5e Meme

I don't like to just post AI generated images, but sometimes they can be useful as a kind of meme. 

Top image is what I want my fantasy gaming to look like. 

Below that it what 5e offers.

That, more than anything, adequately, I think, explains my biggest dissatisfaction with 5e and D&D in general. 5.5 was absolutely a bridge too far, although they'd already gone many bridges too far honestly before that even happened. But with 5e, I know for sure that I'll never have any interest in D&D again, except reluctantly because I'm playing with other people who were already playing D&D.

It's just gotten silly. And no, Dark Sun isn't going to win me back. Having it have ridiculous, over-the-top violence like Fist of the North Star where girlbosses punch straight white males in the face and cause them to explode, curated by sensitivity readers to make sure that it's Lindsay Clancy friendly and still hews to the dying Diversity, Inc. trend is literally the opposite message of what I want from D&D. 

Out of the Abyss

It took me longer than I expected, as it was a busier and more stressful weekend than I expected, but before going to bed last night, I finished Out of the Abyss, an early 5e campaign that has a mixed reputation: it's considered a good narrative, a good campaign, but not really a very well organized book, and one that requires more work than one would expect to actually run. I read at least some of the book; maybe all of it, although I don't remember now, about eight years ago, although it wasn't even new then having first been published eleven years ago next week, I think. By this point, most of those earlier 5e campaigns are sadly out of print, and can only be picked up digitally. This is especially difficult for ones like Ghosts of Saltmarsh which you simply cannot find in physical book copy at a reasonable price anywhere, if you can find it at all. Out of the Abyss you can at least buy at about the same price as the cover price. After the last campaign, Princes of the Apocalypse was a reworking of a classic adventure from the 80s ("Temple of Elemental Evil") it was nice to see this one being an original. But, I kind of agree that as much as the gist of the campaign was a pretty cool idea, there are a number of things that I didn't like about it. I know it's easier to focus on the negative, and maybe that's a personality flaw of mine anyway, but let me, before I dive into all that, try and caveat this as saying that I rather liked the book, more so than Tyranny of Dragons or Princes of the Apocalypse, but I'm focusing on specifically things that I would change.

First, I think certain elements of the organization of the campaign is legitimate to complain about. The main conflict is the arrival of the demon lords (some of them anyway) in the Underdark, but we don't even get a solid understanding as a GM of what's going on until halfway through the book. Lacking some kind of introductory chapter, or at least a few pages where the campaign is summarized for the GM up front made for somewhat difficult reading, and I can see exactly why people suggest that it's difficult to run, and difficult to prepare for, and GMs need to read it at least twice just to understand how to run it, because you're given very little clarity on what's going on until it resolves. The kick-off event that starts the whole thing was published in a novel and if you didn't read it (which I did not) then it gives you nothing until more than halfway through the book to explain what the context is of anything at all that's happening. That's fine for players, but kind of rough for GM.

Another structural complaint which I think it definitely legit is that there are way too many NPCs who are sidekicks to the party, and actually keeping them straight, coming up with a unique enough roleplaying voice for them that they have some personality, and even just managing them mechanically is a huge headache. The NPCs don't have enough detail given to them to have much personality as written, so GMs will need to provide most of that on their own, which is fine, but its a bit onerous when there are so many. You'll inevitably focus on a few and leave the rest to be unremarkable and probably forgotten. And many times, the "hook" for an NPC is just mechanical. "What if there were a gelatinous cube that were sentient and wanted to tag along with the PCs?" Well... what if there was? What if there's a myconid "kid brother" who tagged along with the PCs? What if there were a quaggoth who were crazy and thought he was a curse elf prince? OK, the last one is actually something workable, but curiously, he's an easily forgettable NPC in terms of actually reading the campaign. In fact, I forgot about most of the NPCs most of the time except in the first chapter where they were introduced in about half of a column each, at most, or when they had a reason to be mentioned specifically again, like the pacificist kuo-toa monk being mentioned when you get to the kuo-toa village. Frankly, ideas like a "pacifist kuo-toa monk, deep gnome twins who are were-rats, and a sentient gelatinous cube" were more novelty value than deep more meaningful anyway.

Which brings me to my second problem; clashes and inconsistency with tone. Unlike most iterations of demons in D&D, the demons here, or even their presence kinda sorta nearby causes madness. This is a very Lovecraftian idea, that exposure to the demons like Cthulhu or even Elder Things causes you to make a Sanity check, and many NPCs nearby to fail it and become weird and crazy, and while I don't want to suggest that it is exactly like playing a Call of Cthulhu game in that respect, it does have some echoes of it, and the madness system, simplified and easy as it is creates much of that same ambience. Both the PCs and their NPC entourage are at pretty constant risk of going at least temporarily insane, requiring the use of either lots of restoration spells, or dealing with the consequences of a failed "sanity check", at least for a few rounds or two, which can be a big deal in combat. Chris Perkins, who was the lead editor, called Out of the Abyss "D&D on hard mode". So far so good, right? That's a solid bit of theming, and one that's right up my alley.

