Hi Folks,
is there anyone still playing or mastering the Jade Regent AP in 2024? I just started to DM the campaign with a well established and experienced group (all having years of experience and running through Shattered Star together). It would be nice to talk to other players or DMs, exchanging tips how to run the campaign. What worked out well and which pitfalls to avoid.
I capture the progress of our group in this blog: Jade Regent 2024 - An Adventure Journey
I played in our IRL group's Jade Regent campaign from October, 2015 to December, 2019, so a little over four years of monthly sessions. Our GM ran it mostly by the book. We took things off script occasionally, but by and large it was run as written, and the only thing we completely threw out was caravan combat for reasons that are well-documented.
My observations as a player in this campaign are here. I like to think there's some valuable feedback in there, including what worked and what didn't.
We've been playing since 3.0 in the early 2000's, encompassing 5 complete campaigns (one homebrew, and four published). It is my favorite campaign out of all of them to date.
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I am running a heavily modded PF2e version of this game currently. I started with books 1 & 2 and a fair amount of book 4, then largely tossed the rest. Instead of traversing the crown of the world, they convinced the son of a Jarl to grant them a long boat and some crew to sail them to Hongal. It allowed me to have a couple of nautical scenarios and lay a Mariner's Curse on one of the PCs...
Then I used the House of Withered Blossoms as a lore delivery device, with a combat with a homebrewed Spider Oni and are now moving to a more mission-based approach for the end.
Now they get to play kind of a wargame, where I propose several missions: Subterfuge, Diplomacy, Supply Disruption, etc.
This way, they get to play the kind of game they want to play, for the most part. However, there will be some times that important missions will pop up that they will HAVE to do, but the players can choose who wants to take part in that mission and I have a handful of NPCs that they can take with them to bolster their skillset.
Anyway, I was trying to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I don't think I gave too much away with that one...
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I'm currently GMing a group of four players through the JR AP. They've just started Book 2 (and have managed to survive the ambush by Asvig's thugs at the bridge).
We've got a human Fighter (sword and board) with abysmal social skills, another human Fighter (trip specialist) with almost equally abysmal social skills, an elven Arcanist, and a human Witch (summoning specialist). No one's exactly the party's "face" so far.
Based on our experiences with Book 1 and early Book 2 plus advice from the sub-forum here, I've decided to ditch most of the caravan combat rules. (Some caravan encounters might be converted into regular encounters.)
Instead, I have added (or will do so) the three JR-focused adventure plug-ins from Legendary Games: "The Road to Destiny", "The Baleful Coven", and "Under Frozen Stars". Possibly also some Kaidan material from Rite Publishing (e.g., "Autumn Moon Bath House"*).
* I used to have that adventure/location as a PDF, but maybe it was on a previous computer because I cannot find it now. :(
Yup! We're about to finish up the first section in book 5. We would have been done by now but we're using the Relationship subsystem and my players have gone whole hog with interacting with the various NPCs in the caravan.
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So, I have almost eschewed the entirety of the last few books and started making 'mission'-based adventures. Last weekend, I ran the crew attempting to break a siege on a possible ally's castle. One PC issued a challenge to the lead samurai, but the challenge was instead answered by an oni that was a disguised advisor.
While the challenge was being carried out, the two sneaky characters crept through the camp to see what they could find in the commander's tent. After stealing some maps and a magic item, they did a skill test and ended up saving a bunch of villagers from the occupied village (around the castle)...
The only one that I really felt for was the Champion that was acting as the Barbarian's second. But he was finding ways to help, via guidance and an occasional sneaky lay on hands... I asked him afterwards, and he said he had fun.
Then I opened up Tide of Honor and found that there were ideas for missions in there, so I will use those. I am basically doing this as an episodic campaign, with a couple of weeks between each adventure, so I have some Downtime for them to try in between each session. I find this works much better for my running style.
My plan is to have this come to a climax at a final battle against the Regent's army, or perhaps a similar stunt as the climatic battle of the 47 Ronin where they need to sneak in to the palace... Still working that out, depending on the choices that they make...