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So, pretty soon I will be starting a new game of Hell's Rebels, and I was wondering if there was any advice that those who have run it might have. I don't have specifics on what the players will be playing, but I thought I would ask. so, what where your experiences with the adventure path? any pitfalls to watch out for? advice? I'd love to hear it all
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We're a little way into book 4. If I had the option of starting the AP again with the benefit of hindsight, I would run the rebellion in the background and not involve the players in the rebellion rules. I've found them distracting, sometimes they make no sense, and usually take the players out of the roleplay aspect of the game and into number crunching.
Because it's set largely in one place, be prepared for players to want to do things that aren't described in the APs. You're going to have to wing it often unless you force them back onto the rails or want to spend time before play coming up with random NPCs, shops, street scenes, rumours etc.
Start creating a cast of characters for the town. You'll need them.
Create an outline of each adventure, with the type of encounter noted for each one. A lot of the missions can go in any order, so noting which ones are can be helpful and knowing what kind of encounter they are allows you to vary your encounters (avoiding a slog of combat, then a slog of investigations, then a slog of RP in favor of mixing up the spotlight).
This is an AP where periodic use of the verbal duel can be helpful. I'm not a fan of the complicated sub-system Ultimate Intrigue has, but you can modify it to taste. I used their types of arguments then got rid of the whole determination mechanic in favor of a skill challenge system stolen from 4e. YMMV.
Look through the forum: there's a lot of good tips in the stickied posts on each adventure. There's some excellent critiques of the revolutionary theory proposed by the module that are spot-on. Indeed, those are must read. Use the revised instructions on 5 steps to revolution found in this forum, sit back and let the players really roleplay the Silver Ravens' vision of the good life. There's some side encounters that might spark things for you.
Say yes to things and take notes while your players plan. Your players should drive a lot of the plot. The writing of the modules necessarily has a lot of "mission comes to the PCs" writing as a safety net, but if you let players think things through you can have them actively find a lot of missions that would otherwise be passive. And if they don't you can always give them the hook the adventure lists.
Tell your players that being optimized for combat isn't necessary, but being useful in combat is. There's a lot of room for skill-based characters, but there ARE some set pieces where the combat expertise of the PCs will be tested.
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Read the entire adventure path start to finish. There's a lot of foreshadowing that gets mentioned in book one and doesn't get resolved until book four. My players are in book 3 and have been aggressive in following hints so I have had to reorganize some stuff. When you get to book two especially, make sure you put forward varl wex and Luculla early and often. Make them someone that the players remember.
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Also the players guide implies that the silver ravens were active recently and that the players may have known someone in the silver ravens. This is not the case in the adventure path and i had to spend a really long time explaining that to one of my players. Make that error super clear to your players ahead of time, save yourself the hassle
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Look through the forum: there's a lot of good tips in the stickied posts on each adventure. There's some excellent critiques of the revolutionary theory proposed by the module that are spot-on. Indeed, those are must read. Use the revised instructions on 5 steps to revolution found in this forum, sit back and let the players really roleplay the Silver Ravens' vision of the good life. There's some side encounters that might spark things for you.
Aww, you remembered!
@Thirdhorseman, the revised steps of revolution to which @roguerogue refers can be found here and here. The theoretical disquisitions can largely be found starting here.
Be careful though. There are roving bands of Orthodox Razcarists and Razcarist-Zimmerists roaming the threads, and the intensity of their hatred for one another is matched only by their mutual loathing for the Raynulfists ;)
Also the players guide implies that the silver ravens were active recently and that the players may have known someone in the silver ravens. This is not the case in the adventure path and i had to spend a really long time explaining that to one of my players. Make that error super clear to your players ahead of time, save yourself the hassle
I explained this by having the meaning of "Silver Raven" transition over the decades from referring to a specific group to being a general folk term/pejorative for "dissident." Fittingly, most of the actual cadre organizing (as opposed to supporter organizing) that the PCs' organization will be doing is bringing hitherto unaffiliated dissidents under the banner of the Silver Ravens.
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I'll join the "Read Ahead" chorus line.
There are a number of places where an earlier introduction of a character or location would have been really useful, but while the authors can't benefit from hindsight, the GM can. In particular I would recommend:
- Figure out how and when Rexus learns of the Many-Steps Monastery
- Introduce Setrona and the Tooth and Nail in Book 1, sometime after clearing the Wasp Nest. Having the PCs know her before she comes asking for help makes it a lot smoother in Book 2.