Prince of Demons, on his home layer of the Abyss

But Chris Perkins also thought that the Underdark was like Alice in Wonderland, and was very proud of noticing that, mentioning it several times in interviews, and even in a brief forward to the book. References to Lewis Carroll were scattered all throughout the book, including a "white rabbit" character that you were supposed to chase, who said something to the effect of "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!" as you did, mushrooms that made you bigger or smaller, lots of explicit references to "The Jabberwocky". This stuff took the Lovecraftian horror and added to it a strong dose of whimsy and silliness that is really baked right in to the game. Almost the entirety of the time spent with the oddly friendly myconids has them giving off Alice in Wonderland vibes; they're weird for the sake of being weird, but also whimsical and the only threat there is that the demon lord (lady?) of mushrooms wants to "marry" a gigantic sentient fungus, and you can actually meet her working on her mushroom wedding dress. When you come back later in the game, it's somewhat more serious, but this mismatch of horror alongside silliness and whimsy characterizes the whole adventure. Maybe that's not a problem per se, but it's not something that I particularly liked, and I thought that leaning in to the Underdark being "Wonderland" where normal little girls like Alice just get annoyed by crazy characters who act silly rather than sensible was not a direction that I cared to lean in to. Perkins said in another interview that he actually talked to R. A. Salvatore in preparation for this multimedia tie-in event (Salvatore wrote the novel that kicked it off, as mentioned above) and asked him if he had deliberately leaned in to those themes when he created the modern interpretation of the Underdark in the Dark Elf trilogy, the prequel trilogy to the Icewind Dale trilogy. He said no, but he could see the appeal of making the comparison. So that's all Perkins pushing that, not Salvatore, nor anyone else who created the predecessors to what Salvatore did. (I'm actually quite pleased that I recently read the Dark Elf trilogy again less than a year ago. Good timing!) More to the point, although not well described at the time, Gygax probably came up with the idea of the Underdark more directly from Lovecraft, specifically the underground parts of "The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath" and the story that he ghost-wrote for Zealia Bishop, "The Mound." That's the vibe that the Underdark was "supposed" to have. And frankly, the Underdark of the Dark Elf Trilogy isn't nearly as Wonderland-like as Chris Perkins is making it out to be. 

As an aside, resist the urge to reorder books. You can buy omnibus versions of a lot of Salvatore's series; I bought the omnibus version myself of the Dark Elf trilogy, and would have bought the Omnibus version of the Icewind Dale trilogy if I didn't still have pretty solid paperback copies that bought back in the late 80s or early 90s when they were pretty new. But just because it takes place chronologically before the Icewind Dale trilogy, it doesn't make sense to read them in that order. That was a prequel, and without the context of having already read the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy doesn't make as much sense. I think people forget what prequel actually means. It's been around long enough that people forget that it's a "clever" neologism; taking the word sequel which means of course a subsequent work that follows an earlier work, but changing the first couple of letters to indicate that it takes place earlier. It was published later of course, and reading books in publication order, unless they've been heavily edited to facilitate reading the in the new order. Reject the new ordering. The Dark Elf trilogy is not the first three books of the Driz'zt saga. It's the second three books. 

To add to the tone challenges, the art, while often quite good, is sometimes also very cartoonish, especially of the NPCs. I'm not going to include any of it, because it's readily viewable online, but I really like some of it, and I really dislike some of it... or rather, I think that it encourages the whimsical silliness when it needs to be leaning more into the cosmic horror. NPCs who look like cartoons next to demon lords who look... well, more savage and alien then they have ever looked previously, is a weird juxtaposition, and once again, there's a kind of mismatch between the tone that the demonic incursion is meant to invoke vs the tone that the Underdark normally invokes. But the Underdark was literally pioneered by H. P. Lovecraft, most especially in "The Mound" where K'n-yan, the upper level, is most like the land of the drow and the Underdark as its usually known, Yoth below that was once the abode of the now extinct Serpent-men, and N'kai below that is pitch black, and apparently where Tsathoggua-worshipping shoggoths now roam, sealed off in panic by the K'nyanians. In "The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath" the first layer is the Twilight Realm of the Gugs, with gigantic Cyclopean architecture, including the Tower of Koth, which is a staircase leading to the surface in the Enchanted Wood. Below that is the Abyss of the Ghasts and the Kingdom of the Ghouls. The darker, savage tone of the demon lords absolutely applies to the Underdark too, or at least it should.

