ZEITGEIST Question about starting Zeitgeist

J

jacktannery

Explorer

• Mar 2, 2013

• #21

I've made up some statblocks for the infiltration team, to give to my players. I've added one more team member (Viktor, a dwarf ranger) and I changed Tanya from a shaman to a warlord, because my party already has a shaman with a spirit wolf companion.











EDIT: any way to make these thumbnails?

 

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J

jacktannery

Explorer

• Mar 13, 2013

• #22

Some quick notes on the adventure sofar (http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=54669&date=1363215351)


Adventure 1
-PCs succeeded in docks challenge, just scraping it. It worked very well and they enjoyed it.

-Unfortunately, by succeeding the nex tbit felt a little long as there was a LOT of exposition and not much action. PCs felt there were too many NPCs. If they had failed the challenge, this would have been a little more interesting at least. In the end I skipped the tour of the ship.

-PCs have just gone down to wake the Duchess - they heard a splash and have kicked open the door. Astonishingly, one of my PCs has just made a skill check to ask what he knows about sea-based archfey kidnapping people. Note that this is BEFORE he has spotted the archfey. He is basing this on a throwaway comment by the king (page 12): “One of the local archfey is upset I parked my ship here,” he guesses, laughing it off. “One of the burdens of kingship; the fey can really let me know when they’ve got an opinion. I always get burps that taste like fish when I sail these days. I think that he is psychic.

-I'm very excited now - this is the bit I have been waiting for; I do hope it does not end in the tpk.

 

RangerWickett

Legend

• Mar 14, 2013

• #23

Good luck. Sounds like your players are invested and paying attention. Always a great sign.



I don't think any of the groups so far has had a TPK. If you're willing to go a little Meta, you might create a scale to track the heat in the boiler, and increase it by 1 for every round of time that ticks off the countdown, so the players can see how dangerous things are getting. Maybe say there's a gauge on the boiler with a reading that goes from "Safe Temperature" to "Emergency: Evacuate Immediately" to "Engine Explosion."

 

J

jacktannery

Explorer

• Mar 15, 2013

• #24

here's a profile of the coaltongue with a 5' grid - its not a thing of beauty but I think it makes it easier to visualise the encounter.

 

RangerWickett

Legend

• Mar 15, 2013

• #25

Hm. Nifty. In actuality the ship should probably be longer, but I wanted to try to keep it at least possible that the whole thing would fit on a battle map.

For comparison,

We should have designed the upper decks to be longer. And the ship would have a lower keel. I've learned a lot about ship layout since we designed this.

 

gideonpepys

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

• Mar 15, 2013

• #26

I really, really wish jacktannery was ahead of me in the AP.

 

Crispy120286

Explorer

• Mar 16, 2013

• #27

Why don't you redesign it Rangerwicket? a Coaltongue 2.0. There are many of us who haven't started running the campaign yet. I am curious what it would look like after all the improvements But it bet it would be a lot of work

 

M

mdusty

Explorer

• Mar 16, 2013

• #28

That's true, I'm waiting until at least half of the adventure has been released before I start running, so whenever book 6 or 7 comes out that's when I'll start getting the group going on characters. Hopefully that will not be too much longer?

 

J

jacktannery

Explorer

• Mar 16, 2013

• #29

I really do not think that this encounter map needs to be redesigned to make the layout slightly more realistic. I think its fine as it is. The only thing I would suggest is a bit of photo-shopping to remove the erroneous wall on the lowest deck, which can screw with the GM and players. Here's a version of the lower deck map with the offending wall removed. Other than this, the existing map is absolutely fine.

 

J

jacktannery

Explorer

• Apr 21, 2013

• #30

Campaign update:
PCs saved the colatongue - actually it was pretty easy in the end. I reduced the number of rounds of countdown from 40 to 30 (since 30 rounds = exactly the length of the 3 minute anthem). At one point they were only 7 rounds from disaster, but once the enemies were defeated they stabilised the furnace (by frantically shovelling the gems out holding a fire charm each) with ease. At one point they almost gave up and started evacuating the ship. Overall I feel it went extremely well.

I used the newspaper clippings maker to make a little article after the PCs were interviewed by a journalist.



Act 2 has now begun: PCs have kitted themselves up, solved a puzzle about three towers, and are discussing the duchess' motivations on the RNS Impossible with Captain Rutgar and the Infiltration Team. Each PC has now selected one of the Infiltrators to adopt as I have explained to them that the process of swimming through the caves, sneaking into the fort and opening the sea gate is FAR too difficult for level 1 PCs.