- Read the Soul Anchor section of Book 6 and decide what you want to do with Luculla, and adjust accordingly. As-written her cult is behaving... "oddly", and not reacting how one would expect to having their fane occupied by Thrune.
- Decide what you want to do with Balgorrah, and adjust Wex accordingly. Be prepared for PCs to want to keep it; there'susually one. ().
- Decide whether the nobility (who generally own everything and have their own military forces) are ti play a major role in the story, or not.
- Introduce Solstine's grandkids early. Having them join & die for the rebellion off camera retroactively in book 5 is going to irk some players.
- Decide what you want to do with Mayhart, and introduce him earlier (rather than leaving him in jail the entirety of Books 1-4), if you feel it would make for a better story.
- Decide whether Kintargo's population only counts civilians, or all locals. Decide whether the dottari are imports or locals and adjust accordingly. Note: The dottari answer to the lord mayor, and the last LM was a CG Caydenite, suggesting the dottari are unlikely to all be LE originally, and the campaign start was only a week after Barzollai arrived.
- Think about your players (not characters) and how they handle minigames; if they don't like them, or alternatively like them so much as to obsess over them to the detriment of the game, do not use the Rebellion mechanics as a PC driven thing.
- Decide what you want the climax of book 4 to be. If it is Barzillai you may want to adjust the Devils Bells scenario. If it is the bells, you may want to foreshadow/emphasize them more in the earlier books.
- Be aware of your PCs abilities, in particular with regards to Perform skills. Shensen is an NPC who packages up *some* Perform skills (but not percussion) and can fill in for the PCs if there's a need, in order to perform the Song of Silver. If a PC already has this covered, consider downplaying Shensen as a character - YMMV.
- Check what the Devils Bells need vs your PC party. If they lack the divine spells and skills, consider revising the bells or removing the ritual to cleanse them altogether.
@Thirdhorseman, the revised steps of revolution to which @roguerogue refers can be found here and
here. The theoretical disquisitions can largely be found starting here.
To second (or third) this; If you're using the Five Steps of Revolution, that one is better.
Personally... I'm not. It feels like a safety net to force feed the PCs a plan. Also: Neither Laria nor the previous Silver Ravens are or were revolutionaries. The background glosses over what the situation in Kintargo was during the civil war (such as the state and allegiance of its armed forces), but the Silver Ravens are fighting external threats to Kintargo, not attempting to overthrow an unpopular government.
Be careful though. There are roving bands of Orthodox Razcarists and Razcarist-Zimmerists roaming the threads, and the intensity of their hatred for one another is matched only by their mutual loathing for the Raynulfists ;)
Ah, hyperbole, how I missed thee :P
More seriously: Like all matters of gaming, it's about personal taste and verisimilitude. For history buffs like Zim, the light hearted Star Wars (original trilogy) rebellion just can't get their buy in - and if you're aiming for a more simulationist approach to the revolution, hr makes some good comments. For others, it's less of an issue. We all have our quirks - I and most of my players are engineers, so I frequently redesign dungeons and locations (like the entire lower level of the Lucky Bones) because otherwise the impossibility of the published design is immersion breaking... And usually halts the game while people try to analyze it and conjure better solutions. The perils of gaming with engineers.
I actually removed the entire lower floor of the plucky bones and instead ran a bunch of missions where the silver ravens interacted more with the city, helping people. My players have interrupted an attempt at prearranged weapon crafting ostensibly for the war effort against the glorious revolution and actually to build thrunes private army, broke into the records office way early to get information on street vestori's disappearance and the lord mayors disappearance, and rescued 3 aquatic elves from public excruciation during festival. They're about to start approaching elements of the dottari and trying to turn them over to their side
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...More seriously: Like all matters of gaming, it's about personal taste and verisimilitude. For history buffs like Zim, the light hearted Star Wars (original trilogy) rebellion just can't get their buy in - and if you're aiming for a more simulationist approach to the revolution, hr makes some good comments. For others, it's less of an issue. We all have our quirks - I and most of my players are engineers, so I frequently redesign dungeons and locations (like the entire lower level of the Lucky Bones) because otherwise the impossibility of the published design is immersion breaking... And usually halts the game while people try to analyze it and conjure better solutions. The perils of gaming with engineers.
I'm just started prepping for the AP but the rebellion sequence in Book 1 strikes me as less "how a rebellion works" but more "these are the rails of the AP" and serve two purposes: telling GM's what content they will get from future Books and to the extent provided to players/pc's in-game, what pc's should expect to be doing. "No, you will not be taking out Barzillai anytime soon."
