So with Seven Days to the Grave fast approaching and the need to get all my prep-work started so that I can have things hopefully flowing well into the story, I think it's time to kick off the discussion of how to go about fixing what needs fixing in Book 2, and hopefully creating a much more solid experience for the players.
Now, my working premise is that on the whole, Seven Days isn't actually that bad. Certainly not as badly paced and fumbled as the introduction to Edge of Anarchy was, meaning that it may not actually need any major overhauls to the story.
The problem I have is that as it's written, Seven Days doesn't have a whole lot of what I really love, which is horror atmosphere. I mean, it certainly has some, and they're pretty great. But the problem is that they don't carry through to the rest of the book. So my working goal is, hopefully, to alter every section so that the feeling of uneasiness and "horror" persists throughout the entire chapter, eventually building at a climax with the Temple fight.
So let's dive right in:
Part One: Infection
The chapter starts with the sinking of the Plague Ship, the first symptoms springing up, and the players meeting and hopefully curing Brienna Soldado. There's really not much I want to add here, though I think there needs to be a decent chunk of time with the players engaged in activity
Part Two: Outbreak
Unfortunately, outside of the activity of pushing through a mob of angry/scared citizens, this chapter isn't actually all that interesting. It contains a lot of the players being monologued to, first by Vencarlo, then by the priest of Abadar, then by Marshall Kroft and Davalus. There's no real investigation here, no combat, nothing to really pass any time. So that's the first bit.
Ideas:
-Stretch the initial outbreak of the disease out, probably over the course of some investigation content so the players can actually see the descent into madness and disease.
-One early idea that hits me is the old Gamemastery module "Gallery of Evil" to fill this early time, heavily re-written for the purposes here. The concept I am playing with is one of setting up a villain directly opposite to Blackjack for the course of this chapter, a sort of Joker to Blackjack's Batman, in the form of Victor Saint-Demain (the humiliated Inquisitor who went insane after failing to recover the Queen's Brooch). However, due to the horror nature of the story, I am thinking of making him a vicious murderer. More details to be worked out, but I think giving him a "signature" murder style, something gruesome and dramatic would fit his twisted need to reclaim his old fame...
Part Three: Pestilence
This part is strange because a lot of the sub-sections of it really dispense with all of the horror atmosphere completely. But most importantly, there isn't really any central, unifying theme or plot thread that runs through all of the scenes. They exist to give the players a wide-reaching effect on the city as far as saving people from the plague, but none are actually connected. There's vampires...but they don't really do anything or tie to any large vampire plot in the city. There's wererats...but they don't really connect anywhere and just happen to be a colony of rats that exists to be killed. Carowyn Manor is a great set-piece...but it isn't a link in a chain that leads anywhere. These are the issues I want to fix.
The Hungry Dead (Vampires in Racker's Alley)
The Color of Death (Dismantling Lavender's scam)
Plague Rats (Colony of Wererats in the sewers)
The Direption (Diving with hags)
Carowyn Manor (Zombie nobles)
I want to find a unifying storyline that leads continuously from the initial outbreak of the disease right through to the Urgathoa temple at the end, ideally one that the players don't realize they're tangled in until the end. This is where I'll do a lot of tinkering.
Ideas:
-The disease was created by the cult of Urgathoa, meaning they're going to be the central pillar of the trail the players follow. This is majorly where I'm having trouble coming up with ideas.
-I know somewhere along the line I want to hint at Urgathoa's presence in the city. I want to do this by basically running a modified version of Carrion Hill, a horror-themed module where an invisible monster tears through buildings and leaves crushed and mangled bodies in it's wake. It's got lunatic asylums, murder, and plenty of horror. I plan on re-writing this so that the monster featured is one of the Leukodaemons, the pestilence demons the Urgathoa cult summoned and contained to create the disease, having escaped containment and gone on a rampage through a wealthy part of the city.
-One of my players has a sick mother resting in a small church of Sarenrae, with a younger brother lost somewhere in the city. I am still
unsure as to how I want to handle this, but anywhere I can make them rescue the brother is something I need to work on.
-I want to extend the Vampire storyline into something much longer and farther reaching. I'll have to comb through my materials for a module that includes vampires as a plot element to see if anything good comes to mind, but I have an idea for a plot thread about Vampire covens mind-slaving citizens to keep them safe from the disease to secure an un-infected food source.
