Just finished running RotRL, thinking of running Ruins of Azlant next and have a few questions.

[Kiniticyst]

So after around 3 years my group finally finished Rise of the Runelords, hurrah! Forewarning, there will be some RoA and RotRL spoilers.

Only a month or so has passed and I'm already itching to climb back into the GM chair so I started briefly leafing through the adventure paths and Ruins of Azlant has caught my eye as the top contender!

One main issue I have is that from quickly reading the introduction, it seems to be the same story as RotRL: Some being from an ancient civilization was placed in stasis 10,000 years ago and has been awakened, the civilization it once knew is gone so now it's got it's own plans!

It seems that a lot of the first two chapters hinges on the players exploring the mystery of what happened and when it is revealed, I'm incredibly worried my players will think the same thing. "Wait, another thing that was in stasis 10,000 years ago woke up? But we wanted to do something different.."

Granted, I haven't yet read the entire thing because I want to be certain I'll run it before I do so, in case I decide not to and could one day be a player in the campaign. Am I aligning the storylines too much? Does the 'dude from 10,000 years ago' thing go away after the 2nd chapter and does the story progress into something else?

[Zaister]

The "dude from 10,000 years ago" is actually the big bad of this adventure path and likely the motivator of most of its evil plots. Well, it's not so much really a "dude" but an inhuman monstrosity, but yeah.

[Captain collateral damage]

Other than the primary big bad being from a long time ago and exploring ancient ruins, the APs are pretty different. And yes, Karzoug and Ochymua are very different people with pretty much opposite motivations, plans, and reasons for being in stasis.

[Kiniticyst]

Zaister wrote:

The "dude from 10,000 years ago" is actually the big bad of this adventure path and likely the motivator of most of its evil plots. Well, it's not so much really a "dude" but an inhuman monstrosity, but yeah.

Dang, the more I read the more similarities crop up. Dude from 10,000 years ago's plans rely on slavery / domination as well as spying on the players with Clockwork Spies just like Karzoug enslaving and dominating giants and spying on players through the sihedron medallions. It's a shame because I do still really want to run it but I may form a different group for it rather than my usual group who have done RotRL.

Thanks for the heads up!

[Kiniticyst]

Captain collateral damage wrote:

Other than the primary big bad being from a long time ago and exploring ancient ruins, the APs are pretty different. And yes, Karzoug and Ochymua are very different people with pretty much opposite motivations, plans, and reasons for being in stasis.

Yeah they do seem quite different in terms of pace and of course setting (apart from 10,000 year old ruins) but I'm just worried that alarm bells will go off in the players heads when they finally get the big reveal of what's going on to be all too similar.

[justaworm]

The history of Thassilon and Azlant are very much tied together. Other than the history, there isn't really very much similarity between the APs themselves.