Pathfinder 1E Need tips & info about Vault of Larin Karr and Lost City of Barakus

[aboyd]

I am about to DM the module, The Vault of Larin Karr. However, I am also at the same time, in the same game, running The Lost City of Barakus but without the lost city of Barakus. In other words, all the sandbox encounters and characters and towns from LCoB will be dropped into The Vault of Larin Karr. It basically makes for an even bigger, sandbox-style game, with more cities.

My issue is that I get hazy on what the beginnings of these modules should look like, and they are old enough (from D&D 3.5) that they seem to have missed out on the "actual play podcast" fad, so I cannot find any examples of what the first few sessions might look like. I think it's the open-ended gameplay that gets me: I don't know what the best, specific approach is, since it's possible for the game to start differently for each group. I'd love to hear from you about how your game went. When you played or DM'd these modules, what did the first few session look like? What was the opening like, what were your first encounters, which NPCs did you talk to first? And if you have advice for how to run these modules, please, let me know. Thanks!

Note that although these modules are D&D 3.0 or 3.5, I will be running them in a Pathfinder game.

 

[S'mon]

I remember I started VoLK with the PCs arriving in town just as the hobgoblins from the fort raided the market, which got things started with a bang!

 

[Thotas]

Wow, it's been a while since I ran VoLK, I honestly do not remember at all what I did to get it kicked off. I know they were talking to the local lord pretty early on, and he did toss'em a few plot hooks over time. Yeah, boringly standard procedure, I know. We did have fun with the adventure itself, though.