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So let me first give a bit of context and explanation to what I mean in my topic.
Also, this thread will have spoilers so consider yourself warned.
I have now in my grubby, little nerd mits hard copies of Stoneheart Valley, Rappan Athuk, and Slumbering Tsar. (Parenthetical Aside: Holy eff are those books massive. I mean seriously, RA and ST are beasts.) I decided to add these to a borrowed copy of Bard's Gate for an epic campaign and, just because the I am a sadist, I added Glades of Death at the last minute (PF updates of these books, especially BG would be fantastic).
I adapted this mega campaign to my homebrew world, mostly so I could ignore the geography explained in the books and give my players something familiar. The changes mostly just boil down to a couple of name changes and new overland maps rearranging where things are located to fit my new geography. I then went with a slow XP progression and cut my player's loose.
If anyone else is considering a mega campaign such as this I'm happy to discuss the details of such a game. Also, I would love to pick the brains of anyone else who has tied these products together. That's the point here. :D
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So, first question/advice request. My party has cruised through Wizard's Amulet and are nearly done dealing with the orc threat in Crucible of Freya. I don't know if they are going to head for the shrines next or explore Bard's Gate for a bit. They may get a wild fancy and head down to Rappan Athuk for some swift death, er, I mean adventure... yeah, adventure...
I'm curious what folks have done for plot hooks or delve quests etc. SVs Crucible section has a great part with tons of little adventures to incorporate the presented material and I have been making good use of it. The Abysthor section however, only has a couple paragraphs saying GMs should whip some stuff like that up and then just kind of moves on. RA is kind of the same from what I remember when I read it for a campaign a few years ago (I haven't had the opportunity yet to dive into the tome in earnest). I can go through and come up with things but I decided to tap the collective and see what trickles out.
So what have folks used as plot hooks and quests in these books?
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It's not really what you asked for (and requires further investment) however I think Sword Of Air would be worth a look also for this kind of campaign. Bill described it as a "campaign overlay" a kind of grand, meta-plot which could occur throughout a campaign, sometimes coming to the fore and sometimes receding. It's based around the same region as ST and Stoneheart Valley (or rather, they are small parts within SoA).
It vaulted to the top of my list of all-time favourite RPG products (granted i got the Swords and Wizardry version and generally prefer very open sandboxes/sourcebooks to more linear adventures) - joining Rappan Athuk and the Anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords.
Although I have similar plans for such a campaign, I haven't got much actual preparatory work to share, since I'm a long way off running it. My players don't share my love of a sandbox. They much prefer straightforward Adventure Paths.
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It's not specifically what I asked but it still is in line with the idea behind the thread so suggest away! :D
I started the campaign because I mentioned in passing that Stoneheart Valley, Rappan Athuk, and Slumbering Tsar would make a neat mega campaign to a couple of my sandbox loving, old school friends and they had a squee fit. I plugged Bard's Gate into the mix to give a central location the party could return to. My central theme is the Orcus/Tsathoqqua conflict and the story of the fall of Tsar and the final battle at Rappan Athuk. So, no big plot, just an reoccurring theme.
If I add Sword of Air I think I may break my back attempting to transport the books. Seriously, Slumbering Tsar alone is like an unabridged dictionary. I fear also my players may collapse under the weight of all the adventure material. lol All in all, it's a lot more material to add to an already large game, also, I'm kind of broke and SoA would be another $50-$60 (I just now priced it) I just don't have at my disposal. I run a game store so I get books at cost, which is how I was able to afford the books I just received (all three books plus a copy of Shadowrun Fifth Edition cost me about $160, which is super badass if you're a big game nerd and collector like I am).
For others though, SoA could be a good fit for a Frog God mega campaign. I'm not familiar with the book so I'm interested to hear more about it.
Rise of the Runelords is a fantastic campaign and it deserves the place it has earned as a classic people will be playing and talking about for years to come. My only issue is it's linear nature. I have nothing against linear games it's just I have played almost exclusively that for a VERY long time and I've been itching for a sandbox for a little while now.