The Underdark was probably invented as a D&D concept in the Against the Giants series by Gary Gygax himself, when after fighting giants for a while you find out the drow are secretly the mastermind villains of the adventures. The D-series trilogy was much more explicitly set in the proto-Underdark, and kind of late 1e AD&D's Dungeoneer's Survival Guide is the first really explicit source, and coined the name Underdark. 2e AD&D had some source material, including a modular campaign, Night Below, a number of drow products, and of course the Driz'zt Dark Elf trilogy, which largely spawned the D&D sourcebooks. 

3e had a book called Underdark, although it was part of the Forgotten Realms line specifically, but it also had Drow of the Underdark which was mostly campaign neutral, but implicitly was a Greyhawk setting, and instead of Menzoberranzan we had Erelhei-Cinlu and the Vault of the Drow. 4e's Underdark was explicitly part of the Nentir Vale setting, although the very late Menzoberranzan: City of Intrigue book was specifically Forgotten Realms. 5e, of course, has mostly pretended like Forgotten Realms is just D&D, and done relatively little to support, or even admit that other settings exist, until very recently. I know that that's an exaggeration, but don't argue with me on that; I like looking at high level patterns and generalities, and pedantic nit-picking does not impress me. 

Anyway, I think the older Underdark is a tone that works much better for me, but there you have it.

Finally, at least in terms of things to "complain" about, the finale where you are basically spectators to the Rumble in the Underdark between the demon lords and then you fight a weakened Demogorgon was pretty weak-sauce, especially considering that you fight an unweakened (well, sorta) Demogorgon at the finale of Savage Tide. There's a lot of potential weirdness; Juiblex and Zuggtmoy might have already had their rumble together, and you only had to fight a weakened Juiblex afterwards, and Yeenoghu and Baphomet might have had their rumble together previously too. And, of course, Orcus shows up out of nowhere, and other than one off-hand reference from some mind flayer, you might not have ever suspected that he's supposed to be here in the Underdark at all. Chris Perkins calls this a "plot seed"; I call that gas-lighting. They either never developed it, or cut it for space. There's art for it, but it was in a totally different book that didn't even reference it... except in that piece of art. In general, I feel like the finale was altogether kind of confused, chaotic (not in a good way... I know, demons) and a little bit underwhelming.

UPDATE: There is a small mini-adventure published by a 3pp that fleshes this out in about 15 pages or so. I ran down a copy; I'll read it too in a little bit and see if I think it better fleshes out the narrative or not.

Ultimately, the bigger questions are would I use this material, and can I combine it with other Underdark material that I have, like the recently read Second Darkness adventure path? (And I should point out that Second Darkness was significantly less Underdark focused than I would have liked.)

I think actually that I'd need to combine them, and maybe with some other Underdark material too. Second Darkness really only has two modules (of six) that take place in the Underdark, and one of those is one that is hard to adapt, because you're posing as servants in a drow household. Out of the Abyss has too much of the wrong tone; funky and friendly cartoon-like mushroom people, deep gnomes, and whatnot. When I check out stuff related to Paizo's 1e Darklands stuff, it feels much more like what I want, but there simply aren't enough adventures that feature it.  (That video is quite long, by the way. Don't click on it unless you want to spend a good hour and a half going through it.) Ultimately, if I do a massive Underworld campaign in some kind of Old Night version of the Underworld or the Underdark, or the Darklands, or whatever you want to call it, I can borrow a few elements from these two works, but I can't do it as is. I'll need more material. 

Given that, I'm not going to move on to the next 5e campaign (Curse of Strahd) anytime too soon. I'm going to focus on some third party campaigns, including Kobold Press's Empire of Ghouls, the next Sandy Petersen Cthulhu Mythos Saga, and... well, we'll see from there. While I do have, and have had for some time now, the aspiration to create a campaign 5x5 Front focused on the Underworld, or whatever you want to call a more generic version of "the Underdark"—but ultimately, I'll probably have to create most of it myself. Despite the Underdark being such an iconic D&D setting, there's not much going on there that I feel that I can use. Out of the Abyss shows how it could be done, but then kinda goes the wrong direction with it.

"Photorealistic" AI renditions of WAR's vampires

It's Saturday, not Friday, but I spent some time asking Grok to convert some WAR images that I had to photorealistic versions of themselves. It kinda sorta did so. In any case, I'm happy with the results, so I'm going to call this a slightly belated Friday Art Attack; a series that I haven't done regularly in years, but which I should continue to do...

I called them vampires, but one of the images is of a nest of ghouls, of course, taking the corpse into the well. Given that I've said ghouls are like proto-vampires, though, I don't care. The one below is a ghost.

And below, is the demon lord of slime as shown by Paizo... which in Paizo's version is Jubilex, not Juiblex. I'm not sure where the deliberate slight mispelling came from, but the Tome of Horrors has Jubilex, so maybe that's the one that's open content.

