ZEITGEIST Deathwyrm's Zeitgeist Campaign - Clockwork Eclipse

[hirou]

Congratulation! How much did the structure of the last adventures survive from the published form? Did you run the battle with VoR and the final Axis Island encounter in parallel, judging from the photo?

 

[Deathwyrm]

Honestly? The published books became a loose framework to pull from.

A Post-Mortem

Now that the campaign is done, I've had some thoughts. Not enough to really warrant doing a retrospective on my youtube channel, which has a different focus. But still, here's a good enough place as any.

The Highs

• This was probably the most ambitious campaign this group had ever done. It's an achievement few can steal from them.
• William/Nicodemus was an outstanding villain that they enjoyed as an antagonist. Just so full of self-righteous arrogance but at the same time acted as a mirror for a band of heroes/adventurers who are likewise imposing their will and morality on the world because a badge gives them the right.
• The NPCs were all highly engaging and well written, contributing to a "lived-in" world. Their relationship to Rock Rackus went from "f*** this guy" to "oh, he's just the main character in another parallel story, just like us" to "trusted ally". RIP Rock.
• Despite all the mind-bending weirdness, there was a logical progression of events. Starting off as boat security guards and ending repairing the cosmos felt natural. Normally there's a point of escalation in a story where some players check out at the absurdity, but each part reinforced the next.
• The finale of repairing the stars and having a hand in creating the metaphysics of the next campaign setting was a very special treat to the players.

The Lows

• This definitely wasn't the adventure for everyone. We started with 6 players and dropped to 3. One player left after Season 4 because he made a primarily combat-oriented character, and the adventure is set up in such a way that by relying on allies or advanced scouting means entire combats can be minimized or outcomes determined before an initiative roll is very possible. So he didn't feel like he contributed as much when his preferred playstyle is combat. Another player left at the same time because playing "heroes" isn't for him, as he enjoys being the loose cannon of the group and as the story went on, tolerance for inter-party conflict was dropping as the stakes were raising. Finally, one last player left mid-season 8. Partly because Pathfinder asks a lot (more on that next point), partly because he didn't really have a character he was roleplaying. He was clearly playing himself, so when ethical situations came up that created dramatic scenes of characters arguing over "the right thing", we didn't realize he felt like he was being personally targeted. We spoke about it after, and he said he doesn't want much in the way of roleplaying in games, so he bowed out on alright terms. This is the kind of out-of-the-box type adventure that definitely requires a type of buy-in which some players may think they want but might not.
• The format for the game could have been better, but that's on me. We gamed in person (world-spanning plague as an exception) at my central location, where other players drove in from neighboring cities. The travel distance meant we met once per month, for a session of 6-8 hours. A lot can be accomplished in that time, but it's also enough time between sessions to forget a lot of what's been going on and how your character works. Miss a month or two and that compounds. This probably would have went faster and smoother as a weekly or alternating week online game. As a result, the last two years was a struggle to keep a consistent schedule as players naturally will get curious about the new shiny campaign someone else is running.
• I'm not running this again, but if I did it'd probably be 5e or Shadow of the Weird Wizard or something else that didn't have this much crunch. We used Pathfinder 1e because it was the style at the time, but some players absolutely struggled to keep up with their massive sprawling spreadsheet character sheets. High level Pathfinder also created a system of binary outcomes. Skills and types of rolls which were actively invested in reliably resulted in rolls of +30/+40, creating automatic successes. Abilities not invested in remained at +4 or so, meaning auto-fails most of the time. They still enjoyed rolling buckets of dice to get the biggest numbers, but even then outcomes would average out. Player feedback did mention that after session, they were useless to their partners after having their brains fried doing Mathfinder for 6 hours.

