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Forward:
Strange Aeons is the fifth Paizo AP I've run, and one of the best aspects of running that type of pre-published material is the awesome community who shares their lessons learned and tweaks. For Strange Aeons, I'm going to try to pay it forward in the hopes that I can offer someone in the future some insight or idea to give their table a better experience. I'll be writing up my own summaries of each major 'scene' including what I changed, how my players reacted, what went well and what I would change a second time around.
My Table and Session 0:
We play every other week for 4-6 hours with 4 PCs. We did 20-Point Point Buy (instead of standard 15-point), all Paizo-official Class material open, but races limited to Core, Goblins, Orcs, Changelings and Dhampries (a mix of Ustalav-centric races, and more monstrous races that might have been good muscle for their past employer.) Idea behind 20-point point buy was to allow them not to feel as restricted about taking 'bad' class features in the interest of RP (We have a Waves Oracle and a switch-hitting Gunslinger with 14 Strength and a penchant for Crowbars for example) and also since it seems like this AP has a uniquely-strong hook to the original PCs so wanted to give them a little more early-game strength.
In the interests of intensifying the blank slate 'fugue' for my players, I had each one of them come up with four Defining Events in a Character's life. I told them their character would have two or those events in their past, and two of them would be randomly assigned to another character. In that way, both the Player and the Character would be thinking about those events during the game, trying to piece together which of their four they kept, and which were assigned to others (i.e. which of their hazy memories and recollections were real and which were misremembered or unrelated).
Given the theme of the AP and knowing they started in an Asylum, the Players took this in a somewhat dark direction. Examples include "Sustained a serious injury trying to protect someone they didn’t know from a mugging" "Watching your father and uncles kill, skin and dress wild game has stuck with you and you think about it often " and "I'm the first person in my family to leave our town since it was founded". I tried to steer people towards objectively-described events, rather than declaring how someone felt about that event, to still give the person who ultimately received it the final say over their character. For example, being the first person to leave your town could be exciting...it could be terrifying...you could have been leaving for a big city job, or leaving because you were exiled...
Once I scrambled the between the players and spoke with them a little about what type of personality they were planning to portray, I fit the four events for each player together in a rough backstory outline only I knew. I wrote a short (around half a page) summary of what the character felt and remembered immediately upon waking up (with a few choice details from the backstories included) put them in envelopes, and gave them to the Players at the very start of Session 1, to be opened after the nightmare introduction. I also assigned them one of the Traits from the Player's Guide based on the combined backstory (they only picked one trait at character creation).
Our party includes:
- *A Varisian Human Gunslinger, modeled loosely after The Joker. Not murderously psychotic, but certainly unpredictable and with a disconnected "I bet we are all still dreaming, none of this matters" nonchalance.
- *A Varisian Paladin of Sarenrae. The player told me they wanted to be confused, conflicted and guilt-ridden about their past. In pursuing that, I made it so when the character awoke, they found that there was a terrible and painful burn wound across their back, in the shape of Sarenrae's angel wings. However, they also found a holy symbol of Norgorber amongst their belongings when they found their equipment.
- *A Changeling Oracle. I assigned her the Trait where she's "seen it all" and isn't phased by these creatures, based on the fact that one of the random Defining Events she received had to do with previous exposure to Elder Mythos creatures on a mining expedition. At this point a few sessions in, she seems more concerned with the Paladin she saw pick up an idol of Norgorber than she is the Zoogs and Dopelgangers.
- *A Goblin Alchemist. This was another one where they player told me they were looking for something specific - in this case the character is convinced that he is in the wrong body, that he was a prestigious scholar and chemist was somehow mind-swapped into a Goblin in some cosmic injustice. I assigned them the 'Yith' mindswap Trait bonus mechanically, although it remains to be seen if it was a Yith or something else...
How the players reacted:
Several sessions in and I'm very excited by how this turned out. Scraps of information about their past are treasured as much as equipment as they try to (both in character and out of character) figure out which of their 'hazy' memories of the four Defining Events they wrote are true. I think the best thing is it has added a very cool element of mystery that doesn't just rely on the players RPing forgetting their backstories (which can be challenging for some) and even our less strong RPers are talking in character more and narrating little events to show who they think they are.
Anything I would change?:
Nothing at this point, will see how things continue to progress.
