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| Blackwarder |
 Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:37 pm Post subject: Court of the Shadow Fey game session and queries |
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Joined: 18 Feb 2011
Posts: 103
Location: Israel
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Hello all.
Hopefully in 5 days I will run this adventure to my group and following Richard great thread about Halls of the Mountain King I decided to start a thread telling you guys of my players adventures and doings.
I also intend to use this thread to ask for help and advice in running this module and here is my first (of many to come) question:
The player party is currently like so:
Eladrin Swordmage- Pretorian
Elf avenger -Torias
Human bard - Kale
Human dagger master rouge -Ace Varidian
Gnome wizard
Edit: names added.
What I need to know is how I integrate the gods with the adventure, I assume that the sun good is Pelor the elf avenger worship corelleon and since we are dealing with shadow fey is there any way to get that into the game.
Honestly I would rather use an all new pantheon of gods for this game, where can I find a list of gods worshiped in Zobeck?
Thanks in advance guys, I hope to have a first report for you by suterday.
Warder
Last edited by Blackwarder on Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:52 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 4985
Location: The Mines
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The Sun God in Zobeck is called Khors, and there's very little information about him in the Zobeck Gazetteer.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| richgreen01 |
| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 9:16 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 06 Apr 2008
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Hi Warder,
Looking forward to reading your write ups and questions - I'm planning on running Courts myself once we've finished Halls of the Mountain King and one other adventure back in Parsantium. I'm going to try and relocate it to that city which will be interesting......
Cheers
Richard |
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| Blackwarder |
| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:18 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 18 Feb 2011
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Location: Israel
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Thanks Richard 
Just one question right now , on page 11 it says "give the party handout 1, the invitation to the winter's kiss", where is the handout?
edit: and another one, are there any paper minis for the advanture?
Warder |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:35 am Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
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Location: The Mines
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| Blackwarder |
| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:08 am Post subject: |
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That handout is not there, the only hand outs are the feast invitation and the manu.
darn about the minis  .
one last thing, I cant download the big fey court map, I downloaded it 4 times and every time I get the massage that the file is corrupted.
Warder |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:21 am Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 4985
Location: The Mines
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Gah! I think I got my invitations mixed up.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Blackwarder |
| Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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Location: Israel
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Some thing I thought about while driving back from work today, how does the shadow fey look like? I'm used to thinking that fey are elves and eladrin but not all fey look like them.
Is there any physical description for shadow fey? Is it possible that the feta in the first encounter all look different? And if so can some one please link me to pic/descriptions about feys, it's not my strongest point.
Warder |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 4985
Location: The Mines
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There's some pictures of shadow fey (like the king and the assassins) in the book. They look like somewhat monochromatic or goth-ish elves.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| Blackwarder |
| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:46 am Post subject: |
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Today was the first meeting, sadly the wizard player couldn't make it since one of his best friends died from cancer this week.
Anyway, the party stared in the kings head, I gave a brief overview of Zobeck and it's history and what the characters did up until now, than each player talked a bit about his character, it's history, description and behavior and we were off.
The session started with the party sitting around a round table in the kings head getting ready for an easy winter and much needed rest, right of the bat Kale betted Pretorian that he could throw a coin from their table to a cup on the other side of the room by the bar, the cup in question sitting beside a slightly drunk dwarf merchant. Pretorian, of course, could turn a bet so he accepted the bet, during their banter several patrons at the bar joined the bet and the pile grew to 50 gold.
I set the throw DC as moderate and kale player threw a 2 luckily for him Varidian, the scroundle that he is, snatched the coin from the air, Pretorian called it a miss but the bystanders cheered Kale on calling him to make a proper throw, Kale threw the coin again and Varidian tried to snatch it again causing the coin to fly under the table, Pretorian punched Varidian in the face (he rolled a 1 and we though it was funny) and told him to stop interrupting and than Kale tried to throw the coin one last time this time rolling the exact DC with the coin rolling on the rim of the cup before falling inside, the tavern exploded with cheers.
