Witchfire Collected Edition

[Thomas Percy]

I know it's not something brand new, but I've started to DM this today, and I have some questions about this trilogy.

1. Is there anybody with used Collected edition who wants to sell it?

2. The adventure contains pieces of railroading, which is not a way of playing I'm dreaming of, so, can you tell me you had such problems with Witchfire?

3. Any links to discussions from the past?

thansk for help in advance

 

[Andre]

2. The adventure contains pieces of railroading, which is not a way of playing I'm dreaming of, so, can you tell me you had such problems with Witchfire?

Our group gave up on the adventure after the first module because of the final encounter. YMMV, but I would strongly recommend eliminating that encounter (where the PC's are encouraged to participate, but virtually everything they can do has been nerfed by the module writer). If you must keep it, make it a cut scene that occurs just as the PC's arrive, then immediately move on. We spent over an hour (real time) trying to hang on to the stupid sword before we just gave up and stopped caring.

Other than that one encounter, most of the module had acceptable levels of railroading - my group doesn't mind too much if the GM points us in certain directions, so we pretty much went with the flow up till the end. It helped that the GM running it was very good with characters (it was her first time as GM), so much of the investigative, non-combat stuff was fun. But she tried to modify the last encounter on the fly, recognizing how bad it was, and still couldn't save it.

 

[Khairn]

I know it's not something brand new, but I've started to DM this today, and I have some questions about this trilogy.

1. Is there anybody with used Collected edition who wants to sell it?

Sorry, but I'd like to keep it.

2. The adventure contains pieces of railroading, which is not a way of playing I'm dreaming of, so, can you tell me you had such problems with Witchfire?

Maybe its my players but they never had much of a problem with the railroading. Like any adventure with an ending that centers around an iconic npc/event, Witchfire does have a few places where GM skill is needed to generate a result that continues the story. I found there to be more than enough sequence neutral encounters in the adventure to allow the players a lot of leeway when it came to solving the mystery of the grave robbers. It was primarily the encounter with a certain dark haired necromancer in the sewers beneath Corvis that had a "railroad" feel to it.

3. Any links to discussions from the past?

The Privateer Press boards seem to discuss Witchfire in great detail a few times every week.

 

[Thomas Percy]

ad 1. We already bought it.

ad 2. RAILROADING, so cutscenes can be a remedy for railroading? They are not even worse evil than "forced choice"?


***

My favorite pieces:

"She will re-appear, cast hold person on the party, and lock them in the dungeon. If the PCs captured her, she'll make her escape now."

"If the PCs don't cooperate, a dozen of his men appear at this moment. They will subdue them. Helstrom will arive and apologize, so he will appeal to the players for help..."

 

[Wrathamon]

I ran the first adventure and we stopped after the final battle.

I was very upset at the railroads that happened... but I played it pretty much straight to see how it would play out.

If I were to run it again I would try to remove all of those encounters that are there.

Otherwise, it is a pretty fun adventure with some great roleplaying and investigation opportunities and hooks to expand off of.

I also felt it was VERY obvious who the protagonist was so I really downplayed the bbeg roleplaying encounters as much as possible till the big reveal and so the group thought it was either one of the other two big NPCs or a mysterious 3rd party. That was a lot of fun because i didnt have to do something cheesy likethe mod suggested.

I also made the badguy a 12th level Warlock instead of a 10th sorcerer.

I am not sure how I would play out the last scene I would need to re-tool it entirely I beleive but for advice? The key in how i handled it was to run it with a time threat... they only have seconds to make the choice! So they had the adrenaline pumping.

I would probably check out Heroes of Battle and maybe Red Hand of Doom and use the Victory point ideas from those to modify the ending.

 

[malchus]

Disclaimer - It's been a couple of years since I ran it, I don't have the books, and I've lost my notes, so I may remember things incorrectly (especially where I changed things), or mix up which bits were the module and which bits I made up.

ad 1. We already bought it.

Did you get all three, or just The Longest Night? The reason I ask is that I'm pretty sure there was some important information in the later two modules which helps a lot in running the first one.

