Complete Campaigns

[Patman21967]

Come on guys, How about Rappan Athuk?

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Consider this a second for Slavelords of Cydonia, which IMHO is the best effort for a 1-20 adventure ever done, with its variety of encounters and organization. It got nominated for an ENnie and is available with free shipping through IPR (check my sig).

 

[Yair]

Consider this a second for Slavelords of Cydonia, which IMHO is the best effort for a 1-20 adventure ever done, with its variety of encounters and organization. It got nominated for an ENnie and is available with free shipping through IPR (check my sig).

Free shipping sounds great, now my address is Israel, Jerusalem, zip code... Sadly, getting anything down here takes money and about two months. Hmph.

I didn't mention Slavelords of Cydonia as I've gathered from it's reviews that it comes with "some construction neccessary", providing a framework but not eliminating prepwork. Was I mistaken?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Free shipping sounds great, now my address is Israel, Jerusalem, zip code... Sadly, getting anything down here takes money and about two months. Hmph.

I didn't mention Slavelords of Cydonia as I've gathered from it's reviews that it comes with "some construction neccessary", providing a framework but not eliminating prepwork. Was I mistaken?

No.

It's an excellent frame to hang a campaign on but it requires a lot of fleshing out the details. It's also not a 'pure' d20 fantasy book, but as most of the action takes place on a different world, that's really a minor issue.

 

[Stormborn]

Just say no to the Witchfire Trilogy. I didn't run it, but I played in it and hated it. The DM had lots of problems with it, and it was very very railroady at major plot points. I love Iron Kingdoms, love the world, but hated that set. Maybe the revision will fix some of that, in which case it might be nice.


Shackled City is one I am thinking about getting myself, I have the Dungeon issues so know it looks good; but all in one place and updates w/ new material would be worth it if indeed I were to run it.

From what I have seen and heard of WLD its not worth the price.

Freeport is great, as is Banewarrens. Just depends on what kind of game you want.

 

[JoeBlank]

WLD is still $40 on amazon, a steal.

I have enjoyed playing in Banewarrens and considered running it, but it is another one that I don't think fits the requisite "little to no prework". There is a lot going on, and multiple groups that can be encountered, seems like the DM has to be pretty aware of where they all are at all times. Less work than some, but still not an easy module to run.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

No.

It's an excellent frame to hang a campaign on but it requires a lot of fleshing out the details. It's also not a 'pure' d20 fantasy book, but as most of the action takes place on a different world, that's really a minor issue.

Well, I have to respectfully disagree with Joe here.

I guess it depends on what your definition of "prep" work is.

Will you need to read ahead and understand the plot? Absolutely. You won't be able to run Slavelords "room to room" like you could with a standard dungeon crawl, and so I would guess that it might not be what you are looking for.

But you won't have to do "prep" work in the sense of statting out creatures or side quests or anything like that.

Slavelords is meant to be a story-driven, pulp-adventure experience. When I run an adventure of this sort, I don't sweat the small details, because they're unnecessary. You need to focus on plot and pacing, and Slavelords provides that.

When Indiana Jones flees through the marketplace and upsets a vendor cart, I'm not particularly worried about precisely what the vendor was selling, if you get my meaning.

I will snip this pretty good explanation from one of the reviews here (which I actually hadn't even seen myself yet!):

Slavelords of Cydonia is also an unusual type of adventure - handy since I don't think the usual, scripted, linear adventures work very well. The fact of the matter is that your players will do something that the linear plot didn't expect. They will. Face it. Slavelords of Cydonia deals with this issue in an intelligent way (and as the professional extension of the way many of us have been designing our own notes for years now). Slavelords of Cydonia is modular. It's not modular in the sense that it contains a linear module/adventure but modular in the sense that the GM can pick or choose plot points, adapt and respond as needs be to get players from outcome A to outcome B.

But he also says this:

I thoroughly enjoyed Slavelords of Cydonia. The book is a great idea resource. It's an uber-plot worth running and has enough help in its mass of pages to make it easy enough to run - though the work needed on the GM's side should not be understated. It's a credit to Slavelords that I see that the GM will need to do plenty of work and yet it's very tempting to run the game.

It's a really nice review.
http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2403681

You need to be a competent GM to run the adventure. But you won't have to do the "grunt" prep work of statblocks and such.

It's definitely for experienced GMs, and if all I've said and quoted above makes sense to you, and you feel like now you know what to expect, then you probably have the necessary competency to run it.

I suppose I should mention, in parting, that Slavelords of Cydonia is nominated for an ENnie for Best Adventure.


Wulf

 

[Steel_Wind]

While many of the suggestions here are great - I think getting in on the ground floor of Age of Worms is where it is at

#126 is about to hit subscribers. The Age of Worms Overload is slated for free download off of Paizo's site next week and - a nice bonus - your players get monthly tidbits in the new monthly Worm Food articles for players in Dragon magazine.

The Whispering Cairns is one of the best advenures I have ever come across and while Three Faces of Evil (part 2) is not as good as part 1 - that's more a reflection on how good Whispering Cairns truly is. TFoE is a very good adventure.

The problem with the design process behind Shackled City initially was that it was not pre-planned and a known and plotted campaign which was tightly meshed from the start. It has major continuity issues as a result and needs TLC to make it work.

Age of Worms is Paizo's second go round on the grand adventure path and they have identified the design errors that contibuted to some rough spots in Shackled City.

Your lead time is now adequate that with three issues of Dungeon, the backgrounders and Age of Worms Overload (plus Worm Food) - you'll have about 180 pages to get going with - plus a good idea where it's going. You'll be as excited as your players will be to find out where the story ultimately leads.

Issue #125 is on the stand now. #126 will hit in a few weeks. That leaves you to find #124 at a gaming shop and subscribe to Dungeon for the rest of it. Figure on $55 or so to get it all? About that.

Shackled City will cost you a little more than that. Slavelords of Cydonia is about $45-50, depending on the store. So it's about equal in price - but you get 12 issues of Dungeon to go along with your campaign

Age of Worms - all the way.

 

[Yair]

Thanks everyone

I'm in the process of asking my players for their preferences, and will decide based on that. This thread was definitely useful.

Steel_Wind: I've had very very bad experience with a subscription to Dragon. It's rediculously expensive to get magazines far away here over the atlantic (Israel), takes a lot of time, and about a third of the issues just never arrive. Also, being able to read the whole adventure before focusing on the current adventure really has its advantages.
Paizo allows to purchase a few Dungeon issues as pdfs, but sadly not the new ones. I have no idea why. If they did, Age of Worms would have been a great candidate.

 

[Keith F Strohm]

Paizo allows to purchase a few Dungeon issues as pdfs, but sadly not the new ones. I have no idea why. If they did, Age of Worms would have been a great candidate.

Due to the terms of our licensing agreement with Wizards of the Coast, we can't sell PDf's of print products that are still in print.

Keith Strohm
Chief Operating Officer
Paizo Publishing, LLC