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Okay, it's possible I'm imagining things, or experienced some sort of bizarre reality shift, or...
Am I imagining that? (feel free to tell me if I am)
And if I'm not imagining it, did that ever get posted anywhere?
I won't tell you that you're imagining that, but do not remember seeing that as a blog or forum post. If anyone finds it, I'd love to look at it, too!
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I had sort of an idea for weaving them together. This is by no means fully formed, but I hope to start a discussion on this topic. The core theme of this megacampaign would discovering the Shards of Sin to form the Sihedron, in order to use its power
Start the story with Secrets of Roderick's Cove (book 1 of Return of the Runelords), and run it largely the same. The players discover that the Runelords are awakening, and are sent to further investigate in Magnimar.
Here the story transitions into Shards of Sin, where the PCs join the Pathfinder Society and begins the hunt for the eponymous shards, discovering the shard of Pride. Since the Sihedron Council would not exist yet, it is the Pathfinder Society who task the PCs to travel to Hollow Mountain and investigate, transitioning into It Came From Hollow Mountain.
The next part of the story weaves together Curse of Lady's Night, Asylum Stone, Sins of Saviors, and Runeplague. The PCs find and defeat (later revealed to be rogue) agents of Runelord Shorshen instead of Grey Maidens, discover the Shard of Gluttony in Kaer Maga, and find the Shard of Greed in the dungeon under Sandpoint. Meanwhile they contend with the the agents of Xanderghul, Alaznist, Zutha, and Karzoug in each of the locations they visit.
The PCs can then do Beyond the Doomsday Door and Temple of the Peacock Spirit in whatever order, obtaining the Shard of Envy and defeating Xanderghul, as the first Runelord encountered and slain. They learn from Xanderghul that the Runelords Karzoug and Alaznist are behind all the recent strife, and while the two have yet to meet up, they have the potential to cause great ruin to Varisia through either an alliance or all out war against each other.
The story transitions next to Into the Nightmare Rift, where PCs obtain the shards of Sloth and Wrath, and then form the Sihedron. The activation of the lost city of Xin is rewritten to be caused by Alaznist's time shenanigans, and the PCs proceed to venture into the Dead Heart of Xin. Furthermore the PCs discover that Xin-Shalast has similarly risen due to time shenanigans, Karzoug is fully awake, and they must defeat him as well. The PCs can then learn to activate the Cyphergate using artifacts and notes discovered in Karzoug's personal realm.
Armed with the Sihedron, the PCs then enter Xin-Edasseril, the City Outside of Time, and gain contact with Belmarius.
The story then concludes with the confrontation against Alaznist herself in the Rise of New Thassilon.
This is by no means perfect, and the leveling is all over the place. Count this as a bump. I'd love to see other people's thoughts on the matter.
I won't tell you that you're imagining that, but do not remember seeing that as a blog or forum post. If anyone finds it, I'd love to look at it, too!
Honestly, someone probably talked about it in a vague "wouldn't it be cool if" sense and I'm just misremembering.
I had sort of an idea for weaving them together. This is by no means fully formed, but I hope to start a discussion on this topic. The core theme of this megacampaign would discovering the Shards of Sin to form the Sihedron, in order to use its power
Start the story with Secrets of Roderick's Cove (book 1 of Return of the Runelords), and run it largely the same. The players discover that the Runelords are awakening, and are sent to further investigate in Magnimar.
Here the story transitions into Shards of Sin, where the PCs join the Pathfinder Society and begins the hunt for the eponymous shards, discovering the shard of Pride. Since the Sihedron Council would not exist yet, it is the Pathfinder Society who task the PCs to travel to Hollow Mountain and investigate, transitioning into It Came From Hollow Mountain.
The next part of the story weaves together Curse of Lady's Night, Asylum Stone, Sins of Saviors, and Runeplague. The PCs find and defeat (later revealed to be rogue) agents of Runelord Shorshen instead of Grey Maidens, discover the Shard of Gluttony in Kaer Maga, and find the Shard of Greed in the dungeon under Sandpoint. Meanwhile they contend with the the agents of Xanderghul, Alaznist, Zutha, and Karzoug in each of the locations they visit.