A new round of drinks was on the way when Misha burst through the door yelling that the Oleg the priest of the sun good is being bullied, the party left every thing and ran after him toward the temple of Pelor and Kord.
Torias was the only one with passive perception high enough to notice the parchment stuck to the side of the door and he was quick to point it out to the other PCs but none of them read it before the fight.
Since I only had 4 players I didn't use the hound and I played the feys with the option for less HP and higher damage, it was a tough fight with the cutthroat feys hitting Torias and Varidian with their poisoned daggers on the first round and several of the rakes scoring nice hits with shadow fey strike during the fight, the fight lasted for 5-6 rounds with the PC throwing several daily powers and with Misha and Oleg each with one more hit before death.
The grand finale was Torias killing three of the rakes with one attack decapitating the last one and sending the severed head across the room to hit the last cutthroat for 1 point of damage and killing him.
Another great moment was when Pretorian, who rolled a one on his initiative roll and those couldn't help any of his friends during the first turn, started teleporting around the battle field and marking bothe of the cutthroats and saving Torias and Varidian ass's.
From this first fight it seems like the faster combat states works as intended we had fun and even though it was a hard fight and even though all the players played with new characters we managed to finish it in about 2 hours, a record time for our group.
Next time the PC will get the chance to start learning that their hopes for a peaceful and restful winter might not be fulfilled.
Warder
Last edited by Blackwarder on Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| richgreen01 |
| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 1:53 am Post subject: |
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Hi,
I'd forgotten about the "faster combat" stats - very interested to hear how these turn out!
Cheers
Richard |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Kobold Overlord
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 4985
Location: The Mines
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Rather amusing for me, the faster combat stats are similar to the change in damage stats that WotC implemented in MM3.
I'm happy to hear they work "in the wild" as well as they did in the playtests!
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Wolfgang Baur
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| jessemriley |
| Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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Joined: 24 Aug 2009
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My party has been playing Courts for about 2 months now. We're currently in act 2. Everyone seems to like the faster combat stats. I've had some issues where combat seemed a little too quick. But I blame party make-up for that and me not reading all of the monsters powers carefully enough. Overall I really enjoy the module and the writing. I’m a relatively straightforward combat-centric DM. I started with 4e using the modules WOTC sells. The stuff I’ve 'written' myself is relatively close to what Wizards puts out. Mostly combat, a splash of RP and skill challenges.
I'm running the module in the Eberron setting. It's easy to skin it that way, Zobeck just becomes Sharn.
Act 1 ran pretty smoothly for me, a newbie GM. As it's a bit more what I'm used to running. Players investigate strange things, have some combat encounters, try to uncover clues. I didn't have any major issues running this section. Be prepared though to flesh out some of the strange happenings from page 9 with encounters of your own prepared. My players were particularly interested in "the repentent criminal" hook. I expanded it out, creating his wife and child who the party ended up encountering. I inserted a skill challenge to get information out of her. After succeeding in the skill challenge, the players learned that information about the shadowfey was hidden in a lockbox the players had to retrieve at the docks. While retrieving it I threw in the assassination encounter from the module to move the story along. I had to do all this on the fly, which I'm not all that good at. It ended up working out in hindsight, felt a little forced at times (especially when I didn't have names or places ready for people)
Act 2 and 3 truly become an RP sandbox, where players determine what actions they need to take. This is new ground for me and somewhat problematic for my usual GM style. One issue I had was the way I read the scene numbers. At first I assumed that the scene numbers indicated the order of the encounters. A few weeks into act 2, I realized they can occur in any order depending on the players status. Based on this experience I’d advise GMs to read the entire module before you reach act 2. The players might want to duel or court some consorts/courtesans at a certain point (around 7-10 status) and the rules for both only show up in act 3.
