I've been running Iron Gods for years now, and I generally like the story. But AS WRITTEN book 4 seems really odd to me.
For one thing the DRIVING plot hook is one sentence at the end of book 3. It's very "Sorry, Mario, the princess is in another castle.". I think that will deject my players a little bit.
On top of that, it gives no details. It's just the neurocam is in the Scar. Go there and just search the entire thing until you get lucky enough to happen upon it. I someone told me "I hid something. It's in Brooklyn. Just go search all of Brooklyn until you find it", I'd be pretty peeved.
And I'm not thrilled with the format of Book 4 either. It's just go to area->explore area->kill everything in area->loot->Go to next area. There's only a handful of NPCs and they don't really give you quests or anything to break up the above pattern. There's no towns. There's no shops. The roleplay for most sessions is just going to come down to players interacting with each other.
And my last pet peeve is absentee villains, which Unity absolutely is. Unity doesn't DO anything. It doesn't attack the party. It doesn't kill anyone. It doesn't even know they exist. The reason to fight it is because it's EEEEvil, but what does that mean for the party? It's apparently been around for centuries with no noticeable effect. I just wish Unity was more active of a bad guy in this story.
I know I can change some of these things, and I think I'll have to. But I buy APs to avoid having to homebrew too much. Sigh. So does anyone sort of feel the same way? Did anyone make any changes that they thought served them well?
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Yep, agreed on all fronts. I ran book 4 last year for my players (we took a break afterward to play a different AP). Book 4 runs 100% entirely on theme and atmosphere rather than a proper plot. As you say, "Search this giant place until you find the MacGuffin" does not make for riveting adventuring.
I did end up making a few tweaks when I ran it, but was wary about wandering too far off into homebrew territory. Here's what I did:
In retrospect, I'd actually make the first 4 books way more "Against the Technic League", with Casandalee actually having secret info about the League rather than about Unity. The League is the far more active oppressive force in the AP as written, with there being some juicy moments possible in Books 1 and 3 especially. There could be whispers and hints that something else is driving the League behind the scenes, only to reveal in Book 5 that the League is just Unity's puppet.
Yep, agreed on all fronts. I ran book 4 last year for my players (we took a break afterward to play a different AP). Book 4 runs 100% entirely on theme and atmosphere rather than a proper plot. As you say, "Search this giant place until you find the MacGuffin" does not make for riveting adventuring.
I did end up making a few tweaks when I ran it, but was wary about wandering too far off into homebrew territory. Here's what I did:
At the end of book 3, I changed the hook to "X years ago, Casandalee uploaded her consciousness to a new body and fled to a place she didn't think either Xoud or Unity would follow - the Scar. She may still be hiding out there." and then had a lot of the longer-lived characters in the Scar actually remember and talk about her. This gave the PCs more reason to hold back from attacking and instead chat where possible (particularly with the mad druid, the android community, and our favorite four-armed alien pal).
I scattered a bunch of minor hints and clues across the Scar that pointed to Casandalee having crossed the Dominion while she was here. I also hyped up how strong the Dominion was to give PCs more of a reason to level up and gather more advantages before going to the Hive.
I added more dead Technic League agents with explicit references to "Unity's Orders" and a couple of other references to Book 5.
Across the four books to that point, I'd tried to establish a clearer picture of the threat of Unity via the Technic League. Basically I had the Technic League going around being really oppressive, and made sure to emphasize that they weren't always this way. Unfortunately, even with this emphasis, the driving force forwards is a bit weak. In retrospect, I'd actually make the first 4 books way more "Against the Technic League", with Casandalee actually having secret info about the League rather than about Unity. The League is the far more active oppressive force in the AP as written, with there being some juicy moments possible in Books 1 and 3...
I don't have book 5 yet. Can you tell me more about these hints and references?
For one thing the DRIVING plot hook is one sentence at the end of book 3. It's very "Sorry, Mario, the princess is in another castle.". I think that will deject my players a little bit.
