Campaign in a Box

[delericho]

Is there somewhere I can get a brief rundown of the Age of Worms plot? After reading the Shackled City preview with it's backstory summary I was VERY interested. Maybe AoW will be similar.

I believe (although I haven't looked) that Paizo have published a web-enhancement for issue 125 that includes a brief summary of all the AoW adventures. Try their website: http://paizo.com/dungeon

 

[Morte]

As for Shackled City: Every post I've seen about it makes it out to be written by God himself on leaves of gold. I like urban campaigns, and it seems like there's a lot of plot. But what else can people tell me about it? -Why- is it so great?

You could have a look at Lazybones' Story Hour

How does it deal with going to the police? It seems that many times an adventure smack in the middle of civilization is killed quickest by the PCs being good citizens and telling the mayor what's going on.

You too, huh?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Why is it that when I search for "shackled city" on Amazon, the first thing that pops up is the Teletubbies?

 

[S'mon]

Check out The Lost City of Barakus by Necromancer Games. It takes you from 1st-5th level and recommends you cut xp in half (so the party doen't quickly outstrip the challenges). After you finish that, you can head over to The Vault of Larin Karr and take them up to 10th-11th level (regular xp advancement). Barakus, itself, is a dungeon crawl, but the city of endhome is rife with intrigue and adventure. The VoLK has lots of little quests in Quail Valley that add up to a pretty neat mini-campaign. The only problem with VolK is that it's 3.0. Check the Necromancer boards for tons of info on these. You'll really like them...

I'm running Barakus and really liking it - the more I GM it, the more I like it. It has flaws (I'd prefer the NPC stats integrated w the scenario, not at the back) but no big ones. While written "for 1st to 5th", you really do need to halve the XP, and there's about 30-40 sessions of gaming in there at a minimum (plus it's really easy to expand if you want to include stuff of your own). There's the big dungeon, the city with its adventures, the forest with its adventures, and the hills with their adventures - there are a _lot_ of adventures here! Many are small dungeons, a few are not dungeon-based at all. The scenario is tough for the listed levels, a min-maxed group of 6 PCs could do it at the listed levels but for a typical group it's likely to be completed around 7th or 8th level and remain challenging throughout. After I think it's 10 sessions at around 2/3 XP (3/4 early on, 1/2 now) my PCs are 4th level, they have completed maybe 1/4 of the stuff in the book (maybe a bit less), and I expect it will take them ca 30 sessions more to do everything, reaching ca 8th level.
The only reason not to run Barakus would be if your players flat-out refuse to play at 1/2 XP, which would be a shame - and giving full or 2/3 XP up to 3rd level seemed to work fine; the problem would be in challenging PCs at level 5+ with Fly, Fireball etc.

 

[OnCider]

Hmmm, don't know how to say it any more clearly :

Dungeon Crawl= Not interested

Meatgrinder= Not interested

Granted, my definitions of these are probably a little different. RttToEE, for instance, was a huge PC killing machine, but I know that "fixing" that is pretty easy, since it's also very plot-heavy. So maybe these dungeon crawls many of you are suggesting are still in my ballpark.

Is there somewhere I can get a brief rundown of the Age of Worms plot? After reading the Shackled City preview with it's backstory summary I was VERY interested. Maybe AoW will be similar.

Another vote here for the Mongoose's Drow War campaign. I'm just finishing reading the first book and have been very impressed with the quality of this campaign.

It has very little in the way of dungeon-crawling. I can see lots of oppurtunity for roleplaying and political intrigue. There are also rules for mass battles that are well-written and sound fun.

And it is for levels 1-30!

The only concerns I would have is that the timing is very tight. You won't have much time for character-driven plot elements which I would like to have included. But as it seems that you want it "out-of-a-box" it seems perfect for you.

I've also run Lost City of Barakus in the past and although I agree that the city sections are very good with lots going on, the dungeon seems overly long and too damn far from the city (too much time spent journeying to and fro).

