Moderate In Vices With The Usual Abuses
I haven't killed any PCs since my last post! Yai!
After the troll tragedy, the final encounter of book 2 had me worried. I was afraid I was going to TPK, especially as we were one player short. (I loathe running when not everyone can attend, but we've been going so slowly and had a few scheduling setbacks and... gah.) The huge owlbear with attacks that were only going to miss on a 1 on most of the party and not insignificant damage certainly had the capacity to kill a PC or two. They were, however, saved by the stupid.
At INT 2, the owlbear had no tactical sense. It even specifically says in the text that he'll attack whoever did the most damage to him last round because he's enraged. Between no one managing to do the most damage to him for two rounds in a row and him charging into combat in a position that made it harder on him, he went down far too easily. It was fairly anticlimactic. While there was some frustration on my part--we want the players to be challenged, yes?--in the end I'm okay with the outcome. I trampled them pretty badly in the troll hole; they may have needed the easy kill for morale.
Of course, most of the rest of the owlbear lair was a cakewalk, with one trap and a fairly difficult roleplaying moment breaking the tedium. The trap came closer to killing a PC than anything else in the place. The baby owlbear made me feel bad. I have a player who is a fanatical animal lover, who makes characters who are invariably as wild about fluffies as she is. I actually looked forward to the scene, because I really expected her to fight hard for that hatchling and win. However, the PC took a more practical path. The result was very sad, but I applaud her roleplaying.
The shambling mound did not make an appearance in the owlbear lair. I moved him to a completely different hex. (And I cannot now remember if my players remembered to gather sap for their side quest. I think not.) In his place, I put in a fungus leshy. This was partly to amuse one of my players, but mostly to amuse me. Mushrooms have become a fairly comedic watchword, much to one player's dismay. (If you aren't following, then you probably missed the bit where the first baron died as a result of kicking mushrooms. Don't worry too much about it.) I even made certain when describing the scene to throw in some black rattlecaps.
Following the victory over the mad owlbear, the party retired to their city to do a couple years' development and downtime. We spent one entire session doing 12 Kingdom Building turns before moving the process online. That seems to be working out well for the moment.
I have a few thoughts, observations, and complaints.
First, a complaint. No, two. The book tells the GM that it's best to give the PCs "a chance to build up their town" before the owlbear attack. This is presumably so that the destruction the creature wreaks on the town will be felt that much more keenly. This? Is a dick move. Here's an event that is going to destroy some of what you've paid blood and tears to get. Oh, and by the way, there is nothing you can do to stop it, because you will be out of town when it hits. While I did spring it on them like that, I also reduced the mechanical impact of the attack a bit (I destroyed one square of houses and did 2 BP damage to their castle). I made Taztlford, which they had not yet claimed, take the brunt of the damage. It still had an emotional impact on the PCs, I think, but not to the point of angry frustration.
But wait, you might be saying if you've read the adventure, how the hell did the owlbear get over to Tatzlford without alerting the capital by the Tuskwater? Well, you found complaint number two: I had to move the owlbear lair. Several times. It's all well and good to make sure the party has plenty of time to explore and build before triggering the owlbear, but that also means that they are exploring. Their chance of not running into the lair before the dramatic attack that's supposed to close out this chapter gets slimmer with every hex. It seemed poorly thought out to me. I finally ended up dropping the lair into a western hex that they had skipped, next to Tiressia. That put it in a perfect position to hit Tatzlford first and then head toward the capital, giving a runner time to come chasing after them to notify them of the emergency. They still missed the attack, but they arrived just hours behind it and chased it down in short order.
The next is less a complaint, but it is a problem with the side quests. While I've tried to space the distribution of the cover quests out a bit, differing both time and method, the result seems fairly consistent: the players pretty much forget about them. Now, they can be forgiven for forgetting to gather troll blood. They had a pretty traumatic experience there. And there have been several that they completed as they should. I suppose that they don't need to complete all the quests, but I worry about treasure. Many of them are already pretty far behind the curve, I think. If they skip treasure opportunities, that sets them back further. Of course, I can add random treasure, up creature hoards, etc. But my issue is that the cover quests are awkward to incorporate. If I have NPCs walk up to them every time they're in town--"Hey, did you know there's a hodag living near here? Nobody believes me but I lost my magic spear when I fought it."--it just feels like a video game to me. I can see the computer-generated character who delivers that line, envision the text popping up at the bottom of the screen. If, however, I deliver the quests through rumors, then I run the risk of the players losing track of them. I tried to encourage them to share their rumors on Obsidian Portal so that everyone would have access to them, but only one person did, if I recall correctly. I'm not entirely sure how to fix this, but I don't really blame Paizo for the problem. No worries, though. Once we've gotten into book three, I have a definite complaint about the side quests to share with you.
