Stolen Fate Masterpost

Hey folks!

I finally finished running Stolen Fate, so I figured I should compile all those posts into one place! I'll also briefly comment on each chapter that I didn't remix or change, and include links to other resources I found on the internet.

Running Stolen Fate

Book 1: The Choosing

• Chapter 1 got the most extensive remix. As written, it's kind of a mess, and by far the worst example of the Influence subsystem that I've seen. So, we remade it into a more straightforward 3-clues Mystery!
• Chapter 2 I ran more or less as is. If I remember correctly, it's a handful of random portal-hopping quests, which were just too disparate for me to meaningfully change. We ran these in a quest-of-the-week style, where we just did whichever one was next whenever we had time to play! Not the most engaging, but sometimes that's okay.
• Chapter 3 was, I believe, the Storval Stairs. I didn't make any formal changes, but I did run it like a theatre of operations and really played up the different factions like I did in Abomination Vaults. This led to some tense infiltration sequences (just using skill checks, not the subsystem), with our heroes sneaking in through the upper windows, as well as some really interesting negotiations between the various factions!

Book 2: The Destiny War

• Chapter 1 I mostly ran as is - the timeline is a bit generous, so I could see condensing it a bit, but I think the overall structure of this chapter works fine. There are lots of things to do, if I remember correctly they get worse over time, and succeeding quickly is meaningful. This chapter obviously works better if the players are invested in the Harrowed Court!
• Chapter 2: Negotiations in Kho is really cool conceptually. The main changes that I made were to keep really strict track of time, to use lots of random encounter checks (which led to some really interesting tying into the existing locations), and change the Influence encounters to Negotiations. This worked really well, but you probably don't need to do this if you like Influence. This chapter was great overall, there were a ton of opportunities for the PCs to use one faction against another or play broader politics.
• Chapter 3: The Harrowed Realm got a more extensive rework. I basically added an overland travel / pointcrawl system that was relatively streamlined while still making time and supplies (or spell choice) matter. It worked great! Really helped bring the drudgery of the corrupted realm to life. I changed several encounters as well, including making the talk with Sonnorae a negotiation, but in general I'd just make sure to play up the RP aspect! Even if you don't use this remix, I include the map from the original module that makes running this a lot easier.
• Chapter 4 I also mostly ran as is, since it's basically a handful of fights and then a big dungeon crawl, but as per usual played the opposition as fairly active rather than just waiting around. Having all their old allies turn up to fight with them was awesome, but I wish I'd have integrated factions from Book 1 as well. Make sure to set up for the PCs that they'll need military support early in Book 2 so that it's clear what they're asking for in negotiations!

Book 3: Worst of All Possible Worlds

• Chapter 1 I again ran as written for the most part, since it's another grab bag of quests. I made the PCs figure out the logistics of travel, which led to some really cool moments! They chartered a ship to Tian Xia and fought a sea monster, then joined the airship crew from Howl of the Wild to get to Arcadia, flew around as clouds, and had a great time! I also tried to smooth out some of the transitions to the card locations by having the PCs basically drawn to them via the map. I like this chapter as a chance for the PCs to stretch their legs, show off their cool abilities and connections (especially relationships in Absalom or similar), and feel baddass! I mostly like the betrayal, though it might be neat to find a way to foreshadow it (I did not).
• Chapter 2 is very cool, but I don't like the setup of "everything fights to the death," especially given the fairy tale vibes. I wrote up a new intro for the Nornhounds to read out (a sonnet, because I'm a theatre girl at heart), added some explicit ways for the PCs to avoid combat (they did so mostly pretty successfully, other than the troll), and revised the negotiations with the Norns a bit.
• Chapter 3 I again ran mostly as written! Remember, while most Paizo dungeons assume that the PCs will clear all the fights, in this one they have a more specific goal: reach and travel through the teleportation circle! I think this chapter is best run as an infiltration, but follow the PCs lead in terms of how to approach it.

General Advice

There are two things that I don't think I did a good enough job with in my campaign.

Recurring NPCs

All APs can have a problem with introducing new quest-giving NPCs each book, or with always travelling to new locations and leaving old NPCs behind, but none more than this one. Part of that is inevitable - you're travelling basically everywhere on Golarion! - but I wish I had put more of a focus on connecting those missions and making the relationships matter. Even if it was just "this NPC shows up randomly later and gives helpful advice" or something, it would've been neat for those smaller sidequests to matter more. Part of this was because this was a one-on-one campaign, and so the prep to play time ration was smaller, but I think there's a lot more to do here.

In particular, there are three really important NPCs that need more focus.

• All Seeing Hajeck: Her death is the spark for the whole campaign, so make sure she remains a constant presence! If possible, PCs should have a prior relationship to her - either family, friends, or some sort of mentor thing - before the campaign even starts. Then, during the investigation, the party should learn more about her and how cool she was. Once she shows up in the Harrow Court, she should be active and helpful for the rest of the campaign, acting as a guardian and adviser for the party.
• Sonnorae: Not only is she one of the primary antagonists of Book 2, but also a big part of the big bad of Book 3's backstory! The party should ideally first learn about Sonnorae early in the campaign as a legendary Harrower of immense power, so that when they reach the Harrowed Realm it's a huge feeling of "hell yeah!" followed by "oh NO" when they realize what she's been turned into. Maybe even give the party a book written by her to help them learn about harrow stuff, so that they interact with her name at least fairly frequently.
• Zellara: Along similar lines, she just kinda... shows up in Book 3, despite being an ostensibly pretty important NPC in the lore! I think she showed up in a 1e AP? She should also be foreshadowed sooner, but also I think it'd be neat if her ghost tried to break through a couple times earlier in the campaign but failed! That way the PCs saw her, knew she was trying to help them, and might even be able to research her or find a way to pull her the rest of the way through, allowing her to act as a guide much sooner (she'd still encourage them to find the rest of the cards before tackling Raven, in that case).

