The only things I can suggest that doesn't really spoil anything is to give any new PCs a reason to despise and seek out the person responsible for taking the original PCs memories. Perhaps he pissed off a few other people in his travels after his little betrayal with the original PCs. That is how our group is handling a similar situation when a PC decided he had enough once memories were regained (He ended up retiring and making a new character)
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Don't kill them so much.
3 deaths is really quite a lot, sometimes it happens, but it might be that you need to adjust things. If nothing else, you can come up with a way for them to be raised from the dead.
Beyond that, I think you are doing well in creating backstories that tie in to the original. As long as the players and characters are motivated enough to solve the mystery it should be ok.
3 deaths is really quite a lot, sometimes it happens, but it might be that you need to adjust things. If nothing else, you can come up with a way for them to be raised from the dead.
I think a serious problem in Strange Aeons is that one fight in the courtyard with the flying thing that picks you up and drops you to your doom is basically impossible to avoid and is *super* deadly. If anybody is reading this because they want to run Strange Aeons, it's pretty important to tone that one down.
So is it possible that the sister has some sort of spiritual connection with her dead brother that can help move the plot around (it's kind of important that someone who got mindwiped survives at least until book 5, since those people start getting mysterious messages only they hear).
I figure you could "haunt" the sister with the brother (she's not a spiritualist or a medium perchance?) and have his shade (which maybe only she can see) hear the messages and relay them. I'm not sure that the spy can be tied in really (Unless Lowls did something spooky to him without his knowledge), but having 3/4 should be fine. IIRC book 1 is deadlier than the next few.
That courtyard fight gives me nightmares.
My girlfriend's group solved the courtyard fight by looking outside and saying "nope!" and just avoided the fight altogether.
That is what we should have done. Would have only delayed the inevitable though.
My girlfriend's group solved the courtyard fight by looking outside and saying "nope!" and just avoided the fight altogether.
Same. I think it's entirely possible to avoid the fight and still clear out most the building. At worst you can explore the courtyards after the mist is lifted to find stuff.
I'd just play up the threat of leaving the cover of the building. Maybe have them see a patient get dropped from up high or hear the creature's screams and a heavy thud on the roof.
My girlfriend's group solved the courtyard fight by looking outside and saying "nope!" and just avoided the fight altogether.
Same with the group I'm running through the AP.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of good after-the-fact advice for the OP. I knew keeping the original PCs was important, so I made it clear to my group (who picked the AP) that I wouldn't pull punches, but that I was going to maim their characters instead of kill.
I don't have any should've-been-dead cases yet, but I've already inflicted two roleplay mental illnesses. One PC has pronounced OCD and another literally doesn't believe in colour.
I honestly don't know how to recreate the intimate aspects of the AP once four characters are gone/dead.
Lowls is just bad news in general. The man tampers with magical forces and artifacts far beyond his league, dabbles in the slave trade, openly affiliates with evil cults, is willing to partake in human sacrifice to get what he wants, and shows that he's willing to abandon friends and allies when they're no longer convenient for him. There should be no shortage of people who have been terribly wronged by Lowls who are out for revenge.
While it is a bit unfortunate if your party is mostly non-original, so long as people bring characters who are motivated to take down Lowls it'll work. While a few parts of the campaign might not work as intended, they'll still work with replacement characters. There's one NPC in book 4 that you'll probably miss if you've replaced the original party, and there's one encounter in book 6 that doesn't work if the party isn't at least mostly original, but the story as a whole works just fine without them and they can be cut entirely without compromising it.
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My group is into book 4 now, and the only deaths we've had have been during book 1. I didn't want to undo the work we'd put in by bringing in new characters and so I ruled that each time a PC died before they defeated the Tatterman was a dream. I felt it fit with the dream weirdness that was going on in the Asylum and there were enough PC deaths in that first book that it became a feature of the problems stacked up against them, So when a PC died in the asylum, everyone woke up again at the start of that day and got to relive things. It was terrifying, and interesting, and a little irritating, but my players rolled with it. The situation let them do things differently the second time around. I was worried it might make them careless and disinterested and just stomp around trying stupid things because they felt they couldn't die but in fact it made them MORE careful because they didn't want to relive the horrors of the asylum any longer than necessary.
Once the Tatterman was dead, I removed that 'safety blanket' and there actually haven't been any deaths since. I'm not entirely sure how I'd handle a PC death now since there's a lot invested in their backstories at this point. I'd like to think they might raise anyone who died, but that'll be a decision for them if/when it happens.
Could be that new characters are family or friends of the deceased who are seeking revenge/closure?
Considering the proclivity of adventurers being orphans without any actual ties to the world, good luck with that.
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Could be that new characters are family or friends of the deceased who are seeking revenge/closure?Considering the proclivity of adventurers being orphans without any actual ties to the world, good luck with that.
... I think I will forbid characters without family or shunned from their family in my next Campaign.
After the fact advice is tricky,since you probably don't want to retcon, and it's not clear how long they've been playing their replacement characters now. Eventually, they'll be able to acquire Raise spells on their own, which makes the whole thing much easier. In the meantime, Winter Klazcka might have enough clout to get some Scrolls of Raise Dead from the Church of Pharasma for them, and you might look into having PCs who would die survive but gain a Corruption from Horror Adventures from the experience, or a similar sort of semi-permanent drawback.
Major Spoilers here:
Towards the end, the PCs can basically discover that this whole thing has been a dream that they've been having back in the asylum. Their dreaming minds are grasping at straws for ways to get out of this situation and then trying to rewrite reality to make their escape real.
Perhaps the new PCs were actually the ones supposed to be in the asylum in the first place, and this is a dream reality in which they switched places with innocent others (the PCs who died) and only joined the quest later instead of immediately.
Could be some neat psychological horror in discovering that their current PCs are basically responsible for the deaths of their previous ones. That their current PCs dreamed up the previous ones and subjected those innocent people to madness and death simply because the current PCs were just that desperate to save themselves, and sacrificing those people was the only route that would lead to this reality.
Leaves them with a nice horrifying "Congratulations. Was it worth it?" sort of realization.