Thanks for all the feedback!

[James Jacobs]

So! Now that the cat's out of the bag, and the hardcover version of Curse of the Crimson Throne is announced, I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to post feedback and criticism and suggestions in this forum. When I first started working on this project many, many months ago, I combed through all of these threads and extracted a LOT of really helpful and useful advice. Now, I'm about a week away from being done with the development of the book, at which point it gets handed over to the editors and opportunities for significant new revisions or additions are more or less cut off, but I'm confident that what folks have observed and reported on over the past nearly 10 years have covered the critical parts and lots of the other warts and blemishes as well.

And it wouldn't have been possible without all your feedback, so thanks again, everyone! And I hope you check out and enjoy the new book when it's out later this year!

[Kalindlara]

I wish I could have helped... I've been playing it, though.

Still, I'm glad to hear that the community was able to help. ^_^

[Skeld]

The RotRL:AE came out about the time I was halfway through Skinsaw Murders. Since I just started prepping CotCT, I'm glad to see you continuing the tradition of hard covering campaigns I'm GMing. ;)

I wish I'd been in a position to give you some feedback, but I'm nonetheless happy to see this happening and I look forward to seeing the improvements you've made.

-Skeld

PS: Has the release date been announced?

[MrVergee]

James Jacobs wrote:

So! Now that the cat's out of the bag, and the hardcover version of Curse of the Crimson Throne is announced, I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to post feedback and criticism and suggestions in this forum. When I first started working on this project many, many months ago, I combed through all of these threads and extracted a LOT of really helpful and useful advice. Now, I'm about a week away from being done with the development of the book, at which point it gets handed over to the editors and opportunities for significant new revisions or additions are more or less cut off, but I'm confident that what folks have observed and reported on over the past nearly 10 years have covered the critical parts and lots of the other warts and blemishes as well.

And it wouldn't have been possible without all your feedback, so thanks again, everyone! And I hope you check out and enjoy the new book when it's out later this year!

I'm very excited to hear about this. I'm looking forward to finding out what has been revised and added and possibly sniff out which ideas from these messageboards made it to the new edition.

We're currently playing (my modified version of) book 4, but at the rate we're playing (slowly), I hope to get the hardcover before we finish the AP. And even if I don't, I will still get this book. Now we can start dreaming about a miniature line to accompany the new hardcover (even though I'll have to store this dream next to my Hell's Rebels miniature line dream).

[Askren]

Luckily, my group plays so slowly that 6 months, give or take, should put us pretty squarely at the end of Book 2 or the beginning of Book 3 meaning I'll have time to use the compiled edition.

So, spill it JJ: Did you use any of the campaign tweaks you found here? Any word on what changes we can expect in the book?

[James Jacobs]

Skeld wrote:

The RotRL:AE came out about the time I was halfway through Skinsaw Murders. Since I just started prepping CotCT, I'm glad to see you continuing the tradition of hard covering campaigns I'm GMing. ;)

I wish I'd been in a position to give you some feedback, but I'm nonetheless happy to see this happening and I look forward to seeing the improvements you've made.

-Skeld

PS: Has the release date been announced?

September, this year.

[James Jacobs]

Askren wrote:

Luckily, my group plays so slowly that 6 months, give or take, should put us pretty squarely at the end of Book 2 or the beginning of Book 3 meaning I'll have time to use the compiled edition.

So, spill it JJ: Did you use any of the campaign tweaks you found here? Any word on what changes we can expect in the book?

I used a lot of them; thats kind of what I was saying in the first post above. I'm not gonna say which ones, because going through thousands of messageboard posts and deciding which ones were good ideas and which ones were bad and creating a master document of the ones that I liked and then sorting them through the book was a HUGE task that I handled like last September or thereabouts, so I don't really remember the details.

There'll be spoilers and hints as to some of the changes ere and there on these boards, but I want to spread them out. Here's one though...

Spoiler:

In the previous game we had only 1 type of rakshasa to play with, and they were WAY off their CR mark. Today, the baseline rakshasa is a solid CR threat, and we also have a lot of other rakshasas of other CRs to choose from, so Palace Arkona has had some monster swapouts...

[Askren]

Interesting. I'm curious to see what kind of monster and class swaps we can look forwards to.

My big suggestions, which I would make purely for the sake of making sure players and DMs got the best possible experience out of the campaign, would be to downplay Gaedren in the Player's guide, and make sure there's a specific instruction to make players not think they need to come into the mindset of "Raaagh Gaedren must die right now!". Being overhyped in the Guide causes the very abrupt death of the NPC in the first session to leave a lot of players dangling, with no motivation.

I know you said it's too late for changes, so I don't expect this to happen, but if I could change one thing about the campaign without increasing the page count (all my changes would involve adding content), it would be that, because of the number of issues it would solve.

Outside of that: New interior art? Can we look forwards to new illustrations of NPCs and scenes? If not, I suggest doing the Runelords thing and having Eric Belisle illustrate everything.

[James Jacobs]

Askren wrote:

Outside of that: New interior art? Can we look forwards to new illustrations of NPCs and scenes? If not, I suggest doing the Runelords thing and having Eric Belisle illustrate everything.

Lots of new interior art; it's in fact the single largest art order I've ever written. Not sure who Sarah got to do all the art, but it's looking good so far!

[Muser]

James Jacobs wrote:

Askren wrote:

Luckily, my group plays so slowly that 6 months, give or take, should put us pretty squarely at the end of Book 2 or the beginning of Book 3 meaning I'll have time to use the compiled edition.

So, spill it JJ: Did you use any of the campaign tweaks you found here? Any word on what changes we can expect in the book?

There'll be spoilers and hints as to some of the changes ere and there on these boards, but I want to spread them out. Here's one though...

