RotRL or CotCT

[DEP]

So I am stuck between which AP to get? I was wondering which do you feel has more depth and was more fun to run and/or play in? Also, what the story line is for both?

I didnt post this in Paizo because it would have been posted in one of the forums for the AP and not the other, so I felt it would have been biased.

Thanks

[Morpheus]

Originally Posted by DEP

So I am stuck between which AP to get? I was wondering which do you feel has more depth and was more fun to run and/or play in? Also, what the story line is for both?

I didnt post this in Paizo because it would have been posted in one of the forums for the AP and not the other, so I felt it would have been biased.

Thanks

I'm about to start running CotCT myself. I like the idea of having a campaign set within a city-lots of investigation, mystery, etc.

[azhrei_fje]

I'm a charter subscriber and I've read both of the AP's but haven't played or GMed either one. If/when I'm able to GM again, I will probably do them in order, not because I think RotRL is particularly any better than CotCT, but because it will provide a good introduction to the rule tweaks since I would be using the PF Beta ruleset. Plus, I plan to use MapTool to run the game, so I'm more likely to find prebuilt maps and tokens for the older AP than the newer one.

I think the CotCT is more to my liking, though it only barely edges out RotRL. Sorry I don't have any real experience with either of them.

[gribble]

Originally Posted by DEP

So I am stuck between which AP to get? I was wondering which do you feel has more depth and was more fun to run and/or play in? Also, what the story line is for both?

Well, they're both very different. The very high level plot summaries of each are:
RotRL: An ancient evil has awakened and his minions are once again active in the lands of Varisia. The PCs fight first against his minions and other trouble stirred up in his wake, slowly uncovering and then facing the forgotten threat. RotRL is primarily about discovery - both of the lands of Varisia (it involves a lot of travel) and of what is really going on.
CotCT: The fragile peace of the great city of Korvosa is broken with the death of the king. As further misfortune befalls the city, the civil disorder is revealed to be a plot of the Queen, who has become corrupted by an ancient and powerful artifact. CotCT is more of a typical city-based adventure, although there are some forays out of the city at later levels.

Both have a lot of depth, but at a high level I guess the choice is between dungeon/wilderness (RotRL) vs urban/dungeon (CotCT) adventuring.

[Hammerhead]

Spoilers follow:

I think Rise of the Runelords is a better AP; to be honest, CotCT isn't all that 'investigation, mystery, urban.' It's pretty clear who the bad guys are, especially once those doctors show up. And you end up in a lot of dungeons. And the mystery of Blackjack is something of a joke.

Queen Evil is a pretty worthless overall villain, and probably won't even last a round against 15th level characters. She's a bard...what kind of group can take pride in defeating the evil machinations of a bard? Worst of all, the final confrontation with the Queen doesn't even have a bunch of elite troops that she can inspire. I don't think beating up a trophy wife (even a fiendishly empowered one) can compare to beating up one of the kings of an ancient, evil, decadent empire whose evil was legendary.

CotCT also has one of those filler adventures so beloved of CRPGs...the one where you have to help a group of people, to earn the favor necessary to help them later. Lame. The 5th adventure of CotCT is better than the comparing one in RotRL, which is a "theme" dungeon. Also, the tarot deck thing is cool, but I'd be unsure about how well I could implement it as a DM.

In short, go with the first one.

[Freakohollik]

I played through the first 3 RotRL adventures and thought they were all terrible. For a bit of background, my group likes to explore dungeons and come across interesting traps, puzzles, and encounters. We're not very interested in the story of the adventures or the AP. Our experience was that all the dungeons were terrible with nothing memorable encountered in any of them.

As for the "story", after 3 adventures we had no idea about any kind of overarching story or coherent plot connecting the adventures. Kind of ruins the "path" part of adventure path.

Our DM was frequently annoyed reading the room entries as they would go into way too much backstory about the inhabitants in every room. We'd never find out any of it since they'd be dead in a few rounds. He read it to us a couple times to make fun of how irrelevant it was.

I peaked at the boss of the last adventure and its really lame. Its a human wizard. Not only is that really boring and unoriginal, he could be easily beaten with grapple.

[freyar]

Originally Posted by Freakohollik

I played through the first 3 RotRL adventures and thought they were all terrible. For a bit of background, my group likes to explore dungeons and come across interesting traps, puzzles, and encounters. We're not very interested in the story of the adventures or the AP. Our experience was that all the dungeons were terrible with nothing memorable encountered in any of them.

As for the "story", after 3 adventures we had no idea about any kind of overarching story or coherent plot connecting the adventures. Kind of ruins the "path" part of adventure path.

Our DM was frequently annoyed reading the room entries as they would go into way too much backstory about the inhabitants in every room. We'd never find out any of it since they'd be dead in a few rounds. He read it to us a couple times to make fun of how irrelevant it was.

