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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5463487" data-attributes="member: 2">Post 1084, in the Spoiler Block.A few notes:- The death field outside the tower doesn't actually kill people per se. It does slow them after a round and do ongoing damage; enough to wipe out normal people, but not heroes, and enough to make fighting the industrial automaton a very dicey proposition indeed. - Sagiro didn't mention the level with the teleportation circle and three summoning circles. One of the circles was sundered and ruined; the other two were occupied by demons. The group conferred to find a way to dismiss the demons that wouldn't allow them to easily gain revenge for their thousand-year entrapment. It hearkened back to the days of 1e's very carefully worded wishes. - The arcane library here is huge but very old and fragile. The group can get a +4 item check when researching arcana or history, but only while in the tower and only if they take more than an hour to do so. - Similarly, anyone who casts arcane rituals can select three rituals of their level or below to learn for free every time they go up a level. I've been handling ritual book treasure this way instead of selecting the rituals for myself, because it pushes the responsibility off on the player (if they don't pick three, they simply chose not to learn them) and saves me time. - Hopefully one of those rituals will be Linked Portal. you know, what with the teleportation circle and all and the tricky front door entrance! - I generally used the recent rules in Dragon for building PC strongholds. Attached is the tower's layout in PDF format, created in Visio. Took about 45 minutes and was fun to do. The group hasn't explored the bottom two levels yet. - Sitting in the throne caused Strontium's head-sigil to glow slightly; putting on Inquisitor Zacris's wizard's hat caused it to briefly blaze. Once this occurred, he could stop the tower from spinning at will. - We had a guest player and I used him to pass on rumors about what's been happening in the city, such as the emperor outlawing thunder and the recent declaration that fish were allies, making the eating or possession of a fish to be a capital offense. - And hey, how about that for a convenient view-point to witness what happened when the emperor died? Having ancient buildings crumble - buildings which were built with the empire's power literally worked into their foundation stones - is probably a bad thing. I didn't expect the PCs to be in Capria when it happened, but things worked out really nicely.So now we transition over to paragon tier. The last two years have gone really quickly. How have I done?- We have ongoing adventure hooks for everyone's backstory except for Gilran, and I hope to remedy that soon. some of these came out later than ideal, but I think the pacing has been pretty good overall. - The next tier's foundation is solidly in place. I'm pleased about how the adventures are unfolding. - I have been a woeful slacker about world-building. I need to make maps and more maps, and write history. - I need to tweak the combat/roleplaying/skill challenge/puzzle balance a little away from combat and more towards the other things. I think the campaign plot/mystery balance is pretty good. - The party has about the right amount of treasure for their level, perhaps a little low. That's easily adjusted. They also have some treasure that is more powerful than they realize. My magic items haven't been quite as flavorful overall as I would like. (I'm doing better with this in the Merchant Prince game.) - I have come to the conclusion that alchemy sucks as written, which is a shame when two players were really interested in it. I'll be dramatically increasing the efficacy of alchemical attacks as a result. House rules, ho! - We're pretty good, but there's more distraction at the table than I'd ideally like. I'm considering re-establishing the Pig as a result. - Games are never long enough, but we're all busy adults, and my players are fantastic with their attendance. We play every two weeks like clockwork. It works out fine. - I couldn't run the game without the Compendium, at least not for magic items and monsters. It's a tremendous help for fast prep. - As a result, running two campaigns simultaneously isn't a hardship or burden in the least. - I would benefit vastly by tracking all the NPCs in the campaign and listing them on the sadly underused wiki. (See: lament about world-building, above.) - Having copies of every character sheet up on that wiki is really, really useful. - The player-free brainstorming thread I created, where people thought up cool unique marvels for Capria, was a huge help in envisioning the city and helping make it come alive.Hmm, I think that's it for the moment! I welcome commentary or thoughts. We'll start the Paragon tier thread in a few weeks; I'll leave this one open for comments.</blockquote>

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