How Not To Kill Your Players In The Fall Of Plaguestone

The Fall of Plaguestone cover art

Hey folks!

I freakin love The Fall of Plaguestone! It's a beautiful adventure with complex themes about loss, betrayal, and societal guilt, and I wish more people got to experience that! Unfortunately, it is plagued (heh) by overly tough encounters that have lead to many TPKs. One person I talked to said their three groups had all TPKd, once to the wolves, once to the chapter 1 boss, and once to the chapter 2 boss! While I never had a TPK in the two times I ran it, I did lose 2 players the first time through, and there were definitely a few other close calls.

Today, we'll be going through my advice for toning down some of the rougher aspects of the module and bringing out what's really beautiful!

RHoD Chapter 5B - Avernus Rising

 RHoD Masterpost

Tiamat Rising

In the previous section, we finished the conversion by going through Chapter 5 as written! Today, we'll be going through my re-write. This will work better for anyone looking to jump into an 11-20 Paizo adventure path (though they'll be a little ahead on treasure), but the main reason I'm doing this is so that it will fit in better with my plan for after RHoD - Descent Into Avernus (or rather, the Alexandrian Remix).

In this version, the PCs will be imbued with a surge of "divine" energy (part of a devil's plot in my version) that allows them to full rest and level up instantaneously. Then, after a quick teleportation, they'll have to quickly navigate the (literally) hellish Fane of Tiamat and stop the ritual before it fully melds with Avernus itself!

Here's the final document - let's jump in!

RHoD Addendum - The History of Eslir Vale

RHoD Masterpost 

Hey folks!

Elsir Vale's history is scattered throughout the book. On top of that, I'm grafting on several other modules! So today, we'll be going through both the original history as represented in the module as well as integrating the Goblinblood Wars and the Hellriders into that timeline. Originally this was going to be a joint history and politics article (looking at Weimar Germany as a way to better understand the Hand), but I'm not a historian, so that meant it was never going to be published! I might wrap up some of that into an article on Themes later on, but for now we'll just be going through fictional history, not real world history.

The Misty Mountains

Let's jump in!

RHoD Chapter 5A - The Fane of Tiamat

RHoD Masterpost

Azarr Kul

Hey folks! This is going to be another two-parter, though part 2 might not come for a while. Part A will be a strict conversion of Chapter 5 (The Fane of Tiamat), so if you're running the campaign by the book, this is all you'll need! In Part B, I'll be taking a stab at my own take, which changes the Fane from a rambling dungeon crawl into an epic, fast-paced race! 

Here's the full document.

Let's jump in!

Stolen Fate Book 2: The Harrowed Realm

from the Wiki

The Harrowed Realm is pretty cool! Especially if you've played the 1st edition module that not only inspired this chapter but the whole adventure path. Unfortunately, outside of the scripted locations, there's not a ton of detail on how to run it. It's not nearly as bad as Katapesh in Chapter 1, or any of the popcorn locations in Book 1, that really feel like you need 7 other books and hours of research just to set the scene, but I think this scenario would benefit from a little more connection between those disparate threads.

And there are hints in the module that it originally was going to be! Page 49 says "three events will take place as they travel. The first of these, Event 5, takes place automatically the first time they arrive in the Harrowed Realm." James Jacobs confirmed that these events were incorporated into the set adventure locations, and this line was meant to be cut but was missed. On the upside, this probably made those locations cooler! On the downside, it makes the Harrowed Realm feel more static in a way I don't love.

So, today we'll be going through this chapter and the 1e module to better orient ourselves in the Harrowed Realm and help breathe some life into it!

RHoD Addendum - Sandbox Play

RHoD Masterpost 

Hey folks!

So far in this remix, we've assumed you are using the Fast Advancement variant rule, where you only require 800 XP per level. I think stretching the established encounters all the way to 1,000 XP would be a bit of a grind, and this variant fits the core progression of the campaign better.

It also leave us a lot of room to play! We can add 200 XP worth of material every level - either one major side quest or a couple of smaller challenges - without bloating the adventure too much. Even better, if we seed tons of side quests, we can give the players a choice about what they pursue! This both puts the players more in the drivers seat in terms of what they want to pursue and allows us some leeway if they do end up skipping content (we don't want them to be a whole level weaker just because they didn't head to Rhest, after all).

I'll be updating this post as I add more side quests and sandbox elements rather than making new posts, though I'll be linking separate documents for each region to help keep things contained. 

Elsir Vale Map, by Antariuk

RHoD Settlement - Brindol

RHoD Masterpost

Lord Jarmaath

Hey folks! Today we'll be going through the city of Brindol - full document here! I'm probably going to add to this later on, my players are actually starting RHoD now so I'm feeling the time pressure!

The Basics

Brindol is a big city - Level 8! It has built in factions, several places to learn rumors about them, and enough shops to keep most parties occupied for a while.

SoT Book 4 Chapter 2 - Raising the Sun

Hey folks!

Holy Symbol of Dajermube

I ended up using Book 4 of Strength of Thousands: Secrets of the Temple City as an example of poor module layout, and I felt pretty bad (especially since the writer of the book commented below), because it's honestly a great module overall! I didn't love the scenario structure of Chapter 1, but that's not the module's fault per say, it's the fault of the Influence system and tight deadlines that don't permit playtesting. Chapter 1 is also a really interesting and nuanced take on a complex culture, and I appreciate having less combat-focused scenarios! I did make some light changes to Chapter 3, but mostly because I like the Aspis Consortium as antagonists - I think you can probably run it as is and it'd be fine!

So, today we're going to talk about the other chapter in the book, which I really love, despite it being the main focus of my game rant. Obviously, spoilers!

Strength of Thousands Masterpost

Strength of Thousands is an incredible adventure past. We've had an absolute blast so far, and I'm excited for what's to come! But in addition to my full remixes, I've made a number of smaller changes throughout that I want to capture. I am also looking ahead to Book 5, where I might make some substantive changes, so I figured it makes sense to put everything in one place!

First off, here are some Collected Links about Strength of Thousands from across the internet. I'll specifically shout out SoT Expanded and this Koride re-write as very worth reading before running your game. The rest of this post will be a mix of breakdowns of how I handled things and links to my more in-depth writeups.

Note that we used Milestone levelling, so they levelled up when they moved on to the next chapter! This meant that players aren't screwed for skipping content through clever or judicious play, and if things balloon into larger scenarios they won't be over-levelled. I usually like XP a lot, but I think it worked well at 1. not making them exhaustively do everything and 2. keeping things balanced, as they were always the expected level.

RHoD Chapter 4 - Enemy at the Gates!

RHoD Masterpost

Hey folks!

Today we'll be going through Chapter 4: Enemy at the Gates! Here's the full document. We'll start with a straightforward conversion of encounters, discuss the crisis points that will appear throughout the battle (based on "Streamlining the Battle" in the Red Handbook of Doom).

We also changed the final victory calculation last time (Remixing Victory Points so that victory is not assured, and the different between different tiers of victory is important) - to me, this makes not only the PCs decisions throughout the campaign matter, but also their decisions specifically in this battle, because a given challenge might be the difference between a Costly Victory and a Major one! You don't need to use this variant to use the rest of this post, however - it stands on its own!