I peaked at the boss of the last adventure and its really lame. Its a human wizard. Not only is that really boring and unoriginal, he could be easily beaten with grapple.

Forgive me for saying so, but it doesn't sound like your group's play style really works well with any adventure paths, since you're not interested in the story. What seems to be the great strength of the Paizo APs is the overarching story.

To the OP: I don't have CotCT, but RotRL seemed great on a read-through. Your group would need to enjoy digging into history, though, since that's a lot of what it's about.

[amethal]

I've read both, but haven't run either of them yet (finishing WotBS first).

RotRL is more varied, as it covers a lot more of Varisia than CotCT does. Individually, I prefer the RotRL adventures as in my opinion they have more "that's really cool" moments than CotCT.

However, CotCT is more structured and the adventures flow much better from one into the next. Korvosa is an interesting city, and whilst the PCs are supposed to get attached to Sandpoint in RotRL they spend most of their time somewhere else, whereas they can really get to know Korvosa.

Depending on your players, some might struggle to come up with a reason for their characters to go adventuring in RotRL - it wouldn't be an issue with my group, but from comments on the Paizo boards some have had problems in this area.

On the other hand, a gung ho party who prefers a direct approach to dealing with evil may find the intricacies of solving Korvosa's problems in CotCT fairly frustrating.

[Virtue]

I have read them both im going to start out by running RORLs but im biased I love using Giants as enemies

[bento]

We just finished the first book of the CotCT AP and so far it's delivering what I and my group were looking for in an AP. Here's what initial attracted us to the AP, and so far how its turned out:

Character Development: I wanted a game where the players felt like they could really invest themselves in their characters. The Guide to Korvosa was an excellent investment and each of them has a list of NPC contacts and plot hooks that give us plenty to do when we're not playing out of the AP.

Clear Hero Roles: A big part of CotCT is having the players rise from simple city folk to well-established heroes. The players really have to care about being the "good guys" for this AP to pay off. The first book gives them several important NPCs that provide them with adventures that help the players begin to build a solid reputation. If your players like to play evil, or rogue all time, you might have a problem with the overall plot.

Fleshed-Out Setting: Between the Korvosa Guide and the AP books there is plenty of "fluff" to build a game on. Besides running the adventures out of the book I've also run one two-session side adventure using the background material. Korvosa, as far as fantasy cities go, is pretty human-centric and much lower-magic than a city like Sharn (Eberron). There are plenty of interesting groups your players can interact with.

Fun Stuff: I like it when there's more than standard 3.5 rule encounters. In the first AP book we had three of them. The most well known "fun item" in CotCT is the Harrow Deck, a fortune telling deck which is used to kick off the adventure and set the theme for each AP book. Two other "fun things" that we enjoyed in the first book was the "Knivesies" fight at the local crime-lord's hideout and a roof top chase. The roof top chase used note cards you create and as the players go from card to card they are given a challenge. Fun things that helped take the game out of the standard 3.5 mind set.

Interesting NPCs and Villains: I guess you could say that NPCs are as interesting as you make them, and to date I'm probably batting around .500. There are some that the players have taken to, while others are rather flat. Oh well, at least they remember some of their names.


Downside to CotCC:

• Periods of "sit quiet while I read this two page passage to you"
• Background material that never comes into play
• Books layout makes it difficult to find information
• You'll want to buy and read ahead as some early NPCs are important in later books
• It costs $120 for the AP set, not including Harrow Deck and City Guide

I hope this helps. We're certainly enjoying it and will probably be playing this for another year or two.

[SelcSilverhand]

I'm DM'ing RotRL and will be playing a character in CotCT next month. Can't comment much on the second series since we haven't started playing it, but so far my players have loved the first AP. They didn't really figure out what was going on until the end of the 4th book, the whole time they were blaming all the bad stuff on a certain evil deity. If you run the first one, be sure to read the paizo forums for that AP as there are a lot of useful tips and stories to draw from. In my own experience, two things I would have changed in the way I ran my game. First off I didn't spend as much time as I should have fleshing out the town. The players had some fun seeing the sights, but didn't get too invested there. They are used to our games starting off in a small town that you never see again. Second, I would have moved the location of the third book a bit closer to town (as several other dm's have recommended as well). If the players are in a position to protect the town easier they are more likely to see the town as being important to them. By the 5th book the players were saying "What, we have to protect this place again?".
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. I think you'll have fun with either one.

[roguerouge]

The Runelords has a great first three adventures: a BBEG that the players write backstory about with hysterically funny goblin minions; a Hell House adventure; and Mammy Graul for the win in Hook Mountain. I didn't especially care for the series after that.

