Hey there,
i will be running the AP shortly and was wondering if someone could help me tuning it to the possible best outcome for my players. I did already play it until the end of Book 2. So now I will be in charge of the GM.
First of all i already tried to get some advice from the net but couldn't find reliable sources. Finally a friend of mine who was the GM on Book 1-2 said something about changing/rewrite certain NPCs, villans and whole encounters in all books. Whats that about?
When reading the first 2 Books it felt like that there is no connection of the Whispering Way in between each Book. Do you have to ideas on what to change there?
General
* Play the AP without EP so players dont have to worry about grinding and focus more on Roleplaying
My Plans for Book 1:
* Changing the broken "trust system" and give players more opportunities to raise trust among villagers
* 90% replace low level encouters into haunts to give playes more a feeling of being in a wicked places
*
Between Book 1-2
* To connect both book: I maybe send a group of Assassins from Whispering Way (WW) to attack the PC´s and leave encryted notes what the WW is up to in Book 2. Though only insinuations there which will conlude decrypt during the AP and my maybe a treasure map for a little relic to be found in Book 2.
Book 2-6
No ideas yet. Open of any good advice :) Please feel free to copy and paste your ideas to Book 1-6
I was a player in this wonderful AP and my group had a lot of fun so from a players perspective here are my suggestions.
I think most of the changes people refer to involve injection of the options presented in the recent wave of Occult releases from Paizo. One of the great thinks about the Paizo business model is the release of new options months/years after a particular AP releases can breath fresh air into an older AP. I always customize the older AP's when I DM them it's fun and it keeps the players on their toes as many have read or played the older stuff before.
General
* Play the AP without EP so players dont have to worry about grinding and focus more on Roleplaying - As a player I always prefer XP vs any other advancement system. But, you need to use which ever system fits best with your groups style of play. XP's are to me the reward for the grind as you called it. The reward for role-playing is the fun of the role-play however, I prefer giving boon's or story insight as the reward for the roleplay. After all, there is a lot of wonderful background information about NPC's, Golorion events, physical locations etc that never comes to light in the AP's that I feel make great rewards
My Plans for Book 1:
* Changing the broken "trust system" and give players more opportunities to raise trust among villagers The system worked fine for our group so I am uncertain what may or may not be broken. Referencing my comments on your question about XP or no XP, perhaps this is a great way to enhance the Trust System
* 90% replace low level encounters into haunts to give playes more a feeling of being in a wicked places As a GM I love haunts and the haunt mechanic. In fact, I've adapted it for traps as well, but don't over due it or they'll become cliche and your party will loose intrest in them. The Haunting of Harrowstone is one of the best AP introductory chapters ever; by all means customize it to your party but I wouldn't mess to much with the overall layout.
*Between Book 1-2
* To connect both book: I maybe send a group of Assassins from Whispering Way (WW) to attack the PC´s and leave encryted notes what the WW is up to in Book 2. Though only insinuations there which will conlude decrypt during the AP and my maybe a treasure map for a little relic to be found in Book 2. The realization that WW is behind these events I believe was written as a slow reveal and I don't think a positive connection to the WW at this stage is necessary, and may be counter productive to final reveal(s).
Book 2-6
No ideas yet. Open of any good advice :) Please feel free to copy and paste your ideas to Book 1-6
As a player I was not disappointed by a single installment of this AP and had a blast throughout. Trial of the Beast and Wake of the Watcher stood out for our group but all were great fun.
Here's some stuff. Hope it helps!
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One thing that some of the folks on this board have suggested and I would have wished I had done earlier is tying the BBEG more into the plot of the adventure.
A number of people have suggested having this person be present at the funeral in the first book and even be a seeming benefactor in the early books. If doing that I would definitely suggest giving them an amulet of non-detection and a daily dose of undetectable alignment.
Someone also prepared an entire thread of letters from the villain to the PC's to be delivered at different stages of the adventure... just to remind the heroes that they are the source of all their woes.
Here is all the stuff I did when I ran the path. Maybe... some of it will be a help. I think my re-writing of the BBEG may have been eaten by the mythweavers snafu, however.
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First of all i already tried to get some advice from the net but couldn't find reliable sources. Finally a friend of mine who was the GM on Book 1-2 said something about changing/rewrite certain NPCs, villans and whole encounters in all books. Whats that about?
Seems like overkill to me. I did hardly rewrite anything and it went fine. You could maybe change some things along to make the books less self-contained (a popular choice seems to be to send Kendra down to Caliphas for book 4), but other than that is always worked for me.
When reading the first 2 Books it felt like that there is no connection of the Whispering Way in between each Book. Do you have to ideas on what to change there?
To be honest - I did not change anything. They really only set out to stop the Whispering Way after the second book (After they randomly ran into them a second time, so to speak), but I can see why you'd want to change that. Maybe scatter some more hints that that's where they were going next? I would not involve the WW directly at this point.
* Play the AP without EP so players dont have to worry about grinding and focus more on Roleplaying
Talk to your players about that. I did it the same way (because they too did not want to bother with bookkeeping) but you can always up the XP rewards for completing segments of the AP to balance out loss of XP if they skipped encounters.
* Changing the broken "trust system" and give players more opportunities to raise trust among villagers
Works. Quick and dirty fix: Double the rewards, leave the penalties alone, feel free to add things.
90% replace low level encouters into haunts to give playes more a feeling of being in a wicked places
This can go very, very right and also very, very wrong.
You have to remember these things about haunts:- Once triggered, they can usually only be temporarily destroyed by positive energy.
- To find out how to destroy the haunt once and for all you need to use the ouija board. Which can fail and only has limited uses per day.
That can wreck a group hard. I read about a few other haunts which can be avoided and which are more obvious to destroy (Example: Be nice to the ghost dog - destroy it by burying his bones).
Otherwise you have the choise:
If the haunts are only set pieces (trigger haunt - something non-threatening happens - haut over) it can get exhausting, if the haunts are dangerous they can wear the group down - especially because all the haunts are reset if they rest and come back the next day...