| Gaelstromdk |
Hi!
I'm GMing Shattered Star and we're about to finish book 3. I've GMed Curse of the Crimson Throne before this for a few years and we finished and I'm getting a bit better at GMing, but I find that my party consisting of other GMs is roflstomping the campaigns.
Now this is fun for us because they know how to roleplay a partially joking murderhobo team while also drifting into serious. One of the funny parts is the Caulborn statement "We know that you fear us" and I was like "...nah, they kill everything in one turn, I ain't saying that." And after the scene I told them and they laughed their ass off and we aside-roleplayed what would have been said if they had said that.
In either case I'd love some feedback on how people have found ways to safely deviate from the book, and possibly accelerate timelines reasonably for teams that don't take a while to progress. I ran into this in Curse of the Crimson Throne as well where the Gray Maiden growth was unreasonable compared to the book and after a while had to make it an entirely magical convincing and made it that most women were restored. But then this campaign has gray maidens who were ousted and still believed in the queen for example.
I have a hard time coming up with solutions for these discrepancies. My players don't mind so much, but it harms my storytelling because I have this cognitive dissonance.
I'm not experienced enough to comfortably rewrite stories and sadly I have difficulty remembering so many things in pathfinder so I have to reread things in preparation every session.
Any things people have found over the years that has allowed for ebb and flow of time and events would really be appreciated.
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
As someone who has extensively rewritten APs I can say this: you have to know your players and their characters. This isn't even
Basically, if you know the most likely outcome to any situation you throw their way, you can plan around that. This often comes at the expense of the AP as written so you have to either write a lot of things in advance or be very good at winging it.
The most time-consuming way of adapting APs to the group, and the one that IME gives the best results, is to sit down with the AP when preparing it and pretend to run it. Read the scenes, imagine what your players are likely to do. Make a short list of likely outcomes and then make some notes about how this will impact things later. It's a slog but it serves to reinforce the adage that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
It's been a while since I read Shattered Star, but how important are the Gray Maidens? Could you replace them with some other group? Could you just reskin them? Could they be Gray Maidens who were not part of the 'most' that your previous PCs restored? Does this have to be the same timeline that your own version of CotCT was in?
As for being experienced at rewriting, there is only one way to get that experience, and that is to write. Mistakes will be made. Unfortunate outcomes will happen. Accept it and get on with it. Back in the day DMs did all the adventure writing themselves and things still managed to be fun.
Some times you mess up so badly everyone remembers it for years, some times you come up with amazing stuff that people will remember fondly for years. Some times the mistakes make for more enjoyable memories down the line than the successes.
In short, it's a game and the objective is to have fun. If people have fun, you are Doing It Right.