Stolen Fate jumps around a lot. By its nature, the PCs are portal-hopping all over Golarion, and while that's really cool, it's also really destabilizing! The more things, people, and places you can find to ground the players, the better.

The Harrow Court

Along similar lines, the Harrow Court is really hard to run as written! There's a vague description given, but it doesn't do much to help the GM bring it to life. As a result, given how little time I had to spend on this game, I just... didn't bother. That's bad! Do better than me.

I think it could be really fun to write up a little script for "a day in the life of the Harrow Court" that changes as the PCs acquire more cards! Ideally with little lines of dialogue or descriptions of actions that never change. You would want to repeat this relatively often early on, but then slow down on that a fair bit and only repeat it every so often or when there were major changes. You might even have sub-scripts for different areas, maybe one for the Harrowheart Keep, one for the surrounding village, etc.

More broadly, though, the Harrow Court is... weird. It seems intentionally designed to be weirdly alien. This is what the book says:

These people and creatures are created by the Deck of Desitny, but they're not truly "alive." Instead, they're more akin to simulacra. They possess full memories, relationships, and interests that seem legitimate - these citizens of the Harrow Court believe that they have always lived here and have memories that include lineages and traditions, but they're not actual  living creatures... All of these simulacra, be they citizens or wild animals, appear to live and even die as normal, but with each new sunrise in the Harrow Court, dead bodies fade and those simulacra wake as normal with no memory of their previous death as they continue to play out their constant but repeating role within the demiplane. (The Choosing page 71) 

I don't know how I feel about all this! I don't mind the fake memories/lineages per say, but I think the clear emphasis on them not being real people makes it really hard for the players to get invested in them. My party basically stopped bothering after a bit because the "constant but repeating role" got, well, repetitive.

If I were to run it again, I'd change things up a bit. The line that I cut out of the above paragraph (the "...") is "In a way, the people of the Harrow Court offer the PCs a preview of what reality might be like if the Harrowed Three were to succeed in their goal - a world where everyone believes they have free will but are little more than props on a stage." Except... Book 3 is very clear that the Harrowed Three cannot succeed. At least, not like that. The "Beyond the Campaign" section says the following:

Ultimately, Golarion's final fate cannot be orchestrated by mortal hands. Even with the power of the Deck of Destiny, the world's destiny will remain uncertain. A harrow reading is simply an interpretation of possible events, and although the Deck of Destiny's power is immense, it's not enough to unfailingly assure the events seen within the reading. What the reading can do, however, is provide insight. (Worst of All Possible Worlds pages 66-67)

So the "simulacra" are not representations of what the deck will do, but rather of what the Harrowing Three think the deck will do. ... why? Both from a thematic and worldbuilding perspective, wouldn't it make more sense for them to act more in accordance with how the Deck of Destiny will actually function? Wouldn't it be more interesting if they started as those sorts of simulacra, with false memories and repetitive tasks, but changed and grew over time with the PCs influence? What if, if they died, they did hold that memory somewhere, but were repressing it? What if their relationships grew and changed and developed over time? Became self-aware, began to question their own existence, and made the PCs question what they think they know about the nature of existence?

I know why Paizo didn't do this, and it's because to do it right, you'd need to flesh out the personalities of at least a handful of the epitomes, and ideally give at least some RP guidelines for all of them. That's a ton of work and page space. If anyone is looking for a way to help new GMs better run this module, I think those sorts of writeups would be a really good way to do it! Hell, even pay-gate it if you need to, I'm sure folks will find it useful.

When the PCs finally meet with the norns, I think it would be really powerful for them to be able to say "I don't think the Deck of Destiny works like you think, because the so-called "simulacra" changed, they grew, they exerted free will even while not believing they had any." In order to make this work, if I were to do this again, I would start out with fairly consistent patterns - the dwarf always greets the PCs the same way, the trumpeter blows the same tune as they pass, and so on - and then repeat those consistently enough that the PCs inevitably start to question it. When they do, they realize they're talking to real people. They might not be alive, but what's the difference? If you listen to Worlds Beyond Number, think the shopkeeper magical constructs that remember the PCs, have their own thoughts and beliefs (that differ even though most of them are from the same spell and look the same). When the PCs look for depth, it's there, even though it shouldn't be, and if the deck does what it says, it should work like the book says it will.

I think that would be a whole lot more compelling. It would take some more work, which I unfortunately didn't have time to do, but if anyone else puts in that work, please share whatever you can with the community so that other folks can do better than I did!

Stolen Fate Resources

... I am not actually aware of any, outside of my posts! Please let me know in the comments if there are some I am missing, or if more get created after I write this post.

I guess there are a few products that are tangentially related, though not directly about Stolen Fate:

• The Harrowing Pathfinder 1e module that takes place in the same location as SoT Book 2 Chapter 3, and has some other thematic throughlines.
• The physical Harrow Deck and the Foundry version - the built in foundry library makes it really easy to do in-character Harrow readings. I am not a tarot girlie, but even I could make things really convincing for my players and even use it in my RHoD game too!

I think that's all! I might go back and update this post with more resources or similar, but I think I am officially done with Stolen Fate. It was a good time - can't wait for what's next!