That's all for now, this is just a spitballing post. I'd really love to stimulate some discussion on this topic and hopefully come up with some great ideas to flesh out Book 2.
I have just started this book in my roll20 game and I can share some insights, if you are interested. I mostly run it exactly as written, except that I use the conversions to PFRPG from d20pfsrd.com. We also use the Automatic Bonus Progression and Wound Thresholds variant rules.
The party:
male ratfolk investigator (infiltrator) / swashbuckler
male half-elf ranger (urban ranger)
male half-orc/half-shoanti warpriest of Sarenrae
First some context:
We had a blast with book 1! Yes, the adventure is not very well paced. But my players were very interested in the city and I made sure to give them enough tie-ins to the town to get them started.
The only times I strayed from the book as written:
- I put Grau and Eries Yelloweyes into the backgrounds of some of the PCs
- I replaced the adventurer saved from Rolth's prisoner pits with Deyanira Mirukova so she has a more credible reason to seek out the PCs in book 2.
Everything in book 1 came together just so smoothly, we all had a great time with it and my players just love their characters and the city. They really feel like they are a part of it, not the least because of the use of the Downtime rules to give them a nice way to literally build a living in Korvosa.
Regarding book 2:
Of course, I don't want to tell you how to run your game, but I do think that "horror" is not the right theme for this part of the AP, at least not all the time. I think what you should strive for is "misery" and "desperation": There is a plague in town, everyone could be next, a mere scratch in the back of your throat might make you panic, if you catch it, you are certain to die if you can't afford the cure. I think the horror comes from the realization in the adventure's late stages that this whole disaster is a man-made machination engineered without any regard for humanoid life. It is in the temple of Urgathoa that the PCs realize what evil they are facing and this realization will be all the more horrifying if it stands out from the rest of the adventure. But like I said, by all means, have it your way.
Part One:
If you decide to let one or more of your PCs hear the ballista blast in the night, be prepared for the group to try and find the wreck. Definitely don't give away too much precise information on the ship's location or the party will most likely try to get to it. Just be vague about specifics and have the Guard be "move along citizen, nothing to see here", even if that might frustrate your players at that moment.
The encounter with the Soldado family ran smoothly for me. I had introduced Ishani earlier as a simple clerk at the Bank when the party opened their account so the roleplaying came easily. Try not to make the cleric look like a bad person, though, and play up the conflict he is in between wanting to help and his tenets. When Grau storms upstairs to argue with Tayce, you should use that time to get that point across. Ishani is an ally and the group should realize that.
This is far as we got so everything from here on out is just from reading the adventure.
Part Two:
I actually think that this part will be enjoyable for my group. You are right that, as written, it might become a bit of a long monologue, but if it is presented in a more fluent and back-and-forth manner, I'm sure it's going to be fun. Inserting an entire module would, in my opinion, unnecessarily spread out this part. Part of the point of the plague and its horror is that it does *not* slowly take hold but instead befalls the city like a crashing wave.
Part Three:
You are right, these quests seem very loosely connected and the way the PCs are tasked with them seems very heavy-handed. This definitely needs some personalization. For my group, it is going to work like this:
The ratfolk PC already knows Eries Yelloweyes -> Plague Rats
The urban ranger (who works as a sort of PI) is going to be charged by a client to check out Lavender's scam.
Deyanira was found in Rolth's prisoner pits and seeks them out -> Carowyn Manor
Racker's Alley is going to happen as written so the PCs stay in the good graces of the guard.
Maybe this gives you some ideas? Especially Hungry are the Dead and the Color of Death the PCs can easily be come across without someone formally asking them to. I think that way the players will feel more in control of the flow of events.
I have a thread where I (attempt to) ennumerate my running of my campaign, where you can see my major changes to Edge of Anarchy, where I did some fairly huge overhauls. Things like the hunt for Gaedren at the beginning of the book taking about 5 or 6 sessions of following leads and interrogating criminals, going from St. Casperian's flophouse to the Fishery to the docks to finally cornering Gaedren in an abandoned warehouse (the one that will be used as the Hospice in book 2), followed by a more lengthy chasing down of the Cow Hammer boys and Verik, followed by the players working undercover for Devargo for a while, which included both the complete versions of The Veteran's Vault PFS module and the short Daggers At Midnight 3.5 module. All with the thread of the Arkonas using Gaedren, Verik, and Devargo in an elaborate plot to create a debilitating version of Shiver to weaken the population for their incursion and attempt at the throne.
