Notes from my Campaign

[ridingsloth]

[[[This thread contains SPOILERS!]]]

Well, after some delays I finally started my campaign last night, and I thought I'd put a thread up where I can make notes about what worked, what didn't work, and suchlike. I am running with the Pathfinder rules, usually with a 6 person party (though this first session was only 5).

The Island at the Axis of the World
Act 1
Session 1
- The initial skill check was quite easy for my players. Even though they "wasted" several checks by searching for magical threats, checking the bridge for sabotage, and whatnot they still passed all of the checks by halfway through the 3rd turn. I thought about making the DC harder before we started because I knew that they ended up starting with some crazy bonuses but figured I'd run "vanilla" and report on my findings.

- I had some difficulty running this encounter, though this was entirely my own failing and not the encounter design's. I wasn't sure how much transparency to give them into the mechanics of the encounter (IE, should I tell them up front what the goals are or reveal them once they complete the previous one? Should I tell them how many successes total they need?). I decided to tell them what the next goal was once they had completed one, and some of my players kept trying to "jump head".

- One of my PCs wanted to play King Aodhan's daughter. Naturally I let her. This has been Fun Times so far, as her character background included a pretty deep seated distrust/dislike with Duchess Evelyn of Shale, which came into play as soon as the Duchess arrived.

- My Ricardo Monteblan impression is truly horrible.

- We had to close up the session once everybody got on-board the Coaltongue and had a chance to look around. I suspect that the bulk of the next session will be wrapping up Act I and giving them the intro to Act II (and giving them time to pick out equipment).

 

[benfromidaho]

I'm glad to hear that the skill challenges went well for you in the Pathfinder version. I'll echo RangerWickett's question, what skills were they focused on?

 

[ridingsloth]

Whoops, forgot that I hadn't actually replied!

The big thing that helped the squad with the skill challenge was that some of them got very good at certain skills very early. For instance, I have a half-orc Inquisitor who started with an intimidate of +11 thanks to various racial and class based bonuses. The rest of the characters have a pretty good mix of +3 to +7 in the various skills of perception, knowledge(local), intimidate, diplomacy, bluff and sneak.

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 1
Act I
Session 2

Last night we finished up Act I, and it went great. The combat ended up taking longer than I expected, but that's the fun of running a 6 person group with collective ADD!

- This whole encounter was a blast to run. People are running around all over, the players don't know right away what's going on or why, the saboteurs have specific goals to follow (often baffling the PCs in the short term), the clock is ticking ever closer. Great fun!

-I drew out the entire ship on my huge wet-erase grid. Having people scattered throughout the ship, moving up and down, chasing each other and whatnot was pretty awesome.

-About half of my PCs ended up staying on the main deck for the first half dozen rounds of the encounter. They suspected that the actual threat might be directed up there where the nobles were all clustered. As a result, they didn't have much to do until I thought to make them notice the smoke stacks stop smoking. Although one of them DID get to see Sokana inching her way along the outside of the ship to escape the room, which was fun.

-At first they were just confused, but there came a point in combat where Sokana summoned the fire sprites and sent them towards the magazines, and simultaneously someone finally went into the engine deck and saw the engineers sabotaging things. It was about that point that everybody at the table said "holy crap. We're going to die. We're all going to die! THIS IS GOING TO BE A VERY SHORT CAMPAIGN". They were down to 12 turns on the clock at that point and maaaaan it was sweet to watch!

-They got LUCKY. Sokana was about to throw the ruby into the furnace (which would have dropped them to 4-5 rounds on the countdown) but the blast of heat from opening the furnace took her down. Near miss!

-One of the PCs rolled a 25 on Knowledge (Engineering) so I handed him the idea for using the Brand to vent the energy. This went off without a hitch and everybody won hooray!

-My PC who is playing the daughter of King Aodhan is A) thrilled that her totally unprompted backstory had her suspicious and distrustful towards the Duchess and B) less than pleased about the possibility of a new Danoran stepmother. I am looooving this character.

Overall, this was a great session. Thanks again to the whole team!

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 1
Act II
Session 1

This was a quick one, play-wise. We met, and got a very late start. I brought the PCs to Delft's office and presented them with the "three towers" logic puzzle (carefully crafted from some scrap wood, spray-paint, washers, colored metal rings I had laying around, yarn, and some insanely powerful neodymium magnets). The players had figured out a "out of the box" solution literally before I finished describing the challenge.

Bastard clever players.