The Deviations

• I've ran a few wide spanning campaigns over my 26 years of GMing. From history-spanning Vampire chronicles to lethal megadungeons, and each time I find that there is always a point that comes up when players will take a hard turn out of the presented storyline. Modules, adventure paths, whatever you want to call them... they hold up exceptionally well until somewhere around level 8 on average. At that point, the players are established forces. They have character power, are entrenched in the setting, understand the setting enough to not require exposition, and have made allies. It becomes a tricky balance to both embrace player agency as they do what they want, and keep somewhat to the "scripted material". I liken it to when a TV show based on a book series starts to not resemble the source material at all.
• With a player reduction of 50%, and the remaining individuals is a gunslinger, a ninja, and a mesmerist... some mechanical tweaks had to happen so one bad spell doesn't just TPK. By season 9, Kasvarina, Gale, and Rock each became NPCs of the party using the MCDM retainer format from Strongholds & Followers. I'd still roleplay them, but the players would handle them in combat on their turns. The modified retainer rules meant it wasn't that big of a mental lift either, since the crushing weight of Pathfinder was taking its toll.
• The greatest deviation happened around Season 8, where Borne is trailing the party as Kasvarina is having her memories put together. As soon as Miller started poking his head up, the party decided "wait, this is what he wants us to do" and avoided going to the Lance by any means necessary. The details are expansive, but due to Malice Lands related wild-magic effects and at immense expense of the party, they shunted Borne off into the Dreaming so he'd be out of everyone's hands. Deal with the political fallout later from that move.
• The Axis Ritual that went awry played out very differently for my group. As soon as they heard that the ritual to change the stars was going to start, the players very efficiently put together that this is happening at Axis Island and they went to stop the ritual from happening entirely. Due to the lack of Borne as a resource I scripted that the heavy loss meant a sudden need for partnership between the remaining Obscurati and Benedict Pemberton, as Miller had a pretty immediate need for heavy machinery in the ritual, and uber-capitalist dragon would be willing to work with a former rival because money. This came as a pretty severe surprise to the party of saboteurs who arrived at Axis to find Obscurati ritualists, dragon-worshipping gnolls, pemberbots, and secret Voice of Rot cultists, all up to naughty word.
• Regarding the sabotage, I had to make a choice. Forcing the ritual to play out as scripted would feel like negative-railroading, and if they did a highly successful ruination of the ritual, campaign would have ended a lot sooner. They ended up preventing their own complete success by giving in to an old grudge and abandoning their actions midway through to go try to assassinate Pemberton, which they successfully did. Realizing that the ritual had started and it's already going sideways, they panicked and teleported to Risur to tussle with Stanfield. In the end, they held themselves partially responsible for the current stellar predicament.
• Oh, and the body of Pemberton was dissasembled and fused into their ship thereby creating their airship. Again, not as scripted but they were so excited for the idea who can say no? It's ... uh... it's probably what he would have wanted anyway.
• Now, I know that in Act 3 the players get "divided in half" between their regular selves bouncing around Lanjyr trying to help nations out, and the other selves up in the Gyre doing interstellar stuff... but I didn't do that. There really wasn't much need.
• After going to Ber to solve the Gidim issue, the party thought about the situation. That they can either keep jumping from nation to nation putting out fires, or they can go to the stars and sort this out, delegating the other situations out to trusted allies to solve. Which they did. So most of book 11 and 13 were completely cut out.
• Gyre-crawling in their dragon-powered skyship was a lot of fun for them. Most of the worlds visited had to get abbreviated because campaign exhaustion was setting in, but it was so bonkers that it was a campaign highlight.
• I changed most of the planar traits to generate more debate. The basic traits of "Life, Death" etc was kept the same, but the additional effects were almost all changed up to be more akin mixed blessings. Worlds like "birthrate dwindles to zero" would have been immediately disregarded by the group. I don't have the full list on me, but I wanted the party to argue a bit more about possible new types of elements that would be worth considering for the new age.
• Kasvarina and Rock Rackus died in the battle against the Voice of Rot. The battle took 4 hours to play out. Voice of Rot was killed when the party used stolen ships from the Hunlow Pirates to grapple and pry VoR off Reida, then another ship used to crash into it and push into the Gyre itself.
• The final conflict with Miller wasn't a battle. Knowing that most ghosts are perpetuted by a sense of unfinished business, or sustained by this absolute unbreakable certainty that they are right even beyond death, engaged in a debate with him one last time. They felt the only way to truly defeat him, was to prove him wrong, or make him realize that the world doesn't need him.

Final session was bringing back Borne to help complete the ritual (which was their last act), and then a montage of character and setting outcomes. No rolls or anything like that, I just let them narrate where their characters are one year later, ten years later, and a hundred years later.

