Advice for starting out

[doppelganger]

I'm going through the first adventure and preparing to run it. I see that it starts in a tavern. I'm looking for reasons for the PCs to be in the tavern and to agree with the task proposed to them. What did you guys present to your players to get them to that fateful meeting?

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I followed the suggestion in the module and had my players design characters that all were from Gates Pass and had ties to the resistance. That made it a simple to get the ball rolling.

It helps that my group buys into the 'work with the DM on this' when it comes to following the given plotlines. Mostly

 

[doppelganger]

I followed the suggestion in the module and had my players design characters that all were from Gates Pass and had ties to the resistance.

What kinds of ties did they actually have?

 

[Chimera]

Really only enough to justify being there (I'm one of PS's players). Certainly you don't need to have everything specificied in great detail just yet. Your PCs are young punks just starting out while an army is knocking on the city door. Isn't that enough?

Unless your players are the crass uncooperative actor stereotypes who demand to know their motivation before every scene; or uncooperative "why are we playing this" type players, they should accept the basic outline of the story and be willing to go with it.

Hell, I admit that in the first couple of sessions, not having played an adventure path before, I occasionally (jokingly) sang "I've been working on the Railroad" every time we got led along the path. But eventually I settled down and accepted that this was the way it worked and that I needed to go with the flow.

 

[doppelganger]

Really only enough to justify being there (I'm one of PS's players). Certainly you don't need to have everything specificied in great detail just yet. Your PCs are young punks just starting out while an army is knocking on the city door. Isn't that enough?

No. Not really. Not for me and not for them.

Unless your players are the crass uncooperative actor stereotypes who demand to know their motivation before every scene; or uncooperative "why are we playing this" type players, they should accept the basic outline of the story and be willing to go with it.

Hell, I admit that in the first couple of sessions, not having played an adventure path before, I occasionally (jokingly) sang "I've been working on the Railroad" every time we got led along the path. But eventually I settled down and accepted that this was the way it worked and that I needed to go with the flow.

I don't want my players to have to settle down and go with the flow. I don't think of them as 'crass uncooperative actor stereotypes' or 'uncooperative "why are we playing this" type players', but they do like to fit in with the game world. I want them to have fun and keep coming back for more. I certainly don't want them singing sarcastic songs to me while in play. That's why I'm asking questions before I start them off.

 

[Chimera]

Ok, settle down now. I didn't mean to offend.

If you read through the first module, and follow the idea through the next ones, you will see that there is a huge amount of sense for the PCs to be a part of the resistance and thus, have a firm motivation for following the AP.

The specifics of the ties are really not all that important at first precisely because the PCs are going to be leaving the city and thus, not dealing with those elements beyond what you chose to make of them in the first couple of sessions.

 

[doppelganger]

Ok, settle down now. I didn't mean to offend.

If you read through the first module, and follow the idea through the next ones, you will see that there is a huge amount of sense for the PCs to be a part of the resistance and thus, have a firm motivation for following the AP.

The specifics of the ties are really not all that important at first precisely because the PCs are going to be leaving the city and thus, not dealing with those elements beyond what you chose to make of them in the first couple of sessions.

Fair enough. What portions of the first two adventures did you find to be 'railroady'? What do you think could have been done to improve them?

 

[Chimera]

double post. Board very slow today.

 

[Chimera]

Fair enough. What portions of the first two adventures did you find to be 'railroady'? What do you think could have been done to improve them?

It seemed railroady to me probably only because in my very long D&D career, I've almost never played modules and certainly have not played Adventure Paths. I've played almost exclusively homebrews, or homebrew adventures in published settings.

So in the beginning, yes I'd sing the railroad song when we got to the parts where we knew that we had to do X, or go to Y in order to follow the AP. I know that Primitive Screwhead didn't exactly appreciate it and that he was doing his best to provide options. I didn't mean it as offensive, it was just my reaction to "Well in order to get to Module N, we need to do X, but if it was just me, I'd say we do something completely different".

 

[RangerWickett]

The easiest solution is to ask each player to make a character who already wants to defeat Ragesia. Barring that, I would ask each player to come up with a reason why they want to get to Seaquen, and hope that by the time they get there, they've got a dislike of the Ragesians and want to fight back.

Maybe they are a mage and want to avoid the Ragesian scourge, and they see Seaquen as a safe haven. Maybe they actively want to join the resistance to fight Ragesia. Maybe they're planning to be a spy for the Ragesians. Maybe a sibling or lover fled there first and they're going to protect her. Or they might already be a student from Seaquen who was in Gate Pass on a different mission and wants to get back quickly.

Also, play up the fact that the Ragesians are able to cover most of the paths between Gate Pass and Seaquen, so that the best hope is to take the somewhat dangerous but not heavily-guarded mountain road to Innenotdar. There is the option that they might try to team up with the Shahalesti and avoid Innenotdar by going through the elvish nation, which would result in skipping adventure 2, but as long as each PC has a reason to want to go to Seaquen, you can pick back up with the rest of the campaign saga, and maybe retool adventure 2 for inclusion somewhere later.

I'm curious, Chimera, what sorts of things you thought the module was too restrictive on. I admit, it was my first written module, and if I could redo it, I'd want to loosen it up a bit. Maybe adventure 2 too.