This is a GM reference thread so spoilers ahead!!
Quite excited to get this going and VERY curious how the Mythic rules interact, plus a new area for an AP.
Got last week day 1 but no time due to work to read through it and I am doing so now :)
Tom
This adventure certainly is different. I feel the intro is a little weak in bringing players together but it is wild how much of this adventure is non combat and isbtsd skill focused. I'm hoping next adventure increases the stakes and offers a more balanced experience with some more vigorous combat encounters.
I don't think it's weak in bringing players together, but I do think it could have been done better. If I were to run it, I'd have the players decide how their character met the point of contact NPC rather than the way it is written, and would probably do some RP with the group alone, so the PCs could get to know each other before kicking things off.
He was not mythic as far as I can tell. His hero speaking never worked, which is stated in the Q&A on page 9. However, I can't find - and maybe I missed it - what his cause of death was.
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I feel the intro is a little weak in bringing players together
That is also something we struggled with on my end. The Player's Guide backgrounds do a decent job of getting the characters to Iblydos in general, but it is missing some guidance on getting them to justify their presence in Bailax and especially to Terpsime's dining room. It would have been very useful for the players to have a better idea of where their characters will need to be (under Terpsime's hospitality) so that everyone is on the same page about where their backstories need to end and where the adventure begins.
By way of contrast if the design team is reading this, Season of Ghosts handled this problem expertly: The Player's Guide was very clear to the players that the adventure would start as they woke up on the morning after the Season of Ghost ritual, and that they were expected to have volunteered to take part, whether by the campaign-specific backgrounds or by a reason all their own.
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I feel the intro is a little weak in bringing players togetherThat is also something we struggled with on my end. The Player's Guide backgrounds do a decent job of getting the characters to Iblydos in general, but it is missing some guidance on getting them to justify their presence in Bailax and especially to Terpsime's dining room. It would have been very useful for the players to have a better idea of where their characters will need to be (under Terpsime's hospitality) so that everyone is on the same page about where their backstories need to end and where the adventure begins.
By way of contrast if the design team is reading this, Season of Ghosts handled this problem expertly: The Player's Guide was very clear to the players that the adventure would start as they woke up on the morning after the Season of Ghost ritual, and that they were expected to have volunteered to take part, whether by the campaign-specific backgrounds or by a reason all their own.
I was thinking that they should all be from some small town nearby or better yet, a neighborhood in Pol-Bailax. Maybe they are the children of the noble families in the city. It would explain why they all know each other and would go along with the Greek stories, where the heroes are always royalty.
If/when I run it, I'll have each character decide how they knew Terpsime rather than have them be randomly chosen by her. However, I'd also fill them in in advance on the Ibydian hospitality tradition, so the players knew what the characters should.
I would not limit them to being from Pol-Bailax as people from all over the world pass through the area, so I'd open it up to let them be from anywhere.
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Chapter 1 seems to be well shy of the 1000 XP needed to be level 2 by the time Chapter 2 starts. My party only missed out on the 10 XP for an exceptional 3VP feast at Ataiosiphon's and ended the chapter at 700/1000.
I expect the funeral games should be giving XP. 60 XP per event (retroactively) was enough for my party, but 80 per would give more leeway for missing any more of the optional awards
Session 1 completed over last weekend, the player group was REALLY curious on whats going to happen. They nailed the vibe with their backstories with a little help from me and our Councilor girl :)
I added a delapidated (not used for a long time now sadly) Demi god champion greek house for them to fix up in their downtime for a base.
The Sardine run was quite wild and fun, I added in a map and ships and all the sailing boons and mishaps per run. Team did not have the best dice luck so came in 3rd place but a couple of cool things happening will give them a couple more metals.
Now I am trying to figure out the maps for the day 2 games. oh and in the middle of the nite they will get a knock on their broken champs door with a problem in the Copper house :)
Tom
For some reason I'm having a hard time finding the map of the Acropolis (the J areas). Anyone know where it is?
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For some reason I'm having a hard time finding the map of the Acropolis (the J areas). Anyone know where it is?
I'm not seeing them except for J4 (on page 60). I think they might just not have been included.
Great ideas here throughout; thanks for them, all. Starting this with a group of 5 on Tuesday, and had one initial question on reviewing the adventure.
In Day 3 of the games, the feast, round 1 has the poison prawns that could leave the participants sickened. It says that PCs who don't succeed at the initial check become "sickened 2 at the start of the second round and sickened 1 at the start of the third round." Sickened officially says that a character can't willingly ingest anything - do we think this is intentional, or is it likely to be an oversight (meaning that the PC can continue to compete, but takes the penalty from being sickened to their checks)? I'm assuming the latter, since preventing a PC from competing in the rest of the round seems a little rough for one check at the start...especially since it's the first course, and (according to the box text) a PC has to finish the course to participate in any of the later ones!
Great ideas here throughout; thanks for them, all. Starting this with a group of 5 on Tuesday, and had one initial question on reviewing the adventure.
