Pathfinder 2E Preparing Hellknight Hill

So I am going to be running Age of Ashes (as soon as a slot opens up, probably early next year) and I figured I would go through and prep it, giving my thoughts as I do so because seeing what other GMs do is one of the best ways to learn (I learned that from Happy Jacks btw)

Let me briefly go over how I prep modules to start:

1. I read the adventure;
2. I copy the keyed areas into libreoffice writer and trim it down into something playable at the table;
3. For each NPC I create an NPC sheet (I recently switched to the Alexandrian’s universal NPC template)
4. I go back and I make sure each encounter (and NPC) has the proper fundamentals (I am very big on encounter fundamentals) and if they don’t, I add them, and if desired I also enhance them;
5. I write cheat sheets for any investigations/mysteries and the like.
6. finally, I add any extras I think the module needs: subsystems, plots, encounters, etc.

So having done step 1 and 2 at this point, I have some thoughts which I will put in the following posts.
Warning! Unmarked spoilers from here onward!

Note: this was written haphazardly, stream of consciousness style; please forgive any errors.

Overall:

• The structure of the plot pretty well matches Guy Sclanders five step method (find out plot, travel to plot, find out plot is not plot, travel to new plot, kill plot)
• The author deliberately paid attention to the pacing: breaking up ‘combat encounters’ with ‘social encounters’ and decision points. The quotes are because encounters aren’t really social or combat of course, those are descriptions of how they can be resolved.
• There are some major flaws with the module, some of which are editing mistakes, and some of which are proof that writers have no sense of time or scale. Examples: the keep should probably be 10 miles away (as listed on p. 64) and not 1 mile (as listed on p. 12), the fountain circle/monument circle is an inconstant mess of descriptions (does it have wells, watertowers, or pumps? Is there a statue or not?), and the timeline makes no sense (Warble really waited a whole month instead of walking 15 minutes/3 hours?). Fortunately, these are all easily fixable.
• I am going to use milestone leveling (since I add stuff, and I don’t want players grinding in dungeons because that is unfun).
• The theme of the module is Building a Home on the Ruins of the Past. To really work with that, I am going to make sure that the majority of the players have finding the deed to the citadel as their primary motivation.
• The mood/tone of the module is Reflecting on Faded Glory (think MGS4 when you return to Shadow Moses, or Shadow of the Colossus, or any number of urban exploration videos in decaying and abandoned buildings). When I run it I will probably add some gothic elements as well (more ornate descriptions, unknown undercurrents of malice, stronger scenery descriptions, heavy foreshadowing) and really play up the folk horror aspect of

Chapter 1:

• The idea of the Call for Heroes is fantastic but it’s potential is wasted here as there is only one adventure being offered – I understand why (they don’t want to split the party of new players up) but I am definitely going to add more (and I am totally going to split the party up – a split party is a fun party!). All the quests will lead to the same place of course.
• Everyone just says they saw Calmont do it and he went that way. I would prefer to run an investigation here. I will probably use exploration mode with one hour turns (to keep up the time pressure) and a simple five node investigation.
• I will probably use a variation of the urban crawl I am working on. But all the encounters will be flavor encounters – but with a bit of an undercurrent of the towns weirdness in them (idealization of the founder, doting on adventurers, etc.)
• This isn’t in chapter 1, but Breachill is pretty competently done (if one ignores fountain/monument circle inconsistencies) and it should be really easy to make a rumor table and multiple quests. I am also probably going to make a bounty board – I can use this to foreshadow the bloody blades, the warg, the dead adventurers (to really play up the folk horror aspect of the Call for Heroes), etc.

Chapter 2:

• There are a lot of entrances and areas of the dungeon may be skipped entirely. Obviously this is a non-linear dungeon.
• Dead bodies signal danger in this module.
• For anyone still saying that the author didn’t intend for the characters to use stealth and strategy to tackle this dungeon and instead meant it to be a series of stand-up fights, have this little quote (from A10): “However, he’s not very stealthy, so his presence is more likely to cause enemies to find the group, possibly combining multiple smaller encounters into one more difficult fight.” Which clearly indicates that the author is expecting the characters to be using at least some stealth and strategy.
• There are two encounters that don’t have any foreshadowing and attack out of nowhere: the giant bat and the spider swarms. Everything else has at least some indication of the danger. These encounters were probably added for XP.
• Non-combat resolutions are clearly intended as possible for most of the encounters (and many are explicitly spelled out, including the very first encounter listed in the dungeon (A1) which likely gets you allies to help with the dungeon).
• Creatures are not presented as video-game attack monsters (with a couple exceptions): some creatures don’t attack even if hostile, some are explicitly called out as retreating when wounded, and many have their motivates explained. Notably the boss of this chapter can be talked/intimidated into surrendering and it explicitly says that in the module.
• Yoletcha took the monster under-the-bed description in the bestiary way too literally.
• This chapter should be very easy to pace because of the mix of ‘social’ and ‘combat’ encounters (again with the scare quotes), and I will probably run most combats (except A12) as theater of the mind. The scene framing should be very non-aggressive to give a real sense of exploration (and to make it easier to run a split party of course).
• I am tempted to build a restock mechanism for cleared areas, but my players are very likely to finish the dungeon on the first pass, so I am not going to bother. Likewise a random encounter table is probably overkill.
• The trap location makes sense (in a little used passage behind a secret door), but it still feels like a gotcha type trap to me. Easily fixed though: when Alak entered (see area A8), he avoided the trap (it has to be manually reset), so he knows its there and how to bypass it and he probably left tracks and signs of how he did it because he is not very stealthy (as established in A10).
• This module was written before the GMG but the research subsystem slots into it perfectly, so I am going to put it into the module in place of all the books on Hellknight lore. The higher end will have things like the necromantic ward.
• Beginning to look at the later steps in the process, a lot of work has been done for me: lots of encounters are decently foreshadowed, creatures have motivations and don’t needlessly fight to the death, etc.
• I love the lighting in this chapter. Sunlight streaming through holes in the walls. If I could (I play in a game store), I would set up the rooms lighting on a switch I controlled and adjust the lighting dynamically as we played.

An aside here on scene framing: So I didn’t really talk about it this in the other threads but modules really benefit from using the correct scene framing. In a module like this (inspired by old-school dungeon crawls a with a good emphasis on encounter fundamentals) if you just use the cut-to-the-combat scene framing in which players are dumped into combat with little choice to do anything else, then you will not get good results (for one thing you will absolutely kill any sort of tension regarding exploring the ruins). A more gentle scene framing (that is framing the scenes farther back from the initiation/resolution of the conflict) so the players have more agency and can exercise more skill will get a much better result here – provided you can pace it correctly. Which probably why the module seems to put so much work into actually pacing things decently.

Chapter 3:

• This area is non-linear but less so than the ground floor.
• The gelatinous cube is foreshadowed heavily with slime trails.
• The kobolds are adorable
• The goblins tell about the bear and give the players a map of the northern area, letting them pretty much head right to it. Let me quote: “You can run a combat between the bear and cultists as you see fit, or simply assume that the bear kills half of the cultists in the north wing before it is itself defeated.”
• The entire southern half of the complex (B12-B17) can be bypassed by wearing hellknight regalia and/or cleared by destroying the necromantic ward.
• From all the above it is very clear to me that the author intended the PCs to take a stealthy, asymmetrical combat approach to this level as well.
• This level will be much harder to pace as each area (north, south, east) sort of has a theme and there is no incentive to split up here because of the more linear nature of the layout. There are some breakups (interrogating the cultists in the northern section for example) but it is more likely to have three or more combats in a row, depending on how players approach it. They are also likely to have multiple allies (Big Bumble, the kobolds, Alak). I will have to see how it turns out in play but if the players have a lot of allies, I am tempted to set a quicker pace in the northern portion of the dungeon (through more aggressive scene framing and more reactive allies/monsters), to highlight the chaos and the loss of control with so many allies with minds of their own bring. Then for the southern portion, I will slow it down to empathize the puzzle nature of that portion of the dungeon.
• I liked chapter 2 much more as a dungeon, though this chapter does have it’s high points.

Chapter 4:

• The investigation is rather cursory. I will add more to it to flesh it out and hopefully enhance the folk horror narrative (Voz’s copy of breachhills history, suitably adjusted, should really help here).
• The bloody blades and their camp (C1-C5) is clearly a fortress assault scenario with reactive opponents and I don’t know how people are reading it otherwise. It’s interesting that unlike later scenarios, this one is survivable if the PCs just attempt a straight out attack.
• Balka attempts to surrender if seriously injured.
• Renali is a social encounter meant to be the PCs ally.
• I have serious problems with Ralldar. This is a TPK waiting to happen: a very high level creature pretending to be much weaker creature with potentially nothing to indicate otherwise until things go bad. At the very least the local goblins should have legends on this guy right? I will definitely put them in the module to foreshadow more: maybe Warbell is worried the Ralldar has returned? Maybe Voz has a warning as well (in her notes if not taken allive). At the very least I can do the classic horror rpg things in describing him/the room and hope the characters pick up on it.
• The last part of the module (roughly C6-D10), is very linear. This might not be a bad thing as it is getting towards the end. The pacing should be relatively easy to maintain here since there is a good mix of ‘combat’ and ‘social’ encounters.
• I don’t think that Voz actually did anything illegal? That might be an interesting approach to take swapping out the fight with a debate (or having a debate followed by a fight). Another interesting avenue would be them having them drag her to town – only for her to pay a fine and go free.
• The transition from C to D could be fleshed out a lot more if desired. I’m thinking a cave network with a safe path marked out by voz (using the sigil spell) so you have these little signs in the darkness indicating a safe path.
• Voz, either in person or through writings could provide excellent foreshadowing of some of the dangers ahead (or behind if they took the southern branch and ignored the northern).
• She might also perform a retreat into a dangerous area instead of sticking around to fight if she thinks she is losing.
• I’m liking the setup with Voz – a lot of options. Voz is a villain with plans and agency and I am worried that the actual climatic boss fight (who’s plan is to wait to be rescued because he is stuck in a hole) will feel anticlimactic (and the doorwarden is definitively going to feel anticlimactic).
• There are a lot of dead adventurers here. I am definitely going to add rumors about their fates (all wildly inaccurate) to the rumor tables. Perhaps their friends and loved ones also posted bounties.