Once that was cleared away I introduced them to Lya Jierre, ran through the basic plan, and sent them packing with 1000gp burning a hole in their pockets. The rest of the night was spent with them dithering about how to spend their "hard earned" loot so that was it for us! The good news is, next week we should be able to pick up with the on-ship briefing (which is nice, as it will make sure they all remember what's going on) and then straight into some actiony sequences. Huzzah!

My character who is playing a princess has become obsessed with discovering who her "new stepmom" is going to be since the king announced his attention to remarry. Her first reaction on seeing Lya Jierre was "Oooh! I bet she's gonna be my new mom!". *sigh* secrets are useless with these people. I assume they'll have the whole metaplot figured by the end of Act III.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hehe. I should probably write up an "in case your party figures everything out early" alternative plot. Maybe involving were-krakens.

The next time a PC speculates an idea that is completely unrelated to the real plot, just glare at him and say, "Hey, I thought I told you not to read the DM's Guide to the campaign!" Then they'll suddenly start thinking it's all a giant homage to Les Miserables.

 

[TarionzCousin]

... it's all a giant homage to Les Miserables.

The truth is revealed at last!

Nice write-ups, ridingsloth. Thanks for sharing.

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 1
Act II
Session 2

This session ran pretty much like clockwork. We started aboard the Impossible on the way to the Sea Cave, and played through the end of the Sea Cave adventure, then stopped early because we are lazy.

- The PCs got into a fight almost immediately in the sea cave, completely ignoring the pillar until the fight was over.
- The shadow stalker provided a fun challenge for them. They had gotten pretty spread out when it attacked and had to figure out a way to hurt it once they figured out that swords were just going through it. They're none of them particularly experienced D&D/Pathfinder players so I actually got to use a Knowledge (Arcane) check to fill them in on the properties of incorporeal creatures. Good time! The wand of magic missile really came in handy!
- They made absolutely no effort to talk down the crazy Frenchman with a gun. Best moment of the night was when the party Alchemist threw a bomb at him... while he was carrying a barrel of lamp oil. The resulting inferno led to him jumping into the water to put himself out... and dying from the damage he took falling.
- That makes two encounter "leaders" in a row who killed themselves with environmental hazards. I've gotta quit that!

This week's session will be cancelled for Dragon*Con, so next week we'll see how they deal with the fortress! I can't wait.

PS. I haven't had to use it yet, but I'm prepared to name an NPC "Jean ValJean at any moment to throw them off the track".

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 1
Act II
Session 3

Well, I forgot to update for a bit, so a couple sessions in quick succession here. This night we infiltrated the city, opened the sea gate, and defended the tower. This ended up taking much longer than it should have, mostly because my PCs were bickering like people who bicker a great deal about how, precisely, they should go about breaking into the city.

-I realized early on that I hadn't told them anything about the "weak spot" in the city wall during the briefing. I retconned this rather than try to think of a clever way to introduce the knowledge late in the game. I this would be a pretty obvious "ENTER CITY HERE" sign, but no. Eventually, they used the passwall scrolls and went through. Took forever though.

-They tried to sneak up to the lighthouse, but failed some crucial rolls and ended up fighting their way up. They did this without any serious problems.

-Everybody at the table LOVED the tower defense style defense of the tower. Pennies were murdered in great quantity and the result was nail-bitingly close... 3/6 of the party were at 0 HP and the rest were at 1!

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 1
Act III
Session 1


We started with Captain Smith meeting the party at the lighthouse. They had NO interest in pursuing Asrabay when they saw what he did to the ship in the harbor. Instead, they focused on trying to find a way into the city ahead of the army. Eventually, they just waited until the army took the outer wall. From there, they were escorted to the barn where they bickered about how to deal with the prisoners they found there (sensing a theme from my players?). Eventually they decided to give the officer the weapons he wanted and sweet-talked him into giving them all the information he knew. I got to use my most offensive french accents, which was great fun.

Planning to enter through the sewers, they left the barn in time to see Asrabay use the CrazyMagic to get through. Without even the slightest hesitation they chased after him into the hedge maze that I had painstakingly reproduces in miniature scale on our battle mat. Naturally, the combat lasted 3 rounds. OH WELL.

As usual, the players decided to stop early, so next week we should finish off Act III and do levelling. Looking forward to reading Adventure 2!

Favorite moment: Gillie Dhu hurling a PC 15 feet through one hedge and having him land inside the second... which was on fire.

Continuing a theme: For the third time, a fairly major encounter (the fight against Ghillie Dhu) ended with the enemy dying from environmental hazards. That's "A furnace", "Shallow Water", and "Hedge Fires" respectively. This isn't meant as a complaint... more like a sign of consistently interesting combat encounters.