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EDIT:
I just checked out the description of Sword of Air and it looks like it could be a great addition to this style of game. I'm not sure how many pages it boasts but with a retail price tag of $99 I imagine it's pretty robust.
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I know this is not helping either but also there is an Rappan Athuk expansion book out there that has some low level sites in it. That book is about $35.00.
Also, there is a lot of wilderness material in RA. The whole area around the main dungeon has stuff going on.
It also has a bunch of rumors that you can seed around.
I think Tsar has a bunch of rumors too. '
I know a lot of folks like to add things and do a bunch of prep but I am running things mostly as they are written. The only additions for me are places that the group has cleaned out and then left for weeks or months at a time. I have been restocking them.
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If the party gets to Bards Gate or the twin shrines they can hear through various means (via the magic armor under the temple of Muir or a temple in BG) about the Stone of Tircople. This is a good starter quest in the old burial halls (Tomb of Abysthor). They could find that and the Chalice and return them for safekeeping.
The exploration of the dungeon alone is likely to lead to a couple of points where the PC's seriously start to question where these bad guys are from and why they're there. You can then incorporate things like the connection to Rappan Athuk, the Earthblood, and other hooks.
Basically, get them in the dungeon and reward them with more information when they go looking for it.
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Sword of Air (PFRPG) is 520 pages.
Given the price tag I assumed it was something like that.
I know this is not helping either but also there is an Rappan Athuk expansion book out there that has some low level sites in it. That book is about $35.00.
Also, there is a lot of wilderness material in RA. The whole area around the main dungeon has stuff going on.
It also has a bunch of rumors that you can seed around.
I think Tsar has a bunch of rumors too. '
I know a lot of folks like to add things and do a bunch of prep but I am running things mostly as they are written. The only additions for me are places that the group has cleaned out and then left for weeks or months at a time. I have been restocking them.
I considered getting the RA expansion because at cost the price is pretty reasonable and from what I hear Castle Calelen (or however it's spelled) is pretty great. For the purposes of my campaign though I'm leery about adding too much stuff.
RA has a ton of rumors and I just leafed through ST and there are a few sections of rumors as well. Rumor tables are very handy for giving reason to go explore either the extensive wilderness areas or extensive dungeons.
I usually do heavy conversion so I end up with about half custom material. This time I'm going with what's written, with a few exceptions such as new wilderness maps to fit the geography of my homebrew world.
I did a ton of work on my own fan version "update" of the Tomb of Abysthor for 3.5, back before the PFRPG release. The document turned more into a rewrite than an update, suggesting some backstory and enriching the adventure with a bunch of suggestions - I don't know how well the result fits with Bard's Gate, Rappan Athuk, or the rest of the FGG pantheon, but folks seemed to like it. If interested, message me your email address and I'll send you the Word doc.
(There's a writeup of a Stirge Swarm...)
I don't know how much use I will get out of it either but I will gladly take a look at it and see what I can pillage.
I know it's too late, but Stoneheart Valley/Crucible of Freya/Tomb of Abysthor are updated to PFS, and were recently in the bundle of holding.
I have Stoneheart Valley, the update and it's really great. The bundle of holding deals are fantastic too.
If the party gets to Bards Gate or the twin shrines they can hear through various means (via the magic armor under the temple of Muir or a temple in BG) about the Stone of Tircople. This is a good starter quest in the old burial halls (Tomb of Abysthor). They could find that and the Chalice and return them for safekeeping.
The exploration of the dungeon alone is likely to lead to a couple of points where the PC's seriously start to question where these bad guys are from and why they're there. You can then incorporate things like the connection to Rappan Athuk, the Earthblood, and other hooks.
Basically, get them in the dungeon and reward them with more information when they go looking for it.
I like those ideas. Good hooks to get them out there to the shrines are hard to find. Then there is nothing to tie the wilderness locations together either.
