Tieing in old characters as villains / heroes in Strange Aeons

[hanez]

Hi everyone, so I am beginning to plan the seeds of my next campaign. The campaign wont be for a few more months, and I have lots of time to plan the first couple adventures, and the BBEG. I want to foreshadow a bit in the first couple adventures. I don't want to necessarily plan and railroad the whole campaign, but I do want to have some cool ideas for foreshadowing. My players aren't really sandbox type players, the appreciate a good story, the ability to make some choices but expect to follow the planned idea generally.

The idea for my next campaign is to have Characters from a ten year old campaign affect in this one. It would be in the same area, of the same homebrew world.
So my old campaign from 10 years ago ended around 18th level with this ending story:
- A wizard turned into a lich, and took over a tower being served by undead.
- A druid battled another great druid (which used to be AD&D rules) and then took over his grove, with a unicorn and became a sort of "Tom Bombadil" Character. But the interesting part here is that his grove was next to the liches tower. They were friends and the druid thought that they could "live in peace". We've laughed as a group about this for years because the lich probably ended up killing the unicorn.
- A dwarven fighter became a king of dwarves under a mountain
- The cleric didnt really have an ending story, but I am considering he became a wandering judge and jury, bringing justice from his god.

So for my next campaign, I am considering using Strange Aeons.

Starting adventure: Players wake up within the walls of an asylum, their minds wracked and memories missing. As they work together to recover their missing time, they soon learn that the cause of their eerie amnesia is but a symptom of a much greater cosmic menace. As they struggle to retain their sanity, the heroes must ally with other asylum residents and fight against the monstrosities that have taken over the asylum and plunged it into nightmare. Some things I would add to the adventure are nightmares about unicorns and other fey chasing them.

Second adventure: The players go to their hometown to find out who they are and how they lost their memories. Following much of the same story line, except I would add fighting undead, fears of a nearby tower. Maybe even an old abandoned druid grove..

Third adventure: this may be where I depart from the path significantly or use bits and pieces. Perhaps they find out their minds were effected by some memory artifact that is effecting the whole region and the answers can be found in a dwarven mine.

This is all just my initial thoughts, and I am hoping you might be able to give me cooler ideas?

My ideas on whats happening and how it ties to the whole "Strange Aeons" campaign. Maybe the lich did kill the grove and the unicorn. Maybe the druid didn't give up on the lich though, and cast some spell trying to get him to remember the "old days" his "old self".

So if the druid was/is trying to save the Lich, maybe this memory spell or artefact was so strong it tore a whole in the "dream plane" and now people all over the world are having nightmares about unicorns dieing. Maybe the lich really is saveable? Maybe the dwarven army can help defeat him, or maybe the memory artefact is in the dwarven mine? Maybe the cleric can be the liches judge in the end? Should this be so far in the future that the old chars are dead, or is having pcs meet their prior selves cooler? I am undecided.

What do you think? I am not tied to strange aeons, but I do like cool path and it seems to fit. How would you make this cooler?

[Yakman]

ok... so... here's several cents

1 - let's not make these the exact characters. Let's just use these concepts for NPCs / background to help flesh out stuff within the structure of Strange Aeons.

2 - The Lich and the Tower. Now... there's a couple of interesting towers in the AP. Particularly in books 4 and 6. You can stick him in 6 as a villain... possibly a replacement for the BBEG. Alternatively, instead of the kinda lame villain in Book 4, make some changes, and BOOM. you have a better villain in a better tower. Make it a role-playing encounter rather than a fight.

3 - The Druid and the Unicorn. That sounds like it's straight out of the Dreamlands. Put them in Book 3. Maybe someone who can help out the PCs against some of the nastier effects from the Dreamlands.

4 - The Dwarf under the Mountain. That's PERFECT for an add-on to Book 6. You go to weird images of settlements from across time. Let's throw another one in there... but with the bizarre and cruel and psychic duergar populating the city. You can foreshadow him in the Arcanium in Book 4 and in Lowls' library in Book 2. Maybe replace the Azlanti vampires?

5 - Your cleric is a perfect fit as a wandering madman in both books 3 and for a physical appearance in book 5. Maybe he can be so shattered that he's actually a fellow asylum dweller as well. Maybe he runs OUT THE DOORS... and then they spot him again in Books 3, (4?), and 5.

There's an excellent podcast about Pathfinder DM'ing called TABLE VARIATION. The lead guy on it is a Paizo 5-star GM, who ran Strange Aeons for his group. He does an episode where he reviews the AP and talks about some of its strengths and weaknesses. It's definitely worth a listen to if you are thinking of running it.

[hanez]

Thanks for the podcast, it was really good at getting a sense of the future directon of the story and it's pitfalls. I've also been following a "let's read" of the ap. Having concise descriptions of the the adventure really helps.

These paths make me feel like i have a low reading level or something, because I find it impossible to read 6 of these adventures and get a sense of what is actually happening so I can foreshadow or modify . There are so many writing problems that sometimes it is just easier to write your own campaign.

[Yakman]

hanez wrote:

Thanks for the podcast, it was really good at getting a sense of the future directon of the story and it's pitfalls. I've also been following a "let's read" of the ap. Having concise descriptions of the the adventure really helps.

These paths make me feel like i have a low reading level or something, because I find it impossible to read 6 of these adventures and get a sense of what is actually happening so I can foreshadow or modify . There are so many writing problems that sometimes it is just easier to write your own campaign.

if you write your own campaign you have no one to help you make it better. you have no one whose already run it or read it.

much easier to work with published material.

[Davor Firetusk]

I don't think it is a reading or writing thing at all. Keeping that many pages of material in ones head just from reading is objectively difficult.It has gotten better the more APs I've run, but I still like to have a good chunk of prep time before hand to learn the adventure path.

[hanez]

I usually run my own, but I have run about 4 paths and here are my thoughts:

-AP themes, are so much cooler then what I can come up with

-APs seem easier to run at first but it can be seductive where you think itll be easier but you get bogged down in so much stuff you wont use or will have to modify that it becomes more work

-Paizo loves to write about things I will never be able to communicate to my players or that they will barely pay attention too. My players, are usually interested in the here and now, the villains, the interesting traps, or motivations of the players involved, not things that happened thousands of years ago. I have lately found a way to fix this. I literally take a black marker and wipe out anything I find too detailed. My players wont pay attention if I explain the backstories of 25 npcs and cults, or the difference between Carcosa and Neruzavin. I have to keep it a little more simple then this because the PCs do not have the luxury of reading and rereading the material. THey are experiencing it in a game and it needs to be much much simpler. I used to get frustrated when players wouldnt pay attention to my convuluted backstories, but I understand now that they are playing a game and the backstories dont need to be this complex.

-Lastly the dungeons are way too big. Its odd because when im ripping and erasing backstory, I feel defensive like "oh my players arent as deep or real roleplayers as paizo thinks they should be" .... but then, I have to rip out the dungeon as well because its too much hack and slash. Seriously "In search of sanity" the asylum will take 4 sessions for us, that is way too much I have to rip out half the rooms and add a couple of interesting side treks. In search of sanity is a 5 star adventure, but as written with 4 sessions spent in the same building would be completely monotonous for most players. Seriously if I wanted that I would just buy one of those "worlds biggest dungeon" adventures.

Im quite happy with my modified version of in search of sanity, I may make a new post with my modified map that literally has about half the rooms. I love the APs but I wish they were a bit "lighter" so that I could add to the product instead of having to prune from the product.