All of this ran fantastically smoothly, but I mention it so you understand my enjoyment of slower-paced campaigns with quite a lot of padding. So this is my general concept with re-writing Seven Days, it needs a LOT more padding.
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Inserting an entire module would, in my opinion, unnecessarily spread out this part. Part of the point of the plague and its horror is that it does *not* slowly take hold but instead befalls the city like a crashing wave.
Even at it's absolute fastest, a disease cannot possibly spread across an entire city in a day. It just can't happen. Especially a disease which, as per the title of the module, requires seven days to have lethal results in the average person. So no matter how you look at it, there needs to be time spent around the town so the actual atmosphere has an opportunity to develop, so players can actually see things slowly descending into plague levels, while they have to watch helplessly. If you turn around and say "Ok now everything is bad", it doesn't feel like a real event. I am absolutely against timeskips and fastforwards because I think they murder any sense of urgency or pacing, so just saying "A week goes by and you watch the city get worse and worse" is not my way. That week needs to pass, but the players need to be occupied by something during that time, and that's time I can use to do something that advances a plot or setting detail I want to get across. Right now I'm doing exactly that: My players could just be herded right into the Dead Warrens after being told "Shoanti are being attacked in the street" and that they need to solve tensions between the Shoanti and Korvosa, but instead I'm taking the time wrapping up another plotline while I gradually spell out the violence against Shoanti and other minorities around them, so that when they are actually called in to investigate a high-profile Shoanti murder, it has context within the city.
Also, on the topic of horror, I disagree. This module is overwhelmingly directed towards horror elements, in much the same way The Skinsaw Murders was. The major problem is, it breaks them up too far apart with off-theme events that it doesn't keep a consistent tone. I don't need the whole campaign to feel like a horror movie all the time, I just want to keep a constant tension in the air where everything that happens has that slight tinge of the psychotic or the unnatural or the creepy factor that keeps them on edge, so that the big horror moments hit much harder.
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If you decide to let one or more of your PCs hear the ballista blast in the night, be prepared for the group to try and find the wreck.
I have a custom of taking about a week worth of "off time" in between books that I usually fill with something else, usually something a bit unusual or that furthers the backstory of one or more characters. I intend to have the players engaged in this while the actual sinking of the Direption happens, so they're not really compelled to be involved in that, but can still hear about it after the fact.
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You are right, these quests seem very loosely connected and the way the PCs are tasked with them seems very heavy-handed. This definitely needs some personalization
Like I mentioned, all the "set pieces" in book 1 were shot through with the over-arching plot thread that was the Arkonas connecting each piece. The actual connection didn't make sense until they put all the pieces together at the end, but the idea was always there. That's what I'd like to accomplish for most of Seven Days, though obviously everything can't be caused by the Urgathoa cult, so some things will be false leads and unrelated events. But I want to make sure there's a structure to all of it that will lead clever viewers to the conclusion if they follow all the clues.
I have a thread where I (attempt to) ennumerate my running of my campaign, where you can see my major changes to Edge of Anarchy, where I did some fairly huge overhauls
Oh, that was you? Cool! I actually looked at your thread when I was preparing Edge of Anarchy and considered to follow your lead. However, I seem to have way less patience and persistence than you because as much as I liked your ideas, I just could not bring myself to draw the AP out by so much. I have been playing Pathfinder for more than 5 years but I still have to actually play through an entire AP.
Out of curiosity, might I ask how many sessions (and how long each session) it took for you to finish book 1 with all your alterations?
You are right about the disease needing some time to take hold. When the plague encounters happen, as written, at least three days have passed since the first people were exposed. That is definitely enough time for the unlucky old and weak to die from the disease, though not enough to have bodies pile up on the streets. But people will already be desperate and things are quickly escalating by the day. You are right, the Hungry are the Dead encounter would not make sense to happen this early, but the Color of Death could. I think it'll work for me.
Well, I'm one of many people who have probably attempted it. My current campaign thread is HERE, and there's a lot of session-by-session discussion of what I've done as a whole, though I'm sort of playing catch-up, typing up sessions as I can. The thread is nowhere near caught up.
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Out of curiosity, might I ask how many sessions (and how long each session) it took for you to finish book 1 with all your alterations?
We play every Friday from 11PM to 3AM, so about 4 hours a week. My players are, like I mentioned, probably 1 or 2 sessions away from heading into the Dead Warrens, which itself should take 2 sessions, I think. So, let's call it 4 sessions until Book 1 is "done".
