Hello PF Nation!
I'm about to start running Runelords Anniversary but since my group only meets about once a month I'm considering shortening it to keep the pace up and move them towards Xin Shalast faster. Hoping folks who have run or played can weigh on on any unintended consequences of these edits.
One note: my players are starting as members of the Black Arrows who have been sent to Sandpoint to trade and fly the flag.
Burnt Offerings: remove the Glassworks entirely so it goes from the Festival to the goblin raid to tracking down the goblins on Thistletop.
Skinshaw: skip entirely. As members of the Black Arrows they need to get back with the trade goods they've acquired.
Hook Mountain: plan to run as is.
Stone Giants: plan to run as is.
Saviors: either remove completely or reduce significantly to one session based on other forum threads.
Xin-Shalest: havent gotten there.
So overall the plot is: festival, goblins attack, follow them to thistletop. Head back to the Fort and free it, go after the stone giants, follow leads to Xin Shalast.
Will this work or are there plot points from the missing pieces that wont make sense?
Thanks!
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Hmmm, not sure how 4 books is better than 6, especially on the fast XP track. Still...
I think you found the two books you could drop with lesser damage to the plot, but not no impact, just less impact.
First, you know you have an xp progression problem, yes? PC's finishing book 1 aren't ready for book 3. Ditto on Book 4 to Book 6. Actually that's probably even worse. PC's not at level 16 will likely get pasted in Book 6.
But assuming you have a plan for that (?) I'll throw out some issues you may have.
Book 1: Skipping Glassworks means skipping the Cathedral of Wrath, yes? The runewell of wrath and Erylium's little domain foreshadow the entire Runelord story as well as the idea of a runewell. It also foreshadows book 5 but you're skipping that... Making the pc's Black Arrows doesn't really tie them to Sandpoint which is a common challenge for the AP. But since you're skipping Book 2 and 5 which emphasize ties to Sandpoint, maybe not a big deal. I would consider re-plotting book 1 and have it take place in Turtleback Ferry. That would be a considerable effort but so is inserting content to keep the pc's on track level wise.
Book 2: In my view, book 2 does three things: shows the breadth of Karzoug's agents in Varisia, introduces the harvesting of greed through sacrifice and makes the pc's heroes to both Sandpoint and Magnimar. The first is important just to show the scope of the danger Karzoug represents, the second is absolutely critical but could be introduced with Lucretia, her barge of sin, etc. and the third isn't all that important if the pc's don't need to care about Sandpoint and Magnimar. Eliminating book 2 also eliminates all urban encounters from the AP.
Book 5 tells the pc's a lot about Thassilonian magic, gives them a crapload of loot (especially for wizards) and gives them access to dominant weapons. The latter is most important - without those, Book 6 gets much harder - at least the confrontations with Karzoug.
All three of the parts you are skipping/changing provide sihedron medallions and justify Karzoug knowing about the pc's and in some cases the pc's knowing about Karzoug. If you don't replace those, you run the risk of the pc's not following the story, not seeing Karzoug as a threat or seeing the events in the campaign as random/disconnected.
I'd also point out that the BBEG of Book 2 is probably the single most famous/infamous encounter in the AP.
I do get the whole thing with foreshadowing, but it kind of loses its impact when your campaign lasts for 2-3 years or more, as mine does. It's been 2 years since my players faced the catacombs of wrath, and I can't expect them to remember any of it, if I don't weave together "the story of the show so far" every time there is something important to remember. Heck, I can't count on them remembering 3 months back, let alone 2 years.
And as long as you're doing that, you can assume that some chapters happen between gaming sessions. Just write up a short narration of what the PCs have been doing, then skip those bits. Give them the xp, or better yet just level them to the appropriate degree.
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AP is supposed to be about Sandpoint and not about Black Arrows, so you do need to do rewrites if you want to remove "save Sandpoint" related stuff in campaign.
Well, with weekly about 4 hour sessions I have run this ap around for 11 or 10 months, but thats taking in account 5 weeks were I did my own subplots to give players enough exp they didn't need to "grind" in Jorgenfist to survive, 5 other sessions where I used comic book encounters as part of and few weeks were we had breaks due to real life stuff getting in way of game day. So uh, hard to say how long monthly game would take if you run entire ap. And if you run 6 or 8 hour sessions, it makes figuring that out for me pretty weird.
Its also a thing that I run this game as roll20 campaign so its much easier to be efficient and have everything prepped than with live games. Live games tend to progress more slowly than live games, due to stuff like maps taking a lot of space on table though players get easily distracted both in live and online games soo yeah.
But yeah, I think idea of featuring the parts where you skip as "Between sessions" moments and giving them levels might actually work in that it helps with "removing the foreshadowing" problem that happens if you remove second book. Fifth book is necessary only for grinding and arming up players really.
Hmmm, not sure how 4 books is better than 6, especially on the fast XP track. Still...
** spoiler omitted **...
Hey Latrecis,
Thank you, tis is a very thoughtful and helpful response.
In regards to leveling and speed of advancement, I'm going to be converting to 5E so I can address PC power level and loot during the conversion.
Replacing Sandpoint with Turtleback Ferry is an excellent suggestion. This also helps me get past one of my major beefs with the AP, which is the distances in Varisia. I did some research and learned that the cities in Varisia are significantly further from each other than major cities in California. Having the PCs and giants cover 500+ miles overland seems impractical from a logistics or story perspective.
Would it work if I used another town like Ilsurian or Ravensmoor?
Losing urban adventures doesn't concern me but your point about the big bad in Book 2 makes me think I should consider a shortened version.
I'll look through the other threads to see if there's good advice for how to shorten Book 5. I'd like to include the dragon if possible.