My last issue for this log is the Kingdom Building rules. I know, I know--everybody complains about them, including the people who wrote them. I won't go on too much about it. It seems to me that the rules start to be pointless fairly quickly. My players made a small error in judgement when they built the castle first, but they have long since recovered from that. Now, at nearly 30 hexes, the Kingdom Turns are mostly rote. To be fair, I have players who seem to be enjoying this aspect of the game still, some of them immensely, which I understand; I've spent more hours than I care to admit building houses on Sims. But there is little to concern the players anymore. (One of my players will find something to concern him at all times, regardless of actual threat.) They have to roll very poorly indeed to fail any of their basic rolls at this point. And what's more, even if they do, it doesn't matter. Case in point, they rolled a one on their opening Stability roll. I think they were actually worried for a moment. But the rules as written say you have to fail by 5 to increase Unrest. They rolled a 1, but they only needed a 4. They can't gain Unrest that way right now. Now, for argument's sake, let's say they gain that paltry 2 Unrest from a failed Stability check. They have a Headsman variant to reduce that by 1 before they even get out of the Upkeep phase. Build one house and you're all better. It is probably technically possible for an Event to send them into an Unrest spiral, but it relies on multiple single digit rolls plus a poorly handled treasury. At present, I think they could buy their way out of up to 6 or 7 Unrest without a real problem other than setting their development plans back for a turn. If they fail an Economy check, they simply don't make money. Loyalty checks don't come up very often and, again, don't increase Unrest by more than 6. I think that they would have to intentionally drive the kingdom into the ground to topple it. I am probably going to introduce a flub rule, since the Kingdom stats are supposed to be something like saves anyway. I still don't think it will hurt them, but it may at least keep the fear of the nat 1!
Okay, I might have lied in regards to not going on about the rules. Mea culpa.
On an amusing note, the kingdom has now grown big enough that I had my first problem with the sheer number of NPCs. I have been allowing the players to make 4 Diplomacy rolls per Kingdom Turn to influence individual NPCs to represent that the rulers of the realm are not sitting around downing whiskey between monster battles, but are in fact building a nation with politics and connections. But for the first time, when one of my players listed his 4 NPCs, I looked at number 2 and said, "Who?" Heh. I did recognize the name, knew I had given it to him, but I could not for the life of me remember who it was. Thank gods for email trails!
Until next session...
After the troll tragedy, the final encounter of book 2 had me worried. I was afraid I was going to TPK, especially as we were one player short. (I loathe running when not everyone can attend, but we've been going so slowly and had a few scheduling setbacks and... gah.) The huge owlbear with attacks that were only going to miss on a 1 on most of the party and not insignificant damage certainly had the capacity to kill a PC or two. They were, however, saved by the stupid.
At INT 2, the owlbear had no tactical sense. It even specifically says in the text that he'll attack whoever did the most damage to him last round because he's enraged. Between no one managing to do the most damage to him for two rounds in a row and him charging into combat in a position that made it harder on him, he went down far too easily. It was fairly anticlimactic. While there was some frustration on my part--we want the players to be challenged, yes?--in the end I'm okay with the outcome. I trampled them pretty badly in the troll hole; they may have needed the easy kill for morale.
Of course, most of the rest of the owlbear lair was a cakewalk, with one trap and a fairly difficult roleplaying moment breaking the tedium. The trap came closer to killing a PC than anything else in the place. The baby owlbear made me feel bad. I have a player who is a fanatical animal lover, who makes characters who are invariably as wild about fluffies as she is. I actually looked forward to the scene, because I really expected her to fight hard for that hatchling and win. However, the PC took a more practical path. The result was very sad, but I applaud her roleplaying.
The shambling mound did not make an appearance in the owlbear lair. I moved him to a completely different hex. (And I cannot now remember if my players remembered to gather sap for their side quest. I think not.) In his place, I put in a fungus leshy. This was partly to amuse one of my players, but mostly to amuse me. Mushrooms have become a fairly comedic watchword, much to one player's dismay. (If you aren't following, then you probably missed the bit where the first baron died as a result of kicking mushrooms. Don't worry too much about it.) I even made certain when describing the scene to throw in some black rattlecaps.
Following the victory over the mad owlbear, the party retired to their city to do a couple years' development and downtime. We spent one entire session doing 12 Kingdom Building turns before moving the process online. That seems to be working out well for the moment.
I have a few thoughts, observations, and complaints.