Our last session was #22, so we'll probably have played 26 sessions by the end of Edge of Anarchy.
That's just the pace we operate at. My players enjoy lots of roleplaying, with time spent fleshing out characters and letting events breathe and play out naturally rather than rushing through things. So since this is how I tend to write things, it's the style that I'm leaning towards when I work on Seven Days.
I want to expand the Vampire plot line through the book, which is to say I want to create one in general, because it doesn't exist.
Initial thoughts suggest that perhaps the vampires in Korvosa:
A.) Operate under some central figure that maintains a position of authority?
B.) Have some kind of ongoing war with the Wererat population in the sewers?
Or maybe instead of getting super complex with it, we just take the Racker's Alley vampires, a total of 5 Vampire Spawn, and use them to lead down a rabbit hole that exposes the little, unexplored story of Ramoska Arkminos and what led him to Korvosa so that he's not just "nameless scary Nosferatu" they meet in a dungeon, but rather a fleshed-out NPC.
According to the entry for Racker's Alley, Arkminos is an underling of Conte Senir Tiriac over in Ustalav, who was requested by the Red Mantis. The Conte sent Arkminos over as a way of extending his reach into Varisia, and the Vampire Spawn in the alley are just slaves the Conte sent to watch Arkminos. This is all there currently is to the thread.
So if we extrapolate, we see Arkminos as someone who really doesn't care much for the Conte's interests at all. It might be interesting to write up some new, not-so-feral vampires that the Conte sent over along with Arkminos to establish an official presence in Korvosa, and they have been left to spread their roots secretly. To make it interesting, the initial fight at Racker's Alley could lead to locations where the players find murdered/consumed Sable Company Marines, or even Grey Maidens, delving into the warrens of the city to root out the real vampire threat. Of course, when they kill who they can, they get to learn about the Conte trying to establish a presence, and it gives room to drop clues about Arkminos so the players know there is still a powerful and ancient vampire somewhere in the city who they know by name.
I haven't updated this in a while, but with the renewed interest in CoCT due to the announcement of the hardcover, I figure I'll drop some more thoughts I've been having;
I pretty much settled on weaving the Vampire plotline into my game as a sort of side-plot that runs alongside the original Plague plot. I actually made a really complex flowchart of all the ideas I had for Seven Days, and it's...very convoluted, but it touches everything I want to include. Well, most everything.
So my current progression goes along the lines of
Intro
-(Sidetrack) Keep players busy for a few days in order for people to get sick. I gave them downtime, as well as a merchant who had been robbed at an inn he stayed at, and had his daughter kidnapped to be sold as a slave, with a connection to one of the criminals that had escaped from a prison transport earlier in the campaign.*
-The players are approached by Grau to help heal the girl.
-Harrow Reading (I wrote up my Harrow HERE)
-Players find a note from Blackjack on their door directing them to Vencarlo.
-Vencarlo tells party he wants to make Trinia safe by getting her within the walls of the Acadamae**
-(Sidetrack)Players spend a few days working out a plan to smuggle Trinia into the Acadamae, giving time for disease to spread.
-[I haven't actually figured how the players are going to get into the academy, but suffice to say it'll be weird. The idea is to set up now for replacing the Cinderlands chapter.]
So now, things start getting tangled. I'll use a - to indicate things associated with the Plague plotline and -- to indicate things associated with the Vampire plot.
Sickness
-Ishtari Dahtri approaches PCs, brings them to the Bank. Spreading disease becomes relevant.
-Dahtri tells the PCs to visit the Korvosan Guard to coordinate resources. Also confesses to party that a priest friend of his has gone missing, a personal issue he wants help with***
--Visiting the friend's home finds it abandoned, a diary there detailing the priest's detailed notes on his ideas about a new, rich noble immigrant from Ustalav who has been pushing plans for a new lighthouse through the bureaucracy using money and connections that he shouldn't have.
-By this point, disease has started spreading rapidly in the North Point district, so public attitude is breaking down and people are getting nervous and panicked. Players will encounter the line for the Perfume Shop event on their way through the North Point, or the Hill if you've got them there.
-The party is approached by Eris Yelloweyes about her worries regarding the Wererats in the sewers and impending violence both by and to them. She hires the party to go stop Girrigz, and promises that she may have information for them if they can help.