The AP has some sandbox aspects and it takes place in a large city and players might conceive of a whole slew of crazy plans that would force GM's into a boatload of work - the rebellion layout provides some boundaries to those plans.
I actually hid that info from players and just made it clear before the campaign that this adventure was about finding allies, resisting and building up a revolution. I found the whole 5 steps of revolution quite awkward personally
Things to consider eliminating:
The entire trip to hell in the last book. It's an incredibly disappointing dungeon crawl with no player choice: all linear. You can put Thrune in as the boss in the subterranean trip instead, cutting the witchfire priestess who comes out of no where.
The clearing of the Wasp Nest. Laria's justification is... flimsy. Just have the croc eat the smuggler and move the Fushi sisters to the Red Jills mission, with the Dire Corby being the bodyguard to the sorcerer boss.
Cut the nonsense that Lord-Mayor Jilia is automatically elected. You're missing a great opportunity to role play an election. Skip the royalist "Leverage over Law" sequence in book 5 as a similar violation of player agency. You can think of something better than that.
Something to keep in mind: the battles could use some juicing up to make it more challenging, unless your PCs are all skill > combat in design. Some tips:
Look for opportunities for non-plot coupon and dungeon crawl missions
• Escape/Breach, Hold a location, Obtain/heist, prevent/protect
o Have the monsters have objectives
• Chase mechanics: have a bunch of dottari chase a PC, have an agitator draw attention to the SR pushing them into a combat they obviously can’t win, have some monsters break and run after first casualty (but could report your presence and identity), mix of some stay to fight while 1-2 break off to alert their bosses.
• Spread propaganda: poison pen of Kintargo works, graffiti, brainstorming slogans, a writing/artistry skill check, figuring out your target audiences, using a gather info check to get the message out, maybe a stealth mission for not getting caught. Counter propaganda: Devil You Know or Cheliax First slogan, whispering campaign slandering Silver Ravens,
• Steal supplies for neighborhoods cut off by bridge tax, steal guns and bullets from Alkenstar enclave on docks, steal those paintings of Abrogail from inns
• Investigations: mostly done by mooks already on the inside, murder mysteries,
• Funding: how are you going to get funds for bribes, compensate people harmed by the disruption, weapons,
• Recruitment: for your recruiters give them organizing material—who’s your audience, what’s your elevator pitch, 3 reasons why, FAQ responses
• Sabotage: Leave hidden damage and traps for baddies, lure them into it for missions, blow up Alkenstar enclave on docks when dottari start carrying firearms (-4, but touch attack is easy)
• Infiltration: fake honey-pot rebellion run by Thrune with twist of having rest of party meet Torrent armiger Hortense on the way to arrest the fakers;
• Improve morale: handing out treats or essentials, organize rallies, people’s masquerade prior to the Ruby Masquerade to set it up
• Smuggle a Halfling out to connect with Bellflower network, strike back against pro-Thrune nobles likely to have slaves;
Complicate combats:
• Let scouting pay off, especially if they outsource it, can sometimes use 5e Advantage dynamic for good scouting or ambushes
• Nonlethal: do you really want to kill cops?
• Lethal: when one goes down, another one: tries to stabilize him (“Stay with me Bob!”), one goes bezerk in anger or the whole team stops what they’re doing to target the cop killer, one stops everything and holds him crying, etc.
• Use weather (snow, rain, winds, mist), Have unshoveled streets difficult terrain to encourage rebellion to clear streets
• Use distance to traverse, to shoot, to cast prep spells (set up one board where monsters are; another board where characters are, separate them, then narrate traversing between them
• need to keep dim light,
• need to keep quiet,
• keep the collateral damage down
• On a timer: fight guards as guy’s being excruciated while one guard runs off to report you
• On a timer: You can hear the whistles of the oncoming dottari patrol
• Use 4 dimensions (stairs, building tops, sea battles, air battles)
• Have the monsters call out tactics in their language; have one monster call out tactics and if taken down others waste a round trying to decide what to do
• Narrate attacks and encourage narration by PCs through spotting weak points
• Range and Cover: Pillars, debris, doors, doorways; have casters and archers seek cover first: Move to cover and spell; spell and then duck behind something; have them throw out oil or caltrops to stop charges
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All good stuff above.
From my game (and some of the fixes I used) :
1 - Vary how the NPCs get introduced, far too many people just turn up at the front door. It's a running joke among my players that the Coffeehouse might as well have a neon sign outside the door saying 'Secret Rebel Hideout'.
