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<blockquote data-quote="Fuzzybear" data-source="post: 9029780" data-attributes="member: 6917259"><p><h3>To Seaquen and the Lyceum</h3><p>Heading to Cornerwood, the DM job of NPC juggling during this stretch began in earnest once more. I did my best to make Tiljann the main focus, though spending a little time of Crystin was necessary as well to show her breaking free more and more from her father's influence. I still haven't 100% decided what I'm going to do with Haddin in the future since they left him there to presumably die, but I'm leaning towards a reappearance up north in the prison in adventure 8. </p><p></p><p>This section of longer travel also marks the beginning of some decisions that will affect the rest of our campaign. I always wanted to make the PC decisions on feats, especially minor ones, vs. ASIs in 5e more enjoyable for the party. I came up with a "system" for the party to slowly learn new abilities. I put this in quotes because it is fairly loose in structure and somewhat made up as we go along. Depending on how impactful I think the ability they would like to learn would be, I put a score for them to achieve to learn it. Then each week (10 days in our world), they get to roll for their progress during travel and downtime. They come up with the ideas when talking to me on the side about it and we refine it into something that seems reasonable.</p><p></p><p>For an example, Bryn, the cleric, wanted the ability to reroll 1s on healing spells and checks once. For the next few weeks of travel then, she tells the group what she does to work towards this (experimenting with herbs, different techniques, and refining her magical abilities) and eventually gains it as a feat. This has quickly become something that the players look forward to and beg for each time they are travelling, so I would say it is a success. I know it is something of power creep, but it allows me to be more mean with enemies without feeling bad if people are in danger more often.</p><p></p><p>This particular trip is largely uneventful. They choose the eastern path, meeting some knights, learning some thing about Dassen which may or may not be important later, and doing a fair amount of roleplay. It was something of a struggle to keep them from trying to take more shortcuts, but eventually they took the token for a boat from the feather tokens and sail across the bay following the shoreline on the way. While this avoided the hag encounter initially, I did give them a sight of the hags before weaving it in later during their time in Seaquen anyway. They also ran into the Shahalesti patrol on the boats instead. Rayland snuck onboard and learned a bit about what's planned there earlier than the meeting, but it worked out pretty well in the long run. Talking their way through, and showing off some of their elven nobility for clout, they make their way to Seaquen proper.</p><p></p><p>Since Rayland was from Seaquen in part, he had some history and knowledge here already to check in on. It made things a bit difficult to balance his strings to pull with the adventure wanting them to have some time to explore before the council meetings. It was never a big problem, but it did get some eyerolls at times that no one seemed to be taking things as particularly important. My players do not like red tape and really hate bureaucracy of any kind. This did annoy them, but fortunately, there were plenty of activities to distract them with!</p><p></p><p>They bit and bit hard into all the side adventures around the city, wanting to dive into every thing that showed up with the town criers. They investigated the arsons, fell into Jezska's trap, barely survived, met with the faculty of Lyceum a bit, ran into a dragon egg, fought the swamp hags, rescued Katrina, negotiated peace with the goblins, and auditioned for the Wayfarers (Winry succeeded!) all before the war council! I ended up cutting things off here as I wanted to move along the plot. It had been 7 or 8 sessions at this point of running around, so I was a little antsy to get things moving.</p><p></p><p>There were a couple of player backstory happenings around here as well. First, Rayland's master Aemon Ming (who replaced Paradim and was expounded upon) is the Necromancy professor at Lyceum. He is also running a side business of Biomancy that is frowned upon but legal. I thought this fit well given the parallels between Necromancy spells and Biomancy from the adventure path. Aemon Ming had sent Rayland to Gate Pass to investigate things there initially, but when it took months for him to get in contact or return, Ming thought him dead. He then started making other plans as things started falling into place with the Ragesians and Biomancy that no longer included Rayland. When he returned, things started getting complicated and he needed to decide if he wanted to risk his future plans for the return of Rayland's services or continue with plans. In the end, he decided not to take the risk and abandoned him there feeling that his loyalties to the party may cause troubles if Rayland knew the plans Ming had.</p><p></p><p>The other backstory point that came up was with Myetharia, a noble from Calanis. We had worked in pre-game some of her growing up having interactions with Shalosha and being a childhood friend of hers. In the years that passed, with Shaaladel's wife dying, Shalosha slowly was phased out of such relationships and more directly groomed for her role, but she always remembered her friend that she missed so dearly. With Shalosha coming to town, there was more tension and subtext to every word that was spoken. This made her appearance in the war council a bomb in more than 1 way. The players knew elves may show up at some point, but the princess was a surprise. And for Myetharia it was a sudden crash into her past that she would rather keep buried.</p><p></p><p>This may have been the player's favorite section of the campaign so far (up through adventure 5) which is high praise indeed! They spent a ton of time here and likely would have stayed doing odd jobs for the rest of a campaign if there hadn't had a longer story in place. After how intense and focused the first adventures were, this was a huge relief and opportunity for the players to grow deeper into their characters and start unearthing major backstory plot points.</p><p></p><p>Next post will be the 2nd half of the adventure in Seaquen and thoughts on the adventure as a whole.