My Pathfinder 2E Ravenloft Campaign

[onmyoji]

Hey guys — I've talked a little bit about the ambitious Ravenloft campaign I'm running right now in Pathfinder 2E, which from what I can tell is much closer to D&D 3/3.5 than to 4E or 5E. It definitely feels way more open and expansive than 5E to me. I mentioned I'd be making a thread for the campaign, so here it is.

The wiki I made to help track literally everything about the campaign can be found here: http://strahd.wikidot.com/ The wiki will be updated constantly. We try to meet once a week on Sundays, but are not always free to meet. Adding all the wiki content took me until last night to finish up, so chances are pretty good you won't see huge updates until a day or two later. Hopefully the future write-ups won't take that long. If you guys are interested in following along, feel free. There's not really a way to comment on that site, but if you're enjoying it, feel free to comment here. Keep in mind the wiki is primarily my players' means of keeping track of all the vast lore and NPCs they meet. I secondarily made it something that the general public can hopefully enjoy.

The plan for the first campaign to do the first four Grand Conjunction modules with some minor things from Children of the Night and Chilling Tales sprinkled in for flavor. So we've started with a heavily-rewritten Feast of Goblyns that was inspired by other earlier posts on fixing FoG on this forum. I've got the narrative for it mostly planned, and I'm really happy with how the plans presently look. The last two GC modules are part of our planned second campaign (which has FAR more to do with Strahd and Azalin), which will basically be a massively-expanded Curse of Strahd. But that won't be for awhile still.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Criticisms? Feel free to post them in this thread or PM me. I do _not_ in any way expect my players to find their way to this forum, so I'm happy to share some spoilers here. Some of the bigger spoilers I might prefer to do through PM though.

Either way, I hope some of you might have some fun tracking our game. Thanks!

— onmyoji

[onmyoji]

Second session of my FoG rewrite happened tonight. So far so good.

For those who didn't check the wiki, the players made it to Kartakass last time. After the narrative took them from Cormyr to Kartakass, they were set upon by werewolves, and assisted by Zhone Clieous and Venrith Chole (yup, I know; interesting choices).

This session, they had a little downtime to recover in Kartakass and learn about the place before Zhone's grand-niece, Julianna doesn't come home one night, and the players assist the town guard in trying to find her before it gets too late. Since the players and Venrith ("Ven") have befriended each other, they go with him. On their investigation, they bump into a man with the same injury as one of the werewolves they failed to kill two nights ago, and they come to blows. The man/werewolf flees, and as they chase him, they come across Akriel being whipped in an alley, putting us finally within actual FoG, but not for long. Her cloaked and disguised oppressor steals a ring from her and tosses it aside. A mysterious black cat picks it up in its mouth and jumps over the brink enclosure to an old orphanage, abandoned some ten years ago. Akriel asks the players to help her retrieve the ring. Oh, and they also happen to have brought a silver rapier from Cormyr to Kartakass with the initials "HL" engraved into it.

Next week, the players plan to go into the orphanage to recover the ring. Little do they know they will be meeting Jack Bequick.

It usually takes me a bit to do the write-ups, so I wouldn't expect them until Wednesday, but so far, so good.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free. I'll probably just update this thread every time we have a session, so those who want to keep up can do so. Either way, hope you enjoy!

— onmyoji

[onmyoji]

I just finished typing up the log for our session this past Sunday if anyone is interested. We meet again on Sunday, where the players will meet Jack Bequick (CotN: Vampires). There's a few nice tie-ins I built into that mini-module, but you'll have to wait and catch it then. After that, it's back into Feast of Goblyns for a bit.

Link: http://strahd.wikidot.com

— onmyoji

[onmyoji]

Just had session 3, where the players ran into "Jack Bequick." Didn't work out quite as well on my end, since I should've made quite a few more adjustments to the module. I'm still a new DM/GM, so I don't have all the answers (and I'm probably being harder on myself than I need to be), but it still worked out pretty well. Thankfully, my players are patient with me learning.

Highlights include:
* Finding the name "Medraut" written seemingly in blood on a wall
* Recovering Akriel's engagement ring from her still-unnamed fiancé
* Seeing "Jack's" makeshift coffin labeled "Jacob O. Heinfroth." (Yup. I'm shaking things up a bit.)
° Rescuing Julianna Estovina (Zhone Clieous's grandniece) from Jack (she was the trigger to run Jack's mini-module)

As usual, it'll take a few days for me to transcribe the audio recording to the wiki, so I should have it up in the next few days. Updates will be coming less often as well since we're back to once-every-other-week for a bit.

Thanks to those watching!

