| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, after 10 months, we finally finished Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale... but my players didn't know it at first! They didn't realize that I was reading to them from Dungeon magazine behind that GM screen, so I decided to try to make it seem like I was still reading from Conquest. I think it was more than half a session before my son burst out "You're running a different adventure, aren't you?"
And running this different adventure provided many surprises. For a long time, I worried about shoehorning Chadranther's Bane (from Dungeon magazine issue 18) into the campaign, and it seems that I did it so smoothly, my son incredulously asked "How could this adventure have been written before Golarion was created?!"
And how badly have I been wanting to run Chadranther's Bane! For the last 10 years, I've been in suspense, wondering exactly when and how the players would figure out what was going on, and what looks they would have on their faces when they did. Now I finally know, and the answer surprised me greatly. A couple of weeks ago, as I prepared to run the adventure, I thought "Ah, the players will figure it out right away. And when they do, they might get so mad about it that they'll quit." I was wrong. After the disaster struck, I ran an entire session before my son figured it out! Two days ago, when I began the second session, I mentioned a certain little detail (which, admittedly, I should have mentioned in the first session), and my son burst out the answer in surprise. And far from being mad, he exclaimed "That's neat!" And he proceeded to make many choices that were totally NOT what I had expected, leading the story in a direction that surprised me greatly; Chadranther's Bane is more free-form than a typical D&D adventure.
(Because this post came out so long, perhaps I should mention that if you just want to skip to the punchline, you can click on this link.)
When I ran Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale, I kept throwing in hints about events to come in Chadranther's Bane. Take Oakbrow, for instance. I was getting a little frustrated that no PC had the Track feat, which often seems necessary in a wilderness adventure. So I resolved that the next time Burning Sky (my "DMPC") levelled up, he would get Track, and a rank in Wilderness Lore, even though he wasn't that kind of character. It just so happened that shortly after I made that resolution, the party contacted Oakbrow, an NPC druid who knew the area well. So I role-played Burning Sky talking to Oakbrow, asking "How do you go about following tracks?" Oakbrow said "It is, of course, a difficult skill, but there are a few simple tricks that sometimes work." And he taught Burning Sky about the beauty of nature. Afterwards, Burning Sky talked a lot to the party about the subject. He said "You see that little worm? It's not a worm at all. Look at it closely. It's a snake!" (I had done some research on the web, and found one venomous snake only 240 mm long! The Barbados threadsnake - which constricts - can be as little as 10 cm long.) My son gave me a baffled look, clearly stumped in guessing how this could possibly be significant to the game.
Or for another example, I had two "random" encounters with Tasloi. Instead of using goblins, I wanted the party to get the idea that the Tasloi, while pathetic fighters, were excellent climbers. At night, while half the party was asleep, the Tasloi would quickly climb down from the trees, attack, and scramble back up the trees when the going got tough.
Here's yet another example. When Oakbrow sent the party in the direction of the main boss' fortress, he mentioned that there were convenient wayhouses left over from Chelaxian times, and recommended one particular wayhouse that was on the way to the fortress. I read from the magazine about how the party felt miserable plodding through heavy rain, and the wayhouse was a welcome sight. I made it sound like I was going to run an encounter there... but I didn't! The party passed a nice, peaceful night at the wayhouse! And like I said, as I ran this, the players seemed to think it was part of the Bloodsworn Vale adventure, having no idea that I read it from the magazine behind that GM screen!
And here's a fourth example: After the PCs finished off the final boss of Bloodsworn Vale and headed back to their home base, they encountered a band of hostile hobgoblins and made short work of them. When looting the hobgoblins, the party found, among other treasure, something mentioned in Chadranther's Bane: "a tiny, perfectly proportioned suit of plate-mail armor, only half the length of a man's thumb - an exceedingly fine reproduction of the real thing, though it [was] rusted and dented as though by the jaws of a large animal." My son figured it had once belonged to a fey creature, and even wasted an hour of the party's time trying to trace the hobgoblins' path, thinking it might lead us to fey, before we gave up on that. He completely misinterpreted that clue!