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Fuzzybear, post: 9029780, member: 6917259"] [HEADING=2]To Seaquen and the Lyceum[/HEADING] Heading to Cornerwood, the DM job of NPC juggling during this stretch began in earnest once more. I did my best to make Tiljann the main focus, though spending a little time of Crystin was necessary as well to show her breaking free more and more from her father's influence. I still haven't 100% decided what I'm going to do with Haddin in the future since they left him there to presumably die, but I'm leaning towards a reappearance up north in the prison in adventure 8. This section of longer travel also marks the beginning of some decisions that will affect the rest of our campaign. I always wanted to make the PC decisions on feats, especially minor ones, vs. ASIs in 5e more enjoyable for the party. I came up with a "system" for the party to slowly learn new abilities. I put this in quotes because it is fairly loose in structure and somewhat made up as we go along. Depending on how impactful I think the ability they would like to learn would be, I put a score for them to achieve to learn it. Then each week (10 days in our world), they get to roll for their progress during travel and downtime. They come up with the ideas when talking to me on the side about it and we refine it into something that seems reasonable. For an example, Bryn, the cleric, wanted the ability to reroll 1s on healing spells and checks once. For the next few weeks of travel then, she tells the group what she does to work towards this (experimenting with herbs, different techniques, and refining her magical abilities) and eventually gains it as a feat. This has quickly become something that the players look forward to and beg for each time they are travelling, so I would say it is a success. I know it is something of power creep, but it allows me to be more mean with enemies without feeling bad if people are in danger more often. This particular trip is largely uneventful. They choose the eastern path, meeting some knights, learning some thing about Dassen which may or may not be important later, and doing a fair amount of roleplay. It was something of a struggle to keep them from trying to take more shortcuts, but eventually they took the token for a boat from the feather tokens and sail across the bay following the shoreline on the way. While this avoided the hag encounter initially, I did give them a sight of the hags before weaving it in later during their time in Seaquen anyway. They also ran into the Shahalesti patrol on the boats instead. Rayland snuck onboard and learned a bit about what's planned there earlier than the meeting, but it worked out pretty well in the long run. Talking their way through, and showing off some of their elven nobility for clout, they make their way to Seaquen proper. Since Rayland was from Seaquen in part, he had some history and knowledge here already to check in on. It made things a bit difficult to balance his strings to pull with the adventure wanting them to have some time to explore before the council meetings. It was never a big problem, but it did get some eyerolls at times that no one seemed to be taking things as particularly important. My players do not like red tape and really hate bureaucracy of any kind. This did annoy them, but fortunately, there were plenty of activities to distract them with! They bit and bit hard into all the side adventures around the city, wanting to dive into every thing that showed up with the town criers. They investigated the arsons, fell into Jezska's trap, barely survived, met with the faculty of Lyceum a bit, ran into a dragon egg, fought the swamp hags, rescued Katrina, negotiated peace with the goblins, and auditioned for the Wayfarers (Winry succeeded!) all before the war council! I ended up cutting things off here as I wanted to move along the plot. It had been 7 or 8 sessions at this point of running around, so I was a little antsy to get things moving. There were a couple of player backstory happenings around here as well. First, Rayland's master Aemon Ming (who replaced Paradim and was expounded upon) is the Necromancy professor at Lyceum. He is also running a side business of Biomancy that is frowned upon but legal. I thought this fit well given the parallels between Necromancy spells and Biomancy from the adventure path. Aemon Ming had sent Rayland to Gate Pass to investigate things there initially, but when it took months for him to get in contact or return, Ming thought him dead. He then started making other plans as things started falling into place with the Ragesians and Biomancy that no longer included Rayland. When he returned, things started getting complicated and he needed to decide if he wanted to risk his future plans for the return of Rayland's services or continue with plans. In the end, he decided not to take the risk and abandoned him there feeling that his loyalties to the party may cause troubles if Rayland knew the plans Ming had. The other backstory point that came up was with Myetharia, a noble from Calanis. We had worked in pre-game some of her growing up having interactions with Shalosha and being a childhood friend of hers. In the years that passed, with Shaaladel's wife dying, Shalosha slowly was phased out of such relationships and more directly groomed for her role, but she always remembered her friend that she missed so dearly. With Shalosha coming to town, there was more tension and subtext to every word that was spoken. This made her appearance in the war council a bomb in more than 1 way. The players knew elves may show up at some point, but the princess was a surprise. And for Myetharia it was a sudden crash into her past that she would rather keep buried. This may have been the player's favorite section of the campaign so far (up through adventure 5) which is high praise indeed! They spent a ton of time here and likely would have stayed doing odd jobs for the rest of a campaign if there hadn't had a longer story in place. After how intense and focused the first adventures were, this was a huge relief and opportunity for the players to grow deeper into their characters and start unearthing major backstory plot points. Next post will be the 2nd half of the adventure in Seaquen and thoughts on the adventure as a whole. [/QUOTE]
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