JollyDoc's Serpent's Skull-updated 11/6/2011

Selfishly speaking, I'm disappointed since this is one of only a few story hours that are (were) both regularly updated and worth reading.

But speaking as a fellow human who also has a job/family/life/and a game to run, I completely understand.

JD, we get it and we support you. Whether you're able to throw out full narrations or sporadic summaries, we'll be here to enjoy it.

Thanks for what you've shared with us in the past and for what you will share in the future.

JD, I completely understand. My own SH died the death of slowly petering out after the baby and the new job engulfed my life. It all started after reading your STAP SH and it remains an inspiration for our (now-more-than-half-way) STAP campaign.

Any time you feel like dropping an update, I'll devour it with glee. In the meantime, have fun, don't work too hard, have a smell the odd daisy... all the best matey!

Really wish that i could do something to keep your story hour as it was. That´s because i really love your work here. But i know life is short and complicated, so i wish sucess and luck for Jollydoc and his players. Even if we can´t read about it, i wish that you all have a lot of fun, at least, playing it.

Thank you.

JollyDoc said:

I need to apologize, loyal readers, but I'm afraid this thread is going on hiatus for the time being. It's getting more and more difficult for me to keep up with it, putting me further and further behind. What I may do is to post periodic summaries of the events transpiring in the AP, so that you can keep up with the exploits of our (anti) heroes, but as far as detailed stories...not right now. Once again, my apologies.

Click to expand...

Oh no! I just caught up with this story, too. Ah well, I fully understand how difficult it is to write these. Given how well your SH installments are written, it's no wonder you find yourself running out of time. It looks like the party has been having fun, and that's the most important thing. I really like Jack's character, too. His braggadocio is very entertaining and a refreshing change of pace

Before reading this SH, I knew next to nothing about the Serpent's Skull AP. Now that I've done a little research I'm curious to hear about how the exploration of Saventh-Yhi has gone. The reviews I've read about that part of the AP are pretty poor, and it seems there may have been some sort of problem in development. It was initially just supposed to be written by Kevin Kulp. Isn't that PirateCat here on ENWorld? He always had a great campaign and even wrote a very highly-regarded module a while back. I wonder what happened. Did your group have the same low opinion of the adventure as the reviews I read? Some of the criticism seemed rather harsh and I couldn't find a play-thru review, just read-thru reviews.

Anyway, game on!

Not Jollydoc, but I can answer your questions from a player perspective...

I will admit that the the Saventh-Yhi portions of the module have been less than exciting to this point. A bunch of disjointed encounter areas (without so much as even encounter maps) with little to do with each other has taken away from it. Throw in the fact that this is supposed to be a big treasure hunt, but there is very little treasure to be found, and you have a head-scratcher. With one to two encounters a day, spell casters really shine over martial types because there is ZERO need for resource management.

The biggest disappointment for me was the system they use to resolve conflicts between camps. No matter how much you plan, strategize, or prepare, it simply comes down to a single opposed d20 roll. You could almost just pull out a coin and say, "Heads you win, tails you lose." It would be no less engaging than what they have in place.

We are in the Vault section of the AP, and it seems to be improving somewhat, although I really am kind of nonplussed by the add-on mental illness component. It doesn't really add anything to the game outside of player frustration.

I liked the Vault stuff more when I skimmed it - some spectacular challenges in there ;-)

If you guys do Jade Regent I'd love to hear the occasional snippet. all I've read so far is splendiferous!

Happy New Year to you all!

One Year Since Update...

...and that's sad.

So what did you guys think of Serpent's Skull? Meh?

Any plans to create another Story Hour? I like these so much I've put them on my Kindle.