The PCs can then do Beyond the Doomsday Door and Temple of the Peacock Spirit in whatever order, obtaining the Shard of Envy and defeating Xanderghul, as the first Runelord encountered and slain. They learn from Xanderghul that the Runelords Karzoug and Alaznist are behind all the recent strife, and while the two have yet to meet up, they have the potential to cause great ruin to Varisia through either an alliance or all out war against each other.
The story transitions next to Into the Nightmare Rift, where PCs obtain the shards of Sloth and Wrath, and then form the Sihedron. The activation of the lost city of Xin is rewritten to be caused by Alaznist's time shenanigans, and the PCs proceed to venture into the Dead Heart of Xin. Furthermore the...
OK I'm down with this. I"m getting ready to run my first PF campaign in years and I want to run a Runelords mega-campaign. I like your suggestions here. How would you handle Krune and why is he not mentioned in any of the Adventure Paths I wonder? I agree though, the leveling would be all over the place. If anyone wants to help me decide the ordering, the new mega-plot, and how to appropriately level these out, PM me or we can discuss it on here
I've done something like this.
To me, the problem of such a massive crossover it's the lack of a middle term objective for the Pc to achieve, and the fact that the goals of each runelords may seem too much different and unfocused.
I would suggest to create a group of middle tier antagonist to weave the plot around their actions.
In my situation, I've had Mokmurian + the cult of Lissala working together, with the cult's inner agenda to free Krune.
Moreover, Mokmuriam (who in my story was possessed by a soul shard of Karzoug) had a dual identity, which saw him active as a human in Kaer Maga to create a so called "council of the runelords" under him, a group of misfit spellcasters which worked to "usurp" the other runelord's influences by reclaiming thassilon's heirlooms, such as the seven swords of sin or the shards. With this, you can have a few npcs from both adventures and scenarios be armed and directed by Mokmurian and his allies.
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Matt Dusty, the reason Krune wasn't in any of the APs is because of PFS1, season 4: Year of the Risen Rune.
In my take on Shattered Star, I'm inserting one PFS scenario in each chapter, to show them what the Lissalans are doing, and interfering with them. Then, when they hit level 11 or 12, I'll run The Waking Rune, in which they'll tell the Runelord of Sloth that giving up and just reading up on history will be the path of least resistance, to which he'll reply with, "...Nah," and roll initiative.
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In my initial brainstorming for this, I removed everything regarding Mokmurian and the stone giants - we just finished Storm King's Thunder in 5e, so my players are bored of giants, any giant theme campaigns, or giant anything really. So knowing my group, i'm excluding Mokmurian and the stone giants and probably replacing them with yuan-ti or a rakhshasa. Or even possibly even an evil dwarf clan that's succumbed to evil. But I also like your human in Kaer Maga idea and he's in charge of this council of runelords.
I was thinking Karzoug would be the mid-tier villain, he's not at full strength yet, so a group of 10th-12th level PCs could possibly take him on. That's about the level the PCs face Zutha, the first runelord they fight in Return. I think Alaznist works best as a main overall villain, even controlling things from the very start.
I do know I want Nualia, the main villain from Burnt Offerings to be a recurring villain at various points in the campaign until she has transformed completely into a demon. My players love tragic villain backstories and she has one of the best. It'll be Alaznist who helps her ascend to demonhood.
So Krune was in a PFS module.....I'll go search which one he was in and grab it.
I don't know if i'm quite into Shattered Star though. I think it's a great AP on its own, but I know my players, and they might not like the McGuffin feeling of fetching the shards. I'll probably revise my initial thought and just combine Rise and Return of the Runelords and remove the seihedron's importance from the Return storyline (maybe it was Belimarius who has had it this whole time?) and instead of the seihedron heroes in her prison, its the actual PCs from a different timeline that failed. But I think I'll throw in the Dead Heart of Xin somewhere in the mix. That way Karzoug will seem like an initial threat, but when they face him (or maybe Xin?), he warns them that the others are awake and that Alaznist, who has already killed Xanderghul, is messing around with time and will either take the world by force or destroy it if she can't have it.
Honestly, I'd probably be OK running Return of the Runelords, but I really want the players to meet all seven runelords, have Karzoug wake up first and the players go through some of RotR first, then realize that Alaznist is a bigger threat at some point. Still many ideas to work out tbh.
