Skinsaw Murders: Remove Undead?

[GOALentertainment]

So, I really want to do Rise of the Runelords, but I have some players who aren't huge fans of undead/horror, so I'm trying to figure out a way of changing up part 2 so that it isn't as undead focused. I could probably switch out the scarecrows in part 3 for hobgoblins or abominations or something, but I'm trying to figure out how to replace the asylum and haunted house bits with something less undead/horror-y. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Jhaeman]

Are you sure this is the right AP for your group? Not only is horror a major theme in chapter 2, but it’s also a chunk of chapter 3 (the ogre-kin are Texas Chainsaw Nightmare), Chapter 5 (necromancy wing of the Runeforge dungeon), Chapter Six (Vekkers’ cabin), and probably a lot more I’m forgetting.

[GOALentertainment]

Jhaeman wrote:

Are you sure this is the right AP for your group? Not only is horror a major theme in chapter 2, but it’s also a chunk of chapter 3 (the ogre-kin are Texas Chainsaw Nightmare), Chapter 5 (necromancy wing of the Runeforge dungeon), Chapter Six (Vekkers’ cabin), and probably a lot more I’m forgetting.

Maybe not then. I didn't realize there was so much in the later parts.

[Roonfizzle Garnackle]

As much as I don't want to nudge you away from a very solid AP ... Jhaeman is spot on.

You might want to have a heart to heart with your player.

I personally do NOT like most Horror movies, but I'm enjoying running the Path.

Some of the most memorable, and enjoyed sections of this AP, fall in the Horror category.

[GOALentertainment]

Roonfizzle Garnackle wrote:

As much as I don't want to nudge you away from a very solid AP ... Jhaeman is spot on.

You might want to have a heart to heart with your player.

I personally do NOT like most Horror movies, but I'm enjoying running the Path.

Some of the most memorable, and enjoyed sections of this AP, fall in the Horror category.

And truthfully it's much more the undead thing than the horror thing. Like, the ogre-kin stuff should be fine. I'd have to look at the necromancy wing and Vekker's cabin (I have no idea what's in here); Having undead present isn't that big a deal. It's just having them take up the focus of such a huge continuous portion of the path that's more the issue.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Make Aldern a normal crazy and remove the haunts. Let him have a few living mooks of appropriate CR in place of his ghouls. Add in a couple more low-level encounters to make up for the lost XP from haunts. The mooks are from that organization he was indebted to. They can spill the beans on his actions and connection to Magnimar if taken alive and pressed. Alternatively, in his unhinged state Aldern wrote about everything in his diary which the PCs might possibly find hidden away. That is, if the players are interested in his story.
Have the dude in the sanatorium die of Vorel's Phage instead of ghoul fever.

Keep the Ravenous Crypts as is, because it fits the appropriate Runelord and his magic.

If there are still too many undead:
Instead of finding haunts and ghosts in Vekker's cabin, find the barely living remains of the expedition and have the harrowed survivors tell their tale.

Done.

[GOALentertainment]

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Make Aldern a normal crazy and remove the haunts. Let him have a few living mooks of appropriate CR in place of his ghouls. Add in a couple more low-level encounters to make up for the lost XP from haunts. The mooks are from that organization he was indebted to. They can spill the beans on his actions and connection to Magnimar if taken alive and pressed. Alternatively, in his unhinged state Aldern wrote about everything in his diary which the PCs might possibly find hidden away. That is, if the players are interested in his story.

Have the dude in the sanatorium die of Vorel's Phage instead of ghoul fever.

Keep the Ravenous Crypts as is, because it fits the appropriate Runelord and his magic.

If there are still too many undead:
Instead of finding haunts and ghosts in Vekker's cabin, find the barely living remains of the expedition and have the harrowed survivors tell their tale.

Done.

Awesome assessment, thanks!

[Artofregicide]

Yeah, if you don't like horror this is very much the wrong AP. You'll have to rewrite large swaths of it and change many of the themes...

[ckdragons]

Artofregicide wrote:

Yeah, if you don't like horror this is very much the wrong AP. You'll have to rewrite large swaths of it and change many of the themes...

While you're not wrong, I do like Bjørn Røyrvik's creative alternative to the horror aspects of the game.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Thank you.
Though to be fair the horror remains the same - there are just fewer undead.

[Nicolas Paradise]

While book 2 was probably the least memorable part of my RotR campaign and I definitely feel like it sticks out and doesn't fit the plot you can certainly change it to get rid of the undead aspects.

Making the Skinsaw Man a right hand to Ironbriar and have the Misgivings being a meeting place for the Skinsaw cult with other minor nobels from Magnimar would be cool. Really play up the Sihedron carvings so that Xaninsha's use of the cult as a method of powering up Karzoug.

Change the Scarecrows into faceless stalkers that Xanisha instructs the cult to leave behind to deal with stragglers and do gooders. With this change they can even be in the farmhouses acting as the farmers.

I wouldn't change Runeforge. That whole dungeon is about learning about the runelords and one of them was a necromancer.

I also wouldn't change Mama graul her Necromancy fits with the gross horror of the whole family and bringing her sons back as zombie puppets fits that.

I am not sure Vekkers Cabin is important honestly. If you did book 4 and 5 right the PC's have their target set on Karzoug and Xin Shalast. If they need more XP at that point there are tons of random encounters you can run in Shalast from every giant in the books to spiders from Leng ect.

[CorvusMask]

Technically speaking, they could change it so that gluttony wing got destroyed instead of the envy wing <_< Lot of work there, but entirely possible

[Nicolas Paradise]

True although I think it is ironic humor that Envy got destoryed despite being the abjuration wing and having all the best anti-magic.

[Jhaeman]

For me, since there are so many APs out there, I would just pick one that doesn't feature much horror or undead instead of trying to convert a bunch of stuff--but nothing's impossible. I guess it's like anything--how much time and effort do you want to put into it? With enough time, you can set Rise of the Runelords in a post-apocalyptic future where Karzoug is a super-mutant and instead of giants there are intelligent radioactive cockroaches.

[Artofregicide]

Jhaeman wrote:

For me, since there are so many APs out there, I would just pick one that doesn't feature much horror or undead instead of trying to convert a bunch of stuff--but nothing's impossible. I guess it's like anything--how much time and effort do you want to put into it? With enough time, you can set Rise of the Runelords in a post-apocalyptic future where Karzoug is a super-mutant and instead of giants there are intelligent radioactive cockroaches.

I'm in.

[Jhaeman]

I'll get right on it.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Aren't Azlanti already supermutants?

[Nicolas Paradise]

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Aren't Azlanti already supermutants?

Not so much mutants as ideal humans. So a pure blooded Azlanti in PF1E had +5 to all stats I believe. Although the runelords and thus Thassalonians did do body modifications to implant ioun stones into their body. Karzoug has like 12+ implanted in his arms, hands and face.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

A subset of humanity bred to be better in every way than the baseline - sounds like supermutant to me.

[Artofregicide]

Supermutant is better than the idea that the "ideal" human is empirically better and oh btw white (at least originally).

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

You don't think that an ideal version of something would be empirically better than a non-ideal version?

[CorvusMask]

Nicolas Paradise wrote:

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Aren't Azlanti already supermutants?

Not so much mutants as ideal humans. So a pure blooded Azlanti in PF1E had +5 to all stats I believe. Although the runelords and thus Thassalonians did do body modifications to implant ioun stones into their body. Karzoug has like 12+ implanted in his arms, hands and face.

1e azlanti had +2 to all stats, though pretty much all thassilonian characters had +5 because they had mental stat bonuses without physical penalties from various forms of artificially extending their life :p