Session 2

I ran session 2 of my modified "Curse of the Brine Witch" which could be attached to my greater Cult of Undeath campaign. We'll see. It's a 5e game, and I've only been semi-serious about it, because it's meant to be a short-term mini-campaign while waiting for this group to get back in the swing of things. HOWEVER, as I've said before, there's substantial risk (to the group) that their old DM who was running a big 1-20 level campaign based on the Mad Mage campaign from WotC, and they're about halfway through, that it doesn't really come together. The DM just moved out of state and two time zones further west, and while everyone is talking a good talk about continuing the campaign online, I think realistically, it's always dubious exactly how well that scenario will work out. So, I'm thinking that I'll finish this first chapter, and then we'll see what's going on. If the answer is "still nothing" I can let the characters level up to level 2 and do the next chapter. Although if we do that, I'm going to have to insist on some backstory or something from these characters. They were really just meant to be short term scabs, so to speak, but there's a possibility of them pulling away into being more. 

I also was reminded of one of my weaknesses as a GM; I tend to focus on what's coming next, and rush through what I'm doing a bit. Now, this isn't necessary too bad of a weakness, and I think many GMs would benefit from keeping things moving. But I did notice that I felt rushed in retrospect, had relatively little NPC interaction, and spent more time on just making sure that they found clues, that they had combats, and that they moved on to what was next. I was especially doing badly at NPC dialogue and having interesting interactions. Which probably isn't really my strongest suit to begin with, but when I get too rushed, it gets even worse. 

To be fair to me, I was exhausted. I was stressed. I hadn't had time to prepare as much as I'd have liked. I'm rusty. I can do it better. But I didn't. I need to pay attention and be a little more on my A-game here.

So anyway, yeah; got some clues. The PCs did my whole asylum thing, where they fought cultists, hyenas, and pirates. That was the big "set piece" of the night. 

There's obviously at least one more session, but possibly two before I finish this chapter 1. Honestly, I'd like to slow down and make sure that it is two sessions. If I slow down enough, it might even be three. But we'll see. Like I said, if I'm going to propose that we continue playing this, even as a "side piece" campaign, I need to make sure that I'm a little more on the ball and giving them a better experience. Right now I'm giving them a good enough experience, but I even I can feel the rushed, haphazard nature of how it's going. 

So, it's good to pay attention to how things are going and make some good faith efforts to improve them.

Actually, they were at the asylum in the early afternoon, too. I like this more traditional spooky image, though.

What am I reading, and what will I read shortly?

Although I like tracking my reading, I do find that sometimes it causes unexpected stress if I'm not making sufficient progress. I thought I'd do an extremely self-indulgent post for now, and talk about what's on my docket or in process, and what I'd like to add. My pdf reader is Sumatra (I'm gradually trying to de-colonize my computer from Microsoft and other invasive corporations; my next one will probably be a Linux machine) and it will hold up to ten pdfs in the recents window. It actually will hold more, but it won't show them, but I've noticed that if I remove some from the recent list and I have more than ten, then it will populate with hidden ones. In any case, I keep ten files open either because I'm reading them or because they're on the docket to read. I also have two physical game books in my backpack, and a novel.

