This is my journal to talk about my experiences, struggles, and joys in running this Adventure Path. The primary purpose of this thread is a place to order my thoughts and keep a journal, however everyone is welcome to post here, add comments, and join the conversation. Ideally this will be a useful reference for others and at the worst just a journal.
The planning and how we arrived at the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix.
The pitch for this campaign resonated with the group and we were instantly 100% committed to playing it. Only then did we notice that it was level 11-20.
I didn't GM or play Pathfinder during the dark times that are not over but will pass, Urgathoa willing, so I was hesitant to jump straight into a 11th level 2E game. The players had a few more games under their belts, but were similarly hesitant to make 11th level characters from scratch. We considered the obvious choice of the Abomination Vaults for levels 1-10 but in the end decided to try something ambitious .
The Origin Story Arc
I decided to string together 3 or 4 PF1 modules converted to 2E that would serve as the Origin Story of the heroes that go on to enter the Ruby Phoenix Tournament. The Price of Immortality trilogy (Crypt of the Everflame, Masks of the Living God, City of Golder Death) serves as a great arc, starting in a humble village, finishing in the abandoned Capitol of the Whispering Tyrant (backstory will happen before relevant events occur here). I'm holding space for an extra module if there is something that really complements the themes of the group. I also plan to scale the modules so that the City of Golden Death is lvl 8-9 to let them finish on a super epic note.
I'll post links to the origin story threads in their relevant forums to keep this forum on topic.
The Origin Story Mechanics?
I've been thinking a lot about what mechanical changes I could make to create a ludonarrative harmony in the Origin Story. That these origin adventures are the stories the future adventurers are telling about themselves, or these are the adventures as they remember them, not as they were. 'Back in my day we walked up hill to the dungeon both ways, in four feet of snow.' All these ideas would apply to the backstory adventures only.
We could roll in memory points and narrative rerolls: Either direct player override on the story "You're telling the story all wrong! I didn't fall off the roof and land on my butt surrounded, I made leap attack to take out the ringleader bandit from above! You were just to far away to see my prowess." The Prince of Persia, 'no that isn't how it happened' retcon also fits in this category. Or pull on different "I had a plan for this all along" or "I have a guy for this" mechanics. I'm not in favor of these because I don't want to remove too much tension, and without some meaningful balance point it feels like adding mechanics just to add them.
Next thought was that since this is the character's origin story; they due not die unless the player decided they die. I'm looking at this because I want to give the players the permission and power to make ambitious, crazy plans that they will look back on and laugh at. I'm a little hesitant to remove the risk of death without playing more combat rounds with players in the dying condition, just cause I don't want to remove too much tension. If I do dive into death manipulation, I could also add an option that when you hit dying you either follow normal rules (while still protected from dying), or enter a 'death or glory' state where your dying increases as normal in all ways except that you are not incapacitated and instead get a bonus to all rolls equal to your dying value, until you die. These rules could serve as a safety net if I get the encounter challenges wrong in the conversions.
Random secret objectives is something we have had fun with in dungeon crawling board games (Gloomhaven) and they add an interesting twist in those games. I thought about if random secret objectives could force some interesting dynamics. I would never consider this in a typical campaign, but if we insist the entire game is an unreliable narrator (if the objective does not match the character personality) and have some safety nets (to prevent silly TPKs) in place they might have a place. I don't like this idea because it isn't giving my players enough credit, they are going to create great and interesting dynamics with or without outside pressure.
All that said and considered, I don't think any of the mechanics above would benefit the backstory premise and that my best shot at having adventures that these characters look back on and tell tall tales about is to just run a few enjoyable, well paced games. We will however have level and time jumps where they needed with players filling in the time and level gaps with their own stories (6 to 8 levels of content taking them to level 9 or 10, so they may finish one adventure at level 2 and start the next one at level 4). Retraining will be very permissive.
Character Creation
Started with all Uncommon races are permitted.
Uncommon and rare options are negotiable.
It is already looking very exciting.
In Closing
That is enough for now. I'll post the links to the early adventure journal threads as they happen. The adventure will tentatively start in September, Urgathoa willing, so it will be while before we get started and longer before we start the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix.
Thread Ground Rules
Everyone is welcome. Post away on feedback, comments, or tangents. Everything in here is brainstorm or feedback on how things went, so there are no bad ideas. There shall be no vileness, cruelty, or arguing in the thread. This thread is full of spoilers for the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix. I'll be dropping any direct questions in the relevant GM Reference threads, any questions here are thinking out loud or an invitation to brainstorm on solutions specific to this campaign, or a chance to take tangents that are not helpful in the GM Reference.
Link to the Crypt of the Everflame journal.
Ran it on impulse for a 2 player group. Went well.