One year later, Cysgod the aasimar ninja/shadowdancer/paladin returned the spirits of the lost eladrin to Elfaivar before setting out on a personal journey to find the remaining lost swords of the slain goddess. Dr Basch the mesmerist returned to his family in Ber to make sure they're okay. King Mikkel immediately set to work rebuilding a new Clergy in Risur in an attempt to clean the religion from the corruptions of the old faith, and dispatching as many agents as possible to help the other nations rebuild under friendlier and more unified terms. But time has a habit of mythologizing people and events and on a long enough timeline even the best of intentions may not result in the best of all possible worlds. Especially for a gunslinging king who was crowned under the Great Eclipse, where Emperor Mikkel brought the other nations under his reign as a cannonized saint of the new Clergy.

In the end, the players were happy but there was a seriously emotional moment that few of us expected. End of a massive journey and all that. Or even just mentally letting go of characters they have roleplayed since before some of us were married or had kids. They're happy to move on to the next thing in the new year, and overjoyed that it did reach conclusion, but there's a bittersweetness to it.

Everyone agrees "maybe a shorter duration game" next time.

I'll follow up in a bit with some pictures from the more memorable moments of the final run.

 

[hirou]

Incredible write-up, looking forward for the pictures! If you can post the list with updated planar traits here, it would be much appreciated.

 

[Deathwyrm]

Congratulation! How much did the structure of the last adventures survive from the published form? Did you run the battle with VoR and the final Axis Island encounter in parallel, judging from the photo?

You caught me mid-essay. But short answer, not much of the last adventures resembled the published material. And I ran the VoR battle without the Axis Island at the same time for reasons explained above. Good questions though. I would be impressed at how anyone can keep a late-stage adventure path game to resemble one another.

 

[Deathwyrm]

Images!

Diagram A: Return to a ziggurat, now with bonus flames

Diagram B: Storming Egalitrix

Diagram C: NPC Retainer photoshops and stat cards for airships

Diagram D: Tussling with the pirates of Hunlow.

Diagram E: Summoning aid of the Ash Wolf for the final battle

Diagram F: Impaling the Voice of Rot to get him off the time ring

Diagram G: G is for Gun, under which Mikkel built his new empire. This is the new symbol.

Next up: The new planar alignment.

 

[Deathwyrm]

Mechanics of a New Age

The party opted to keep most of the world's the same, out of a fear that breaking too far from tradition will only make the world worse. They also agreed to fund extra research into what may have come before, as if the Ancients had done this ritual, that means there must have been a prior cosmology we are less aware of. Largely it was the addition of Caeloon and Dunkelweiss because "resilience in the face of tragedy" seems like a net good, and boozing your way to fitness was an instant keeper.

Nothing truly revolutionary as they certainly had anxieties about messing around too much with these mechanics. However, the characters were in agreement that there should be research into what the first alignment is.

What Comes Next

I've been a Forever DM since 1999, and happy to do it. We're talking about a sequel episodic campaign (tentatively named Clockwork Confidential), just so they can do some swashbuckling in the setting they helped shape. We may do some one shots like a recent Ravenloft session.

I do run a parallel underdark game. Although it takes place in the same "world", the events are completely unimpacted by the events of the surface. It's more sandbox hexcrawl, using a 5 foot by 6 foot hex map that hangs on my wall. The players may get to dive in to try that out, alongside my other group.

Overall, terrific book series. Highly compelling material and I think I learned and grew a lot from running it. Highly recommended, but for those groups that have some serious ambitions.

 

[RangerWickett]

Congratulations to you and your players!

I love the 'mini' for the Ash Wolf. And the death of the Voice of Rot sounds epic.

I also will definitely do something shorter the next time I plan adventures.

Do let me know if you give Death of the Author a try. You having a slightly different planar cosmology shouldn't ruin anything about the adventure.

 

[Len]

I love the 'mini' for the Ash Wolf.

I think the word you're looking for is "bigature."
Where did you get that thing @Deathwyrm?

 

[Deathwyrm]

I think the word you're looking for is "bigature."
Where did you get that thing @Deathwyrm?

From a dollar store on my block. Once the players between speculations mentioned figuring out how to call upon the Ash Wolf for back up, I scrambled through my various pawns and minis. It was a lucky find more than anything else.

 

[Deathwyrm]

Congratulations to you and your players!

I love the 'mini' for the Ash Wolf. And the death of the Voice of Rot sounds epic.

I also will definitely do something shorter the next time I plan adventures.

Do let me know if you give Death of the Author a try. You having a slightly different planar cosmology shouldn't ruin anything about the adventure.

I did pick up Death of the Author, but haven't given it a read yet. If we get to it, you'll be the first to hear how it turned out.