• 

  Karzoug, according to AI

  I just finished the Second Darkness adventure path, so Legacy of Fire is next. I've already got it queued up, but I'm thinking that I want to read a bit of something else before I jump right in.
• I have a physical "pocket sized" (not really accurate; it's a chonky trade paperback) Pathfinder 1e core rules book, but I also bought the pdf way back when it was pretty new, so I'm gradually reading that, one chapter at a time. I thought the physical copy would be fun, but I find that it's really too small, and it was getting a little bit beat up in my backpack for whatever reason. I'm reading the paperback. I'm due to start the Combat chapter next. It's a long, long book, and not exactly super fun reading, but I think I really want to get through it, at least once. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I only read the 3e core books once too. Except the Monster Manual, which I've read more than once. I still skim the tables and some of the mechanics, though. 
• I'm also currently reading Out of the Abyss, and that's the main focus of my digital reading until it's done.
• I also started reading Bluffside, and old 3e city sourcebook (3pp) that I bought a copy of a few months ago. It's been slow going. I'm actually thinking of putting it back into hibernation and not reading it right now, honestly. It's been a harder slog than I thought, and with a lot of other stuff on my docket, I don't need to force myself to read it right now if I don't really want to, and I don't think that I do. 
• I'm interspersing my adventure path module read-throughs with stand-alone module read-throughs, and I'm all set to end the 3.5 era of Pathfinder products on both at the same time. That said, there are other Pathfinder products that are 3.5 that I'm not going to finish on this same schedule. Although for the setting stuff and whatnot, it doesn't matter quite as much. Actually, it doesn't really matter that much anyway, since Pathfinder 1e was such an obvious derivative of 3.5 that unless you really look closely at the mechanics, you probably wouldn't even notice that they're not the same. I'd like to do a round-up of the modules that I've read once I finish the 3.5 ones, and talk about which ones I liked enough to consider.
• That said, I am reading a lot of the early Golarion stuff. I'm in the midst of the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, which was kind of an unfortunate title, really, but it's a pretty good book. I had not (until rather recently) read the gazetteer, and it's clear in retrospect that this was just a fluffed out version of the gazetteer; not much new except more added details. But still. I always liked that book, and I've always liked Golarion as a setting. It's the only really D&D-like setting that I like, given that I tend to pull away from D&Disms in general. I think if you discount the map folios, I've got seven more Pathfinder Chronicles books to read before I run out the clock no 3.5. Meanwhile, on the Pathfinder Player Companion series, I've already crossed over that line. Speaking of which, I'm carrying around the Cheliax book in my backpack. I guess I probably should put it back for a little while and focus on getting caught up to the same point in the Chronicles/Setting line instead. I know, I know... there's relatively low value in hitting the 3.5 to PFRPG changeover on all four series all at more or less the same time, but then again, it's also pretty easy to do, so why not? All I have to do is put Cheliax back on the shelf until I've read a few other books first.
• I've also been very slowly reading Prisoner of the Horned Helmet for some time, the novel that I'm reading. I don't know why I've been so stuck on it. It's not a bad novel, and this is the third time (since about 1988 or 1989, to be fair) that I've read it. But for some reason, I forget to pick it up and keep reading it. It's the first of four, and I've only recently come into the last two after searching for them at a reasonable price for many, many years. I really need to just sit down for a couple of hours and power through it. It's not that big; maybe a little over 300 pages, and I'm at least halfway done already. I should have finished it weeks ago. But, again, I have so many things that I'm juggling to read that it just kind of gets short shrift, I guess. 
• I'm also reading the original 3e series of modules, and I've read most of the original eight or so of the pseudo-adventure path modules that include "The Sunless Citadel" etc. These aren't super interesting to read, but I've found that at least one of them ("Speaker in Dreams") is a module that I could enjoy running. 
• I have three other trawls that I haven't touched in a while, and I'd like to read one more of them before getting back into the adventure paths; the SPCM Sagas (I really enjoyed the second one; third is on the docket), and the 3e Eberron and Forgotten Realms books; Five Nations and Silver Marches respectively. None of those are short, quick reads, but when I've got this much that I want to read as part of these trawls, that's the way that it goes.
• I've also got some 4e stuff open, but I think I'm going to remove it from SumatraPDF too, because I don't have any immediate plans to read it, honestly. If I take that and Bluffside off the list that opens up two slots. Which is good, because sometimes I need to open a file just to look at something, rather than because I want to add it to my reading list; it'd be nice to have a few slots free for that.
• Finally, I started by reading a lot of my 3e books, and I've still got plenty of those. Once I get caught up on the Pathfinder 3.5 material, I think I'll pick up the next Monster Manual (III) and put that in my backpack.

There, see? Self-indulgent, and I probably won't even read this post myself, but I feel good getting it out there. I use this blog, as often as not, as a dear diary kind of thing too, and just writing this out and thinking about it real time while writing is useful.

Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Paths

I liked the format of what I did for Second Darkness, and thought I ought to go back to do the first two adventure paths of that format before I forget too much about them (way too late for Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide... although maybe with a good summary of each adventure I could still pull it off...)

Rise of the Runelords was Paizo's first adventure path after being cut loose from Dungeon Magazine and having to go on their own. Maybe for that reason, they went with pretty classic stuff, which is both good and bad. Runelords is generally considered by most to be one of the better adventure paths, and one of the ones remembered most fondly by fans. But, of course, being really "classic" means that sometimes it's not really very interesting, and it does predictable things. But not too badly. It really is a good adventure path, and honestly, I think Paizo stumbled across the right format when they made their own publication. The Dungeon Magazine ones were honestly too long. Savage Tide and Age of Worms, for instance, were 12 modules long and went from 1st to over 20th level. That might have been true for Shackled City, but then again, one or two of those chapters might have been added later when it was compiled into a single volume. I can't remember now. Six chapters, from levels 1-15 or so with each chapter being, admittedly, a bit longer than a Dungeon Magazine module, was the right format. 

In fact, I'd have gone even further, and had it be four chapters of two slightly slower levels each, but that's probably just me. I think most D&D players aspire to higher level, even if they don't actually play it much. I've done it and the experience has taught me that I don't really want to do it again.

Here's a slightly different take on Karzoug, the iconic runelord who iconically rises. I would have actually done another pass at him, but I'm out of images for the day on ChatGPT, and I like this take. I would just have changed the pattern of the gems on his forehead, and said that his topknot is coming out of a mohawk with shaved sides to his head, and his hair isn't that white; more salt and pepper. 