Finally, back at Fort Thorn, the party got assigned the job of searching a certain area of the forest where scouts were disappearing - and from which, in fact, no human(oid) had returned in decades, although some animals had. And the players STILL thought it was part of the Bloodsworn Vale module! So they headed to that part of the forest and found another wayhouse, which I mapped in great detail... but I mapped it on the one-inch-square-delineated paper I use for tactical encounters, to fool the players into thinking that there was simply going to be a battle there. I asked the players to show me exactly where on the map each character was (e.g. this PC is sitting in this chair, that PC is standing on the floor here,) so I could plan the next battle, but the players had no idea what was coming!
And the following week, after all that preparation, I ran the encounter in which the poop finally hit the fan. (After this point, the spoilers for Chadranther's Bane become very major.)
After getting to the bottommost platform and regrouping, the party explored this strange world, with high windows, a giant fire, and other surroundings that still baffled them. An entire play session passed without the players figuring it out! They were wondering if some crazy god had transported them to his home plane for his amusement; maybe they were on a giant chessboard or something.
Well... you could blame it on an omission that I made by mistake. The following week (that is, this week) we ran the next play session, and I told the players "Maybe I should have mentioned that the platforms are grainy. In particular, the bottom platform is so imperfect, there are cracks large enough that that you could put an entire leg into one, and you have to tread carefully to avoid them."
And that's when my son figured it out. He burst out "WE SHRUNK!!!" He then figured out all the clues (except the suit of armor)! I turned to my father and asked him "What do you think?" He said "It's possible." My son made clear his certainty, rattling off clue after clue. The platforms were the floor, the chairs, the table, and the rafters. The giant fire was in the fireplace. And so on.
But the suspense isn't over yet. My son then made many choices of where to go and what to do that were totally NOT what I expected. (I was planning to relate to you our further actions in the adventure, but I feel this post has gone on for too long already. Maybe I'll go on with our exploits in some other post. Suffice it to say that when I related the legend of Chadranther, I incorporated it into the history of Nirmathas, which helped to convince my son that it was a Golarion adventure.) I've been re-reading parts of Chadranther's Bane with the new developments in mind, and I still haven't decided how to handle certain parts of it.
Ah, how often have I obsessed over this adventure, waiting for this moment? I mentioned it many times, including here, here, and here.
Congrats to you and your party on the finishing up and having that combining startup of those 2 differing adventures.
For instance, what convinced me to go all the way to 3.0 - and never play AD&D again - was an Al-Qadim conversion document. (You can find it here next to where it says "Al-Qadim Conversion Manual, v1.00".) The Hakima and Sha'ir classes gave interesting new options for PCs. But if a player really wanted to play a character prohibited by the campaign, I would hate to forbid it.
And while I'm at it, good to have them free fan-adapted stuff for that classic Al-Qadim setting out there. ;)
I don't really play 3.0, but my next homebrew campaign, if it ever takes off, will be a horrid mix of 3.0 , 3.5 and PF, depending on my preferences... for instance the skill system, and the class skill bonus will be from PF, but for most spells the authoritative edition will be 3.0 where they got the least nerfing...heck, wish and some similar spells might even go back to AD&D 1 for the authoritative wording, if it's more interesting than the guidelines in the more recent versions...
I have been wanting to go back to 3.0 for years. It still feels the closest to AD&D 2E to me.
I remember a lot of people saying that 3.5 fixed things like buff spell durations, and a lot of other issues that cropped up at higher levels. Having played through your game for a bit of time, now, Aaron, have you come across any issues with 3.0?
I have, of course, discussed the matter earlier in this thread. In 3.5 & PFRPG, the skill system made more sense. There were more feats from which to choose. Spells made more sense (like ability boosters being constant instead of random). Charts made more comprehensible rules for stuff like flanking, cover, and AoOs. There were detailed guidelines for making wilderness combat maps. Monster advancement was made clearer. Monster illustrations were clearly identified in the Monster Manual / Bestiary. PFRPG came up with nice PC options, like Sorcerer bloodlines. For reasons like these, I often referred to the 3.5 and PFRPG manuals while running 3.0.
