ZEITGEIST The PCs want to go to Av during chapter 10...

[Frankie1969]

... so I'm thinking about letting the events of 12.1 happen early, and revealing the split after the first long rest ("you wake up in Flint, from a crazy dream about worlds...")
The first half of the Gyre would occur in parallel with chapter 11.

What problems might I run into?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Off the topof my head
1)Divergent character sheets. The split occures naturally at max level with max equipment so the characters will not be that different. This could cause some player confusion
2) Pacing. It is going to be harder to guarantee that the pc's reach the two climatic events at the same time. Plus you are going to divert their attention from the Gyre several times and they could loose the thread. Not so much of a problem in the real world as you can break after each act of book 11
3) The characters in the Gyre will be more ignorant of the state of the world and may feel they have to rush back. Depends how much your group metagames, I suspect mine would be ok with knowing they are not rushed but more committed rp'ers might.
4)In the real world they think they have failed this may mean they make more attempts to get into the Gyre.
5) The intereggum basically the Ob is handwaved a year to change the world and set up the events of book 13, if your players are active that won't happen so you will have to rewrite the run up to the ritual and deal with your players plans to thwart the Ob and the Obs plans to kill them. A fair bit of work and possibly a chance for players to derail the synchronised events at the end. This is the biggest hassle the fact that book 13 will not work as written if the pc's are present the entire time.

Me I would just not let the players reach Av, the old rituals don't work and they don't have time to come up with something new. I don't see this as being difficult. But your idea could be fun just a bit of a pain to rewrite the events leading to the final battle

 

[Zipster]

My group is nearing adventure 11 and I've been putting a lot of thought into how to do the Gyre bit. I'm not sure that doing it as written is going to be great for my table - the back and forth transitioning may leave one of my players confused and make focusing difficult.

One way I've been thinking of doing it is to make it seem like after Av, everything just crashed and burned as written. They land near the ziggurat, the ambush happens and they have their day to settle everything leading to the final battle against Nicodemus. This, I think, may cause the party to have that truly "We have no idea what to do or how to stop him" and when it's becoming clear that the battle is nearly hopeless pull out the, "A new memory comes to your mind - you begin remembering..." and transition to the moment the split happened and backtrack to the Gyre events.

Off the top of anyone's head, is there any issues anyone sees to this?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

My only concern would be that the players may think things are actually hopeless. The structure at the moment means the Players unlike their characters know that they have a solution to the planes problem available. Without that knowledge my players would come up with a plan to change the planes without going to the Gyre which would take a long time, arguements and then probably require them to do something silly and dangerous before the ritual unless I flat out told them 'There is going to be a Deux Ex Machina to solve this problem for you' . Even then hardcore RP'ers might insist.

There are not many transitions and should have long gaps between them so it shouldn't be that confusing. You can probably make sure each session is set in one location but you know your players best.