves they were fighting to keep safe in the Dead Fields.

One of them had even died in the encounter. Horrifically. That one threw up his hands and just walked away from the table. One of them just glared at me and asked if that was in the module or if I added it just to spite them for my own personal amusement.

And that was the moment they decided as a party "yeah, screw these dwarves."

It made my night that session. 10/10 would reveal again. Thank you for that.

[Anguish]

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

P.S. For more adventure epicness ... something, something, something, Richard, something, something something, Pett, something something.

Well then, I know where my money's going in 2015.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Anguish wrote:

Greg A. Vaughan wrote:

P.S. For more adventure epicness ... something, something, something, Richard, something, something something, Pett, something something.

Well then, I know where my money's going in 2015.

I know this is good for FGG, but somehow this still makes me sad.

(I can actually HEAR Pett gloating over on his island.) :-P

[Geo Fix]

There is a lot of greatness to Slumbering Tsar and my players are really enjoying the open-ended nature of things. When we were packing up last Friday one of the guys casually asked: "how much more is there?" and before I could even draw breath everyone else shouted "Don't answer that!"

Tsar is big, evil, unfair and unpredictable and that is what has my group hooked.

I've also found it very easy to tune it to my group. Either by pulling encounters out or by modifying the behaviors of their opponents.

@ Captain Marsh

You will need mini's / counters when you get indoors. Places like the Crooked Tower are positively claustrophobic result in maneuvering being much more critical.

[Captain Marsh]

Couple of additional notes following my group's latest session this past week:

First, the group I'm playing with is being really cool about essentially negotiating meta-problems. The new magic item restrictions - people got that.

I also have one way over-powered PC. When I raised it with the player as an issue, he was incredibly cool about it. He's working to downscale some of the build that included crazy 3rd part publishing stuff.

I mention this because I do think Slumbering Tsar is the kind of adventure where you want players who know how to collaborate at the table. I feel lucky to have a group like that.

Second, I want to mention that while Slumbering Tsar can be grindy and needs the kind of GM involvement that Greg talks about, the writing and NPC character development is so strong that it really does ease a ton of that.

My group just entered the Chaos Rift and their encounter with Otis and Lortis was really a highlight of the game. I role-played those guys to the hilt and my players kept asking me, "Is all that in there?" -- meaning in the book-as-written.

And I was like, yeah, it really is. The scene of them being lowered down into darkness on the log lift, and then the lift creaking away upward and leaving them down there.

There are so many great scenes like that -- not all combat-oriented -- that it really does sustain...

I'm getting the feedback about using minis later. Thanks for that advice. I'll definitely try another battle-map structured session once we get into the dungeons.

--Marsh

[brvheart]

We are about halfway finished in our game after around a year and a half and yes I am largely running it RAW! I make a few changes here and there, but very little. I feel that most FGG stuff is done well enough I don't have to. As for the treasure, the party is basically paying a 10% tax to the temple of Muir of everything they take and they can only do real crafting in Bard's Gate an no, I don't let them to the +5 thing. They have to meet all crafting requirements. There have been around 14 PC deaths so far so it is no cake walk.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

That's awesome brvheart? Halfway through in a year-and-a-half? Who are you, Quicksilver? You're making me and my paltry record of 7 years look bad. :-) Glad you're enjoying it, even RAW.

[brvheart]

We only play one four hour session every other week now so it has slowed down a bit. We had two running at one time. Just about to enter the Guantlet now. Should be fun:)

[Geo Fix]

Our group is currently in the caverns at level 17. They have bypassed a large portion of the Citadel after finding the Bell by accident. One character is a paladin (replacement for a character eaten bye the bell) who has a good chance of bringing doom down on them all.

Chronology of level advancement and deaths below:

Reached level 7 (started campaign): Aug 14 2013
One Death

Reached level 8: Oct 4 2013 (+7 weeks)
Zero Deaths

Level 9: Nov 29 (+8 weeks)
Three Deaths

Level 10: Jan 10 2014 (+6 weeks, including the Christmas break...we killed the Tar Dragon in level 9)
Three Deaths

Level 11: March 7 (+8 weeks)
Four Deaths

Level 12: April 18 (+6 weeks)
Four Deaths

Level 13: June 20 (+9 weeks)
Five Deaths - all Aran

Level 14: Aug 8 (+7 weeks)
Three Deaths - all from the Moaning Busts in the now torched temple of Orcus

Level 15: Nov 14 (+ 14 weeks)

No Deaths

Level 16: January 9 2015 (+9 weeks)

4 Deaths and a number of retreats plus one avoidance of a TPK by 1

Level 17 Feb 6th (+4 weeks)

No Deaths . . . yet