As for Curse of the Crimson Throne, it's more streamlined and you have a real sense of powerful evil from the BBEG, as you can know who's behind it all and still not be able to do a thing. The one thing that you'll need to do, IMHO, is to run some Resistance fighters side quests at a certain point in the plot. Your players will be aching to do it once everything goes to Heck in a tea cup. They don't give you that option, which was a huge missed opportunity. The set pieces aren't as memorable, but the sense of an organic setting in operation is much better.

My ideal series would be to start in Runelords for the first two modules, then have them go to Korvosa and scale some of the encounters and run that whole series.

[Hammerhead]

A real sense of power? She's a trophy wife! Worse, a bard. And the only reason the PCs can't kill her is because the campaign essentially 'decides' she's invincible until you reach the last adventure (someone else tries to assassinate her, fatally shoots her, but she's fine).

I'm not saying that CotCT was a series of bad adventures, but their villain is seriously weak.

[Twowolves]

I'm running the first adventure in the CotCT path now, and my players like it a lot so far. It and the second book have problems that you can run on any timeline, and you don't have to fight your way through every problem. In fact, NPC deaths have been extremely rare, because you don't have to hack your way through every problem.

I've read the first 4 books of the RotRL path, and while I'm not sure how it'll play, I am sure that there are some encounters and encounter areas that players should be talking about for years to come. The Skinsaw Man (and his innovative and customized "haunted house" and Mammy Graul are two examples.

And as to the "weakness" of the queen, have a look at the levels of the NPCs in the Guide to Korvosa. The highest level people in the whole city are around 8- 10th level. Throw in a bard with a template and a minor artifact and back her up with fanatically loyal guards and I can see where she's no pushover (even though I haven't read the final adventure yet).

[GlassJaw]

Originally Posted by roguerouge

The Runelords has a great first three adventures: a BBEG that the players write backstory about with hysterically funny goblin minions; a Hell House adventure; and Mammy Graul for the win in Hook Mountain. I didn't especially care for the series after that.

+1

Couldn't agree more.

The first 3 modules were incredibly flavorful and have a lot of cool NPC's and locations.

The last 3 I felt were incredibly generic, high-level slugfests, with one bloated stat block after another. I was incredibly excited after reading the first 3 modules but felt the AP take a very wrong turn after that. It was quite disheartening to be honest. I canceled my Pathfinder subscription after that.

[roguerouge]

Curse of the Crimson Throne is worth it, without question. You should go to your friendly locally owned gaming store and read through the first one or two to get a sense of things. (And, actually, if my player goes to the mainland, I'm considering doing a mashup of the two series, or at least Burnt Offerings and Hook Mountain from Runelords.

As for the big bad evil of Crimson Throne? Lots of spoilers...

Under-powered? Are you kidding? A bard in a major urban center and all the time in the world, so her diplomacy and bluff skills are maximized? A bard who sits on the throne and who thus controls the military, has outsized influence with the clergy, and neutrality from the arcane school? A villain with an entire nation's treasury to buy magic items, security measures and assassins with? And by the time the PCs realize it's her... she's acquired hordes of immunities from items and deals?

There's other kinds of power than melee, my friend.

Queen Ileosa is one of the scariest villains there is. The only way you meet her is when she chooses, on her turf, surrounded by guards and high-level NPCs. She kills a king. She commits genocide. She dominates and overawes an entire city. She has an artifact boosting her personal power. She has allies of stealth, martial combat, arcane might, unholy power, and outsiders. And the law's on her side.

And she actively tries to get rid of the PCs long before they become a serious short-term threat to her.

[Hammerhead]

Have you even read the last adventure, or are you just imagining how you would write an adventure with the bard as a villain? Because the scenario you describe has little if anything to do with the state of Korvosa in adventure six. Spoilers follow, read at your own risk.

Spoiler:

The city hates her. The city hated her when the king first married her for being a foreigner, kept hating her as the king's wife for her greed and fiscal irresponsibility, and their hate grows even stronger when she finally reveals what an insane, crazy, evil villain she is. Not even the decadent nobility likes her. Ileosa is not a student of Dale Carnegie's course, that's for sure.

As far as her government is concerned, one of her ministers tried to kill her, and only failed because of plot (I mean artifact!) immunity. The rest of the military seems more than willing to conspire and plot rebellion with the PCs. Even her 'fanatically loyal' Grey Maidens are brainwashed and tortured into their 'loyalty;' the module even states that their loyalty stems from [Ileosa's lesbian lover]'s small kindnesses to them than the actions of Ileosa. And the queen has even managed to lose the allegiance of the one person who probably should stick with her to the end, the aforementioned Captain of the Grey Maidens.

The final confrontation with Ileosa, of course, takes place outside of the walls of Korvosa, and in the final boss encounter, she doesn't even have any minions to bardsong. Wow, that's some great planning, Your Majesty.