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I plan on using some of the material from rise and shattered star with my run of return of the runelords. Such as opening with a festival and saving the gang fight for later. I am also altering most of the backstory to match a homebrew world.
Long ago, the Greater Dorinian Empire broke into factions, who started using the artifact holding large scale dimensional instability at bay as a personal magical battery. After a few centuries, the seven heads of the factions knew disaster was coming, but had no way to prevent it.
So, seven "survival bunkers" were built and held the faction lords in stasis. Now they are awakening.
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Okay, so I have taken it upon myself as a challenge to combine the three campaigns (Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star, and Return of the Runelords) into a single campaign and have it make sense. I've read through all 18 books, some more than others. There will be fewer Shattered Star encounters used and I really consider this a combination of Rise and Return of the Runelords, with a few Shattered Star plots thrown in. If anyone has any thoughts on what I've done here, I’d love to hear them. Specifically if anyone can see in plot holes in this plan.
There will be spoilers for all three Adventure Paths in this very, very long post, fair warning!!!!
1) I want the PCs meet/fight all seven Runelords in one campaign (this includes Krune by using bits and pieces of the Year of the Rune Society Modules). The events of Awakened Rune have not happened yet, but I think the book where Zutha came back is fine to leave in the story.
2) I will be converting the campaign to the 2nd edition. Converting to 2nd ed is fairly easy; I've run a few modules from 1e for my group and converting to 2e was very simple. Hardest part will be the unique NPCs that don't have an exact version for 2e. I'm hoping these boards will catch up eventually and have some 2e stats for those unique NPCs sooner or later, but if not, easy enough to make a character. Treasure is super easy too, basically 1/10th of the value of the treasure in the books is what it is converted to. Magic items are trickier since magic really got an overhaul, and that honestly might be the part that takes longest for me as the GM.
I also realize that the leveling may be off from what is written in a few of the books. That is fine since I am converting to 2e anyway and it's not going to be a huge jump in levels either.
3) I want to complete the campaign in around 18-24 months or so real time (running once a week for 6 hours). As much as I want to run all three campaigns in their full glory and in order, I get one shot to run a full length campaign with my current group.
4) I plan on cutting a number of the encounters and even whole acts from the adventures that don't specifically advance the plot or weave in the PCs backgrounds. So it could be that what’s left over from the book might take up one level’s worth of encounters and that's it.
5) I'd like to keep Nualia alive for as long as possible, I know my group and they will eat her back story up; she's definitely the type of antagonist they love to face. But if she dies, it won't ruin the campaign, they can relish in their victory and move on.
6) Sandpoint should be the PCs home town with a home base of some sort.
7) I’m removing the whole ‘you get a vision to where the next shard is located’ plot. Instead, the shards are owned by various bosses throughout the campaign. I’ll convert their powers to 2e, still keep a curse based upon their sin, but make them intriguing enough for the players to want to keep them or at least take them when they find them and store them somewhere.
It could be that the inclusion of the shards is unnecessary and I would agree, except I like the idea of the sihedron being a tool to use against a fully awakened runelord, and it is an important plot tool in Rise of New Thassilon, a book I'm definitely utilizing.
Also, no Sihedron Council, it’ll just be the Pathfinder Society, but Sheila Heidmarch is still going to be their ‘quest giver’. The trick here is that once the players find out that a reforged star can help them defeat Runelords, they might avoid the rest of the campaign and try to spend all their effort trying to find the rest of the shards. In which case I probably will devise some kind of method for them to find them other than the ‘vision quest’ method and run the other plots parallel to it. It might be too cheesy that they miraculously happened to find all the shards just from defeating a few bosses here and there, so I’m still chewing on this subplot.
8) The ‘Sihedron Heroes’ as mentioned in Return, are actually a few of the Pathfinder iconics that figured out what Alaznist was doing, they don’t have the sihedron, they were defeated by Alaznist and frozen in time in Crystalin. Basically a way to show the players that the Pathfinder Society actually tried to send its greatest heroes to stop Alaznist already and failed. Because my players get super annoyed at NPCs and ‘friendly’ organizations that don’t try to help them out in some crazy OP way when they have that capability.
