Venture-Captain, Missouri—Springfield
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Hello,
I was prepping for this game for my local group, and compiled all the stat blocks for it. While most stats are normal, be advised that the Zombie Owlbear has Unkillable trait.
You can find my prep work here: March of the Dead Prep
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Hey Heathwool thanks so much for this! I ran this yesterday and the adjustments you made were spot on.
I got inspired and made some maps and props for the module:
• Forrna's Faith map; it's almost 6 feet long.
• Entering Fiorna's Faith.
• Tower Defense props — I printed out all 4 barricade thresholds and stuck them to 16 acrylic cubes to visualize each barricade's status. It worked out pretty well!
I also made a prop for the initial note, complete with some splattered "bloodstains" on it, and tore it apart just like the module says. The players really liked finding the second half! Sadly I forgot to take a pic of it and gave the prop to a fellow GM.
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… and having run this, here are my thoughts; your mileage may vary:
• We completed it in just under 6 hours, but 8 would have been better. I ended up skipping a couple more encounters than I wished in part 3. We ran everything in part 2.
• If you ran ALL the combats and really relished the setting, you could easily take 12 hours.
• In Part 1, I skipped all the undead encounters except the ones in the inn (I ran the more difficult option). This was intentional to create a sense of atmosphere and dread. Part one still took over 2 hours, as we spent time with character development and I tried to build the atmosphere house to house. When we debriefed afterward the feedback from players was positive. We all LOVED this part of the adventure!
• Sort of prop to mark barricade status for the players will be useful. It can be difficult to track. That, or keep it off the map and tally them on a sheet and let the GM narrate which get broken/destroyed.
• Tower defense was PERFECT in terms of challenge. Props to the author and Healthwool for the adjustments. It started out easy and by the end players were really scared, wounded, and tapped out of resources. The way it should be. That part was SO good.
• Some of the combats might start to feel redundant, especially with sack-of-hit-point zombies. This is on-theme for the module, but as it says you can use your discretion where to place or whether to run monsters. We just narrated a couple of fights that were not mechanically threatening (something I do in my non-PFS games as well).
• GMs should definitely prep well for this, no matter what there's a lot of combat. I came in to the session with over 40 pre-rolled initiative index cards, many of which had multiple initiatives on them for grouped enemies. Unlike many 2e games, I think it's reasonable to group enemies together here due to the sheer number of monsters you have to run.
• I would recommend any and all NPC children be excluded from the adventure in the org play setting, considering that torturing/killing children is traumatic for many players. This includes "Terrible Detail" #1. I put a "veil" over any children (there was also some humorous mention of Belkzen summer camp)
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Here is some more prep material on PFS Prep — a letter you can tear up for a prop, a handout for the supplies and items players can find, and a handout for "Choosing a Holdout" and the "Fortifications" rules.
