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I've got an interesting problem I'm trying to plan for before starting this path, and I'd like to get thoughts from other GMs who might have already handled it.
My group is big on the Iomedan angle in Kintargo, suggested-culture-be-damned. The Player's Guide suggests that the Glorious Reclamation should elicit head-shakes from Iomedans in Kintargo, but it would really, really help to have a solid reason why, other than 'the Glorious Reclamation is stirring the pot'. After all, the PCs in Kintargo are about to do the exact same thing themselves.
I've got a few ideas on how to keep Iomedan PCs separated from the Glorious Reclamation in thought and in deed, but they're likely to fall apart as soon as Hell's Vengeance comes out. That's my real frustration in trying to plan this out in any kind of elegant manner. That said, here are some of the attempts I've made in my planning notes:
- The Glorious Reclamation's leader is not native to Cheliax. He/she is basically a bull in the china shop, with no real understanding of the local customs, social mores, and consequences that might occur because of certain actions. As such, that leader keeps making obvious mistakes, getting good people killed, and drawing attention when subtlety might have been more advisable. Basically, any rebellious Iomedan organizations actually native to Cheliax, which might have been slowly building up resources for a rebellion proper, have just had their plans rudely upended by some well-intentioned but arrogant outsider who thinks they know best. This outsider angle also helps starkly separate local Iomedans in a literal way-- even if this outside leader has amassed native followers, it would certainly chafe longstanding Iomedans to watch a bunch of recent fresh-faced converts join the Reclamation, and go immediately running off to their deaths.
- (Possibly in addition to 1) The Glorious Reclamation has a zero-tolerance attitude toward evil. A large number of Chelaxians are LE, or at least tolerant of such attitudes. If you kill everyone in Cheliax who's evil, you may not have much of a country left to save. So far in my games, I've portrayed good-aligned religions in Cheliax as being more predisposed toward redemption than smiting, rather by necessity. If we go with point 1 as being true, outside Iomedans would be much more smite-y than redemptive, and therefore their methods might strike native Iomedans as shortsighted and/or actively harmful to the people of Cheliax.
That said, since we're hoping to eventually use stuff from Hell's Vengeance and not conflict with it outright, I'm worried that this take on the Glorious Reclamation will immediately conflict with the way those modules are set up. It's probably bugging me all out of proportion to the possibility, but I'm still interested in seeing if other people have dealt with the problem differently.
While I could always just tell PCs "Don't play an Iomedan" (who am I kidding, I *hate* doing that), I'd rather just provide them with roleplaying fodder ("Damn those Glorious Reclamation fools! Did you hear that they did X? They're going to get us all killed! Now we have to clean up the mess they've made out of our city!").
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
How about you use your GM powers and tell the players "you know what, that whole Glorious Reclabumble thingy doesn't exist in my canpaign"?
Probably not an option he wants to pursue because he is planning on running and incorporating Hell's Vengeance stuff into the AP, which pretty much revolves around the Glorious Reclamation as the Big Bad...err...Big Good.
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I'd just put the glorious reclamation action so far away that if the PCs were to try to get involved with it they'd be abandoning Kintargo to it's fate. Keep them busy in Kintargo and it won't matter what they think of the glorious reclamation.
Fine, they think they support that thing on the other side of the country that they've only heard vague weeks old rumors about... by the way, the hideout is under attack... and on fire... again.
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How about you use your GM powers and tell the players "you know what, that whole Glorious Reclabumble thingy doesn't exist in my canpaign"?
As above, my group *wants* to eventually do both games, and we're explicitly interested in having easter eggs between those games.
Let's just leave it at "I *could* decide not to include the Glorious Reclamation, but that's not what I *want* to do, and it's not what my players want to do, either." It's basically completely contrary to why we wanted to play two linked APs in the first place, and why we decided on running these two in particular.
I think my biggest issue is that while this related-AP thing sounds great in theory, the writers seem to be going back and forth between the selling point of having two linked APs and the reality of 'we're not actually prepared for you to link these two APs in any way, so just don't do it'. It's creating a disproportionate amount of confusion for us, especially since we were so excited about the premise at first.
I'd just put the glorious reclamation action so far away that if the PCs were to try to get involved with it they'd be abandoning Kintargo to it's fate. Keep them busy in Kintargo and it won't matter what they think of the glorious reclamation.
Fine, they think they support that thing on the other side of the country that they've only heard vague weeks old rumors about... by the way, the hideout is under attack... and on fire... again.
This was one of my original ideas, but in practice, Hell's Rebels encourages a more relaxed pace with its here-and-there adventures and rebellion tracking sheet type rules. If I just keep hammering at the PCs to keep them exhausted, that's going to lead to unhappiness (we went through this exact scenario in Council of Thieves, actually, in some respects). Basically, most of the appeal of a rebellion game is in the free-form nature of it.
But if I *don't* keep it difficult to take a breath and/or leave the city, the natural inclination is going to be to hook up with the large, intimidating force that started this whole rebellion thing and actually made Thrune sit up and take notice.