@CorvusMask: your campaign length reinforces my idea of shortening the AP. There's no way I can keep this campaign alive long enough to play as written.
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Regarding shortening fifth book and Runeforge, all you really need to do is to have same thing what happened to Envy's part of Runeforge happen to all optional ones: They got destroyed by factions fighting each other. All players really need to do is to figure out how to create dominant weapons, everything else there is optional.
Ravenmoor is tiny village though. Though if you want to take that Ravenmoor module and change it to be part of campaign somehow, maybe that would work?*shrugs* It would require lots of rewrites though since Ghaulander doesn't have as much presence in RotR as Lamashtu does.
If you're looking to run a shortened version of Rise of the Runelords, I'd recommending running the AP more-or-less straight, and just ending at a given book. You'll need to tweak the backstory a little, and you won't see any Runelords actually, y'know, rise, but you can twist it such that the baddies are tapping into ancient Thassilonian power, and that's what's rising. (Maybe call the campaign, "Shadow of the Runelords" or something like that.)
End campaign at L5: Run Burnt Offerings straight. Nualia was the Big Bad, and defeating her saves Sandpoint.
End campaign at L8: Run through the end of Skinsaw Murders. Xanesha was the Big Bad. She had tapped into an old Thassilonian energy conduit and was using the Sandpoint Runewell for her own nefarious purposes.
End campaign at L11: Run through the end of Hook Mountain Massacre. Barl Breakbones is the Big Bad, who was trying to use a glimmer of Thassilonian power to take over the ogres of Hook Mountain to create a nation of giants.
End campaign at L14: Run through Fortress of the Stone Giants. Mokmourian is the Big Bad, who was using ancient Thassilonian magic to create an army of giants to take over Varisia.
This also gives you the ability to just keep running the AP as-written if your players are having a good time and/or you get through the adventures at a faster clip than you had expected. It'll also be a LOT less work!
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I've been running RotRL monthly for three years now. Rather than cut entire chapters, I eliminate all random encounters and cut some extraneous encounters while combining some lower-CR encounters so they're more of a challenge and otherwise less problematic.
Really, it's not the books that matter. It's encounters. For instance, you could eliminate the Graul household but still have the PCs go to Fort Rannick. You could also eliminate the giant assault on Sandpoint and instead have a general war break out and the heroes hired by Magnimar to take out the Giant leader, some stone giant spellcaster named Mokmurian. But they have to use stealth to reach it.
You can also add additional diplomatic venues so that the party could negotiate through areas that otherwise would be combat-based.
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I would agree that the easiest way to play an abridged Runelords is to do it the way Haladir suggests. Of course, then your players can't write "Defeated Karzoug" into their gaming CV's...
So replacing Sandpoint for an expanded Turtleback Ferry might work. You could just use the Sandpoint map and NPCs and place it where Turtleback Ferry is, seeing as Turtleback Ferry is awfully small. Skip all of the Lamashtu parts, including the cathedral of wrath under the town and later the Scribbler.
You can then skip the whole Magnimar part in book 2 and subsequently the Foxglove/Norgorber/Skinsaw stuff, make Xanesha into Lucrecia and have her as an ominous figure in town from the start. Maybe owning a tattoo parlour in town, incorporating Sihedrons in all her designs. You can have her pose as some Varisian tattoo artist, giving out magical tattoos for very cheap prices. Give her a place on the town council to give her some official political power and to make her somewhat "safe" from the PCs meddling with her too early. Xanesha/Lucrecia will then be the one corrupting Nualia in book 1 to attack Turtleback Ferry/Sandpoint with goblins (to create sacrifices to free Karzoug, of course).
When that plan backfires she starts plan B, which is drowning the whole valley. Maybe she leaves the tattoo parlour and opens up a large, exclusive brothel in town instead ("The Paradise", as per the book) to which she sells VIP-memberships, which are sealed through the member receiving a small Sihedron tattoo. People come from all around the valley to visit The Paradise (while Lucrecia charms the Kreeg clan to start demolishing the dam) , and cue Hook Mountain.
For book 5, you can place that mountain wherever. Keep the dragon guarding it, have the Runeforge be destroyed and deserted, and have the making of runeforged weapons be a simple process. Have the PCs find the way to Xin-Shalast inside the Runeforge (maybe a large mural inside the Greed section), and that's that.
One fun thing I did was to have my group meet another adventuring party in book 3, who was basically following the same track, having defeated a lamia sister to Xanesha and Lucrecia in Korvosa. They had found a letter leading them to Turtleback Ferry. They where quite coy, seeing the PCs as competition rather than allies (they were led by a CN cleric of Calistria), and disappeared after some horse-trading of information with my group (the PCs later found them dead in Jorgenfist where they went directly after meeting the PCs). I used them to give the PCs a couple of clues, but mostly to give them a sense that there was something larger going on in Varisia and that Karzoug had sent out lot of minions to help him escape his prison. Maybe that encounter could be useful for you, seeing as you will shorten things down so much, and your players might be in need of some exposition and sense of scale.
(As for playing the whole campaign, we did it in 55 play sessions of about 4 hours each, but around 10 percent where longer, 8 hour sessions, so say about 250 hours. I did add and expand some stuff, especially in the first three books, and changed book 5 a lot ((but didn't shorten it)). I also did what Tangent101 discusses above, removed all random encounters ((don't care for this Gygaxitis still lingering in Pathfinder, encounters should be planned by the DM and be a part of the story, in my opinion)) and removed almost all of xp-fodder fights - where some ((usually weak)) critters have been thrown into a room just to provide levelling XP.)
Hey Razcar,
Awesome suggestions, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply.
-Lauguz