2 - Consider tweaking Barzillai Thrune's plan. As it stands, this very intelligent villain has no need to take over the city. He'd be much better off just quietly buying an estate in the city, doing the ritual and settling down to a quiet life while he awaits godhood.
If you add a section to his ritual that means his power on ascension is directly based on his power inside the region while he was alive, he has a good reason to want to take over the city and crush all opposition.
3 - Rexus's early story needs a little tweaking as well. If he knows about the Monastery, why didn't he bloody well say something? If his parents left him a key to the place, you think he'd bring that up. I added in an external Archivist NPC who escaped and fled the city, returning to find Rexus and hand him both the key and the knowledge that there was a secret Archivist lair below Hocum's.
4 - Create your teams up front. Give them NPC names and basic personalities so that the rebellion feels a bit more fleshed out. I used Forvian Crow as the anti-hero rebel, he's the harsh CN mercenary who believes the ends justify the means, and he's a good contrast to Liara, Rexus and Octavio. Turned out to be one of their favourite NPCs so far.
Consider having each NPC represent a 'face' of your rebellion, be it revenge, idealism, freedom, desire for order etc, and let your different PC's get close to different ones that fit their philosophy. It can lead to some good RP.
5 - Tweak the Bleakbridge tolls. They get crazy, fast, and would in reality cause the city to completely collapse.
6 - I increased some of the early follower requirements for levelling up the rebellion, as otherwise a lot of GMs have found it goes a bit too fast.
7 - Try and introduce characters more, and earlier. BT's Lieutenants are basically faceless NPCs until the very end, so try and give them a bit of face time so the party has a bit more of a grudge going on.
Introduce Luculla, Hetamon, Setrona Sabinus and a few others earlier if you can so they don't feel quite as opportunistic. Luculla especially can be a good, slow burn for a betrayal NPC.
8 - My players keep wanting to map the sewers, and are paranoid about the open dock in the Wasps Nest. Consider some high level sewer maps or put a collapsed ceiling nearby to block it off. Given how hard it is to move around at night, your players may decide to make a raft and go exploring.
9 - I bought a few of those flip-scoreboard things you see on quiz nights, and set them up outside my GM screen. The first is for Notoriety, the second is for Followers. The players really seem to appreciate seeing those numbers move as they do things around the city, and it keeps the idea at the front of their minds.
10 - Give Octavio an Amulet of Non Detection, otherwise the players may feel paranoid that he'll get tracked and blow their cover, given his profile.
11 - A little foreshadowing is great. My Milanite has been having prophetic dreams about the Devil's Bells (which in my game are being used as a soul repository for sacrificed Milani worshippers, every time one is killed, the bell rings).
There's probably more, but those were a few of the obvious ones. Hope you find it helpful.
It's a great campaign, I think it's one of Paizo's best, with a great flavour and a good storyline.
But like most urban campaigns it needs a bit of legwork from the GM to get the very best out of it.
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3 - Rexus's early story needs a little tweaking as well. If he knows about the Monastery, why didn't he bloody well say something? If his parents left him a key to the place, you think he'd bring that up. I added in an external Archivist NPC who escaped and fled the city, returning to find Rexus and hand him both the key and the knowledge that there was a secret Archivist lair below Hocum's.
Someone from Lady Docur's seems like a decent choice for this, actually.
3 - Rexus's early story needs a little tweaking as well. If he knows about the Monastery, why didn't he bloody well say something? If his parents left him a key to the place, you think he'd bring that up. I added in an external Archivist NPC who escaped and fled the city, returning to find Rexus and hand him both the key and the knowledge that there was a secret Archivist lair below Hocum's.
I saw this point literally the day before my game got to this section, so thanks. :-) I'm inclined to agree that Rexus as written would probably not be inclined to wait around for weeks if he suspected his parents were still alive in the monastery. He seems like an impulsive guy.
My solution:
I had him discover a coded message in the original note from his mother giving the monastery's purpose and location. I timed it for when he was done decoding the other documents; he noticed something weird about some of the phrasing in the letter once he was done with those and decided to take a closer look.
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I saw this point literally the day before my game got to this section, so thanks. :-) I'm inclined to agree that Rexus as written would probably not be inclined to wait around for weeks if he suspected his parents were still alive in the monastery. He seems like an impulsive guy.
My solution: <snip>
I thankfully noticed it ahead of time... and scratched my head about it for a while, wondering if I missed something earlier.
My solution was a little more of a deviation from the published story: I had Hocum come to the PCs, and inform them of it.