Nice write-up! Lots of good thoughts about how to strengthen the adventure. I especially like the suggestion about having multiple adventures on offer at the Call for Heroes, and turning the Calmont thing into more of an active investigation. (And I also agree that Ralldar is a TPK threat that needs to be toned-down and/or heavily foreshadowed in some way!)

As far as advice, the only thing that stands out to me is the thought of running a lot of combats as theatre of the mind. I've found theatre of the mind combat hard to make satisfying in PF2, since combat is so tactical. But I'd be interested to hear if you find a way to get around that problem!

Porridge said:

As far as advice, the only thing that stands out to me is the thought of running a lot of combats as theatre of the mind. I've found theatre of the mind combat hard to make satisfying in PF2, since combat is so tactical. But I'd be interested to hear if you find a way to get around that problem!

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I come to GMing mostly from a horror gaming (nWoD/Chronicles of Darkness and Eclipse Phase) and (post)cyberpunk (Shadowrun 2e/3e and Eclipse Phase) angle and as such I am really good at running theater of the mind. In this situation theater of the mind is good for four reasons

• It doesn’t disrupt the flow of the narrative as much as using maps and minis is and is generally faster (this is obviously extremely important for horror gaming but it is also good here because I may be running a split party). 2e really aids me here because of the integration of exploration and encounter modes: often I find that I can roll forward one or two characters initiatives so only a couple people have to roll at the start of the combat and it is generally easy to logically place PCs based on their described actions (though my players don’t use the specific encounter mode action - they just describe what they are doing and if necessary I choose what specific action they are taking).
• It helps me maintain the atmosphere by keeping everything in the players mind and not abstracting it out into a map on the table. There is a reason that most horror games don’t do mini combat.
• I play in a game store so I need to be ready for new players (not so much since corona though ) and theater of the mind is much less intimidating to them (imho) since it is just an extension of what we were doing before (I set up the situation, they give their actions, I maybe ask for a dice roll, I narrate the results, repeat) and we don’t break out of the flow of the game.
• It makes it easier for less skilled players (of which I usually have a few) to gain skill because the experienced players will generally state more of their reasoning in theater of the mind (“I move here,” versus “Is there any way I can move into a flank with the last plant zombie?” to which I reply “Yes you can use a single move to flank with X or two moves to flank with Y).

As to engagement: I find it’s all in the narration and player intention. For narration: You really need to set the scene: first when the encounter begins and then after every turn as you transition to the next player. If you do it right you create a very engaging narrative while simultaneously reminding everyone of their position and what’s going on at the start of their turn (similar to what the Angry GM advocates in his running combat like a dolphin article). The second part of the equation is player intent: I kind of noted it above but once you get your players to state their tactical intent with their actions (either as a statement or a question) you can incorporate almost all the tactical decision making of mini based combat into theater of the mind. Let me give an example:

GM: Wizard, immediately in front of you the fighters are grappling with two plant/zombies that have emerged from the jungle, Fighter 1 is fending off his zombie with his shield, but Fighter 2 has taken a couple hits. Past them is the main plant.
Wizard: I want to use widened burning hands to catch all the zombies and the plant?
GM: From where you are you can hit all of them, but you will hit both fighters. Alternately, you could only hit one zombie and one fighter and the main plant.
Wizard. I’m going to hit Fighter 1 and the main plant.
GM: okay roll damage. Fighter 1 roll a reflex save. (I roll for the plants and Crit fail, regular fail).
Wizard: 12 damage!
Fighter: success and I also have fire resistance from my ancestry.
GM: (to Fighter 1) so five damage, (to everyone but mostly Wizard) the zombie gets the brunt of the attack and the spores around it ignite into a pillar of flames, then the blast rolls on to the main plant, destroying a chunk of it as it too ignites. (to Fighter 1) Fighter 1, the zombie in front of you has been completely incinerated, giving you a path to the plant which is badly burned, but the zombie fighting Fighter 2 is untouched, what do you want to do?

