Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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Piecing the map together on this is such a pain in the ass. Please don't do peicemeal maps like these.
Has anyone found a good map substitution for this one? I am willing (grudgingly, if I have much lead time) to piece together tiles, then take a picture of them to have an excellent single map. But that tiled forest map does not even look right aesthetically when put together. The plants don't match up, and it is driving me crazy.
If we were still gaming in person, I would just draw the map myself to avoid the aesthetic dissonance. Maybe my main problem is I'm OCD about my maps -- whether I use official ones or draw them myself. I'm not happy if they don't look right.
(I also realize that this may be solely my problem. It goes beyond quirk straight to obsessive-compulsive...)
I'm tempted to use the swamp flip mat because it at least has paths. Actually, you know what would work? The SFS Flip mat, Jungle World. That map looks fey and has multiple paths and trees. Bigger forest might work too... But I think I am just going to use Jungle World because then I won't have jarring square edges that don't match up correctly, and it still will have a fey look.
Is there anything tactical that I am missing with this substitution? Thoughts?
Hmm
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So, I have a weird question. I rolled for all the options here, and I got the insular village with the Nature, Hunting Lore, and Survival skill checks. I also got the selfish thief kitsune with the Deception, Underworld Lore, and Thievery checks. Now, maybe I got the worst of all possible outcomes, but how do you normally present these rolls to your players? Do you just tell them up front these are the rolls you need, or do you roleplay the whole encounter and expect them to think of making those rolls?
The first option seems too arbitrary, and really removes player agency. The second option seems doomed to either be extremely awkward or impossible for the players to guess the exact combo written in the adventure.
Try to roleplay an interaction between people who can’t speak your language (insular village) and somehow convey that a Nature roll will get these people to help you! I even threw in an NPC translator that just happened to speak Taldane (common) and it STILL came across as super-wonky.
Is this just extremely bad adventure design, or am I doing this all wrong?
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I've GMed this one five times... I always take the time to prepare a plan for how I want to present the village and weave the skill checks into those interactions. It's one of my favorite parts of the scenario since I've got the freedom to describe a village but the challenge to fit the interactions into the skill checks listed.
Below are links to a couple of pbps I GMed.
Link to the posts for arriving at the village.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Unless it's explicitly part of the minigame (like using Discovery to figure out how to Influence someone) I think you should always be open with players about which skills can be used. It's exceedingly frustrating as a player when the GM can't distinguish between "stuff you don't know yet because plot" and "I'm not even telling you the game rules".
But that doesn't mean you have to throw all RP out of the window. You can have a few minutes of RP, setting the scene, and then ease into telling the players that now that they've got to know the villagers a bit, here's how you can get to the paydata. So you telling them the skills to use is like the "mechanical recap" of the previous RP moment.
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Okay, thanks! That’s kind of what I did. I rolled the village that doesn’t speak common (which seems to make a lot of this even harder than Rob’s two fine examples). So I had one man in the village who could act as translator, and I had him explain to the characters that they might get more help from these people if they shared some of their knowledge of the forest and survival techniques.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Just wanted to mention that the Poracha in the Green Scarf section is a very powerful foe. AC 21 at level one is hard to hit, and my players fell into the 12-13 CP subtier, raising its AC to 23. My players were really having difficulty with hitting it, while it did quite some damage back. 2d6+7 is quite a bit at level 1. With a big party it's easy to get to 12+ CP with only one or two level 2 people, and this is not a fair challenge.
On the other hand, several other encounters feel super duper light. The mitflits feel like a very weak addition to the already damage-light jinkins (how do they damage anyone? I've tried to feint to make them flat-footed, but still), and the homunculus might as well not be there.
Any of the -1 creatures just feel like XP fodder to me really, rather than an actual challenge. Also a shoutout to the lesser guardian statues that can barely move, have low HP, and barely any damage output. What makes them even more annoying is that their hardness might prevent Lin Po and Ti Lan's crossbow from finishing them off. A quarter of the time they're not even damaging them.
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Hey Community,
Just want to make sure I am doing this right.
I got three 3rd level characters, CP 12, do I run the low tier or high tier?
(I know I should know this already, but...)
Thanks!
This isn't specific to this scenario so not really a good spot for this question but...
That's not a legal table.
Adventures with a Minimum level of 5 or lower. For these adventures, the GM can run a table of two or three players, and can add additional pregenerated iconic characters of the appropriate level in order to meet the minimum table size of four PCs.
You need to add an iconic.
The Challenge Point rules tell you which level Iconic to add.
(Adventure base level is 1 and you have 12+ CP so add a level 3 pregen and add 4 CP for them.
You end up at 16 CP, 4 players and run high tier no adjustments.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Bellevue
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You need to add an iconic.
Just to be complete. That mean's adding a NPC iconic pregenerated character who can be run by the GM or a player so you have the minumum four characters at the table.
Great answer, Pirate Rob. I just thought if someone is new, the additional detail might help.