The best example is a section in the Freya section that has some little adventures that tie locations together or give a little plot or such outside the main plot of orcs in the keep. The hooks for these adventures are mostly pulled from the rumors table so it's not difficult to put together things from the rumor table, or the hooks laid out in various places within the dungeons or such in the other books, it's just so much more convenient to have the information put together in one place and have a little more flesh to them such as NPC reactions to events and so on. A good example is the missing adventurers adventure.
So RA and presumably also ST have the rumors to build these things from but the Abysthor section is strangely lacking even a rumors table. It has about a paragraph essentially telling me to do it myself. lol
BG is almost exclusively setting and NPCs. There's not really any plot outside the abbey and the gnolls.
For example, there could be a great little adventure dealing with the gibbering orb (originally a beholder). However, as far as I can tell, he just kind of lives there waiting for the party to go hex crawling.
Yeah I had to buy extra heavy duty shelf units for all my FGG and pathfinder books and even those are sagging! I learned a long time ago I am no longer mobile with all of this so we set up gaming at our home.
I like to lug around Rappan Athuk and Slumbering Tsar in a messenger bag so I can show them off and impress chicks.
I'm guessing lugging those two books around in a messenger bag is part of Frog God Games wellness initiative....
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I'm a player in an RA campaign and we've tackled the Mouth of Doom, Gut and some of RA. The first segments work really well for a fetch quest in the Mouth that leads to a chase through the Gut into RA. My party currently has some souls on hawk to some devils in return for the destruction of a "temple", which as a DM you might be able to fashion as an end to the segment, assuming there actually is a temple in our near future and it isn't so tough as to wipe the whole party.
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I'm a player in an RA campaign and we've tackled the Mouth of Doom, Gut and some of RA. The first segments work really well for a fetch quest in the Mouth that leads to a chase through the Gut into RA. My party currently has some souls on hawk to some devils in return for the destruction of a "temple", which as a DM you might be able to fashion as an end to the segment, assuming there actually is a temple in our near future and it isn't so tough as to wipe the whole party.
There are temples in your future, have no fear.
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I am also myself planning for our next mega-sandbox to be based primarily on Frog God Games material :)
Much like you it seems, i will be putting everything on my own homebrew map, that will include Endhome and environs and The Lost City of Barakus dungeon, as well as the small hamlet of Zelkors Ferry and of course... The Rappan Athuk :)
I will also include the Tomb of Abyshtor.
I will place Barakus north of Endhome (simply following the maps in the Barakus book). South-southwest of Endhome will be Zelkors Ferry and south of that The Mouth of Doom and the rest of RA. West of Endhome along the road will be Hommlet and the Moathouse (converted to PF), and a little further west-northwest the Tomb of Abyshtor.
Directly south of Endhome will be the Lonely Coast (from Raging Swan Press), that will include the modules Retribution and Road of the Dead, and possibly also Against the Cult of the Bat God.
I also plan to include a few more converted old school dungeons (from Lamentations of the Flame Princess) namely The Tower of the Stargazer, Grinding Gear and Death Frost Doom (losely converted to PF, possibly just "converted" ad-hoc as we play).
I am also done with the setting now, and am starting to create different hooks and rumours for the different starting locations (the main starting locations are Hommlet, Endhome and Swallowfeld on the Lonely Coast)
I might post some more here later on, if that would interest you, possibly maps when they are finished.
Rules wise I will be running the campaign on the Slow XP track as well as giving only 25-50% XP for monsters slain/overcome. They will be getting XP for gold on the other hand, as well as XP from quests completed and for mapping dungeons and for writing session reports (small bonus).
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I am also myself planning for our next mega-sandbox to be based primarily on Frog God Games material :)
Much like you it seems, i will be putting everything on my own homebrew map, that will include Endhome and environs and The Lost City of Barakus dungeon, as well as the small hamlet of Zelkors Ferry and of course... The Rappan Athuk :)
I will also include the Tomb of Abyshtor.I will place Barakus north of Endhome (simply following the maps in the Barakus book). South-southwest of Endhome will be Zelkors Ferry and south of that The Mouth of Doom and the rest of RA. West of Endhome along the road will be Hommlet and the Moathouse (converted to PF), and a little further west-northwest the Tomb of Abyshtor.