Hopefully, that is clear.

Bonus! A helpful tip to those wanting to get better at running combat: record yourself running combat (both theater of the mind and not) and listen to see how engaging you are, how well you paint a mental picture of the battle with just narration, and if there is anything you need to work on in the future (I got this from Happy Jacks too). I did this and after a couple of sessions of deliberately working on my technique I was able to vastly improve (as a specific example: I found I would stop narrating as soon as the minis came out and lapse into ‘you hit’ ‘you missed’ ‘you kill it’, but upon realizing what I was doing l, I was able to correct myself when I started doing that in future games.).

!DWolf said:

Bonus! A helpful tip to those wanting to get better at running combat: record yourself running combat (both theater of the mind and not) and listen to see how engaging you are, how well you paint a mental picture of the battle with just narration, and if there is anything you need to work on in the future (I got this from Happy Jacks too). I did this and after a couple of sessions of deliberately working on my technique I was able to vastly improve (as a specific example: I found I would stop narrating as soon as the minis came out and lapse into ‘you hit’ ‘you missed’ ‘you kill it’, but upon realizing what I was doing l, I was able to correct myself when I started doing that in future games.).

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This is good stuff. We almost always use minis, but I’ve been trying to develop the habit of framing things like it’s theater of the mind. I haven’t asked my players what they thought about it (although now I’m curious), but I feels like it flows more smoothly.

Another thing I’ve been doing is playing with is narrative timing in combat. We still use turns and so on, but I sometimes frame the next player’s turn as the conclusion of the previous player’s turn. That’s a technique I developed running Dungeon World. Using your example:

GM (to fighter 1 but also everyone): So the just wizard came up and sprayed fire everywhere. You’re a little singed, but two of the plants got burnt, and one just got completely torched. Its spores went up, and it’s damaged pretty badly. Oh, and he got the zombie too, so your path is clear, but the other fighter’s still got one in front of them. What do you do?

One caveat is we play with rolls and results as public information (except for secret checks, of course). The wizard would already know what I rolled and what the result was mechanically, so instead of restating that narratively to the wizard, I work it into the framing of the fighter’s turn. If those things are kept secret, it might not work as well.

kenada said:

One caveat is we play with rolls and results as public information (except for secret checks, of course). The wizard would already know what I rolled and what the result was mechanically, so instead of restating that narratively to the wizard, I work it into the framing of the fighter’s turn. If those things are kept secret, it might not work as well.

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I also use open rolls so that technique should work for me and I see the appeal flow wise... but I think I prefer to keep the focus on the character performing the action - at least when the’re being awesome. I can totally see doing this on less spectacular turns though and I wondering: if I switch between the two techniques can I emphasize spectacular events even more with the contrast? I am definitely going to try it out!

Okay, so I am doing things a little out of my usual order but I have been working on step 6 of my process before fully finishing the previous steps, mostly because I am trying to figure out how to really give an example of module prep in print without writing a textbook. But I figured I would post some things I working on, in case anyone is interested:

The first is the research subsystem for the adventure. This is really simple because it is a straight example. Its purpose is to reward the players (with more information) for taking time to really explore the environment (Incidentally: if my time wheel idea runs well, I am definitely going to incorporate a variation of it in this module - I am hoping it will provide a sense of verisimilitude and an implicit time pressure to the exploration). I was toying with a sort of call of Cthulhu type inclusion, where the research contains horrible revelations, but it didn’t really fit the theme and mode I am going for so I didn’t include it.

The second thing is the exploration mode for the town. It is a very stripped down system that I am primarily intending to create tension and unease through the lack of conservation of detail: why is the creepy mortician talking to the carpenter and why did they suddenly stop when you approached? What did the halfling shopkeeper hand off to the logging forewoman? Etc. the goal is to foster a sense of mild paranoia and build up the folk horror aspects of the scenario (and thus it is absolutely imperative that the players not know I’m using a random encounter table to generate these). Using the system is simple: when the PCs travel across town - I roll 2d6: one for the start and one for the destination. If either dice comes up one I once on table 2 and twice on table 3a or 3b depending on which side of town the start/destination is. If they both roll ones - I combine the two events. Note that the descriptions are for me - I am planning on describing them in neutral language in play.

Really solid post! Thanks so much for putting your thoughts into words! We just finished up Rise of the Rune Lords with my lazy conversion and I really wanted to try Age of Ashes next since it was made with 2E in mind; you've given me a lot to think about how I should run it!