When I began my Iron Gods campaign in December 2015, I read the year and a half of comments in this forum. The experienced GMs warned about those weak connections.
Both of the hunt-for-Casandalee modules, The Choking Tower and Valley of Brain Collectors, have little justification. in the 2nd module, Lords of Rust, Casandalee is mentioned only in some notes in room S6, Kulgara’s Quarters. Some parties missed the significance and instead went directly to Starfall at 7th level. And slade867 is right on the mark about "the princess is in another castle" at the end of The Choking Tower.
In my campaign when Hellion was bragging to the party over the monitor screens, it told the party that Casandalee was the only being who had ever thwarted Unity and it hoped to ally with her (Hellion was ignorant about android lifespans). And Hellion mentioned that she had not left the Divinity empty-handed. She had taken a number of high-tech devices, such as the neurocam and a compact AI, and high-tech weapons, such as laser guns and plamsa thrower, with her. (One of my PCs learned heavy weapon proficiency just to use that plasma thrower.) In other words, I added major treasure to bait the plot hook.
Later in the Aurora beneath Iadenveigh, the party found Casandalee's notes on the ship's computer system. She had gone to the Aurora to created advanced android repair nanites to heal major injuries from fighting Unity's robots in the Scar of the Spider. She was upset that she had to abandon her technology cache in a cave there to escape the robots.
I put Casandalee's weapon cache in J1, the first room of Nemgedder’s Folly.
I had the further luck that Hellion had told the party about the Dominion of the Black's attack on the Divinity fleet, using the hologram generator in room R1 to show their monstrous forms. Thus, when they spotted Neh-Thalggus in Valley of the Brain Collectors, they put the search for Casandalee's compact AI on the back burner while they put their energy into stopping an alien invasion of Golarion!
They also skipped half the caves in the excitement of fighting the Dominion, so finished up one level too low after they found the Compact AI and left the Scar of the Spider.
And my last pet peeve is absentee villains, which Unity absolutely is. Unity doesn't DO anything. It doesn't attack the party. It doesn't kill anyone. It doesn't even know they exist. The reason to fight it is because it's EEEEvil, but what does that mean for the party? It's apparently been around for centuries with no noticeable effect. I just wish Unity was more active of a bad guy in this story.
I view the Iron Gods adventure path as divided into three parts. The first two modules are about the minions of Hellion and then Hellion itself. The middle two modules were supposed to be the hunt for Casandalee, but they are more a series of other encounters during the hunt. The last two modules are about Unity, with the Technic League trying to exploit Silver Mount and Unity trying to protect it while working on its own evil plan.
From this point of view, Unity is not the villain until the 6th module. The three Iron Gods, Hellion, Casandalee, and Unity, are mostly background flavor. Somehow Casandalee counts as an Iron God, perhaps because of her possible fate.
I will have more to say on this in response to slade867's other question.
I don't have book 5 yet. Can you tell me more about these hints and references?
In Palace of Fallen Stars one potential ally is Zernebeth, former leader of the Technic League. She had earned that status by delving deep into Silver Mount and returning barely alive. She sports cybernetic limbs to replace an arm and leg lost on that expedition. She lost the next election for leader to Ozmyn Zaidow after he returned intact and with significant technological treasure from Silver Mount.
Except that Ozmyn Zaidow did not return unchanged. Unity had captured him. Rather than killing him, Unity realized that the Technic League could provide parts and slaves that Unity needed to complete its evil plan. It enhanced Ozmyn and put him under mind control. Ozmyn himself thinks that he made a deal with Unity: it is pretty much the GM's choice how much free will Ozmyn has.
Cellion putting "Unity's Orders" into the hands of Technic League agents reveals more than the default adventure path does. Cellion put the Technic League and Unity on the same villainous side. I myself had them each on their own side, where Ozmyn's deal of Unity was a betrayal of the Technic League.