As an NPC, it doesn't even really matter what her Diplomacy and Bluff are, since Paizo has created a great many NPCs with poor social skills and Charisma but lots of tough followers. She convinces the king's brother to poison the king...which is still kind of impressive. She doesn't commit genocide either; she creates an obvious plague scheme to kill those wretched poor people for no particular reason. As it turns out, the ethnicity she hates most has a resistance to the disease.

The PCs, as I have mentioned, have probably figured out that Ileosa murdered the king fifteen minutes after the deed is done. If not, they'll certainly figure it out (in the typical PC 'no evidence' way) the moment they see those plague doctors, especially if they were one of the million people who played Neverwinter Nights. And they acquire solid proof at the end of the second adventure. Ileosa's no Keyzer Soze, that's for sure.

You also state that Ileosa has some sweet allies...yeah, that's pretty true. I mean, for the adventures to mean anything, there has to be some tough monsters and villains to beat down. As a villain, however, Ileosa seems to succeed more from the demands of the plot than any personal competence or intelligence.

It seems to me that you're describing the adventure as you want it to be, not as it's actually written. Her schemes are pretty transparent, her control of the city tenuous at best (there seems to be a pretty good chance she'd get overthrown in a year or two without any actions from the PCs), her popularity starts off low and only plummets. She doesn't have control of the military or the priesthood (the high cleric of the predominant Korvosan faith is in the Resistance, btw), and the wizardry, while as evil as she is, don't want to get involved-and disinterest is not an attitude you want to cultivate in your subjects. Even the boss fight is something of a cakewalk, like the first easy stage of a boss battle in a videogame.

Again, this is from someone who likes Curse of the Crimson Throne. It has a lot of parts that annoy me as a DM, but it would be pretty fun to run or play through. But I like Rise of the Runelords more.

[roguerouge]

Yes, I've read the entire adventure series. We differ as to its merits and demerits.

I think the key distinction between our approaches here is that I look at all of her actions as a part of building a villain the PCs come to hate, despite necessarily limited face time with them. I place less emphasis on the combat capability of the villain in the final fight, because I want the PCs emotional reaction to the villain to be primary. After all, the PCs are supposed to win after having been challenged while doing so. It's interesting to read posts from your different perspective, which allows me to better prep things for it, so I thank you for that.


[SPOILERS]First off, a factual correction: the final encounter includes 3 dread wraiths and 6 false Ileosas; while the wraiths may or may not be sent off, she does have minions in the final battle.

Second, I call starting with a greater dispel magic followed by quickened charm monster DC 27 for the first three rounds a way to make PCs minions. Not to mention that she can pull off Bardic music, a spell, and that quickened charm in every round.

Third, any villain that is on screen yet virtually immune to unthinking PC violence for 15 levels due to social position and personal power has done a bang up job in my book.

Fourth, there's a long thread on the assassination attempt on the Paizo boards. I suggest the OP read it for excellent advice on how to handle it. It's not "plot immunity" and it's not really hard to adjudicate in RL.

Fifth, how Paizo justifies the presence of minions in other adventure paths is irrelevant; her social position, infernal connections, and skills make them utterly justified here.

Sixth, her personal charisma attracts one of the best fighters in the city, who then solidifies her control over her brain-washed guard. That's a win. But her position helps too. There's a riot in the city... which the military helps her quell, because they have to. The military helps with the quarantine. They follow orders for long enough. The aristocracy are not a factor, when they could be. The clergy of Abadar and Asmodeus both end up helping her. Why bother winning friends when you can influence people anyway?

Seventh, the plague is a genocide as she seeks to redecorate the city by eliminating those of Varisian blood, the Shoanti, and the poor.

Eighth, yes, they acquire solid proof at the end of the second adventure. But who are they going to turn it in to? And it's at that moment that the Queen's personal bad-assery is revealed second-hand through the assassination attempt. Makes running a revolution with half the military dead or on quarantine duty kind of difficult for Cressida and the PCs. Especially since the Iron Maidens are the Queen's personal army. So... it's off to find the Seneschal and try to work within the system.

Again, it fits together well and the villain is run smartly. That the PCs make things fall apart while the Queen is at her extremely important spa appointment is not a sign of a bad or stupid villain. [/SPOILERS]


And remember, I like Runelords to... Karzoug's just not my kind of villain; evidently we've given the OP a good taste of the distinctions between the two.

[roguerouge]

Hammerhead, you say at the end of your post that you like Curse of the Crimson Throne. Your posts haven't yet made clear why. What do you like about that adventure path?

[RangerWickett]

DEP (the original poster), I don't want to step on any toes by presenting a non-Paizo option, but have you considered War of the Burning Sky?

Hmm. I just noticed.

Rise of the Rune Lords
Curse of the Crimson Throne
War of the Burning Sky

Thankfully the current Paizo AP isn't "Doom of the Second Darkness" or something.