In Day 3 of the games, the feast, round 1 has the poison prawns that could leave the participants sickened. It says that PCs who don't succeed at the initial check become "sickened 2 at the start of the second round and sickened 1 at the start of the third round." Sickened officially says that a character can't willingly ingest anything - do we think this is intentional, or is it likely to be an oversight (meaning that the PC can continue to compete, but takes the penalty from being sickened to their checks)? I'm assuming the latter, since preventing a PC from competing in the rest of the round seems a little rough for one check at the start...especially since it's the first course, and (according to the box text) a PC has to finish the course to participate in any of the later ones!
Yeah, I also think the latter was intended. (I.e., -2 penalty to checks for 1 round, and a -1 penalty to checks for the second (where any abilities that the PCs have which could be used to treat sickened can be applied to reduce those penalties.))
Forbidding the PC from participating for 2 rounds seems wildly disproportionate to the critical failure penalties the adventure gives for skill challenges elsewhere in the book.
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Great ideas here throughout; thanks for them, all. Starting this with a group of 5 on Tuesday, and had one initial question on reviewing the adventure.
In Day 3 of the games, the feast, round 1 has the poison prawns that could leave the participants sickened. It says that PCs who don't succeed at the initial check become "sickened 2 at the start of the second round and sickened 1 at the start of the third round." Sickened officially says that a character can't willingly ingest anything - do we think this is intentional, or is it likely to be an oversight (meaning that the PC can continue to compete, but takes the penalty from being sickened to their checks)? I'm assuming the latter, since preventing a PC from competing in the rest of the round seems a little rough for one check at the start...especially since it's the first course, and (according to the box text) a PC has to finish the course to participate in any of the later ones!
Yeah, I also think the latter was intended. (I.e., -2 penalty to checks for 1 round, and a -1 penalty to checks for the second (where any abilities that the PCs have which could be used to treat sickened can be applied to reduce those penalties.))
Forbidding the PC from participating for 2 rounds seems wildly disproportionate to the critical failure penalties the adventure gives for skill challenges elsewhere in the book.
Yeah, agreed - especially since it seems like it would (almost certainly) then lead to them having to sit out the whole rest of the event!
Yep specific rules override general ones, might be nice to have a tag or something to note it when these come up in AP's and adventures.
So how are all your groups fairing in the games so far? Mine is in 2nd place at the moment and they are quite curious as to then next events, so not to bad so far
Tom
We had our session 0 wrap-up/session 1 last Tuesday, session 2 is scheduled for tomorrow night! In session 0.5 we only got through the baleening event, which the group split into two for and ended up in 3rd place. (d20s are so darn swingy - these events might be more competitive than I expected!)
Was thinking for the Pyre Relay that I may change the story about the otherwise-unknown Kaile to be Sophreista, with Merosyne as the "friend" rescued by the herb. That way meeting the two of them later will be a cool callback - I don't think that should mess anything up, but will have to skim part 2 again to remind myself.
Also thinking of putting a timer for rescuing the sailors on the encounter with the sedacthy, if things turn violent - that way it's not just a slugfest of encounters.
Curious as to how yall ran the Amphora Roll Competition. The Guide has rolls but not all of the results show an impact to the race. I was planning on giving modifiers to the actual Rollers checks. Let me know if I am missing something or the results of the guides rolls are not there.
The text above it says, "A guide’s efforts sometimes just Aid a roller, and some obstacles have special ways to provide a different benefit." So I assumed every obstacle that didn't spell out a different result was just an Aid check.
It's not exciting, but it works ok.
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The text above it says, "A guide’s efforts sometimes just Aid a roller, and some obstacles have special ways to provide a different benefit." So I assumed every obstacle that didn't spell out a different result was just an Aid check.
It's not exciting, but it works ok.
Thanks, I ended up using the Guide roll to either make the check harder or easier based on the result of the guide when it wasn't specific. Players who were guides felt it when they failed the team.
Wondering if anyone's run the Hippogriff encounter in area G of part 2 yet...I'm noticing it's labeled as a Severe 2 encounter, but by the math it should only be Moderate, since Mythic (to my understanding) doesn't change the encounter math...anything I'm missing there?
(Also, as a side-note, the fight in F2 may feel slightly harder than it's meant to, as Elite Skeleton Guards should be leve 1, not 0, but it's still in the same band.)
Will also give a (very brief) update on my game: my party completed Part 1, handily coming first in all the other challenges (to the extent that they actually threw the Amphora Roll, taking the jobs that would be worst for each one of them individually, to give the others a sporting chance...since there was no mathematical way for them to lose 1st place at that point). They all hate Aki, and they've gotten pretty fond of Bailax, I think (the witch is particularly enamored of the cyclopean seers).
They expressed absolutely no interest in Dikaios as a person, so I've subbed Rhetienn into Dikaios's role in part 2, since they at least had some interactions with her and I think she'd be interested in the expedition. I've also fleshed out the hexcrawl slightly; keeping the "no Travel activities" section but adding in the chance of random encounters each day and night to keep them on their toes. Seems to be going well so far, but we're about to do the first FULL hexcrawl session tomorrow (last session consisted of divvying up the spoils from the games, 3 days of Downtime I added between the games and the expedition, the sea-faring challenge, and then initial explorations; they met Iokoris and, after Zepherides nearly ate Sappil's team, went out and defeated him, though it was a rough fight!).