Contributor
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Thank you to those who provided helpful comments. On top of everything else, I just had to have my wisdom teeth out, so I'll be running this during the recovery period... at a convention... possibly without power for my laptop.
Wish me all of Desna's and Cayden Cailean's luck combined - I might need it! ^_^
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Well, if it is at a con you can probably skip the optional, which will save you a map and a set of stat blocks :)
(assuming a four hour con slot, you would need to muster, do two briefings, do an investigative sand box, and a cut scene in under an hour in order to get to the optional.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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In the final encounter, how deep is the area where water is depicted? I am guessing 1-2 feet, deep enough for the creature that is back there to swim, and shallow enough for it to count as 2 squares for everyone else.
Granted, that is going to suck for it's zombie...
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In the final encounter, how deep is the area where water is depicted? I am guessing 1-2 feet, deep enough for the creature that is back there to swim, and shallow enough for it to count as 2 squares for everyone else.
Granted, that is going to suck for it's zombie...
That seems reasonable. That fight and especially that zombie are pretty much a walkover.
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I think it may be more important just to make sure you are using the last names every time you talk about them, and make sure you don't get last names mixed up. I mean, it's not like the PCs will ever see then names written down, so it's fine if they can't remember which jack is spelled which way.Prepping this for next Friday, in a convention's 6-10:30. The comments here are not giving me much confidence...It's rough, part of it is that all three names are pronounced pretty much the same(technically jax and jacks ARE pronounced the same). so when speaking the scenario instead of reading it, confusion WILL run rampant. I'd suggest little cards with their spelling on it so you can hold them up, and emphasize little differences in each name. Also there is almost too much to do in town and too long for them to do it before stuff starts happening, stretching the first part out, where it is actually impossible for them to actually accomplish anything other then raising the awareness, isn't very fun.
When I ran it, I had Poppo explicitly spell out the names, both first and last. Luckilly, I have some good players and one of them had the common sense to write all three down, along with his real name, so the PCs weren't too surprised.
The thing that really miffed the PCs was that they decided to basically ignore the 'business' faction and worked for the white thistles. They expressly hated the Chellaxian faction (even the player playing the 'pro-Chelliax' character) for various reasons. They vilified them, but at the end, it was the Business guys that attacked (Because they had largely ignored them, not wanting to interfere with what little commerce was happening, that faction had the fewest points) A lot of the players were confused and annoyed.
If I had to do it over again, I'd make the Chellaxian faction the guys who attacked. Ignore the point system and just choose whichever group the PCs piss off the most.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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So game went off well.
The sandbox was a little slow. I probably should have just nudged them to fast forward a bit. (They got his noodle note, figured it out, but also were worried that letting him carry out his plan might set off the riots they were warned to prevent in the briefing, so they wasted a lot of time trying to figure out if they could get to him before the show.)
The Strix fight was awesome. The Strix got one PC in a net, from 10 feet up, at which point the monk made a truely awesome vertical leap, made an incredible grapple check, grabbed it by it's legs, and slammed it to the ground (strix couldn't fly with the monk added to his encumberance.) At which point the other strix flew higher to pepper them with arrows, and got peppered in return.
The whale got a lot of "wait, you mean really a whale? We are escaping *inside* a *dead* *whale*?"
They were attacked by the loyalists, and their allies were white thistles. The mage got initiative, and demanded their surrender, and "readied her action, to respond if you resist, reaching into a belt pouch." At which point the PCs went "Oh s---, arcane caster!" someone tried to shoot her, at which point I described her as beginning to chant some arcane words, the one person close enough to attack her was flat footed and couldn't stop her, and she bought her hand out of the pouch and stared in horror at the white thistles clutched in her hand, and began cursing. The party lost it, cheering and laughing. I believe several people said that was the best thing they had seen written into a scenario. The feeling that what they had done influenced the outcomes was rewarding, and the thematic nature of the sabotage was awesome. (After that the mage was stomped into the dirt, though out of respect to the white thistle they did switch to non lethal. Her shipmates never even made it down the ladder.)
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The whale got a lot of "wait, you mean really a whale? We are escaping *inside* a *dead* *whale*?"
I gave each of my players a special note on their sheets that if they got the ship boon (from the field guide) that they could instead have the whale (with the same mechanical stats as the ship.) I got the VC (who was playing) to sign it.
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The whale got a lot of "wait, you mean really a whale? We are escaping *inside* a *dead* *whale*?"I gave each of my players a special note on their sheets that if they got the ship boon (from the field guide) that they could instead have the whale (with the same mechanical stats as the ship.) I got the VC (who was playing) to sign it.
There are actual mechanical stats for the ship vanity?
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I ran this last night and at the end the party's spiritualist goes "Is that a dead whale carcass? I CAST GRAVE WORDS!" I ruled that the one round the whale corpse babbled caused it to flood with a foot of water making it difficult terrain for everyone and super difficult terrain (3 movement for one square) for the parties 2 halflings.
After Poppo yelled at him to not do that again, he was ordered to the back of the whale to sit on a crate (actually the player didn't want to stand in water and being a very old tengu sat on a crate in the back)
I decided the influx of water caused a certain parasite to awaken sooner which the spiritualist was near... While everyone was fighting the invaders that ting almost claimed the spiritualist but the gunslinger blew it up with a crit and almost punched a hole in the whale (but it was aimed at the back of the throat)
I also decided to add some more drama and after a couple rounds Poppo started yelling for directions and when no one replied, he hit some rocks tilting the whale and causing all the water to rush to one side. After combat a halfling swam to an eye and yelled "GO RIGHT" but no one was watching the right eye to warn him about the Chelish Frigate he plowed into...
All in all this will be one of the more memorial scenarios I've ever ran.
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So I ran this last night. the party had the usual run around and adventure shenanigans. A gnome used bluff in place of a poetry check to try to sound profound while spewing gobbley g~#! and got agood roll. They pretended it was the first hogsmeade weekend for the party hunter and took him to the brothel. The female gnome and female halfling pretended to be getting married to chat up the dress maker about a diamond ring so.. the usual.
Then Jack starts his speech.
The witch casts lipstitch on him after 3 words. The (now well known) Gnome runs up to take over while the party just bum rushes him and drags him outside. (since he's out of costume, no one knows who he is and one warm up act is just as good as another)
There go half the encounters. :)
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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So I ran this last night. the party had the usual run around and adventure shenanigans. A gnome used bluff in place of a poetry check to try to sound profound while spewing gobbley g%@+ and got agood roll. They pretended it was the first hogsmeade weekend for the party hunter and took him to the brothel. The female gnome and female halfling pretended to be getting married to chat up the dress maker about a diamond ring so.. the usual.
Then Jack starts his speech.
The witch casts lipstitch on him after 3 words. The (now well known) Gnome runs up to take over while the party just bum rushes him and drags him outside. (since he's out of costume, no one knows who he is and one warm up act is just as good as another)
There go half the encounters. :)
Sounds like the common sense ratio of the scenario went up though.
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I put together some handouts for my players before running this last week and chucked them (the handouts, not the players) onto PFSprep: Link
The first is a little guide that Poppo drew up to help his Passfinder friends keep track of their quarry's secret identities. They can take notes on it. Or not.
The second is a set of broadsheets attributed to the mysterious Printsmith, who needs some introduction prior to Olandil's big reveal. Perhaps the PCs can find them posted here and there as they explore the town?