Following on from my behind the scenes analysis of the various published adventures I’ve used in the commission of my Reavers campaign… (Also see Season One and Season Two).
Third Season
In this season I used some smaller sources from Dungeon magazines but a lot of it was homebrew. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but some items I was wanting to use fell through – like Voyages to the West, an Open Design patronage project that came in way late. But what I did use was…
- I stole the town of Hollobrae from Firey Dragon Games’ 3e module “The Silver Summoning.”
I don’t recommend the module, but as a repository for “I need a town for the PCs to raid” it worked fine and added character to the location in session 1. Daphne the unnamed one-line NPC became a recurring character. - “Tammeraut’s Fate,” from Dungeon #106, by Greg Vaughan
This formed the first part of their Azlanti tour and occupied sessions 2-4. Sea zombies beset island monastery! - The Sun Temple Colony from Lost Cities of Golarion
This is more of a capsule setting with adventure seeds, which I expanded upon to form a large section of the season, sessions 6-18 are set there. I also repurposed a couple things they didn’t come across in From Shore to Sea since it is also an Azlanti ruin. - “Rana Mor,” from Dungeon #87, by Rich Baker
- D1.5 “Revenge of the Kobold King,” 3.5e Paizo adventure
Rana Mor formed the primary dungeon on the Sun Temple Island with a heavy reskin from “Indian” to “Azlanti” in feel; it filled sessions 10-12 and then again in sessions 16-17. I added a couple touches like the Sealstone and curse and giant beetles from Revenge of the Kobold King because those were “Azlanti.” I was really having to poll sources to get authentic Azlanti stuff; I also used gear/magic/etc. from the Open Design aquatic rules companion to From Shore to Sea, Sunken Empires. - Back to the Arm-Ripper/random dungeon combo from Season One!
I got to reuse all the old content in sessions 22-25, but had to update it significantly since it was denuded of baddies last time and was much lower level last time… So wrathspawn pirates as mentioned in Dungeons of Golarion were in residence!
The Dungeon sources from this season and last were all good, I picked them specifically because they were some of the stars from the magazine’s run. I’d run Tammeraut’s Fate before but the rest were new to me. The baddie from Rana Mor got dubbed a “vampire stripper” based on her cheesecakey art. She was dangerous as a real stripper though and was a big foil/villain for the latter half of the season. A lot of the actual Sun Temple threat was sorta faceless so I wanted to have another baddie who was more personally memorable. I did a lot more picking locations/seeds out of books instead of whole cloth adventures this season.
And that’s how you run a multi-year campaign that meets very regularly for long play sessions while still having a demanding job and kid and life otherwise! Take preexisting building blocks, add the mortar to join them together, then put a nice veneer over the top. The time you save on making the blocks means you can shine on the additions.
I’ve compiled all these into a new page in the Reavers section, I’ll add to it as we go on!
Filed under: session summaries Tagged: adaptation, adventure path, adventures, campaign, development, modules, Paizo, Pathfinder, pirates, reavers, RPG, RPGs, scenarios