-Pathfinder contact players helped earlier**** returns, tells them he found the standing stone the prisoner spoke of, and followed the visitors into the city, where they've taken up residence beneath a building. This is Racker's Alley.
--After fighting the vampires in Racker's Alley, the players find the newly turned Vampire spawn have symbols on them, which match the logo of a local trade depot, which is a front for a nest of vampires. This is "Vampire Lair 1", a low-level Cult of Lissala occupied by Spawn who are mostly unorganized and free to roam the city. Inside the temple, they find plans for a lighthouse signed with a letter V, which detail an extensive network of sewer connections and structures under the lighthouse.
-Players get word from the Guard about something that's been smashing into buildings and killing people in the south near the Gold Market. They learn that a detachment of guards sent to kill the thing are dead. They must track the invisible beast and kill it, where they learn that it is actually an injured Leukodaemon that has been using the sewers to get around. When the demon is slain, Eris Yelloweyes returns to the party and provides them with the story about the sinking of the Direption, and where it went down.
-Before the party can investigate the wreck, they are given a task directly from Marshal Kroft to investigate the Carowyn Manor, where reports are coming in from noble families about people not returning from a party held there. Deyanira Mirukova petitions the party to find her brother, who was hired to play at the party.
Defeating the Plague
-By this point, the plague has been ravaging the city, and the players are fighting against it, but it's getting worse. They should have little faith, if any, left in the Plague Doctors, and the Grey Maidens will be getting increasingly cruel and militaristic. Their priority should be to investigate the wreck of the Direption. Once they've got reason to suspect the Physicians are involved, they will head directly to the warehouse they've claimed as their base.
-Hospice encounter, runs normally.
-Temple of Urgathoa under the hospice, runs normally.
(I have not actually decided whether any changes need to be made here. This may change.)
So, now that that's all out of the way, let's get some citations cleared up;
* ) First, I stole a little bit of content from some modules here and there, The Lash of Malloc mostly, which is a story about a desert tavern who uses goblins to rob it's wealthy merchant patrons, and take young women as slaves. I removed the goblins, made it a dockside place, but kept the rest the same. When the players asked to buy slaves, the owner sent them to visit an abandoned manor (stolen from Hasken's Manor module), which was a trap where they were intended to die to Mange, a feral Skinwalker and recent escapee (who's escape they came across earlier in Book 1).
**) As I've mentioned, I plan on replacing the entire Cinderlands chapter with one that takes place inside the Acadamae. So, sending Trinia there is basically the exact same foreshadowing that normally happens when Vencarlo encourages sending her to Harse.
***) This part, with the missing friend that leads into a cult of vampires, is actually a stripped-down, repurposed version of the Death/Terror/Madness in Freeport trilogy. A lot of the details remain, such as a cult and a noble building a lighthouse, but I've cut a lot of the fat, since obviously I'm not running three modules worth of content, and replaced the cult with a coven/cult of Vampires. The major difference is that the leader is a new noble who arrived in Korvosa from Ustalav the same time as Arkminos, and decided to spend his time acquiring power here. So the lighthouse is designed to be his "big threat" to the city, a way for his vampires to have complete access to Korvosa via a central sewer connection.
**** ) I wanted to flesh out the Vampire stuff later, and foreshadow a cult, so I stole a bunch of stuff from the PFS S04-08 "The Cultist's Kiss" module. Basically, an old Pathfinder living in Palin's Cove outside Korvosa caught wind of a young Pathfinder girl arriving in town, asking questions, and then vanishing. He took the task of finding her, and it led him to Korvosa where he enlisted the party to help him visit Belodia Asylum, where they spoke with Tomasz Kosta, a patient/prisoner there who's stay was being funded by an unknown source. The crazy man is actually a dhampir, his parents being vampires recently arrived from Ustalav, and his mother has been visiting him via mist form at night, telling him he'll join them soon. The Pathfinder man went off to find a Standing Stone that Tomasz mentioned, and would return when he found it.
After defeating the vampire spawn in Racker's Alley, the PCs were paid a midnight visit by Ramoska Arkminos. He threatened PCs not to go digging in things better left undisturbed, telling them that if they get in the way of his plans to find a cure for himself that they will be extremely sorry. It set him up nicely so PCs don't just meet him in the dungeon later as another monster, and hints that he may be someone they can negotiate with.