9) Alaznist has been manipulating time as written in Return, except for the Cyphergate. I think the Cyphergate is a good device that protects Karzoug from the manipulations of time and therefore it protects itself too. So there are only 6 temporal wounds, not 7. It’ll help explain why Alaznist isn’t going after Karzoug with the scepter of ages, cause she tried but couldn’t.
10) I would like to avoid creating as much new content as possible outside of the Adventure Paths. Moving scenes around or coming up with information to connect the books together, I will need to come up with. And, yes, players often go off and do unexpected things, and that stuff I can account for, but for my initial outline, I’d like to stay within the confines of the three Adventure Paths (plus three PS modules).
11) The hardest part is mashing up the two BBEGs from Rise and Return and figure out how they react to each other. I am finding it difficult to figure out why, after she kills Xanderghul, Alaznist simply doesn’t go and kill Karzoug since he’s not fully awake yet, and even if she can’t because of the Cyphergate protections (my addition, not cannon I think), why those two don’t start some kind of proxy war between the two - or maybe they do. I find that to be the most logical course for those two to take. Alaznist could be helping the Lissalan cult to wake up Krune (the events of the Waking Rune have not happened), or maybe even resurrect Zutha, so they can help her out, as well as trying to find Sorshen. She is quite happy to keep Belimarius where she’s at.
Karzoug will stir first, as written, 5 years prior, but not really awaken and start gathering forces to him. Sorshen wakes up a year before the adventure starts (I’m reworking the cannon timeline, the events of the Crimson Throne have already happened). Alaznist will wake up shortly after the goblin raid on Sandpoint, an event along with the defeat of the Castellan in Hollow Mnt that sends enough souls her way, and then do her thing as per in Return (kill Xanderghul, find the scepter, try to stop Karzoug from becoming a runelord in the first place but can’t because of the Cyphergate, ect.) Most of the campaign Karzoug is trying to gather enough souls to wake up fully, no change from Rise, but I think a lot of his attention is spent trying to foil Alaznist.
12) Here’s what I’m doing as far as which books I’ll be using and what changes I’m making:
Burnt Offerings - 1st -4th levels, Using all of it, but I am giving Erylium the shard of pride for the players to find, but if they don’t find the Catacombs for some reason, then it’ll be in Thistletop with Nualia.
Skinsaw Murders - 4th-6th levels, Remove scarecrow farms & Foxglove townhouse, all of the information will be in the manor house. I want to introduce the Peacock Cult as well, so I’m putting the encounter with Viralane & Corla when they travel between Sandpoint and Magnimar; she’ll be wanting the shard of pride. Now I’ll most likely rename the Cult of the Peacock Spirit to the Order of Resplendence, I don’t think they would consider themselves a cult.
Curse of the Lady’s Light - 6th-7th level, Prior to starting this book, I think there would be alot of exposition from Sheila Heidmarch and this’ll be the part when the PCs start to realize what’s going on. I plan on Sheila already having Baraket in her possession and she witnessed the blade awaken and go dormant herself. Sheila will explain the Shattered Star, just as she does in Shards of Sin. I think she’ll suspect something happened to Xanderghul. I don’t know if I want Sheila to ask the PCs to start finding all the pieces of the star, otherwise that’s what they would focus on. Either way, she’s heard rumors that the shard of lust is in the Lady’s Light and asks the players to get it, either to assist in research to determine if the Runelords are waking up or to start reforging the Star. I’m getting rid of the boggard/xulgath encounters except for maybe one encounter, and the Light will have fewer encounters; the succubus has the shard of lust.
The Runecarved Key - 7th-8th level, Using all of it. I can’t remember if this was already the case, but I am going to have the Apsis Consortium representative also be members of the Cult of Lissala. The note they find on the cultist will clearly indicate that the cults are working together to wake up Krune. I think I may also have the note say something about how Alaznist is supporting them to wake up Krune, giving the players a reason to do the next book.
It Came from Hollow Mountain - 8th-9th level, They go to Hollow Mountain for the same reason as in Return - evidence that Alaznist has fully awakened and they might find the shard of wrath there. There will be fewer dungeon encounters, and I’m removing the hunt for the ranger, & move first act’s Viralane encounter to before Curse of Lady’s Light. I’m also removing the Cult of Yamasoth (see below) and replacing them with vampires who work for Xanesha (maybe the same vampires that once protected Sorshen's tomb but were dismissed when she became good). Xanesha rose as an undead creature the very next night after the player’s kill her. The vampires are trying to release a plague in Magnimar, but that’s all the players will know for now. They still get their vision from Sorshen.