But in answer to your question, if there's one thing about 3.0 I hate, it's grappling! Especially Improved Grab! Not only are the rules incomprehensible (to the point where I could swear that the physical book somehow magically revises itself every time I read the rules on grappling or Improved Grab) but Improved Grab makes Large and larger monsters way, WAY deadlier than their CRs imply! And speaking of monsters too powerful for their CR, the same goes for Large and larger dragons. The CRs in PFRPG weren't always so accurate, but at least I didn't get surprised with low-CR monsters killing PCs.
Come to think of it, though, I don't remember ever getting beyond level 6 in PFRPG. Maybe if I had used high-CR monsters in PFRPG, I would have had those problems in that game as well.
Yeah, I heard that too. This was my reaction when I first heard that. If you don't want to bother pursuing that link, I'll say here that reasoning is, quite frankly, stupid. The point of CRs is to estimate how much of a challenge monsters are. The GM should be the one to decide whether to give the PCs menacingly powerful opponents, and when he does, he should take ones with high CRs. Deliberately giving monsters the wrong CRs completely defeats the purpose of CRs. And it short-changes the players with XP.
So when TriOmegaZero told me that, it helped to persuade me to switch to PFRPG. But upon doing so, I found that its CRs weren't terribly accurate either.
Yeah, I heard that too. This was my reaction when I first heard that. If you don't want to bother pursuing that link, I'll say here that reasoning is, quite frankly, stupid. The point of CRs is to estimate how much of a challenge monsters are. The GM should be the one to decide whether to give the PCs menacingly powerful opponents, and when he does, he should take ones with high CRs. Deliberately giving monsters the wrong CRs completely defeats the purpose of CRs. And it short-changes the players with XP.
So when TriOmegaZero told me that, it helped to persuade me to switch to PFRPG. But upon doing so, I found that its CRs weren't terribly accurate either.
That seems stupid indeed; I doubt any of the original designers really went that route.
However, I recall reading an interview (Jonathan Tweet or Monte Cook or Skip Williams; can't recall), where it was said that the dragons' CRs don't take into account the spells. This makes way more sense.
Even without spells, I think a Large dragon's breath weapon, natural attacks, natural armor, and massive HD make it tough and deadly enough to warrant a much higher CR.
That seems stupid indeed; I doubt any of the original designers really went that route.
However, I recall reading an interview (Jonathan Tweet or Monte Cook or Skip Williams; can't recall), where it was said that the dragons' CRs don't take into account the spells. This makes way more sense.
This.
If you ever have a chance to look at the old Creature Collection (the original 3.0 version), the puppet master/jester leader of the Carnival of Blood is something like a CR8, *DESPITE* casting as a 18th level sorcerer and maybe having some cleric spells thrown in, too. It is a glorious stat block that almost made me poop myself when I read it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
When playing 3.0 you make a character and play the game. In 3.5/PF you build a character and look for ways to do the stuff you built your character to do. The games may look similar at a glance, especially 3.0 to 3.5, but at the table the games play out very differently.It boggles my mind to hear that the games are both so different but still both d20. I'm inclined to believe it is just the way you play it, but if someone can explain the differences that make it happen I would be happy to listen.There are quite a lot of things, some big, some small, as mentioned up thread; some of these may be good or bad, depending on taste; some others are objectively relevant (e.g. game prep time.)
Some of the most relevant points for me (as a DM) and my group:1) Character creation is fast; if you want to save time, each class contains a package which allows creating a character of whatever race in a few minutes. I think something similar was done for 3.5 as well in a web enhancement, but in 3.0 it's straight in the PHB.
2) Little or no decision paralysis, both at character creation and when advancing: there are very few feats, and their design is very tight (as a bonus, if you come from AD&D, you recognise some of those feats as previously fixed class features.) Many feats are designed as clear exceptions to very specific rules. For example, Alertness is designed to provide a bonus in surprise situations, and it's the only feat providing a bonus to two skills. If you want to get better in a skill in general, there's Skill Focus. Furthermore some of the feats in 3.0 were split into two or more feats in 3.5, with the result that each feat becomes less relevant. In general, when you take a feat in 3.0, it's a significant boost (this is important since, except for the fighter, there aren't many occasions to get feats.)