Honestly, I think that's a fair thing to worry about even in a campaign that doesn't heavily feature Iomedans. Because if you're a rag-tag group of good-aligned PCs that needs allies, why *wouldn't* you go after some help from the big, well-funded, well-supported rebel force that happens to totally share your leanings? There's got to be a better reason to supply than the incredibly generic, airy one supplied in the AP, which went something like 'They're presumably doing the rebel thing wrong, but we can't give you any specific instances of what they've done that even people from their own religion disapprove of.'
...am I really the only GM having this problem?
Creative Director
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Distance is one way to keep the Glorious Reclamation away... but also, there's a lot of Iomedans who do NOT approve of what they're up to. The Glorious Reclamation is headstrong and doesn't necessarily think things through... they're acting before thinking, and striking at Cheliax before the time is right, and a lot of Iomedans (including all those few in the Kintargo area) feel, in effect, that the GR has kicked the hornet nest when the anti-hornet gear is still on the way, and now that they've kicked the nest early, those canny hornets will figure out how to entrench and will be even TOUGHER to get rid of.
So I'd aim the PCs at that role.
If they REALLY want to play Glorious Reclamation characters to take out Thrune and redeem Cheliax... they don't want to play Hell's Rebels, unfortunately.
Hell's Rebels is meant, thematically, to work best with chaotic good characters. The best AP we've done so far for lawful good characters would be Wrath of the Righteous.
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If they REALLY want to play Glorious Reclamation characters to take out Thrune and redeem Cheliax... they don't want to play Hell's Rebels, unfortunately.
I don't get the impression that they want to join the GR, necessarily, just that they're coming up short on reasons not to look for the occasional help from them.
The Glorious Reclamation is headstrong and doesn't necessarily think things through... they're acting before thinking, and striking at Cheliax before the time is right, and a lot of Iomedans (including all those few in the Kintargo area) feel, in effect, that the GR has kicked the hornet nest when the anti-hornet gear is still on the way, and now that they've kicked the nest early, those canny hornets will figure out how to entrench and will be even TOUGHER to get rid of.
I can definitely understand the frustration of someone kicking off a rebellion before anyone is ready to deal with it. However, halfway intelligent PCs (and mine are) will be willing to look past that distaste once they realize that they're going to be starting their own rebellion as a result, and will therefore need rebel-type support. That's basically the crux of our issue.
Thankfully, we're a group that's big on talking about these issues and settling on solutions together. After having a chat with some players, this is what we've basically come down to so far:
-As-written, it's still a bit difficult for even non-Iomedan PCs to avoid the temptation of asking the Glorious Reclamation for eventual help. The PCs might even disapprove of their actions, but they're still a big game in town, as far as rebellions go, so "why not bug them for help with the mess they started". I honestly don't have a good answer for that, other than the distance factor, and by Turn of the Torrent, the GR will be even closer.
-This normally wouldn't be an issue-- I'm pretty good on my feet as a GM, and just having the GR send a few trinket items and an NPC their way would be a tame task-- but it's going to cause unavoidable conflicts with the eventual Hell's Vengeance stuff.
-Because of this, we're most likely scrapping plans for Hell's Vengeance, running an open-world Hell's Rebels as-is, and crossing our fingers that any spur-of-the-moment decisions I have to make for them won't wreck our ability to run Hell's Vengeance later. Honestly, no one had any better ideas than that. If we can actually make the next AP work anyway, it'd be kind of fun to set up an occasional visit from a benevolent GR NPC in this game, only to have the PCs try to kill that dratted do-gooder NPC in the next game. (That is, if you share our particular sense of humour, it's fun.) :D
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Creative Director
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The main reason the Glorious Reclamation won't help is because their resources are limited, and they're focusing on big targets. Kintargo is small potatoes to them. For the same reason Cheliax doesn't send more troops to keep it under control, the Glorious Reclamation won't; Kintargo is seen as a kind of backwater. It's the smallest of the legitimate cities in the nation, after all, and the fact that it's underestimated is what makes it the perfect place for rebellion from within.
And the fact that the Glorious Reclamation ignores them because they're focused elsewhere should do well to make them not too likable (which is kinda the point) and make the Iomedans and the other good guys work together to free the region themselves rather than look for help from without.
In fact, if you can get your players to not like the Glorious Reclamation, you kill 2 birds with 1 stone; you get them to help themselves win without help in Hell's Rebels, and you get them to want to get revenge on the Reclamation in Hell's Vengeance.
Isn't Kintargo also really far from a lot of the major cities of Cheliax? I would think that trying to get help from the reclamation, especially with the city under martial law, would require PC's to just straight up leave Kintargo. Which would mean skipping out on a lot of AP events.
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@James Jacobs: That's exactly the help I was looking for, thanks! I can even keep that cross-over NPC, but make him a real jerk who only talks to them long enough to tell them how uninterested the GR is in them and their tiny city's problems. Once Hell's Vengeance comes around, it'll be "Ohh... *that* guy."