I also designed a running subplot of a brewing wererat insurgency well before the PCs attack the wererat lair. At one point save Erie Yelloweyes in human form (who I made into an attractive gypsy girl to gain sympathy from the Pcs) from a mob led by a crazy rat-catcher with a silver sword. This is why she later feels comfortable enough going to the PCs for assistance.
After defeating the vampire spawn in Racker's Alley, the PCs were paid a midnight visit by Ramoska Arkminos. He threatened PCs not to go digging in things better left undisturbed, telling them that if they get in the way of his plans to find a cure for himself that they will be extremely sorry.
I'm not sure I can agree with this, because in my eyes, Arkminos is perfectly fine as he is, a just sort of out-of-nowhere encounter in the dungeon who doesn't intend to fight at all, because he's just to apathetic to bother. I think having him show up early and twirl his mustache at the PCs ruins any mystery he has, especially the concept of him trying to cure his Nosferatu status. That one doesn't make much sense to me.
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At one point save Erie Yelloweyes in human form (who I made into an attractive gypsy girl to gain sympathy from the Pcs) from a mob led by a crazy rat-catcher with a silver sword. This is why she later feels comfortable enough going to the PCs for assistance.
This is actually kind of a good idea, I may have to bring her in early in some way. Not as a gypsy, there's already enough Varisian accents I do in this game.
Oh, sorta update: I had my players visit Vencarlo and him pitch the idea about stashing Trinia in the Acadamae last session. They thought it sounded nuts, and spent the night investigating the Acadamae, and realized that they couldn't figure out a way to get inside at all. Really, I couldn't think of one either, and hoped they would come up with a plan, and then I'd just help make that work, but it would have been better if I had invented a way and had Vencarlo walk them through it so they could accomplish it.
In the end, they just took Trinia to a new safehouse, and I couldn't really stall them for much longer, so I had to just start up the next plot point, so when one player decided to hit up the Bank of Abadar, I just rolled right into the mob outside and the start of the plague. So yeah.
After defeating the vampire spawn in Racker's Alley, the PCs were paid a midnight visit by Ramoska Arkminos. He threatened PCs not to go digging in things better left undisturbed, telling them that if they get in the way of his plans to find a cure for himself that they will be extremely sorry.
I'm not sure I can agree with this, because in my eyes, Arkminos is perfectly fine as he is, a just sort of out-of-nowhere encounter in the dungeon who doesn't intend to fight at all, because he's just to apathetic to bother. I think having him show up early and twirl his mustache at the PCs ruins any mystery he has, especially the concept of him trying to cure his Nosferatu status. That one doesn't make much sense to me.
You don't have to agree with me. Just telling what I did, and players loved it. Rather than ruin the mystery, the scene added to it because they began to sense that, while thoroughly evil, there was something tormented and perhaps even sympathetic about him.
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At one point save Erie Yelloweyes in human form (who I made into an attractive gypsy girl to gain sympathy from the Pcs) from a mob led by a crazy rat-catcher with a silver sword. This is why she later feels comfortable enough going to the PCs for assistance.
This is actually kind of a good idea, I may have to bring her in early in some way. Not as a gypsy, there's already enough Varisian accents I do in this game.
Oh, sorta update: I had my players visit Vencarlo and him pitch the idea about stashing Trinia in the Acadamae last session. They thought it sounded nuts, and spent the night investigating the Acadamae, and realized that they couldn't figure out a way to get inside at all. Really, I couldn't think of one either, and hoped they would come up with a plan, and then I'd just help make that work, but it would have been better if I had invented a way and had Vencarlo walk them through it so they could accomplish it.
In the end, they just took Trinia to a new safehouse, and I couldn't really stall them for much longer, so I had to just start up the next plot point, so when one player decided to hit up the Bank of Abadar, I just rolled right into the mob outside and the start of the plague. So yeah.
While I enjoyed running Seven Days to the Grave, and it is easily my favourite of all the AP modules, there were some stumbling blocks.
Infection: This occurs before the city is gripped by plague, and when a potion or scroll of remove disease is both available and affordable in the whole party chips in. This is fine - the module considers that the PCs might be able to save the little girl.
What it doesn't consider is that they might talk to her.
Spoiler:
The issue is that as soon as they got the gist of Brianna's backstory, one of my players (who has worked in the food industry and is perfectly aware of the vector for infection that cash is) immediately took the party to the Temple of Abadar, which is both a central bank and church, to try to organize running divinations on & cleaning of coins passing through the church. It's not that they figured out the plot, it's just that it was the most direct and straight forward course of action that came to mind.