— onmyoji

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Didn't work out quite as well on my end

If the whole party didn't die, then I think it's OK

I missread "Didn't work out quite as well in the end"

[onmyoji]

Didn't work out quite as well on my end

If the whole party didn't die, then I think it's OK

I missread "Didn't work out quite as well in the end"

No, they didn't die. It all worked out in that sense. I just made some not-so-great balance problems. One of my players is a veteran DM, so he's happy to help me learn. But it's sometimes intimidating to hear his input post-game.

But it worked out ok all things concerned. I'm probably just being harder on myself than I need to be. It's like learning a new language, and I'm not happy I'm not fluent already, haha.

— onmyoji

[Lord_Pruitt]

Looks pretty good thus far! Browsing over your wiki, might I suggest you at least look at the obsidian portal website? They host wiki/blog style campaign content that you might be interested in.

[onmyoji]

Looks pretty good thus far! Browsing over your wiki, might I suggest you at least look at the obsidian portal website? They host wiki/blog style campaign content that you might be interested in.

Thanks!

I checked out Obsidian Portal initially before running the campaign, but I came to the conclusion that for what I wanted from it, it seemed like I'd have to pay. Wikidot is totally free, so I ended up deciding that was probably a better option. Plus I got a nice, short URL. "Ravenloft" was taken, but "Strahd" wasn't.

— onmyoji

[onmyoji]

It's been a bit since we were able to meet for a session, but today's went much better than last session's.

The highlights of the session were as follows:
* The party tracked down Venrith Chole, who had been wounded after pursuing that werewolf (though they didn't ask him how things went down, and thus it didn't seem to occur to him that he might've been bitten).
* They met Akriel again, who paid for Ven's lodgings and care.
* Aion (PC) successfully forged his katana, the extension of his soul as a Kozakuran.
* Morganna and Ascher (PCs) learned more about Kartakan history.
* The identity of Duke Gundar and the rumor that he is a vampire was established.
* Venrith is slowly falling in love with Akriel and participated in one of the weekly concert events at the Harmonia Amphitheater as an indirect attempt to court her.
* Harkon (last name left unrevealed) made himself known in congratulating the outlanders at the concert event. The players caught sight of his name in legends and histories, but were unclear if his popularity led to his name being forged into older legends, or if he was somehow much over 120 years old.
* After the event, Akriel treated them to dinner at the Crystal Club, where she told them about a legendary crown somewhere in Kartakass that might have the power to free her fiancé, Henrik, from his bonds to the service of Duke Gundar—after which, she can hopefully escape Kartakass.

And I'm just now realizing I forgot to introduce them to meekulbrau at dinner. Oh well. Plenty of chances. At least I definitely did better at GMing this time.

Next up, the road to Skald to meet Akriel for business, and the fun with Ontosh and Jaconos.

Note: I'll still link the wiki here, but it still only reflects our first two sessions. Real life has been too busy for me to add the most recent two sessions in, but I absolutely will soon.

— onmyoji
http://strahd.wikidot.com

[onmyoji]

My apologies that the wiki is still almost three full sessions behind (I'll let you guys know when it's fully updated again). But that said, today's session went really really well!

There were fewer highlights this time, but:

• — They made plans to head for Skald, and then to Gundarak to meet with Henrik (Dominiani) and try to determine where the crown is and how to find it. (I'm a big fan of Gonzoron's idea to only go to Dominiani's once, so I'm assuming they'll do it now for info, and after the crown is found, the plot will keep them in Kartakass until they are ready to leave for good and take on Duke Gundar.)
  — They took a few days' prep in Harmonia to do some crafting and purchases so they'll be better on in the future.
  — Akriel is going to meet them at the Old Kartakan Inn, using the next 4-5 days to try to get more intel on the crown.
  — The party took an extra day to go to Ontosh's house, which happened pretty much as-written, except I combined Jaconos (from the beginning of FoG) with Jackques, the wolfwere who is harassing Ontosh. The battle got crazy-tense and we had to cut the session right after, so we couldn't get to any post-battle explanations.

I'm putting a very different twist on Feast of Goblyns as we continue to play through it (though I originally had omitted the goblyns, but now have found reasons to re-insert them). Here's how things are starting to line up:

VIEW CONTENT:

Because 5E has decided that there are witches in Kartakass now (see under Hexblade), I decided to use this as motivation to divide Kartakass into different factions: werewolves (agents of chaos and anti-civilization), wolfweres (natural creatures adapted to civilization), townsfolk (agents of law and civilization), and finally the witches (creatures of civilization who now disown and push away from it). Mother Fury heads the werewolves, Harkon the wolfweres, the meistersingers the humans, and Radaga the witches (which fits perfectly). So those'll be the major factions pushing and pulling against each other as things go on.

Of course, comments, suggestions and criticisms welcome. I'm happy to betray more of what my plans are, but I'll put them in spoiler tags.

— onmyoji