Runeplague - 9th, 10th,or 11th level, Just like in the Runeplague book, the players will have options on which is the most important for them to tackle. Either hunt down the vampires before they release the plague, visit Sorshen in Korvosa, or stop the cult of Lissala from getting the words needed to unlock Krune’s tomb. This is also the book that I will probably change up the most. They still get the visit from the Time Steward here and from here on all Society, Religion, and Lore checks that involve Thassilon, Varisia, or any of its cities have increased DCs. But I’m removing the need to go to Riddleport from Runeplague (or I might keep this in, but instead of the cult of Yamasoth, it's the Cult of Lissala and they are after something that leads them to waking up Krune). I’m also changing it from the Polymorph Plague to the Runeplague - instead of morphing the victims, the plague is going to cause an open sore in the shape of the sihedron and then cause death shortly afterwards. Basically, undead Xanesha is continuing her quest for Karzoug and it ties the campaign to the events at the beginning. But now Xanesha has found the shard of wrath in the Irespan and is quite eager to get revenge on her most hated rivals, the PCs who killed her. I’ll run Kaer Maga as written with Ergantius having the Bone Grimoire and the shard of gluttony (the two items needed to summon forth Zutha at full power). I might run a bit of the Asylum Stone here as well, have them help the Augers so that the trolls will reveal the location of Ergantius, and replacing the Seal of the Brotherhood in Kaer Maga with the Dark Keep (but make it Ergantius’ secret demiplane instead of the Dark Rider).
Words of the Ancients - 9th, 10th,or 11th level, Using all of it, I think I may have it so that the Cult of Lissala is unsuccessful in getting the plates if the players get there first. They are just going to feed incorrect information so that the players think they need to go to Krune’s final location, but are really just opening the tomb up for the cultists. That’s just a thought for now though.
Awakened Rune - 11th level, Using all of this but removing the requirement to gather tokens, just need the plates from the previous adventure. I think Krune would have taken the shard of sloth with him when he went to sleep.
Fortress of the Stone Giants - 12th-13th level, Running the attack on Sandpoint as written. Replacing Black Tower with a stone giant encampment players will need to infiltrate (I’m looking at Skirgaard from Giantslayer as a model). This is because the players will be going to actual Black Tower later on to research the viridian ritual, and I don’t really want them going to the same dungeon twice. Conna the Wise will still help them here. But Mokmurian still discovered all his information at the Black Tower. Mokmurian has the shard of greed.
Beyond the Doomsday Door - 14th level, fewer encounters, remove the upper encounters of the abbey. Instead of Ardathanatus' reason for attacking the abbey as written, I am changing it so that he not only converted to the demon lord Yamasoth while in Hollow Mountain, he also has met Alaznist and agreed to serve her. Thus he has come to the abbey to open the door and speak with Yamasoth on Alaznist’s behalf to secure a demonic weapon for her use in her upcoming war with Karzoug. Most of the creatures in the abbey’s dungeons will have the rune of wrath upon them. Ardathanatus still has the shard of envy. Alternatively, if Nualia is still alive, and I hope she is, she will replace Ardanthanatus as a general in Alaznist’s army. It’s this encounter I expect her to make her final stand.
Sins of the Saviors - 15th level, I’d probably give the information about Runeforge to Mokmurian, Ardathanatus, or Nualia instead of the Scribbler and run the white dragon encounter before Runeforge. However, I think campaign-wise, the Runeforge weapons are redundant with the shattered star if both are meant to defeat runelords. I think instead, maybe they need to take the pieces of the star here and ‘recharge’ them so that they can be reforged in Magnimar. Maybe each of the runelords helped create Runeforge exactly as in Sins of the Saviors, but they also all were trying to scheme and secretly reforge the star for themselves once one of them got all seven shards. I do think that by recharging the shards here, they can also create a Runeforged weapon (stats TBD). I’m still working out the exacts here. Basically, they wouldn’t need either the Sihedron or Runeforged weapons to defeat Krune or Zutha, because Krune hadn’t quite woken up and was extremely weakened and Zutha wasn’t wholly Zutha either. The other 5 Runelords though, will need Runeforged weapons and/or the sihedron to defeat them.
