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After 20+ years of tabletop roleplay, my regular play group and I finally finished our first full campaign in the form of Pathfinder's Skull and Shackles adventure path! A real feat considering everyone's chaotic work schedules, family obligations, and other important responsibilities! It was a six year effort involving 4 core players, with a few guest players here and there as well. I'm blessed to have such dedicated friends willing to join me in the joint creation of such fun, memorable stories and adventures. It's been a blast and I look forward to spending the next 20 years gaming with all of them! A big thanks to Paizo and the Pathfinder roleplaying community for helping to make this happen for us!
It's surprisingly hard to do that, congrats!
I have yet to have a campaign complete myself. I hope to see it through. Congrats Rd!
Wow, that's awesome, RD! I've seen you here so often and for so long that I'd just assumed you'd knocked a few out by now!
That's a great feeling :)
We've knocked out Savage Tide (3.5), RotR, Iron Gods, and are working on Jade Regent now.
Congrats! It's tough to get through an entire campaign.
We've only completed RotR, but man what a trip. I think it took us almost four years. We're currently floundering through Second Darkness, not sure if this one will go...
Good luck with your own games everyone!
We've knocked out Savage Tide (3.5), RotR, Iron Gods, and are working on Jade Regent now.
Nice! We've played through Savage Tides, but after the third TPK, the GM gave up on us. Even though we didn't finish it, it is credited with generating enough interest in sea-fairing campaigns to make us want to try Skull and Shackles.
We've also attempted Rise of the Runelords some too, but play has been rather spotty. Technically not out yet, but definitely on the ropes.
I ran rise of the runelords for my group. Took about 2 years and a bit.
What was your party? I'm curious.
- Glassarah, former river pirate turned oceanic pirate - Quartermaster
N female human sage sorcerer 15
- Luna Redclaw, corsair who wields the exotic weapons of Alkenstar - First Mate
CN female catfolk, gunslinger 6/fighter 8/swachbuckler 1 (picaroom, pistolero)
- Morgana Adams, daring rake and secret member of the Red Mantis - Captain (later Admiral)
LE female half-elf, unchained rogue 3/fighter 2/red mantis assassin 10 (lore warden, rake)
- Navi, ecoterrorist and Storm Kindler - Sailing Master
N female half-elf arcanist 14 (school savant/transmuter)
- Sandara Quinn, Besmaran Priestess - Ship's Surgeon
CN female human, cleric 8/holy vindicator 5 of Besmara (second cohort to Morgana)
Those pirates who didn't have the mettle to make the entire journey are as follows:
- Dirgah Hammehead, traitorous wretch - Boatswain
NE male dwarf rogue 6/Inner Sea pirate 2 (pirate)
Aided the PCs in the Free Captain's Regatta before leading a mutiny that ended in the theft of the Man's Promise from the other players
- Dylan Sapper, siege engineer - Gunner
N male human fighter 2 (archer)
After assisting in the recovery of the Man's Promise from Plug, he retired taking his share of the loot with him
- Fire-Eye Sang, exotic martial artist and master of the original Crane Style - Master-At-Arms
LE male vanara fighter 6/monk 4 (free hand fighter, master of many styles)
Cleaved in two by a cyclops' greataxe while attempting to pacify the Island of Empty Eyes
- Fish, good luck charm - Quartermaster
NE male tengu bard 3
Eaten by swarms while stranded on an unnamed island as he attempted to repair the Wormwood for sail
- Gebralter, master of illusion - Gunner
CN male gnome sorcerer 10
Mind ruined by enemy magic, causing him to go permanently insane; retired to a comfortable asylum
- Neshka Fullsail, talented artificer - "Cabin Boy"
CN female human witch 6 (first cohort to Morgana)
Burned to death by lightning drakes during the Free Captain's Regatta
- Sulern Yoruda, aquatic druid - Sailing Master
N male halfling druid 4 of Besmara
Shortly after assisting in the recovery of the Wormwood from Scourge, he retired taking his share of the loot with him
Our campaign started with several demihumans and somehow ended with all female characters. I think it was considered bad luck to play male characters after a while, as they were the only ones who kept dying.
By the end of the campaign, they had successfully taken three outposts to use as their various bases of operation: Tidewater Rock, Isle of Empty Eyes, and Lucrehold.
Because the ship and fleet were run by female officers many of the names used were, well, somewhat indelicate.
- Flagship
Dominator, rechristened as the War Wench (warship)
- First Ship
The Man's Promise, rechristened as the Moist Wench (sailing ship)
- Fleet
The Whore Fleet (25 sailing ships, 11 warships, 6 longships, 5 galleys, separated into 10 squadrons)
- Lead Squadron
The Red Tide (lost in the final battle against Port Peril forces)
Disclaimer: I won't know if the below actually works for a couple months
My strategy in a custom campaign is that I'm doing "Seasons" of 8-12 sessions (depending on how far the players get each "episode".) The hope is to avoid player burnout and avoid GM burnout since as you go "We only have three left" is probably enough to build excitement and commitment to finishing.
I think another issue that happens is that when you do something consistently and it's going to go "forever" (such as a long campaign over years or something) it's easy to get lazy and be like "well this week I wanted to go to the movies, and it'll be there every other weekend!" Where as a Season may make it feel like a you gotta catch it while it's still here. It works for TV, maybe it'll work for me!
I'll know soon enough, we just wrapped up session 2 in a little under 2 weeks; and I think we should be through it just before the holidays, which would be good; since that timeframe tends to really nuke things.
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Either way, congrats! I too have always had burnout, schedule changes, or laziness kill my campaigns; some of it is my fault as the GM too; it just gets tough to keep up sometimes.
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Though I mentioned around ten characters, we only had four core players. Three additional players played guest characters for a couple of games too.
Only Captain Morgana Adams and First Mate Luna Redclaw made it from the very first adventure to the very last (levels 1 - 15). Glassarah joined in halfway through the campaign, and the player of the monk switched to the Arcanist when his first character died halfway through.
My brother played the tengu bard, then the dwarven traiter, then quit.
Another friend played the human archer for a couple of games, then quit.
They were replaced by Gebralter, the gnome, who was crippled in-game, and the player moved away before it could be resolved.
Then our only female player joined up, playing Glassarah, and stuck it out for the last three or four years of the campaign.
So of the four original players, three of them played to the end of the campaign. The fourth left us, leading to a few guest players and their characters before settling on the sorcerer, Glassarah.
Our group dominated most encounters after the monk was replaced by the arcanist. She crafted fog-cutting lenses for everybody (and a Goz mask for herself) and spammed fog spells every encounter.
Enemies could never see the PCs, while the PCs could see the enemies perfectly. The modules just weren't built for those kinds of tactics. Even in the late game, when they had a reputation for it, and enemies began preparing for it, it was of little use. By then they had three powerful casters with high initiative, so by the time an enemy could act, they were already hit by stinking cloud, dazing fireball, confusion, and other lockdown effects.
Barnabas Harrigan was trapped in an icy prison and slowly froze to death while the PCs used their fingers to draw lewd images onto the foggy ice, laughing all the while.
Many other prominent enemies, such as Kerdak Bonefist, were unceremoniously decapitated by the red mantis' prayer attack ("alright, pull back everyone, the captain is doing her thing again"). Many others, like the cannon golem were quickly cut down by the gusnslinger's pistol volleys. She never did less than 100 damage each round and rarely missed, even on iterative attacks. Nothing really could defend against that.
Any of it.