New Elysium - Information Overload! - No Spoilers (I think!)

[Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan]

Alright, so I have a couple problems with the first book of this AP.

1) A TON of data to relay to the PCs, without any help from the published module. When the "app" has a map of the place, well, by golly, my PCs want the map! And then there are 50 locations on the map, that are described in the text, but I'm not going to spend 4 hours going "Oh, A-3, yeah, that's another bar, with a 50s lounger's feel." And I can't just cut and paste 3 pages of the mod and give it to the PCs, because there are spoilers in there. This is just a rough way to start the whole adventure.

2) The NPCs. How about a picture of the whole group of Buzzblades? How about a nice summary of the NPCs in a location where I can just read it all off, or even a handout. Because, again, there's a ton of info, descriptions, etc, but I can't just cut and paste it because I don't want the PCs to know, "Cardinal Richelieu is secretly planning to take over France!"

How did everyone else handle this massive data dump with your players?

[Ixal]

If you want to go the extra mile, take the map of Elysium, put icons for each location on it, the kind you find on maps for a mall and at the bottom group them together by type and just list the name of the location. So for example you would have:

Bars:
A9 - Hollows Tavern ($$)
A13 - Wild Apples ($)

Then prepare a card for each location with an advertisement text you would find in travel guides and hand it to your players when they ask for it.

You might need to edit the lower floor map to cut out the restricted area.
(If in any product Paizo introduced a symbol for credits use that one instead of $)

[Hawk Kriegsman]

I had Filip take them on a tour of the main level and I read the all the room descriptions, less any spoilers. Then I had the app guide them to the public areas of the lower level before heading to the residence level.

The NPCs all got introduced or described through various means at the opening gala.

It did not take all that long really.

[Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan]

Thanks for there advice friends!