Shackled City
Kweezil
Caffeinated Reprobate
I've been running Shackled City four weeks now (just finished Life's Bazaar, and Drathkar's Way went rather... wrong, more on that later), and I heartily reccommend reading the SCAP book through several times. Life's Bazaar just brushes the ongoing plot, but if your PCs start digging around you'll want to know the background details for foreshadowing. Regarding Jzadirune and the Malachite Hold, my PCs were planning on trying to make it their own, but they weren't the best at keeping things quiet and the City reclaimed the 'lost' areas. They didn't make the matter of the keys public (spoiler)
(/spoiler).
Drakthar's Way deserves a special mention. Read over the module beforehand and change things! As it is, the moment anyone with a light source comes into the dungeon, the entire starting section of the complex goes on alert. Even 3rd level PCs will find 25+ goblins attacking at once hard-to-impossible. Drakthar himself is a nightmare in a fight, and likely to kill or badly incapacitate several PCs before they realise how to deal with him.
so people are still using Ghelve's locks. The Last Laugh had Ghelve killed in jail so they (and the Cagewrights) could continue to use the skeleton keys.
Drakthar's Way deserves a special mention. Read over the module beforehand and change things! As it is, the moment anyone with a light source comes into the dungeon, the entire starting section of the complex goes on alert. Even 3rd level PCs will find 25+ goblins attacking at once hard-to-impossible. Drakthar himself is a nightmare in a fight, and likely to kill or badly incapacitate several PCs before they realise how to deal with him.
JoeGKushner
First Post
Kweezil said:
Interesting. That's what happened to the party in Fane of the Drow but there were fewer creatures. As the party is now 5th level, I'm looking over ways to make it more dangerous. Might leave the numbers/levels as is and make them more dangerous fighters like Tucker's Kobolds of yore.
Psion
Adventurer
We just made our first characters for Shackled city last night. I decided to run the game in Second World. Anyone from Arizona? I decided to set Cauldron in one of the cinder cones in Arizona north of where first world Flagstaff is, and figured that Cauldron would be a trade stop between the central empire, the kingdoms of Mexico, and California.
I used the class-targeted chargen and the bonus ECL rules from Green Ronin's Advanced GMs Manual, to give the players a chance to play unusual stuff without taking a level hit on the chin. I figured given the tales of early PC deaths, it wouldn't be out of line. The players made:
m Uthuk Shaman (Green Ronin). Shackleborn.
f Ved Qayat (first world exile) special forces Strong Hero, working towards blood & fists martial arts.
m Chaos Gnome Sorcerer.
No rogues so far, so the strider NPCs may be handy to throw in at certain points...
I may revise some of the gnomes in Cauldron to be chaos gnomes.
I'm still wondering what sort of changes to make to the churches. I could just punt and assume the locals came up with Greyhawk deities, but I'd almost rather come up with some Second World translations of first world religions.
I used the class-targeted chargen and the bonus ECL rules from Green Ronin's Advanced GMs Manual, to give the players a chance to play unusual stuff without taking a level hit on the chin. I figured given the tales of early PC deaths, it wouldn't be out of line. The players made:
m Uthuk Shaman (Green Ronin). Shackleborn.
f Ved Qayat (first world exile) special forces Strong Hero, working towards blood & fists martial arts.
m Chaos Gnome Sorcerer.
No rogues so far, so the strider NPCs may be handy to throw in at certain points...
I may revise some of the gnomes in Cauldron to be chaos gnomes.
I'm still wondering what sort of changes to make to the churches. I could just punt and assume the locals came up with Greyhawk deities, but I'd almost rather come up with some Second World translations of first world religions.
FEADIN
Explorer
I started SC from Dungeon magazine in June, there was 3 sessions and I have one dead and one prisonner, they are around 7-8 character and I don't use point by system, the CR of the monsters are high, beware....
Read all the scenario, you'll get a better idea of what to do with some npcs.
Read all the scenario, you'll get a better idea of what to do with some npcs.
Nightfall
Sage of the Scarred Lands
*raises eyebrow* Second world with Shackled City?! Wow. Okay spoilager question Psion
How in the HELL do you explain stuff like Carceri, the Demon Prince of Madness, and the rest of the planar stuff? Is there an underdark type world in Second World? What about the Spellweavers and the other monster races?
Psion
Adventurer
Nightfall said:
What's to explain? The structure of the planes as a default in Second World is a more, um, Labrynthine construct than the astral, but there are plenty of little places in the forge that you could stick any of the planes that exist in the default cosmology. Read the bits about the Army of Trespass and the Pact system document. Hellish outer planes clearly exist. One of my favorite entries in the pact system document, The Chamber, relies upon this fact. Albeit it's sort of like the abyss as if it were designed by Terry Gilliam and David Lynch.
In fact, Second World opens up some possibilities. Since the outer planes aren't structured by alignment, you can mix and match demons and devils a bit more freely, and have fun with the army. To work it in with the Second World backstory, you might assume that
Trespass is a guise of Grazzt
Nightfall
Sage of the Scarred Lands
Psion,
See the only thing I knew about Second world was that there was the "real world" and then a world of magic that existed just outside of it/out of phase/co-existing but not always reachable.
But after explaining that, I guess it COULD make sense. Just make sure to use a couple Infernal Sentinels or some ferals too!
See the only thing I knew about Second world was that there was the "real world" and then a world of magic that existed just outside of it/out of phase/co-existing but not always reachable.
But after explaining that, I guess it COULD make sense. Just make sure to use a couple Infernal Sentinels or some ferals too!
Psion
Adventurer
Nightfall said:
Ah, okay. Yeah, the Second World has it's own cosmology. It's different than standard D&D in some fundamental ways, but it paints some interesting pictures. The Peterson draws on some wierd alternate images. There is no astral plane, but in some ways that makes the hellish worlds seem that much closer. A major setting element is the army of trespass, which is raiding the world through a sort of wound leading out from another plane.
That comfy feeling that there is an astral or ethereal plane between you and the big bad nasties is sort of absent in second world.
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