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On the one hand, I've been waiting a literal fifteen years for this! On the other, I've waited so long that I started to take things into my own hands last year. I am oscillating between crestfallen for all the work I'd done, and super excited, but more on the excited part of things.
One question I have though, is whether it may be possible to break this adventure path up to run it in small convention sized chunks like Wes was doing. I started running my own version of Bastardhall at Paizocon last year, and I would love to be able to continue that at future Paizocons, and since my starting point is not Grayce, I still have some room to do a prequel adventure this year to fill this year's slot.
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It's not meant to be run in smaller chunks; it's built to be a full 9 to 10 level Adventure Path with a LOT of interconnections. That said, there's plenty of encounters in there you can pick and choose to run as smaller encounters. I guess the good news there is that it's not going to "replace" the version of Bastardhall that's run in smaller sections at conventions.
5-14 is a good range, I think. Two or three class feats to have your character style started up and the game ends before the combats and effects therein get too large and sweeping. Also, I've been itching for more pathfinder horror since Malevolence.
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The primary reason I went for the 5–13 range (again... you'll MAYBE hit 14th by the end if your group is a completionist one, but most of the campaign will be 5–13) was becasue the monster mix that Wes picked back in the day to lurk around in Bastardhall fit the best into that range. There were a few outliers I had to fudge a little bit, but for the most part, that zone's the sweet spot for the gothic castle haunting critters.
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One question I have for James is that the segment during Paizo Live made it sound like Maiserene is on the island with the castle, while Wes's recaps of his Paizocon tables and the text of Rule of Fear made it sound like Maiserene is on the shore across from the castle. Is this a change?
The published lore about Bastardhall, Maiserene, the Arudoras, and all of that is what I based my work on—I deliberately did not include anything Wes did in his personal games he ran at Paizocon, and even the text in Rule of Fear is unfortunately pretty tangled with some logical inconsistencies and typos. Which forced me to make some clarifying executive decisions, one of which was to place Maiserene on the island itself rather than on the far shore. In particular...
So, it's part a change, part a clarification.
I have never been this pumped for a published module. I swear Paizo targetted me specifically with this AP! I've wanted to do something truly Castlevania-esque basically since I started running TTRPGs, but I've always felt like I've never been able to figure out how to make the design work. As such I am super excited to see how James has gone about designing this adventure, but from everything you've said about it on stream and here I am pumped!
...Now to sell this to my not-as-dungeon enthusiastic players.
Just watching this stream several weeks late, and I'm really excited to hear about this.
Looking forward to tearing into this once it is released. I may even be able to run it with the Beginner Box and Troubles in Grayce leading into it.