Anyway, what do I think of the various chapters of this AP?

Burnt Offerings: I've actually used the first act of this, combined with another Paizo stand-alone module, for a one-shot. I'm admittedly less interested in the final act; an "assault" on a goblin lair. I admit that it feels very iconically D&D, but not in a good way. It feels tired to me. That said, Sandpoint itself is a great setting, and the first two (of three) acts here are quite good. 

The Skinsaw Murders: This is one of my favorite modules period. I really, really like it, although I admit that I'm a bit less interested in the final act of it too, where you go to town and face a boss beyond the one in the haunted house. Naturally, adapting it to fit into another context other than what they intended you to use it for means that some of it won't make sense, and cutting much of the final act has been my solution. But it's just a great module. 

The Hook Mountain Massacre: This one is OK. Parts of it, again, are pretty good, while the hillbilly ogres kind of rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. The stuff up by the lake and the occupied ranger fort were pretty good for that kind of thing. There are elements of it I'd borrow, but it started veering into territory that I had less interest in, with more traditional D&D feels at times.

Fortress of the Stone Giants: I don't want to say that I kind of checked out on Runelords by this chapter, but I kind of did. By the time they're talking about how characters can travel via fly or teleport, I don't feel like I understand the game anymore, nor is it in the same genre that I really, really enjoyed in the earlier levels. The attack on the town by giants, and how the PCs can handle that was reasonably well done, I suppose, but it wasn't something that I was as interested in anymore, and the attack that the PCs make on the giants' own fortress just felt like a dungeon-crawl.

Sins of the Saviors: This one felt like a place filler; stuff that you needed to do, mostly in a dungeon, to get to high enough level to do the last module. Very little in this one interested me.

Spires of Xin-Shalast: Here, I'm kind of torn. The high altitude mountain survival stuff is really interesting, as is the Lovecraftian stuff at the destroyed city, which sometimes has the feel of a Mountains of Madness city lite. But it's also a relatively high level D&D adventure and dungeon-crawl, with factions in the dungeons to interact with, and a pretty predictable BBEG at the end. I enjoyed reading it well enough; I don't know how much I'd enjoy playing it, and I know I wouldn't enjoy running it. I did play partially through this campaign once years ago, but the GM got burned out and quit near the end of chapter III, so we didn't get to the final chapters. That was the same GM who ran us through all 22-23 levels, or however many it ended up being exactly, of Age of Worms. 

I think that I have certain patterns when it comes to the adventure paths: 1) I don't enjoy higher level play, so I tend to think that the last few chapters require special pleading to be interesting to me. 2) They're still too long, and should probably be cut by at least a third, with slower leveling. Ideally (obviously) I'd have preferred them to be compatible with E6, but I'm not shocked that they're not. 3) Usually around chapter III, IV or V the campaign takes a weird turn, probably on purpose to give it some variety, but it makes the whole section feel a little disjointed and out of place. Making the campaigns smaller would also make them more focused, because there would have been less perceived need to do this. 4) I've long been on record as not really liking dungeon-crawls, and Paizo does tend to include them. Those are usually the parts that I'm most likely to look at trimming out of the campaign.

And those obvious biases impact how I view these adventure paths. Without those biases, Runelords is even better, but for me, it does too many things that I'm less interested in and wish that it didn't. I tend to like the first third or so... maybe almost half of it, and some elements of the finale, and don't care about the big middle section in between them.

The second adventure path, Curse of the Crimson Throne is another very well-regarded one, and considered by many to be one of the best examples of a primarily urban-themed campaign (although not entirely.)

I actually didn't ask ChatGPT to give me all that cleavage. I guess it just assumed that that's what most people want. Which, honestly, is probably true. Otherwise, this is really close to how Paizo also described Queen Ileosa, one of the more complicated and interesting villains. Much more so than Karzoug or Allevrah—or, in most respects, than the even earlier forays with Adimarchus, a Demon Lord of madness (who's sadly not foreshadowed enough), Kyuss, the weird undead demigod or whatever he is, and Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons. Sure, sure, those are iconic villains. But Ileosa is someone you actually see and interact with from the very beginning, and her villainy is perhaps less cosmic and more villainous because of it. None of the adventure paths are perfect, of course, but Crimson Throne is considered one of the best ones for a reason. It was updated to the Pathfinder RPG itself (1e) in a hardback compilation, it was released as an audio drama, an adventure card game, and was even adapted to Savage Pathfinder (although Runelords was all of those things too.) Overall, this one comes highly recommended by me, and I'm actually thinking of how to adapt the whole thing, or at least use it as the backbone of an adaptation, much like how I did with Carrion Crown to Cult of Undeath.

