After enjoying the WotR Adventure Card Game and after finding RotR much more enjoyable to run with all the resources from the RotR Card Game, I picked up WotR and just finished reading through it. Despite all the problems people have (accurately) identified here, I'm thinking about running the path in a few years. I wanted to open a thread to discuss a specific kind of reworking with anyone who's run the path or is interested in improving it.
Some quick background first: I've been a GM for over 30 years and ran several campaigns that went into the 40's in level; when 3.0 came out, my group spent about 6 months familiarizing ourselves with the system and then I wrote a set of epic rules so they could convert their 20+ level characters. When the actual epic rules came out, I thought most of the choices they made were bad ones; I was such a balance hawk that that campaign ran until the end with 3.0 haste allowing two spells per round without being overpowered or broken. Whether I eventually decide to make massive changes to the Mythic rules or whether I simply patch in my epic rules to Pathfinder and fast-track the PCs to 25th level or higher, I’m not worried about making the encounters challenging or the game-balance right for my players. I’m also not worried about any minor errors in monster or encounter design (although I’m still annoyed that several Paizo writers don’t seem to know that Sending has a 10 minute casting time).
Where I want to rework involves a lot of story elements and choices that feel off to me, sometimes bafflingly so. I’ll provide a quick overview and then give two concrete examples of how to rework the path, one for The Worldwound Incursion and one for City of Locusts.
Themes of Redemption and Corruption: this sort of thing is tough to pull off in a published adventure, but I find WotR frustrating because it sketches out something thematically wonderful and then keeps dropping the thread. Redemption is basically clear, and rules are provided for it, but the adventures do a lousy job of providing opportunities. Adventures 1 & 4 don’t even seem to realize redemption as a theme. And stressing to players that they should look to redeem their foes, except demons who are evil and they can just kill (except for the pre-redeemed demon they’ll meet, who isn’t and they shouldn’t), not only massively oversimplifies the issue but IMO ruins the whole point of the theme.
Which brings me to Corruption, which is understandably trickier but utterly mishandled in the published path. There’s very little trust shown in either GM or players to handle difficult issues here, particularly issues like working with demon lords out of necessity. The Midnight Isles, in particular, trivializes the whole railroaded plot point by handing out talismans of true faith which render any matter of corruption for the PCs entirely moot. It’s perhaps understandable that the writers didn’t opt to explore PC corruption, on the assumption that a CE PC becomes unplayable in the path, but this sort of binary approach is too simplistic even for a strict alignment-system. Players shouldn’t be worried that a single bad decision strips their characters of power or renders them unplayable, but that’s a matter of trust between players and GM and not Paizo’s responsibility. I want my players discussing when they’re doing the right or wrong thing and I want consequences when they make choices, whatever the choices are. The Adventure Card Game does a much better job of tempting characters than this path does.
An easy fix for the Corruption problem is to focus, as Sword of Valor does, on possible or actual corruption of NPCs. That runs the risk of making the game about NPCs, not PCs, but if players like certain NPCs that can work out. A harder approach would be to have actual rewards and costs for PC behavior throughout, perhaps by extending the Devotion Point mechanic of The Worldwound Incursion. Have the deities or mythic beings associated with the PCs monitor their progress and reward them for acting “properly,” for varying definitions of “proper.” Actually, making mythic progression work in this way, with new powers and abilities as gifts or rewards, could also solve the balance issues as PCs would be awarded things like mythic feats and spells instead of selecting them. The players wouldn’t control what they get, but instead would determine whether they get anything at all based on the play decisions they make.
Epic Scope/Epic Confrontation: Early WotR seems to do better at this sort of thing than late WotR. As I suggested, I have a lot of past experience with epic play, and I’m shocked at some of the missed opportunities here. I’m certainly going to do a lot more with the Lexicon of Paradox, following some suggestions in other threads here, including having the PCs discover it and having its study (and the potential corruption one risks through said study) be a part of the campaign. Reworking things like army combat, depending on my players’ interests, could also help. But I’m interested in anything which can be added or modified to produce a sense of scale and significance, as opposed to fighting another epic foe in a cave or a brothel.
Examples:
For The Worldwound Incursion, I’ll be including three corruption/redemption moments for the three NPCs who begin with the PCs. Each of the three should have a moment once they return to the surface where corruption is a real possibility. Of the three, Horgus Gwerm will be the one who resists without any help, which I think will help endear him to the PCs and help his story-line and development, if they realize that deep down he has the firm strength of character his backstory indicates.
For Anevia, the temptation will be despair. Vagorg will declare that he’s already killed Irabeth, both to hurt her and to gain an advantage in the subsequent fight, and she’ll believe him. Distressed, she’ll not think to check the secret alcove and if left alone, she’ll kill herself. The PCs will have to restore her hope, mainly through role-play, at which point she’ll find the note and thank them profusely.
Aravashnial is trickier, especially as I don’t want despair to be his thing. Anyone have ideas?
With Horgus, I think I’ll have someone stop by his manor and claim to have taken his servants hostage, so the temptation will be one of greed. He’ll naturally pay the ransom, even though the servants in question robbed him of everything they could get their hands on, but the PCs could intervene to make certain the hostages are returned unharmed and the evil-doers punished. (Faxon could turn out to be behind the thing himself.)
For the City of Locusts ending, I’ll do what seems obvious and up the stakes of the Closing ritual. The previous closing in The Midnight Isles required people doing things at both sides of the rift in question. Clearly, that should be the case here, too. Doing the logical, Queen Galfrey sets the Sword of Valor up in Threshold on the Prime Material, but someone will have to take part of the Lexicon through to F21 and Deskari’s realm to do the ceremony there. Deskari can attack this group directly during the performance of the ceremony—much more epic a conclusion, and also much more sensible than the present version, IMO.
When the ceremony is successfully completed, I’ll use the description of the world dropping away for anyone on the Rifts-side, then cut to the folks in Threshold (probably mostly or all NPCs given the obvious differences in safety between the two sides). After a brief discussion of how the PCs haven’t returned despite the ceremony’s success, they’ll drop some divinations and determine that the PCs (or whoever) are now incapacitated and in the center of Deskari’s realm.
Cue the rescue attempt, with players running cohorts, NPCs and the like as needed. All those the PCs helped and redeemed in the past adventures will gather together to help in whatever way they can. I can just picture Alderpash handing a PC a spare spellbook, immediately post-rescue, and saying, “While I appreciate the opportunity to advance my own redemption, I’d appreciate it if you were a little more careful about throwing your life away next time!”
The rescued PCs then likely take the opportunity to finish Deskari for good, if that hasn’t already happened as part of the rescue.
So, that’s a glimpse of where I’d start and end things. What ideas do other people have for the vast in-between?