Temple of the Peacock Spirit - 16th level, I think here, I’ll have Sheila start the ritual to reforge the star, but it’ll take a while as it requires a specialist of each school of magic to participate in the ritual that takes up to 7 days. In the meantime, Sorshen will come to them about Xanderghul and the book moves on as written, mostly. This means that they will have Runeforged weapons, but not the shards with them. Will keep the time dragon encounter when they visit the Black Tower to find the ritual to get to the Temple and remove most of the other encounters from here. I’ll probably keep the cultists in the Temple, but get rid of alot of the rivalries going on there since I plan on this all occurring during a single character level for the players. So far fewer temple encounters. But otherwise keep it the same.
The Dead Heart of Xin - 17th level, the reforging will be much less celebrated, more secret, it’ll cause some flooding, but not a whole tsunami so I won’t be running any tsunami encounters. I guess it’s possible the players could ignore the risen palace and head straight to Xin-Shalast, especially after the events of Sins of the Saviors where his statue comes alive to try to kill them, in which case, I think a wave of clockwork soldiers appear in Magnimar and start attacking which will give the players a sense of urgency to head to the island to stop the source of the clockwork army. Overall, there will be very few combat encounters I put here, and the only rooms they can really access are just the rooms that grant them visions and the star vault rooms, maybe enough encounters to get them up half a level. I think during the vision that shows Xin creating the sihedron, the vision gets all blurry and changes to show Alaznist arriving to interrupt him, but the vision ends before they see her destroying the star. In addition, in the assassination vision, the rune giant will flicker in and out of existence, replaced by Alaznist.
The City Outside of Time - 17th - 18th level, I’m removing the Timeworn Tunnel, but keeping a very small portion of the Shadow Plane. Fewer encounters, but keep the city events that help them figure out what in history is off. The Sihedron Heroes are some of the Pathfinder Iconics and they don’t have the sihedron. Also, once they emerge from Crystalin, Varisia is still somewhat what they remember. I’m tinkering with the idea that instead, Varisia is in ruins and Sorshen is gone due to Alaznist at this point, but they know that Karzoug has the means to stop her and has not been affected by her manipulations, but if they allow him to stop her alone, he’ll just make it worse if he’s the one in charge. So this could give them urgency to get to Xin-Shalast to stop Karzoug and to find out what he knows about time travel (the Cyphergate).
Spires of Xin Shalast - 18th- 19th level, TBH I haven’t read this adventure in a really long time so I’m mostly going off of memory here. But I think they will have to use the sihedron to show them how to get to Xin-Shalast instead of trying to find the ghost dwarves. It’ll be fewer city encounters and getting to Karzoug quicker.
Rise of New Thassilon - 19th -20th level, Like Spires, I really need to sit down and read this book again, it’s probably one of the most complicated adventure path books I’ve ever read. I’ll have to cut a few encounters, and remove the Cyphergate temporal anomaly, but overall I think I’ll run it mostly the same. There’s the part about finding Karzoug’s old master and finding Karzoug’s spirit in the Boneyard that is really cool, but players might get annoyed having to hunt down the spirit of the guy they just killed cause he has information they suddenly need. A couple of workarounds: Move the submerged dungeon to before they go to Xin-Shalast, get the skull, and negotiate with Karzoug when they reach him for the information before he ultimately attacks them anyway. Or maybe Alaznist finally reaches Karzoug before the PCs do and she manages to kill him since he’s still not quite at full power, the players arrive just in time to see her finish him off and then dimension doors away, with the final encounter here being Khalib the apprentice, who takes the burning glaive and declares himself the Runelord of Greed when he sees Karzoug’s dead form in the Eye. When they get to the Boneyard, it can be played as written, but its much easier to get him to talk since Alaznist was the one who killed him.
These are just a couple of options, I’m still figuring this part out and who knows how much will change throughout the campaign tbh.
Okay, so I have taken it upon myself as a challenge to combine the three campaigns (Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star, and Return of the Runelords) into a single campaign and have it make sense. I've read through all 18 books, some more than others. There will be fewer Shattered Star encounters used and I really consider this a combination of Rise and Return of the Runelords, with a few Shattered Star plots thrown in. If anyone has any thoughts on what I've done here, I’d love to hear them. Specifically if anyone can see in plot holes in this plan.