First, a complaint. No, two. The book tells the GM that it's best to give the PCs "a chance to build up their town" before the owlbear attack. This is presumably so that the destruction the creature wreaks on the town will be felt that much more keenly. This? Is a dick move. Here's an event that is going to destroy some of what you've paid blood and tears to get. Oh, and by the way, there is nothing you can do to stop it, because you will be out of town when it hits. While I did spring it on them like that, I also reduced the mechanical impact of the attack a bit (I destroyed one square of houses and did 2 BP damage to their castle). I made Taztlford, which they had not yet claimed, take the brunt of the damage. It still had an emotional impact on the PCs, I think, but not to the point of angry frustration.
But wait, you might be saying if you've read the adventure, how the hell did the owlbear get over to Tatzlford without alerting the capital by the Tuskwater? Well, you found complaint number two: I had to move the owlbear lair. Several times. It's all well and good to make sure the party has plenty of time to explore and build before triggering the owlbear, but that also means that they are exploring. Their chance of not running into the lair before the dramatic attack that's supposed to close out this chapter gets slimmer with every hex. It seemed poorly thought out to me. I finally ended up dropping the lair into a western hex that they had skipped, next to Tiressia. That put it in a perfect position to hit Tatzlford first and then head toward the capital, giving a runner time to come chasing after them to notify them of the emergency. They still missed the attack, but they arrived just hours behind it and chased it down in short order.
The next is less a complaint, but it is a problem with the side quests. While I've tried to space the distribution of the cover quests out a bit, differing both time and method, the result seems fairly consistent: the players pretty much forget about them. Now, they can be forgiven for forgetting to gather troll blood. They had a pretty traumatic experience there. And there have been several that they completed as they should. I suppose that they don't need to complete all the quests, but I worry about treasure. Many of them are already pretty far behind the curve, I think. If they skip treasure opportunities, that sets them back further. Of course, I can add random treasure, up creature hoards, etc. But my issue is that the cover quests are awkward to incorporate. If I have NPCs walk up to them every time they're in town--"Hey, did you know there's a hodag living near here? Nobody believes me but I lost my magic spear when I fought it."--it just feels like a video game to me. I can see the computer-generated character who delivers that line, envision the text popping up at the bottom of the screen. If, however, I deliver the quests through rumors, then I run the risk of the players losing track of them. I tried to encourage them to share their rumors on Obsidian Portal so that everyone would have access to them, but only one person did, if I recall correctly. I'm not entirely sure how to fix this, but I don't really blame Paizo for the problem. No worries, though. Once we've gotten into book three, I have a definite complaint about the side quests to share with you.
My last issue for this log is the Kingdom Building rules. I know, I know--everybody complains about them, including the people who wrote them. I won't go on too much about it. It seems to me that the rules start to be pointless fairly quickly. My players made a small error in judgement when they built the castle first, but they have long since recovered from that. Now, at nearly 30 hexes, the Kingdom Turns are mostly rote. To be fair, I have players who seem to be enjoying this aspect of the game still, some of them immensely, which I understand; I've spent more hours than I care to admit building houses on Sims. But there is little to concern the players anymore. (One of my players will find something to concern him at all times, regardless of actual threat.) They have to roll very poorly indeed to fail any of their basic rolls at this point. And what's more, even if they do, it doesn't matter. Case in point, they rolled a one on their opening Stability roll. I think they were actually worried for a moment. But the rules as written say you have to fail by 5 to increase Unrest. They rolled a 1, but they only needed a 4. They can't gain Unrest that way right now. Now, for argument's sake, let's say they gain that paltry 2 Unrest from a failed Stability check. They have a Headsman variant to reduce that by 1 before they even get out of the Upkeep phase. Build one house and you're all better. It is probably technically possible for an Event to send them into an Unrest spiral, but it relies on multiple single digit rolls plus a poorly handled treasury. At present, I think they could buy their way out of up to 6 or 7 Unrest without a real problem other than setting their development plans back for a turn. If they fail an Economy check, they simply don't make money. Loyalty checks don't come up very often and, again, don't increase Unrest by more than 6. I think that they would have to intentionally drive the kingdom into the ground to topple it. I am probably going to introduce a flub rule, since the Kingdom stats are supposed to be something like saves anyway. I still don't think it will hurt them, but it may at least keep the fear of the nat 1!
Okay, I might have lied in regards to not going on about the rules. Mea culpa.
On an amusing note, the kingdom has now grown big enough that I had my first problem with the sheer number of NPCs. I have been allowing the players to make 4 Diplomacy rolls per Kingdom Turn to influence individual NPCs to represent that the rulers of the realm are not sitting around downing whiskey between monster battles, but are in fact building a nation with politics and connections. But for the first time, when one of my players listed his 4 NPCs, I looked at number 2 and said, "Who?" Heh. I did recognize the name, knew I had given it to him, but I could not for the life of me remember who it was. Thank gods for email trails!
Until next session...