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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2747644" data-attributes="member: 19675">Counterintuitively, the answer is no...you CAN run Shackled City in an open campaign.  The trick is you bait the hook to SC with good bait.If your players go for it, you're in business.  If not, wait a while, and offer the hook again (dressed a little differently).My current GM is running RttToEE in his open ended campaign...we took the bait, so we're in it.  However, if we veer from the plot line, so be it- the temple will be waiting.The real work of dropping in a pre-written adventure into an open ended campaign is what happens to the pre-written NPCs while the PCs are elsewhere, "off -track."Most GM's have the pre-written stuff "freeze," so if the party goes back, they pick up more or less right where they left off.  Obviously, bodies would get cleared away and reinforcements would arrive and be in place when the PCs returned.The superior, and trickier, technique is to have the forces the PCs set in motion with their action stay in motion.  This technique involves the GM thinking "What would the BBEG do?" and having those actions take place away from the action.Example:  PCs get 1/3rd of the way through "Storebought Adventure A1" from Generic Press, then retreat to lick their wounds.  While recuperating, they get distracted by an NPC's sob story, and wind up saving the NPC's farm...then return to finish off A1.  In the meantime, though, the BBEG of A1 has not been idle.  He's not ony reinforced his position, but accellerated his other plans.  Instead of waiting months for the Great Harvest Festival to kidnap the queen, he instead sends forth a lone assassin to poison her within the next few days.Or some such.</blockquote>

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