** spoiler omitted **

I reshuffled some of those too, particularily the uh, pet enthusiast. Going to up the ante even more should my players decide to storm the place after their trip to north.

[outshyn]

James Jacobs wrote:

I'm not gonna say which ones, because going through thousands of messageboard posts and deciding which ones were good ideas and which ones were bad and creating a master document of the ones that I liked and then sorting them through the book was a HUGE task that I handled like last September or thereabouts, so I don't really remember the details.

Personally, I don't need to know details; I'm just happy this was done. The forums are a huge knowledgebase to draw from, and using that resource is just a really smart idea. Some companies have a policy to never use ANYTHING that comes from sources external to the company. I'm glad that wasn't the case here. It bodes well for the quality of the final product.

[James Jacobs]

outshyn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

I'm not gonna say which ones, because going through thousands of messageboard posts and deciding which ones were good ideas and which ones were bad and creating a master document of the ones that I liked and then sorting them through the book was a HUGE task that I handled like last September or thereabouts, so I don't really remember the details.

Personally, I don't need to know details; I'm just happy this was done. The forums are a huge knowledgebase to draw from, and using that resource is just a really smart idea. Some companies have a policy to never use ANYTHING that comes from sources external to the company. I'm glad that wasn't the case here. It bodes well for the quality of the final product.

I did the same thing when preparing for Rise of the Runelords, so it was something of a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. ;-)

[BuzzardB]

Rise of the Runelords AE has probably been one of my favorite RPG purchases so far, and was my first adventure path. I really excited for this to come out.

[roloz]

Right now my group is about a third of the way through History of Ashes; at our current pace we should finish up right about the time you publish.

I've played several APs, but this is the only one I've DM'ed. I'm loving it and my only regret is that I can't play it :-D

And I still might buy the new version when it comes out, just for sentiment and to see the new art!

[Cat-thulhu]

Im just happy to get the update. I also hope we see others updated and released as collected works

[pinkycatcher]

Are you going to release a pawns set with this too? I absolutely love the pawns.

Oh and our group is putting off a CotCT game specifically for this, we're super excited.

[Zebbie]

James Jacobs wrote:

So! Now that the cat's out of the bag, and the hardcover version of Curse of the Crimson Throne is announced, I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to post feedback and criticism and suggestions in this forum. When I first started working on this project many, many months ago, I combed through all of these threads and extracted a LOT of really helpful and useful advice. Now, I'm about a week away from being done with the development of the book, at which point it gets handed over to the editors and opportunities for significant new revisions or additions are more or less cut off, but I'm confident that what folks have observed and reported on over the past nearly 10 years have covered the critical parts and lots of the other warts and blemishes as well.

And it wouldn't have been possible without all your feedback, so thanks again, everyone! And I hope you check out and enjoy the new book when it's out later this year!

Thank you for taking the time to listen to the fans, the DMs's, and the players on this forum. It's like 10 years of play test feedback. It is very rare that anything in this industry gets a do over. It stands as a testament to the quality of work you guys released so many years back.

That said! I for one am thrilled about this release! ROTRL AE was a big part of why I picked up Pathfinder. I fell in love with it because of it's well polished feeling. I actually enjoyed reading it, from cover to cover. 2 years, and countless hours later my group is almost finished.

I too, would love Pawns to be created, and a update to the Map Folio.. with high enough resolution to be used in D20, maptools etc.

I beg of you to make more of these in the future.

[Curmudgeonly]

According to this page, the live banquet revealed:

• Blackjack will be a vigilante.
  
• LOTS of new art for CotC. All the good art from the AP is in the CRB.
  
• New content. Rebuilding encounters.
  
• Looked back at feedback and changed the AP so you don’t leave Korvosa. New mini adventures.
  
• September 2016
  
• Erik Mona: “Yeah, some of tha stuff is going to be a miniature.”

Specifically regarding not leaving Korvosa, is that correct? I hope the party still goes to Scarwall... I loved that part of the AP.

[Kalindlara]

You do still leave Korvosa, but you can return at the end of Book 4 to attack the Grey Maiden/Red Mantis HQ. This is what forces them to retreat into the castle for Book 6. Other than that, the revised AP Wil still follow a familiar route. ^_^

[Elorebaen]

As a GM, I find the AP forums INVALUABLE, so I am glad to a tip of the hat to everyone that supports these forums.

I am looking forward to the revision!

[Helel13]

I NEED THE ART :)

Can't wait to see the new renditions of the awesome characters in this AP

[ShinHakkaider]

Kalindlara wrote:

You do still leave Korvosa, but you can return at the end of Book 4 to attack the Grey Maiden/Red Mantis HQ. This is what forces them to retreat into the castle for Book 6. Other than that, the revised AP Wil still follow a familiar route. ^_^

I hope so because I think that Scarwall was probably the most harrowing (no pun intended) chapter for my players.

[Kalindlara]

ShinHakkaider wrote:

I hope so because I think that Scarwall was probably the most harrowing (no pun intended) chapter for my players.

Skeletons of Scarwall:

Apparently, the content of Scarwall has been greatly expanded!

Every room on that map now contains some sort of specific content, based on the (much larger) original turnover.

Also, Greg A. Vaughan is awesome. That is all. ^_^

[Turelus]

Kalindlara wrote:

You do still leave Korvosa, but you can return at the end of Book 4 to attack the Grey Maiden/Red Mantis HQ. This is what forces them to retreat into the castle for Book 6. Other than that, the revised AP Wil still follow a familiar route. ^_^

Really glad to hear this. I will be running this for my RP group for the first time next year and having only skim-read the original books and then hearing the comments from PaizoCon I was a little worried all the leaving content was cut.

Edit: Cut is the wrong word, reworked to stay within the city is what I meant.