Let's go through it's chapters then, shall we?

Edge of Anarchy: This first adventure is entirely urban, and while it starts off rather small and personal, it gradually gets you involved with the succession crisis and the intrigues and plots of kings and queens and the like. 

Seven Days to the Grave: Now firmly (well, I don't know about firmly) on the throne, Queen Ileosa must deal with her first crises, riots, plague and more! But all is not quite as it seems, and there's lots of skullduggery and intrigue to be had. 

Escape from Old Korvosa: Now, the Queen is clamping down and proving to be a very bad ruler indeed, and the people, represented by the PCs, can't help but notice that something is very wrong, and getting involved in it. These first three adventures are about as good as these kinds of adventures tend to get. They're well-written, thematically very consistent, and just very well done. The crime lord dungeon-crawl is the only part that I'd lose, but otherwise, I feel like this doesn't need a very strong editing hand to just be a good half campaign. Of course, that's when it decides to go do it's weird mid-point tone shift, which most of the adventure paths seem to have to do.

A History of Ashes: Escaping from the city, you have to essentially join a barbarian tribe to get more information from them. While not a bad idea; this is supposed to be an urban campaign, and this and the next chapters feel a little out of place. If you were to cut back on the length of the campaign overall, the information that you find out here could easily just be told to the PCs by someone in town, skipping the need for this adventure entirely.

Skeletons of Scarwall: Now, you have to go do a totally disconnected dungeon-crawl in yet another remote wilderness location so you can get the special MacGuffin sword needed to defeat Ileosa. Again, this could have been somewhere at the end of Old Korvosa, and you could skip this one entirely too.

Crown of Fangs: Now back in town, you find that things have gotten worse, and the the whole city is rising up against the intolerable rule of Ileosa. Not only is there this exciting uprising to manage, but the assault on the Queen herself, while admittedly kind of an exotic dungeon-crawl, is less intolerable than most, and actually kind of interesting. Somehow the whole finale is the most exciting of them I've read so far, because instead of relying on cheap thrills of doing fantasy stuff that's impossible, you do (mostly) things that are believable and grounded, but certainly in a high fantasy setting against an evil queen who's managed to get her ambitious hands on power that is well above her pay grade. 

Now, obviously, I still haven't read most of the adventure paths, but I really like Crimson Throne and suspect that in the end I'll have found it to be one of my favorites. 

Second Darkness Adventure Path

I finished--just a few minutes ago--the final pages of the Second Darkness adventure path, including even reading the Player's Guide before starting, which I'm now doing. (Why not? The pdfs are free, after all.) It's the third adventure path published after Paizo stopped doing Dungeon Magazine, the 6th adventure path in all, and the penultimate 3.5 adventure path. Next, although I'll read something else first, I'm sure, is Legacy of Fire, the last 3.5 adventure path.

While Second Darkness seemed to have elicited some excitement when it was new, because it brings the drow to Golarion, and still is the only major publication to feature them, I believe, it is also not seen as one of the better APs in retrospect, and when I asked ChatGPT to rank the APs, it put Second Darkness in the lowest, C-tier ("heavily flawed") with a summary of jarring mid-campaign tonal shift. That's fair. How about my quick summary of the six parts and the campaign as a whole?

Parts of the adventure path were actually really good. I doubt that any of the adventure paths are perfect; in fact, it seems to be a meme among fans that the 4th or 5th chapter is kind of an odd-ball that doesn't fit very well. Lower level plays out pretty classic, but as you get to higher level (5th and 6th chapters in particular) the characters are in the teens, usually ending at 15-16th level, so they're completely superheroes, and the game doesn't feel like classic fantasy anymore, it feels weird. The Avengers. Luckily Golarion isn't (yet) also the Muppets like 5e is, but it eventually gets there.

Anyway, here's the six parts, and my opinion (briefly) on each.

Shadow in the Sky: This is mostly an adventure of urban scum and villainy, hucksters, gangsters, pirates, were-rats, and the like. The vibe is very similar to Freeport, actually. While I don't really care for the casino employees gig that makes up a big part of it, it's certainly a serviceable urban adventure, and nothing at all is wrong with it. It ends with the reveal of the drow, which is supposed to be a big deal because they hadn't been revealed or described at all in Golarion up to this point. (Ironically, this adventure path was explicitly made "non-canon", I think it an effort to over-protect themselves in the wake of the OGL debacle, where they deliberately took OGL D&D concepts and made them either more generic or more specific to themselves... but no longer part of D&D. Now, it's not even clear that drow canonically exist in Golarion at all.)

Children of the Void: This is my favorite of the adventures; a treasure hunt that turns into a horror adventure of sorts, heavily based on Predator, Aliens, or any other adventure where you're trapped in a constrained space (a small island here) and under constant attack by alien monsters who are trying to turn you into a zombie. In fact, I'm going to explicitly adapt this into one of my two sailing campaigns; either Terror in Timischburg or Curse of the Corsair Coast.