There will be spoilers for all three Adventure Paths in this very, very long post, fair warning!!!!
1) I want the PCs meet/fight all seven Runelords in one campaign (this includes Krune by using bits and pieces of the Year of the Rune Society Modules). The events of Awakened Rune have not happened yet, but I think the book where Zutha came back is fine to leave in the story.
2) I will be converting the campaign to the 2nd edition. Converting to 2nd ed is fairly easy; I've run a few modules from 1e for my group and converting to 2e was very simple. Hardest part will be the unique NPCs that don't have an exact version for 2e. I'm hoping these boards will catch up eventually and have some 2e stats for those unique NPCs sooner or later, but if not, easy enough to make a character. Treasure is super easy too, basically 1/10th of the value of the treasure in the books is what it is converted to. Magic items are trickier since magic really got an overhaul, and that honestly might be the part that takes longest for me as the GM.
I also realize that the leveling may be off from what is written in a few of the books. That is fine since I am converting to 2e anyway and it's not going to be a huge jump in levels either.3) I want to complete the campaign in around 18-24 months or so real time (running once a week for 6 hours). As much as I want to run all three campaigns in their full glory and in order, I get one shot to run a full length campaign with my...
Damn good stuff sir! I came up with the same idea as I was running the Rise of The Runelords AP and now having read the others I'm starting to mix them together. Here's what I came up with:
My outline of the campaign is a bit more stripped down. I'm leaving Krune and Zutha out as mere mentions or have them as one shots. The campaign will have two major villains, Karzoug and Alaznist. Alaznist was luckily foreshadowed in the Catacombs of Wrath so I think it works really well even though I already started. The only Runelords awake at the begining will be Sorshen and Karzoug. The Shattered Star AP as it stands is IMHO pretty bad. You gather the shards for really no reason and cause the evil to rise and get rewarded for cleaning up after yourselves? Scrap that. The Sihedron will be used to defeat Karzoug instead of the runeforged weapons and perhaps to activate the Cyphergate later.
I've ran the Rise of the Runelords up to Hook mountain pretty much as it is. Only change so far has been introducing Sheila Heidmarch at the end of Skinsaw murders, as our heroes joined PF society after defeating Xanesha and saving the Lord Mayors life. Sheila has aquired the shard of Pride and is tasking the players with finding more, no deeper plot here yet. Everything will change after Hook Mountain and the attack on Sandpoint.
During the attack on Sandpoint I'm replacing the red dragon with Cadrilkasta as Karzougs henchman tasked with finding Sihedron shards. Cadrilkasta will rip open Sandpoint and acquire the Shard of Wrath from the deeper levels of the Catacombs below. The destruction will also awaken Alaznist as the runewell in sandpoint gets powered up during the siege. Cadrilkasta will take the Shard of Wrath to Jorgenfist and then then continue to Guiltspur, getting stuck in Leng. After this it's The remaining shards in any order, and use any of the dungeons in all the adventure paths, Windsong, Guiltspur etc. Around these parts or even before I'll start foreshadowing the time shenanigans with hounds of Tindalos and visions, contacted by Sorshen and such. Runeforge will be the place to reforge the Sihedron and after that it's Xin-Shalast. Karzoug will hint the PCs at Alaznist and Xanderghul and the rest is all Return of the Runelords. Instead of the Sihedron Heroes I'll probably have them meet alternate versions of themselves and tell them what Alaznist has done in the __darkest timeline__ :D Then correcting the timeline, epic battle in the eye of Fury and it all ends with Yamasoth dragging Alaznist down to the abyss.
I'm running it in 2e. They're now at level 6 and I'm aiming for Karzoug at lvl 14-15 and defeating Alaznist at lvl 20, them getting their memories and experience from the alternate timelines being the thing that gets them to lvl 20.
This is all actually pretty much like Avengers: Sihedron shards are like infinity stones and in the end we have time travel. I wonder if Marvel writers are Pathfinder fans?
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You might want to read the rune-based abilities that Krune has in 4-26 The Waking Rune. If Xin doesn't already have similar, I imagine he would have 'back in the day'.