Given that the sinking of the ship was actually intended as a distraction from the actual infection method, the fact that they used infected coins was... frankly... a bit too heavy handed a giveaway for my party.
If you have players who are fond of investigative and problem solving games, have something else in those washed up boxes. Wooden toys or something. Just not coins, or you'll need to do some finagling to avoid the PCs nipping things in the bud.
The Wreck of the Direption: First off - this should be run after the manor. The manor gives motivation, the wreck gives direction. Best not to tell the PCs where to go then expect them not to go there.
Spoiler:
Also, unless your group cannot put the clues together on their own, I recommend against having the nebbish acolyte wearing the blatantly incriminating evidence. It's just... a bit too obvious, and too great a bungle on the part of the bad guys.
I agree with your point that it's pretty easy for players to make that connection early. in fact my players already figured out the vector for the plague. Our session went basically:
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First the players cured Brienne with a scroll that was a combination of Remove Disease & Diagnose Disease spells, which basically gave them all the basic information about the actual Blood Veil (it's symptoms, it's method of spreading, etc.) but not actually a name or anything for it, since the disease is pretty much custom-made and brand new. The next day, when the players met with Vencarlo to talk about Trinia, somehow the rumor of a ship being sunk in the river came up. They didn't put 2 and 2 together right away, but the players did choose to visit North Point and ask around about the sinking, where I used the rumors straight out of the book. One of the players, a Cleric of Gozreh with ranks in Prof. (Sailor) identified the quarantine signal in the rumors, and they basically instantly realized that the box of coins Brienne picked up could have come off a quarantine ship, and thus been one cause of the disease, when the players rushed to the Bank to tell them, and found the growing crowd of people seeking healing at the gates.
Now, at this point, the players know there's a plague, but they also know that honestly, the ship itself doesn't matter much. Not now, at least. The disease is here, and focusing on the sunken ship seems like a waste of time. They also know that the Churches are scrambling to put together a plan of action.
Now, theoretically, the players could do as you suggest, and rush right to church and have them "wash" the coins, but this is why I make sure to make a point of having all of the events (the sinking of the Direption, Brienne finding the coins, and the second batch going into circulation) happen always a few days prior to the players being able to solve them with quick action. Brienne is at least 3 days into her sickness when the players arrive, which means it's been at least 4 days since she found the coins (one day incubation period, per the disease stats), which means at least 5 days since the ship sank (though in reality, could be longer). If it's been 5 days since the ship went down and the coins hit the Bank, that means by now it's far too late for any sort of action by the players or the clerics to stop the spread. Because by now, enough people have been hit that infection isn't just transferred by coins, but by contact. That one day incubation is enough to make it spread way too fast to control.
Now here's my read of this: I don't really think the fact that the Direption was meant to be a distraction is all that important. What's important is time scales. If you feel like every event is moving too fast, and like players can put details together too quickly, that's a place where you need to insert something to stretch out the time. A simple side-quest or something to keep players busy for a day or two. Buy yourself the time to make events feel natural.
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The Wreck of the Direption: First off - this should be run after the manor. The manor gives motivation, the wreck gives direction. Best not to tell the PCs where to go then expect them not to go there.
Agreed, which is why I put it after the Manor in my last outline post. The Direption is, for all intents and purposes, the smoking gun of the book. It's the major link directly to Dr. Davalus and the cult of Urgathoa. The only way to keep players from going there, is to downplay it's importance, and make them focus on other things, so that they forget it's there until you can bring it back into frame.
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Also, unless your group cannot put the clues together on their own, I recommend against having the nebbish acolyte wearing the blatantly incriminating evidence. It's just... a bit too obvious, and too great a bungle on the part of the bad guys.
I think just straight having a dude with an Urgathoa symbol is a little on-the-nose, especially as there's a set of ledgers in the boat that straight say "R. Davalus" on them, which is proof enough for the players to seek out the Physicians at the Hospice.
The problem, at least in my head, is that I'm not a fan of details that just pop out of nowhere. And I feel like the players finding R. Davalus' name on the plague-ship, and then charging into the Physician's place and finding out it's a cult of Urgathoa might be a little too "Wait, what?" of a moment. So I feel like there should be some sort of clue that indicates that the Physicians are not only evil, but also the exact opposite of what they claim to be, but BEFORE the players take the elevator down and find themselves in the middle of a temple to the god of disease.
Still, good points, I appreciate you sharing them.
