Start Crimson Throne with existing characters

[stese]

I am looking to start the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP with my group.

I have a group of beginner players who are big on having their own backstory. I am running the classic Black Fang's Dungeon, but integrated a lot of content, so after 4 sessions they are only now approaching the actual dungeon). But naturally, being huge fans of the roleplay-side of things rather than the tactical fighting, they have really fleshed out their characters nicely, and I would hate to force them to kill their characters.

I asked them to keep their backstory open, so that still have material to work with, and can probably create a tie in with the Traits and Gaedren Lamm as laid out at the beginning of the AP; For some of them. But some have absolutely no connection, and it would be a narrative disaster to force it. For example, one character's sister - a very hedonistic person - went missing, and the character is looking for her. She could have fallen for 'shiver' which was sold by Gaedren, and I could give him the "Drug Addict" trait.

In your experience, how important is it for the characters to have a close relationship with Korvosa? Do they need a backstory where they grew up in the city? Gaedren seems to die early, so basing everything around him could also backfire, and the characters could want to leave...

Sorry for all the ramblings, I'm just trying to find a good hook for my players to run this AP, because I know my players will absolutely love it.

[Yossarian]

I consider it 100% essential that the PCs have a strong connection to Korvosa: the AP expects them to proactively work to defend and support the city. If they don't care about the city the AP will very possibly fail horribly. GM's post in this forum sometimes about this going wrong for them: that as trouble increases in the city their PCs just want to leave. So I kept this simple and made it a mandatory part of each of PCs backstory to tell my why they cared deeply about Korvosa. Because each player has come up with their own reason, they are even more invested in it.

The connection to Gaedren is much less essential. In our campaign we had one PC with a strong motivation to find Gaedren (and then Rolth), and another PC who had a weak motivation to do so. That was enough to get the party to go after him.

[Gidonamor]

Yossarian wrote:

I consider it 100% essential that the PCs have a strong connection to Korvosa: the AP expects them to proactively work to defend and support the city. If they don't care about the city the AP will very possibly fail horribly. GM's post in this forum sometimes about this going wrong for them: that as trouble increases in the city their PCs just want to leave. So I kept this simple and made it a mandatory part of each of PCs backstory to tell my why they cared deeply about Korvosa. Because each player has come up with their own reason, they are even more invested in it.

The connection to Gaedren is much less essential. In our campaign we had one PC with a strong motivation to find Gaedren (and then Rolth), and another PC who had a weak motivation to do so. That was enough to get the party to go after him.

I agree completely. The characters have a lot of reasons to just leave the town behind, which need to be balanced out by a connection to Korvosa and her well-being. You could of course make something up, maybe a prophesy that the BBEG needs to be defeated, otherwise *insert bad consequence the party cares about*.

For an established party, a connection to Gaedren should be pretty easy, he could just do something to one of them, which should be enough to get them all on his trail. Campaign traits are not essential.

[stese]

Woop, thanks for your feedbacks! Indeed doesn't sound like a great idea to run with the existing characters in that case...

[Yossarian]

stese wrote:

Woop, thanks for your feedbacks! Indeed doesn't sound like a great idea to run with the existing characters in that case...

It still might work. But you'd have to perhaps change a few details in their backstory (such as the missing sister connection being related to Lamm) in order to make it robust.

Alternatively just have that Session Zero talk with your PCs. Tell them 'This AP requires you to want to protect Korvosa, your PCs will have to want to do that. As long as that's a given then we are all good'.

As Gidonamor said 'characters have a lot of reasons to leave the town behind'. It gets really unpleasant in the city during the AP, the PC's reactions have to be to double down on trying to fix the place. There's zero wiggle-room in this.

Running any AP or pre-written module has an implicit social contract: namely that the players are going to allow themselves to be guided along the rails of the pre-written story. As long as your players know this you should be fine. It is metagaming, but then so is life.

Good luck.

[stese]

Yossarian wrote:

But you'd have to perhaps change a few details in their backstory (such as the missing sister connection being related to Lamm) in order to make it robust.

Yeah that's a good hint. I have in the meantime run some homebrew content tying 2 out of the 5 characters into stories that give them a connection to Korvosa. One of the characters is a cleric who is out adventuring because she is hunting an artifact, which, through my homebrew content, ties the theft into the wrongdoings of one of the criminal organizations in Korvosa. The other character is trying to find his sister, which I thought about tying to the fate of Korvosa (haven't really figured out how, but I'm quite sure I will be able to find a hook.) .. Just in case you were wondering: I love to do homebrew content, so I will definitely change quite a few things around in the AP.

I also thought about killing one or two of the PCs early on, and have them come back new as local Korvosans who can help the PCs in their quest.

But there's one idea in my head: There's one character in the party who is Shoanti. I haven't yet full understood the form the Shoanti get involved in chapter 4, but could this be something I could use to tie the PC into the AP?

Quote:

... the players are going to allow themselves to be guided along the rails of the pre-written story. As long as your players know this you should be fine. It is metagaming, but then so is life.

Good luck.

That is a great hint actually. I think by having this explicit talk I can offload part of the problem onto them, because it was them in the first place who said that they would love continue with their existing characters but still venture into an AP.

Thank you so much for your thoughts!

[Yossarian]

Sounds good. I add a lot of created content to the AP also, all aimed at integrating the player backstories and playing them out.

For the Shoanti you have a nice big hook: Thousand Bones. The shaman wants a better relationship between the Shoanti and the city: if your PC can somehow come to support that you'll be in a good place. You'd need to create some reason for the PC to meet Thousand Bones, and have the Shaman be quite persuasive. There's no doubt plenty of other ways to link the PC with the Shaman. One option could be that your PCs tribe could tell the PC to go and help Thousand Bones.

A few other backstory integration tips:

- Don't make it too much about Gaedren Lamm. He's gone in the first part of the first book! Or extend it. For example, perhaps Gaedren gave the artefact your cleric is hunting for to his son Rolth? In my campaign one PC was hunting Gaedren because he had severely wronged her. But she learned from him that it was Rolth's idea to do it, and that Rolth was paid (but she doesn't know who by). So now she's happily hunting Rolth.

- Relationships with key NPCs can hook the players in well. In my campaign one PC is an associate of the Arkonas. Another is the brother of Ishani. The third is a member of the Cerulian Society. And the last is at the Theumanexus College. So they all have vested interests in those people and organisations being ok.

- Family members is a cliche but easy way to get the PCs to care about the city being ok.

- If any of your PCs have a patron, they could charge the PC with doing something in the city than requires them to help Korvosa. Perhaps a cleric has been charged with starting a temple there, for example.

As I said before, I like to make this my players challenge! So I ask them to come up with a reason they would care about the city, then integrate it. For example, my PC who said she wanted to work for a powerful noble... I made that noble Glorio Arkona, and we figured out the how and why together.

In the end, as long as the PCs care about the city and its people being ok, you'll be fine.