[sblock]The one that comes to mind clearly is the powers / effects of the Witchblade, specifically what happens when PCs pick it from. From memory, you gain 4 (!) negative levels if you're not already a 10th level caster. I'm almost certain that wasn't mentioned in The Longest Night (if it was, I never found it).[/sblock]

So, while it's probably good advice to read ahead when you run any series of modules, I thought that some of the information really could have been better placed better. (I suspect this is because they hadn't worked out all the details when they plublished The Longest Night, but that doesn't help you when you're trying to run it).

ad 2. RAILROADING, so cutscenes can be a remedy for railroading? They are not even worse evil than "forced choice"?

At least if you call it a cut-scene, the players know there's no action they can take. Otherwise, they're likely to keep trying things until they get frustrated. Either way, it's pretty ordinary.

My favorite pieces:

"She will re-appear, cast hold person on the party, and lock them in the dungeon. If the PCs captured her, she'll make her escape now."

"If the PCs don't cooperate, a dozen of his men appear at this moment. They will subdue them. Helstrom will arive and apologize, so he will appeal to the players for help..."

Yeah, there are some quite obvious rail-roads in there. The problem is, I think, that the module writers were a little too keen on showing how cool their NPCs were, instead of allowing the PCs to drive the game. I decided pretty early on that I'd let the PCs do what they want, and try and work the second and third modules around what they were doing.

[sblock]For example, when I ran The Longest Night, Alexia got smacked into negative hit points by a steamjack (don't ask), and the sword got stolen by Sirac. I'd already decided that the sword had been 'put to sleep' by whatever happened when Sirac last used it at the Trial 10 years ago, so as to explain why no-one noticed gaining negative levels when they picked it up and buried it with Alexia's mother. So 'Shadow of the Exile' involved Sirac storming the Temple of Cyris to use its energy to 'awaken' it again. And so on.[/sblock]

I really liked the feel and setting of the modules, but the writers obviously have a very different play style than my own group (and, judging by many of the comments I've read, other groups as well). I ended up putting a fair amount of effort (for me) into the background stories of everyone involved, as I knew that my players would want fairly detailed answers for stuff.

[sblock]Like, you know, what the original Trial was all about[/sblock]

On the other hand, 'jacks are just cool.

 

[Darklone]

...contains pieces of railroading...?

It is one single piece of railroading. Hop on the train and watch the show or drink beer.

 

[Stormborn]

Part of it was a DM with completly different ideas of how a game should be run and little experiances, but playing through the first adventure soured me on Iron Kingdoms stuff. That final scene is terrible. For example, my Gun Mage <spoiler> fired at her as she was getting the sword. Natural 20 followed by a second 20. I was told "your gun misfired." After the game I pointed out that thre is nothing in the rules that would allow that result and was told that the module said she had to get away and that was that. <spoiler> If we had been somehow been distracted or engaged and were later told what happened I would have been fine with it as a Plot Point. But having the characters present and allowed to take actions but be totally ineffective no matter what they did was frustrating. I dont need to be frustrated as a player to have my PC be frustrated that the BBEG got away.

We played throught he second one also, and I thought it was better but also somewhat aggrevating, but that may simply be my recollection of being generally unhappy with it at that point more than anything in the game itself.

Overall I have found that I love the IK setting, and find the execution of lots of the mechanics to be lacking.

Also, the first book came out long before the IK setting books came out and thus has stuff like "There is an opening the size of a halfling" IIRC - you will want to be on the lookout for that.

 

[Andre]

2. RAILROADING, so cutscenes can be a remedy for railroading? They are not even worse evil than "forced choice"?

The key is to give the pc's something they can affect, and have anything they can't affect occur off-stage or as a cutscene.

I dont need to be frustrated as a player to have my PC be frustrated that the BBEG got away.

That pretty much sums up the problem with the modules, as written. The writers didn't focus on ensuring that the players had fun, regardless of how the story progressed.

 

[senodam]

The first two modules have beautiful artwork, and some pretty nifty ideas. The Steamjacks, Skorne, and the image of PCs on a riverboat cruise through Gatorman infested swamps all struck as being wonderful.

However, the actual meat of the modules was such a mess of railroading, UberNPCs and arbitrary author Fiat that I never bought the third, and was forever put off the IK setting. It's pretty much the diametric opposite of what I consider to be good gaming.

The authors should be ashamed of themselves.