3) The game is not strongly wedded to the grid; there are some references in the DMG, but that's all. You won't find things like...
I was reading this a few months back and then made my next Adventure Path I am going to run into 3.0 So running Serpents Skull as 3.0 and things are going great. It has a different feel than PFRPG game does, lower magic and I really like that.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
On March 13, 2017, in this thread, while I was running a 3.0 campaign with my son (and my father) I posted the following:
...I often feel conscious of the relative merits of 3.5 and PF, but all in all, I still feel I like 3.0 the best. My son made it clear he prefers Pathfinder, and he once made arguments about why we should switch back to it by pointing out some of its merits at some length. I responded "I know that PF has some advantages, but I'm sticking with 3.0." He wasn't terribly happy with me for a while after that, but we continued playing all the same.
In fact, my son prefered PFRPG so much that he GMed it for me later, as I related in the thread My son GMed Pathfinder.
On May 1, 2019, in the thread A goodbye of a sort, I wrote the following:
My son used to champion PFRPG, while I felt that D&D 3.0 was superior (even as I used Paizo products with it). Consequently, we played both. But in the last year, both of us lost interest in RPGs
I just don't have the passion I used to, and I can't make the commitment to a regular game. I expect it will be years before the RPG bug bites me again.
Last month, something unbelievable happened. My son decided to DM a 3.0 campaign for me! Despite all his reasons for prefering PFRPG, he decided that 3.0 would be simpler! We've played every Sunday since then. The campaign is set in Galt and the River Kingdoms, and yesterday, I finally succeeded in doing something I've dreamed of doing for over a decade now: I rescued prisoners from the final blades and smuggled them out of Isarn!
(My prediction came true, though. Since I wrote that goodbye, it WAS two years before I played again, unless you count creating characters.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
On March 13, 2017, in this thread, while I was running a 3.0 campaign with my son (and my father) I posted the following:
...I often feel conscious of the relative merits of 3.5 and PF, but all in all, I still feel I like 3.0 the best. My son made it clear he prefers Pathfinder, and he once made arguments about why we should switch back to it by pointing out some of its merits at some length. I responded "I know that PF has some advantages, but I'm sticking with 3.0." He wasn't terribly happy with me for a while after that, but we continued playing all the same.In fact, my son prefered PFRPG so much that he GMed it for me later, as I related in the thread My son GMed Pathfinder.
On May 1, 2019, in the thread A goodbye of a sort, I wrote the following:
My son used to champion PFRPG, while I felt that D&D 3.0 was superior (even as I used Paizo products with it). Consequently, we played both. But in the last year, both of us lost interest in RPGs
I just don't have the passion I used to, and I can't make the commitment to a regular game. I expect it will be years before the RPG bug bites me again.
Last month, something unbelievable happened. My son decided to DM a 3.0 campaign for me! Despite all his reasons for prefering PFRPG, he decided that 3.0 would be simpler! We've played every Sunday since then. The campaign is set in Galt and the River Kingdoms, and yesterday, I finally succeeded in doing something I've dreamed of doing for over a decade now: I rescued prisoners from the final blades and smuggled them out of Isarn!
(My prediction came true, though. Since I wrote that goodbye, it WAS two years before I played again, unless you count creating characters.)
I was skimming the thread because someone asked about the differences between 3.5 and 3e so I was reviewing the discussion we had here. So cool to see this thread still around! I am happy you are back in the saddle :) Are you playing 3.0 "core only"? How many players? If you feel like it, I'd like to hear more about your game.
I started a 5e game with my kids a few months back, but we got dissatisfied with it for a number of reasons, so last week we converted to D&D 3.0, and we all are happier!
Oop. I haven't checked the boards in a while and I haven't been able to respond until now.
I'm afraid that campaign fizzled out months ago. It was fun while it lasted, though.
Yes, we played "core only". That's mostly how we play. We don't have a lot of splatbooks or anything like that. And the only players left were my son and myself.