I do have a specific and a general question about how to run these later acts:
My PCs want to meet the roach lord. Knowing them, they won’t like the cut of his jib and will go straight to rolling initiative. My concern is the development as written: “If the party fights to the bitter end, they will be swarmed and overrun by the roach lord and his underlings” Does this imply that this fight is unwinnable? I’m cool with that, my PCs need to run away from things once in a while. If it is unwinnable should I just throw more and more roaches at the PCs? They have a lot of auto hitting goodness that slices through minions like butter which would make the encounter a lot easier as it’s written for them.
Many of the ‘encounters’ in act 3 happen to individual players while his mates sit on the sidelines. The barbarian sorcerer for instance might be dueling Caleb or courting the Flame Cloaked Consort. What are the other players doing at this point? Are they just watching while one person does these things? The players will try to assist, but they tend to run a three musketeers play style “all for one, one for all” and don’t particularly enjoy something if it’s not happening to all of them. In these instances, what can I do to help make sure everyone is enjoying and taking part in the scene? A big concern here for me is the upcoming feast. I know that at least one player is not going to be able to build up enough status to sit at the big people table and will sit out this really cool scene while everyone else gets to party. |
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| Wolfgang |
| Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 8:32 am Post subject: Two Suggestions for Endless Hordes and Feast |
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Kobold Overlord
Joined: 30 Dec 2007
Posts: 4985
Location: The Mines
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I think the lord of roaches scene can be played up both before combat ("there's dozens of his guards" and "you hear noises in all the side passages") and during combat ("you kill 4 roachlings, and 6 more enter the room") as unwinnable, but if the party takes down the roach lord, all his minions should scatter.
If they decide to fight to a TPK, I'd say the Roach Lord has captured them and corrupted them, turning them inexorably into roachlings themselves. Only way out of the curse is to give him what he wants, a victory against the Moonlit King by turning over his regalia to Lord of Roaches.
For the feast, low-status player characters might be given some entertainment in the servant's hall or a Goblin's Ball. Alternately, it's a great time to snoop around the Courts while everyone else is at the feast. I'd treat these as cutaway scenes from the main action, returning to the low-status player every so often.
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Wolfgang Baur
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| jessemriley |
| Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 9:57 am Post subject: |
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Joined: 24 Aug 2009
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Awesome. Thanks for the advice! I picked up a copy of Guide to Game design vol. 3 yesterday. Gave it a read and picked up some ideas. Realized the sandbox was too wide open for me personally to be comfortable with. I added some structure to it to help me wrap my head around it and really enjoyed doing it! I used Dave Chalkers http://critical-hits.com/2009/06/02/the-5x5-method/ and chatty DM's 5x5 adventure design ideas http://critical-hits.com/2009/07/29/using-the-5x5-method-for-adventure-design/. Here's what I came up with:
5x5 Adventure Plan for Act 2-4 of Courts of Shadow Fey
Major/Minor Quest Hooks
Akyishigal or the Blind Seer is rumored to have some sort of connection to the summer king. Defeat Akyishigal or the Blind Seer to learn key information about how to access the king.
The Black Prince is searching for the firebird to impress his mother, with whom he has fallen out of favor. Secure the firebird for the Prince or the Queen.
Dueling and courting courtesans are excellent ways of gaining status. Enough status will surely earn you the attention of the royal family. Duel and defeat Lightning Lord Suvid, or Court Maraya the Sapphire.
The swan feast is occurring. The queen and possibly even the king are rumored to attend. Meet with the queen at the feast learn more about the relationship between the king and Zobeck.
The winter queen’s claim on zobeck is somehow connected to the departure of the summer king. Discover the key to the King and Queen’s rivalry and convince one or both of them to give up ownership of Zobeck.