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Session 1
The Nightmare:
I was focused on misdirecting the players (maybe a bit too focused, see below) on thinking the opening scene was real. I rewrote a bit of the read-aloud text to imply they had just escaped from the asylum they all knew from the Player's Guide they started in. I also used it as an opportunity to potentially foreshadow what happened to their memories in Book Three: "You all are dripping wet as rain falls in sheets from a deep black sky, but your eyes are focused on the path in front of you. You hasten your pace to a jog, moving away from the fortress of deep amber sandstone and glass towers that you can feel looming behind you. Every fiber of your being screams that you dare not look back." Both the dripping wet and the sand (which I described in more detail when one of them of course decided to look back) being allusions to the Oasis. Other than that, I ran it mostly as written, with them ending up running through an abandoned open-air market where the stalls kept getting more and more densely packed as they continued, by the end describing it as if they were crawling through a thick jungle.
How the players reacted:
I was convinced one of them would charge into the mist immediately upon hearing footsteps. Perhaps it was the ominous music or playing by candlelight, but they all ran for quite some time. A few failed skill checks climbing through the market later, and only the Gunslinger was still alive. When I revealed the full 'Wake Up! Save Me!' message, he said "Ohhhhhhhh, okay!" put his gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. I described the Tatterman beginning to flay him as his consciousness faded. Definitely an extremely memorable and flavorful way to start the campaign.
Anything I would change?:
It dragged on a bit too long in my eyes. In trying to make it seem more 'real' in the early stages, I had the Tatterman making attack rolls as normal until the first PC fell, throwing in extra attacks here and there, but still playing with his actual to-hit and damage numbers. Even without armor, a couple PCs were hard to hit, so it took about 5 rounds before someone died (at which point they figured there was no way they actually died so this must be a dream, and I quickly butchered the rest of them.) The cadence I was hoping for of 'one death per round' got stretched to probably an 8 round encounter. Players seemed engaged, and it ended with a Bang...so overall went well.
The Prison Cells and Furnace
Ran this pretty much by the book, two PCs in each cell. Ultimately the cell with the Oracle and Gunslinger goaded the Doppelganger into Grapple range, while the Paladin got a nat 20 on their Strength check, which I ruled allowed them to bend the frame of the door enough that the next round they could take a Full Round action to wrench it open enough for the Goblin to Escape Artist out. After that, they got their belongings (including the Masterwork Viol) and used the Body Pile to climb up the chute (two of them getting Filth Fever in the process.)
How the players reacted:
They took a moment in their cells to get their bearings and asked a bunch of questions about themselves. I had them open their 'backstory' envelopes at this point (see the post about Session 0 above), describing how they woke on the stone floor and a bit about their state of mind, which gave it a very ominous overtone as everyone tried to feel each other out. After that, they quickly began working together to get out.
Anything I did/would change?:
No. Two major highlights were the doppelganger eventually getting annoyed with the Oracle's constant questions and morphing into her, and when I had the Doppelganger Coup de Grace the restrained orderly. Audible gasp at the table when she drove the shard of glass through his throat (since I think everyone was assuming you'd free him and he'd be your first quest giver.) Very much drove home the point that this will be a brutal and potentially brief adventure as they were left alone at the end of the fight.
The Barricade and the first Hallway:
The Scalding Rain was effective to get them indoors to B2 rather than start digging through the rubble to the north of B1 (and miss the barricade/survivors) which is what they started doing when they first arrived. After arriving at B2, the party talked to the group at the barricade, cleared the Dire Rats/Zoog (the Zoog fled down a burst pipe after getting an attack in, wanted to use him again!) and Centipede room in that order (which was a nice break and confidence boost after the tough Doppelganger fight with no weapons) and then found the Doppelganger corpses in B11.
How the players reacted:
It was a challenge to convince the characters to go fight another Doppelganger without it feeling like a "MMO Quest" (Bring me three Doppelganger heads!) especially after they were so beat up after the first one (Oracle had used 2 of 3 spells on CLW, and most were still below half health). Playing up the 'We all want to live, lets build trust amongst each other' angle, I had the Captain retrieve the parcel from the Chaplain's office, using the potions/wand as a peace offering and some much-needed healing to build confidence for a bit more adventuring.
Anything I did/would change?:
I'm happy with how things turned out, but required a lot of on-the-fly updates to make sure we didn't have a Session 1 TPK. I changed a fair amount with the initial quest from the survivors (only asked for one Doppelganger corpse, had the Doctor guarding the corpses in the Staff Office B11 be in a different room (added another to the map, north of B13 where she was bringing the samples to dry) at the time. I was pretty sure I'd TPK them if they had to fight another Doppelganger, so be very careful at that point in my opinion. Even the Bleed from the Zoog was almost too much and caused them to panic after four failed Heal checks.
Session 1 ended with them bringing two severed Doppelganger heads back to the barricade, and being allowed entry (but still at crossbow-point) as the Captain went to get Winter.
I'm currently prepping this AP and found this very helpful! Please keep.posting these up!!