Ok, here you all are! Let's keep this the place for GM questions and discussion and not in the common area of the Player's Guide please.
Creative Director
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This thread exists because spoilers crept into the Curtain Call Player's Guide thread. Thanks for setting this up, Jonathan!
Here's the reply I posted on the other thread that's now hidden. I'll spoiler the whole thing here just to be careful too... SEASON OF GHOSTS POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW:
CastleDour wrote:
James, you mentioned it would be easy to start Curtain Call at level 12. What do you think of following Season of Ghosts with Curtain Call? I don't need a strong thematic fit here, just want to know if there would need to be heavy adjustments. The characters would spend 10 years between SoG and CC to learn Taldan and travel the world.
That's trickier. Season of Ghosts ends with the PCs at level 13, after all, and the nature of that Adventure Path means that it's not really as likely that the story of their adventure will have resulted in them being globally famous, or even really all that regionally famous.
Also, the change in tone from horror to whismy will be tricky.
Keep in mind that "easy to start Curtain Call at level 12" means not running all of chapter 1. Some GMs might balk at that, since there's a perception of "not getting your money's worth out of a purchase if you only run 2/3 of an adventure.
You could still do it, but you'll want to come up with some way that the director in Curtain Call learns about the PCs; maybe word of what they went through managed to catch her ear? Or if you have a PC who's of a theatrical bent, they might flip the proverbial script and approach Curtain Call's director with an offer of their story for her, rather than the other way around. In this case, I'd suggest ignoring chapter 1 of Curtain Call completely, then starting with Chapter 2 and remembering to lower XP as normal for 13th level PCs adventuring in 12th level encounters. By the end of the first adventure, your 13th level PCs will be well into 14th level, and things will slowly course correct as you continue.
Of course, if you use milestone leveling, that's easier. Just have the PCs play at 13th level through all of book 1; it'll make it less fun for the players to play that much extra content without leveling up though.
And also, you'll want to address the "Why do the PCs gain several levels in the span of several months, but don't gain any levels at all if they spend ten years traveling the world?" bit of verisimilitude.
It could be done, but it would require heavier lifting on the GM's part than any Adventure Path or campaign that just ended naturally with the PCs at 11th level rather than 13th, and in a campaign that's more traditional in how it frames that whole campaign than does Season of Ghosts.
HUGE SPOILER INCOMING FOR SEASON OF GHOSTS IN THIS LAST PARAGRAPH!
The fact that the PCs are dead in the mindscape for the first 75% of Season of Ghosts, then spend the last 25% (book 4) remaining in a remote part of Shenmen means that, while their adventure still is for sure worthy of an opera, it won't have a huge impact on a national scale with stories spread. That said... if you build in that 10 year gap... then in that time, have the PCs be semi-retired, maybe learning Taldane or whatever, and have other folks from Willowshore who DO know their story spread the word to Curtain Call's director. Then have her ask them to travel to the far side of the world to meet with her, using your chosen NPC from Willowshore as a proxy, and you're good to go; you'll likely need to lean more on having the PCs relate the details of their adventure more to the director than normal, though, since it might be tricky for word to spread, again, due to Season of Ghosts being so unusually "local" in its scope. (It's not just that it's in Tian Xia and Curtain Call is in Avistan... it's mostly about the fact that the PCs never leave the region at all, and the region itself is super remote. Even if Curtain Call took place somewhere in Tian Xia, it'd still be kinda awkward to play as-is into Curtain Call. But still... it can be done. Just will need a bit more work for all the reasons I mention above: level discrepancy, unusually regional story, and a significant thematic difference in tone between the two.
Very excited for this Adventure, I feel we had a ton of adventures lately for those that don't enjoy Urban environments or Norgorber, but I love both and am the exact target audience for this one.
I thought I wanted more 6 part adventures because it allowed for a complete 1-20 experience without much GM adjustments, but I found that the 6 books were so different and loosely connected between them sometimes, that having a tighter 3 part adventure overseen by a developer who can maintain all the story elements and themes from all parts cohesively, really punched above its weight and had a nice reset between APs for players who wanted to exit old characters or introduce new characters.
And in the beginning, we really only had Abominations Vault and Fist of the Phoenix, so I was unsure how we could follow up an adventure with another one and maintain believability. Absalom adventure goes to fight in tournament across the world felt a bit weird to me at the time, but joke's on me because now I'm trying to bring SoG villagers into Curtain Call because I love the ideas of it lol.
I think it just sells itself when we can buy a 1-10 lvl and a 11-20 lvl AP to follow it up with now that there's more variety to choose from.
I would prefer if the player levels ended in many APs at the same one where other APs picked up so I didn't have to change much.
One more exciting fact!
Simandu, one of the leaders of Vyre, is a Jorogumo follower of Norgorber, just like the rulers of Shenmen! Lots of cool parralels here, I predict we will see her in Curtain Call! She is known as the Queen of Whispers.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Simandu
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Creative Director
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** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **
I'm not a huge fan of putting in a lot of work creating lore for a region and then discarding it and doing all that work over again simply to try to chase the verisimilitude of "leaders change often." The majority of what we establish about Vyre in Hell's Rebels is the status quo of the city at the start of Curtain Call.
If that breaks verisimilitude for any one table, a GM should change up names and NPC types as needed. For Vyre, for Kintargo, and honestly for any location we feature in an Adventure Path that builds upon a location we've visited previously.
Personally, I think it's more interesting to be able to adventure amid familiar locations and familiar faces, and to have big changes in a region take place "on screen" during an adventure than to reinvent things in between visits.
I'm going to run this after Seven Dooms, and my thinking is to either completely skip chapter 1, or do a sort of cinematic intro where I tell them all the things that they've gone through, the nightmares, the desert, &c , and then just start them at the brainchild battle.
Maybe even do it in media res, study with the battle, and then pause to barrage what happened to them to get them there.
I think either idea works, but I'm leaving towards the latter for the narrative.
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Creative Director
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I'm going to run this after Seven Dooms, and my thinking is to either completely skip chapter 1, or do a sort of cinematic intro where I tell them all the things that they've gone through, the nightmares, the desert, &c , and then just start them at the brainchild battle.
Maybe even do it in media res, study with the battle, and then pause to barrage what happened to them to get them there.
I think either idea works, but I'm leaving towards the latter for the narrative.
That would work... but before you do, keep in mind that I've mentioned before that we have, in the works right now, somethign that will work VERY WELL as a sequel to Seven Dooms for Sandpoint. It's not yet announced, but I'm hoping it will be soon.
That would work... but before you do, keep in mind that I've mentioned before that we have, in the works right now, somethign that will work VERY WELL as a sequel to Seven Dooms for Sandpoint. It's not yet announced, but I'm hoping it will be soon.I'm going to run this after Seven Dooms, and my thinking is to either completely skip chapter 1, or do a sort of cinematic intro where I tell them all the things that they've gone through, the nightmares, the desert, &c , and then just start them at the brainchild battle.
Maybe even do it in media res, study with the battle, and then pause to barrage what happened to them to get them there.
I think either idea works, but I'm leaving towards the latter for the narrative.
Well, okay! The party just spoke with Nualia so it isn't like we're that far in....