CrimsonScribe said:
Possibly a stupid question, but my players are asking for more history on the celestial garrison in Region E. I know I've read quite a bit on this in the past, but I can't seem to find it referenced within Region E. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
The only history you are going to find Crimson (unless I’ve missed a big piece of the dungeon text somewhere) is in the front of the book (minimal), the front of region E, and bits and pieces in the region such as the hall of Portraits, or the room where rests the Garrison Charter. I've added a couple of salvaged libraries in the region still controlled by the Celestials and used info from the Planes of Law in my old Planescape campaign setting to fill in some particulars that are skipped in the adventure (due to space saving issues I'm sure).
Due to various personal issues I've had to cancel the last two sessions of the Sanguine Sentinels (one death in a players family, one major surgery, etc), so we haven't been meeting much on the heels of our holiday break. I hope to be able to delve into Region E soon, it’s been too long.
I won’t get into it here, but I've been sidetracked by my Shadowrun game and a renewed passion and interest in Star Fleet Battles... guess I'm a diverse gamer type and not a true royal blood RPGer.
With regards to TwistedOliver's concerns about leveling folks properly, the game I'm running has absolutely developed into a room hunt, but this has some great advantages. The primary one being that since I don't fix the level room in advance but rather let it float about and decide in game where the best place for it is according to the needs of the party I get more out of the region. A lot of decisions I make about running any RPG are following up on intuition and evaluation of the way the players are feeling and what is needed at that time. This means that basically I can get the PC's to explore the entire region, experiencing all it has to offer before they move on by holding off on when I level them and keeping them hunting. Perhaps this matters little to you or doesn’t fit your GM style, but for me if I put the effort into working on a room I darn well want them to go there and play in it! This makes certain they do that.
If you have different players coming in and out of the dungeon, the easiest way to deal with it is that you keep all the PC’s at the level the party has managed to attain at that point, and just fiat players in and out as needed. If they don't like this solution they are certainly not being forced to sit at your table, and it’s a lot less of a headache for you.
I'd certainly suggest a living dungeon, but within reason. This place is huge. Don't spend time repopulating empty areas unless its vital for the story, otherwise you won’t get very far in the WLD. Use the living dungeon idea only as a way of making the place feel alive in the area they are playing, not filling up what they have already explored. Don't encourage backtracking, rather push them forward and give them reasons to enter area's they haven't been to yet.
By way of example, use abominations from region I to enter into region E if the PC's do something to down a ward while they are STILL ADVENTURING in region E... use patrols from the Celestials into region A if the players are STILL EXPLORING region A. Don't put a tribe of Ogres into Region A to repopulate it if the players have nearly just finished exploring B... or E. That just returns them to areas already delved to explore once again. It’s a heck of a lot more work for you to backtrack that way, when instead they could be going into already detailed regions of the complex yet unexplored.
Make sense?