 

[delericho]

Why is it that when I search for "shackled city" on Amazon, the first thing that pops up is the Teletubbies?

Well, it turns out that they are the masterminds behind the whole thing, of course. It turns out that Tinky-Winky is a 25th level Sorcerer, and you don't want to know what La-La's classes are!

 

[S'mon]

Although Barakus is tough - it is not a meatgrinder - I have suffered meatgrinders (Necropolis) and heard of others - City of the Spider Queen is infamous, as is RTTOEE. Barakus is far more open than these and includes a pretty well-developed city, a wilderness forest, and hills full of caves & ruins. Assuming by "dungeon crawl" you don't mean "any dungeon", I'd think it should work well for you. It's _extremely_ easy to run, partly because the 1/2 XP helps the GM keep control of the game. It's completely open, PCs can wander anywhere and find adventure all over, the GM can present them with hooks to particular adventures but if they don't bite that's fine, there are plenty more.

Only reasons to avoid Barakus:

1. Your players won't accept reduced XP gain. NB the NPCs are subject to the same limitation, their levels are roughly half standard, so the highest levellers in the metropolis are 8th-9th not 18-20th. 6th level PCs are powerful folks here.

2. Your players won't play low-level. Barakus could be started at ca 3rd, but no higher IMO.

3. You won't use dungeons _at all_. In that case D&D probably isn't your cup of tea.

 

[DaveMage]

Well, it turns out that they are the masterminds behind the whole thing, of course. It turns out that Tinky-Winky is a 25th level Sorcerer, and you don't want to know what La-La's classes are!

Poe's a rogue - no doubt.

 

[Brakkart]

I'll give another vote for the Freeport trilogy, especially now that its been revised for 3.5. The mini-saga has everything really, a few small dungeons to explore (with good variety, a sunken temple, pirate caves, basement cult lair, giant lighthouse), plenty of intrigue (especially in part 3 what with the Lords Ball to attend), a truly diabolical plot and snakemen galore (gotta love snakemen). It is also very easy to add too. I ran the Freeport adventure from Dungeon #107 as a prelude to the trilogy itself, and added in numerous characters from the Denizens of Freeport book (most notably the beer swilling wenching paladin with a Rhinoceros bonded mount, and the grossly fat halfling woman who made a deal with the devil for immortality, but has to eat something she's never tried before every month to keep him from claiing her soul. One of my party got rather queasy when she started asking about whether they could keep the brains of any snakemen they killed, as she would like to try them jellied *grins*). While the trilogy stands alone just fine, a lot more can be made of it if you have the Freeport: City of Adventure book also.

And if you need a longer campaign both the pdf adventure Vengeance in Freeport as well as an adventure in the book Tales of Freeport will serve well to build on the events of the trilogy itself.

Plus pirates, evil cults, madness, snakemen and more pirates. Whats not to love?

 

[S'mon]

I've also run Lost City of Barakus in the past and although I agree that the city sections are very good with lots going on, the dungeon seems overly long and too damn far from the city (too much time spent journeying to and fro).

I agree, so I placed a village Branford 8 miles from the Lost City - http://www.geocities.com/s.t.newman/barakus.htm
The campaign map definitely needs more settlements, so I stuck in several villages on my version. Took a couple of minutes. I don't recommend forcing your PCs to hike 50 miles from the city every time they want to visit the dungeon.

I agree the dungeon is also very big/long - it's not boring though, there are tons of different things going on within it. My PCs have missed a fair bit of the dungeon politics by generally attacking all goblinoids on sight, actually. Your PCs shouldn't feel obligated to "clear it out"; my PCs all have reasons for going there, things they're looking for. I have no idea if they will ever reach level 5 & the BBEG, and that's not necessarily important anyway, though it can make a nice climax to the campaign. The quests my PCs are on are of the likes "find Fenton, the missing adventurer", "recover the Sword of Kells", or just "discover the lost secret magics of Barakus for your bosses" - and more quests develop as the PCs venture further and discover new things, like the Dr*w.