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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
 Posted - 21 Jan 2011 : 17:41:04
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I'm starting to get ramped up for the conclusion of my Pools of Darkness homage adventure. They've returned 2/4 cities to the Moonsea and are almost finished the 3rd.
Pools of Darkness takes place in 1350 and for my campaign - began 10 years after Ruins of Adventure: with the PCs having been turned (not to stone, but) mithral as Tyranthraxus plunged into the pool of radiance.
So, all said and done they'll complete their quest in 1350 and they'll be roughly 12th level. It looks as if best guess on Curse of the Azure Bonds is 1357 DR.
Under Illefarn is 1357ish.
Desserts of Desolation is also 1357ish.
Everything else out there is likely to be after the Avatar adventures.
I am not keen to pull another time jump right away, so I'll want to fill the time both with some adventures and some down times. I don't know if it's smarter to do Curse of the Azure Bonds with these characters or with different, perhaps tangently related characters.
I'm also likely to start thinking about a game I will run when everyone is there and a separate game I will run when not everyone is present.
What would be some good canon adventures to fill in 1350-1357? Maybe from Dungeon? I don't want to timeshift any existing adventures.
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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jan 2011 : 18:49:56
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So, finally had everyone in for the second part of the Hulburg portion of my Pools of Darkness adventure and at the last minute a key player had to bail. Eight inches of snow and a pregnant wife is his excuse.
Rolling with it, and already realizing that when Curse of the Azure Bonds comes up, I'm not going to be able to run a game without everyone there, I looked up the Dungeon Index.
I came up with "The Inheritance" as tonight's adventure. It's in the Waterdeep environs and looks like I can run it in the mid 1350s easy enough. I could also link into Under Illefarn, eventually, I bet. And this is all very easily a starting link to Mere of Dead Men. |
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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
Posted - 27 Jan 2011 : 16:18:09
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So, The Inheritance started off, well enough.
One guy (who could really only make this one game) made a character named Wang - a monk with a light crossbow and a stammer.
The one player I forgot to tell to make sure he was at least part-human made a Dwarven monk.
One player made a human fighter named Traek, and the fourth made an elven wizard named Lanhorn. These two, I decided, were the heirs to their half-elven uncle's inheritance.
Since it's the 1350s, I'll likely link Lanhorn to Elorfindar of Daggerford, as well.
The hiccup we ran into was the time deadline (30 days) and the distance (700 miles). This seemed excessive. That's when I remembered the map changes from 2E to 3E. I'll probably revise it for the 3E map scale.
Markustay - what do you do with that, by the way? Are your maps based on the 2E or 3E scale? |
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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
Posted - 02 Feb 2011 : 16:58:49
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So, I'm wondering if part of the solution is running "other" adventures inbetween this group's adventures. If they do something in 1351, and then take part in a different adventure with different characters - regardless of the time for that one, picking up with the other characters in 1353 might feel more plausible. Anyone got insight?
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7989 Posts |
Posted - 02 Feb 2011 : 18:11:58
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Your idea of playing Azure Bonds with a different group of characters isn't bad. An entirely new (~12th level?) party would be refreshing for everyone. You might even let "both" PC parties meet and join to complete one or the other module. Maybe you'll find your players are able to run two characters each. Or maybe not; let each player choose which character to "keep", the others Polymorph Into NPC and hang around the local bar or something, spares who can be quickly mobilized and are already familiar to both the player and the rest of the party (extra firepower, replacements, just in case, whatever).
Of course if your group maintains multiple adventuring parties there's less of a requirement to maintain continuous timelines, just keep them separated in time and/or space and you can "timejump" a few years as necessary when switching. You might even consider "coming back" to ToT to play the Avatar modules with yet another group of characters at some point, though to be honest I found them to be disappointing and I would judge them unworthy of such effort.
All I'm saying is that with multiple groups of PCs you can jump your calendar around all you like and play/accomplish more things than a single group possibly could, without wrecking your calendar. |
[/Ayrik] |
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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
Posted - 02 Feb 2011 : 21:58:44
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I'm with you on that, I'm trying to tie adventures that have a decent link chronologically with others together. Part of the problem there is the canonized shift of the timeline for the various Pools adventures.
What I don't want to do is screw the characters out of the "journey" so to speak and just decide "Oh, you were trying to become a noble, okay, well that happened in the meantime, you're Sir Lionhearted, and one day when you were on a journey, you ran into this bard..."
I already robbed them of activities between 1340 and 1350. |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7989 Posts |
Posted - 02 Feb 2011 : 23:02:44
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How can you rob from them something the historians dated incorrectly in your Realms?
Unless events impact other events they can just wait until the time is right before they happen. |
[/Ayrik] |
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Rhewtani
Senior Scribe
USA
508 Posts |
Posted - 03 Feb 2011 : 00:32:27
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I'm just referring to how Ruins of Adventure was at one time lined up as a standard 1E time frame. When it came to getting Pools of Darkness and Pools of Twilight lined up (I think for Kern to be a reasonable age), they couldn't push the novel that far forward in time, so the Tyranthraxus affair got pushed back to 1340 (and Pools of Darkness to 1350).
The downside is that there's not any other adventures around that time. Yes, I could fudge things around with the timeline, but I'd prefer to run all of the adventures when they were "supposed" to happen.
-C |
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Adventures Before the Time of Troubles