Quest Components
Akyishigal or the Blind Seer is rumored to have some sort of connection to the summer king. Defeat Akyishigal or the Blind Seer to learn key information about how to access the king.
i. Meet akyishigal and survive the encounter. Agree to join his faction. Or Meet with the blind seer successfully join his faction.
ii.Sneak into the moonlit hall where the Seer performs rituals. Sabotage his altar and ritual components (Skill challenge, or deathshade wisp encounter). Sneak into akyishigal’s lair sabotage his Shadow producing censer (skill challenge and/or roach encounter minus Roach Knight and Akyishigal)
iii. Duel and defeat ally of Blind Seer Sir Rujan with a poison blade. OR Court the ally of Akyishigal the evil courtesan Moonwater. Poison her.
iv.Steal back Akyishigal’s Dagger from Lightning Lord Suvid. Duel and defeat Yikgurak (Make elite)
v.Assassinate the Blind Seer. OR Assassinate Akyishigal. Gain secret information about how to find the king.
The Black Prince is searching for the firebird to impress his mother, with whom he has fallen out of favor. Secure the firebird for the Prince or the Queen.
i. Duel and defeat Lord Chesselfield. Prove your threat to the Black Prince.
ii. Have an audience with the prince. Agree to his terms(skill challenge), or show yourself above them (defeat his assassins)
iii. Go on a hunt with the prince (21 status) boars and butterflies encounter. Save one of the princes allies, even though the prince is willing to let him/her die.
iv. Secure the firebird.
v. Give the prince the firebird, or, give the queen the firebird (Act 2, Scene eight)
Dueling and courting courtesans are excellent ways of gaining status. Enough status will surely earn you the attention of the royal family. Duel and defeat Lightning Lord Suvid, or Court Maraya the Sapphire.
i. Duel and defeat a consort of at least 9 status, or, court a courtesan of at least 10 status.
ii. Duel and defeat someone of 12 status (monty python argument skit). Court someone of at least 13 status.
iii. Duel and defeat someone of at least 15 status. Court someone of 15 status.
iv. Duel and defeat Lord Chesselfield. Court Songemesha
v. Duel and Defeat Lightning Lord Suvid, or court Maraya the Sapphire. If too challenging for PCs as they are provide some sort of quest to gain some sort of powerful item that will aid them.
The swan feast is occurring. The queen and possibly even the king are rumored to attend. Meet with the queen at the feast learn more about the relationship between the king and Zobeck.
i. Get groomed for the feast successfully (skill challenge). Achieve at least 14 status.
ii. Find a date to attend the feast with. Or succeed in at least 2 duels to prove your worth.
iii. Attend and take part in the feast. Perform with courtesy and poise (don’t commit any faux pas totaling -8 or less status).
iv. Survive the 3 dances.
v. Get a quick audience with the queen, be embarrassingly rebuffed. You learn some key information and rewards.
The winter queen’s claim on zobeck is somehow connected to the departure of the summer king. Discover the key to the King and Queen’s rivalry and convince one or both of them to give up ownership of Zobeck.
i. Secure an audience with the winter queen (30-50 status depending on how many quests PCs have completed)
ii. Convince the queen of your worthiness.
iii. Kill the king’s steed, the remaining connection the king has to the court and remove its heart as proof of its death, or, let the steed survive and allow the kennelmaster to give you a false heart to trick the queen. (Second option provides mount wish list treasure for Cleric PC)
iv. Don’t die (as the queen secretly desires you to). Reach the king.
v. Heal the king, or, take his orb. Use developments “Sieze the orb”, The Angel on the Tower, Through the black maze, A new king (page 98 ). PCs return to Zobeck and the Shadowfey’s claim to it is declared void.
Optional Combat Related Encounters (for random boosts of Status)
1) Rescue Maraya the sapphire from a green dragon in the shadow forest (actually turns out the other way around, you need to rescue the dragon from Maraya)
2) Go on Hunting expeditions - hunt down an elf village (evil), the head of a cableoplas, arrange for the death of a major player while on a hunt.
3) The illusion adventure idea, except that players overcome the illusion, much to the chagrin of the fey (status increase) |
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