Directly south of Endhome will be the Lonely Coast (from Raging Swan Press), that will include the modules Retribution and Road of the Dead, and possibly also Against the Cult of the Bat God.
I also plan to include a few more converted old school dungeons (from Lamentations of the Flame Princess) namely The Tower of the Stargazer, Grinding Gear and Death Frost Doom (losely converted to PF, possibly just "converted" ad-hoc as we play).I am also done with the setting now, and am starting to create different hooks and rumours for the different starting locations (the main starting locations are Hommlet, Endhome and Swallowfeld on the Lonely Coast)
I might post some more here later on, if that would interest you, possibly maps when they are finished.
Rules wise I will be running the campaign on the Slow XP track as well as giving only 25-50% XP for monsters slain/overcome. They will be getting XP for gold on the other hand, as well as XP from quests completed and for mapping dungeons and for writing session reports (small bonus).
That sounds VERY similar to the campaign I put together and a lot of fun. For me the big part was putting together the setting and placing all of the locations on maps but once that was done my job of running the game is considerably easier. I'm actually running the game in D&D 5e and doing conversions as we come to them but the monsters are mostly old school and presented in the Monster Manual. Those that aren't are easy enough to convert or reskin an existing monster. If I were running it in Pathfinder, which was my other choice but my players chose 5e, my job would be even easier since everything except Bard's Gate is already written in PFRPG. I'm interested to hear how your campaign pans out since we are kind of doing the same thing only with slightly different material.
My players have been really enjoying the campaign though they are complaining about the slow XP progression and the fact that they are still only low level, having just hit 4th. Otherwise, they are raving about the game. They are really embracing the sandbox nature and are alternating between quests and hex crawling. They have yet to venture into a big dungeon but I suspect when they do they will switch to dungeon delving as well.
The big thing I have noticed however is the sheer massive amount of material I am presenting to them. They have finished Wizard's Amulet but are still deep in Crucible of Freya. They finished the keep but are still exploring the land around Fairhill. They are talking about going to my reskinned Bard's Gate, but have yet to actually do so. There is just so much for them to do I have no doubt they will never touch all of it.
Kudos to the fine folks at Frog God Games for presenting material that is so much fun to play.
@Joshua: How do you - and your players - like Wizards Amulet and Crucible of Freya? And what is your opinion on running 5th ed vs running Pathfinder? I am curious to know your experiences and thoughts?
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@Joshua: How do you - and your players - like Wizards Amulet and Crucible of Freya? And what is your opinion on running 5th ed vs running Pathfinder? I am curious to know your experiences and thoughts?
We have absolutely LOVED the adventures. They are solid and a lot of fun. If you have a party that want solid plot then it is totally there. If you want smaller plots, it has those also. If you want a sandbox, you can play it that way too. It's really really great. My group hasn't left the Fairhill region yet so I can't speak to the same versatility in the other material I'm using but it looks to be more of a sandbox style than a plot driven style. Stoneheart Valley has been worth every penny.
As far as PFRPG vs 5e, they aren't really that different. Both are great systems and I love them both. Pathfinder is robust and solid while 5e is a more fast and loose kind of rules style so it all comes down to how you and your players enjoy interacting with the rules of the game.
I am really sorry for resurrecting this thread, but I am now tackling a similar type of Campaign, and would love to know more about how others have done it. Even though the thread is very old, I believe it is still relevant.
So my first question (let us see if anyone spots it) is: There is a big discrepancy between the Stoneheart Valley product map, and the Bard’s Gate map for the same region. Did this affect in any way your placement of the Waystations along the Tradeway? (I believe originally they were set about 18 miles apart from each other? But with the most recent scale change, this means there are about… 200 miles of Tradeway between Bard’s Gate and the fork to Fairhill alone. With Waystations placed every 18 miles, that would mean 10 of those just in this first stretch)