In more detail: I re-imagined Hocum's Fantasmagorium as being built atop the ruins of a shrine to Nethys (build by an eccentric migrant from Absolom) which was destroyed at the end of the civil war, with Hocum himself being a dwarf and thus merely old (and still remarkably glam) at this point. A few decades ago the Archivists purchased the building from him, allowing him to stay in business and add new (and slightly less shonky) collections to the museum. Thus the Fantasmagorium was active and trading until the Night of Ashes.
The Many-Steps Monastery I had built from the chambers the disciples of Nethys reclaimed or built, only joined with passages and staircases rather than phase doors. I had Rexus' parents survive the Night of Ashes and take refuge in the monastery along with many other Archivists, and were only killed when the Asmodeans attacked several days later - while Hocum was out searching (and failing to find) for Rexus on behalf of his landlord, Porcia.
Returning (wearing a hat of disguise) Hocum discovered his museum occupied by devils and Asmodeans and promptly fled and went into hiding. He emerged from hiding only after several weeks, when the word of the Silver Ravens finally reached him, and he approached them to see if they could investigate his museum and evict his uninvited guests... only to discover that Rexus was alive, at which point he fessed up the remaining details.
I borrowed this bit of art for Hocum's appearance.
Part of my motivation with the Nethys shrine was to explain why, despite being in Redroof and low lying, the Fantasmagorium lacked a basement level, and instead went straight down into vast archives that were below the water level. I also prefer the idea that certain acts of insanely powerful magic - such as the lanterns that function as sunlight in the Meditation Garden - not be works of the Iroran monks, but rather disciples of Nethys creating something absurdly difficult and expensive purely because they could.
I was also not enamoured with having another abandoned-for-decades building for the PCs to delve into, largely because Kintargo is not Westcrown, and lacks the fall-from-grace atmosphere justifying the high number of disused buildings. So I made it open until the Night of Ashes and reskinned the encounters to be associated with an active (rather than long-closed) museum. Additionally, as the Asmodeans will have regularly inspected the museum, I didn't have the redactors bother investigating or removing anything in the Fantasmagorium - they've seen and largely ignored it all before.
I also tweaked the encounters to move all the redactors down into the monastery and replaced them upstairs with a collection of soulbound dolls Hocum recently purchased from a Wiscrani dealer (stolen straight out of What Lies in Dust, except adding the Advanced template), who are doing things like releasing spiders and generally being evil little critters. I then reduced the number of redactors down to five (plus one dead one in the artifact room), removed the Lout, and added a few CR1 Order of the Rack armigers. Finally I made Yillev the ancient librarian bound by the Nethys disciples generations back, who is currently trapped in an inwards magic circle against law by Tiarise, and forced to watch as his great collection is destroyed.
Hocum had thus spent the campaign to date hiding and drinking heavily in a Redroof tavern, appearing as a plainly dressed middle-aged dwarf claiming to be "hiding from the missus". One of my PCs actually met him prior to the later reveal <_<
This may be just my opinion, but don't just run the game like a normal AP. Add in interludes where something resembling normal life happens. A huge pitfall in how many people run urban APs is that they often lose sight of just what the PCs are fighting for. I find that juxtaposing the normal(ish) iteractions and the evils of the setting tend to make great urban games.
One thing to look out for in a sandbox campaign like this one is that information you need to play off your PCs' backgrounds and players' interests may be spread across several books. For example, you're not supposed to be dealing with nobles until mid-game and end game, but if a PC has a noble's background, you'll need to gather that material in one place and work off it. If you have a PC interested in starting a thieves' guild or in pacifying the gangs, that info is spread across three books, with several gangs referenced in the random encounters in the second book.
Generally speaking, I like the advice here, but a crucial thing to reinforce is that it's important to understand what the players want to focus on with the AP. I had a combat-happy group that included a 14 year old with ADD. As such, I knew that I had to stick to the script and keep the dice rollin'. They still loved the story, 2 of 4 would have liked to explore some more of that, but by and large the AP was a success. As you look through the GM sticky threads, you'll see a lot of my write-ups with musings about the grand successes and spectacular come-backs they had. I'm kind of a weak GM when it comes to rewriting the story and expanding upon it. I made my goal for the AP to provide challenges to them that were varied and interesting.
I recommend against using the rebellion rules. Having played through the tower defense mini-game in Way of the Wicked, I knew exactly how fun-sucking rules like these tend to be, particularly if the players perceive the rebellion to be aimless without them.