The Armageddon Echo: Now, you're in the elf forest, and as agents of the elf queen, you are going to war against the invading drow in the elf forest. Quite the change from the piratey or criminal start to the campaign in a seedy, dumpy little town, but not a bad adventure, and one of the better "war-themed" adventures that I've read in a long time. Little bit hoaky finale, though. I'm not a fan of demiplanes as a constrained villain hangout.

Endless Night: I did not like this one. Here, you go undercover disguised as a drow into one of the drow households in the Underdark (er... Darklands) drow capitol city. The adventure is incredibly railroady, and the PCs have very little agency by design. Even when they're not being overtly railroaded, they're being deliberately hamstrung and put in a position where they can't do very much except be a spectator to the unfolding plot. I don't think I'd enjoy this one at all, and that's a much more significant flaw than any "tone shift". Getting jerked around by one girlboss NPC after another isn't anyone's idea of fun.

A Memory of Darkness: Another one that I did not like. You're back up on the surface now, going to a hold-out fortress in a demon-haunted section of the elf forest, but it's less of a raid and more of a visit where you're expected to go and talk to a bunch of people. It's also very railroady, and it feels more like you're a spectator rather than a "mover and shaker" in the story. Not only that, the adventure background gives the module very unlikeable context; the PCs are essentially manipulated by the girlboss elf queen, and there's an extremely transparent allegory of her being the feminist progressive "hero" and the whole point of the module is to go either convert or kill the traditionalist conservative elves who are the "villains". The module is all set up for the big reveal that elves who become "too Republican" turn into drow, which again, is supposed to be a big shocking reveal, and the module is set up as if it is, which isn't really a very appropriate way to structure a module, I don't think. I can't imagine running this one, ever. 

Descent Into Midnight: Finally, you go back to a weird section of the Underdark, fight lots of demons and drow at relatively high level, end the campaign. This is serviceable, but not particularly inspiring. The  Land of Black Blood should be cooler than it actually ends up being in practice, I found. It's a good idea that they do too little with.

Anyway, I didn't necessarily expect this to be one of my favorite campaigns. I knew ahead of time that it wasn't one of the more popular ones, and my AI ranking had it at the lowest tier at which it grouped 1e adventure paths. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the first two chapters, the second one in particular.

Before I start Legacy of Fire I'm probably going to read Out of the Abyss, the 5e campaign that also focuses on the Underdark, drow and demons. It'll be interesting to see the same themes explored differently. 

I also ran another AI query of Google, asking it to rank the adventure paths, but I asked it to rank both 1e and 2e adventure paths. Thought I'd include that here for the heckuvit. Once again, I don't pretend to expect that my own rankings would match these. 

S-Tier: The Gold Standards

Universally praised masterpieces with exceptional writing, cohesive themes, and minimal required GM intervention.

• Curse of the Crimson Throne (1e): The ultimate urban campaign.
• Kingmaker (1e / 2e): The definitive hex-exploration and kingdom-building sandbox.
• Rise of the Runelords (1e): The quintessential high-fantasy Varisian epic.
• Season of Ghosts (2e): A masterclass in localized, atmospheric mystery and emotional storytelling.
• Strength of Thousands (2e): The premier roleplay-forward magical academy and diplomatic campaign.

A-Tier: Excellent & Highly Memorable - Silver Medal

Incredible campaigns that fully deliver on their premises, holding minor flaws or requiring light GM pacing tweaks.

• Tyrant’s Grasp (1e): A grim, high-stakes military survival campaign against the undead apocalypse.
• War for the Crown (1e): A brilliant, courtly intrigue and political espionage campaign.
• Abomination Vaults (2e): The gold standard for modern, multi-level dungeon crawls.
• Hell’s Rebels (1e): An engaging underground urban resistance and rebellion campaign.
• Wrath of the Righteous (1e): An epic mythic crusade against demon hordes (held back only by late-game 1e mythic rules bloat).
• Fists of the Ruby Phoenix (2e): A high-octane, cinematic martial arts tournament arc.
• Iron Gods (1e): Splicing sci-fi technology and crashed starships into traditional fantasy.
• Strange Aeons (1e): The definitive cosmic horror and amnesia-driven campaign.

B-Tier: Good Campaigns with Small Caveats - Bronze Medal

Fun, deeply thematic adventures that stumble slightly due to subsystem weight, repetitive encounters, or disconnected acts.

• Blood Lords (2e): Climbing the ranks of an undead-run magocracy; suffers slightly from enemy damage-type repetition.
• Skull & Shackles (1e): A phenomenal pirate simulator hampered by tedious ship combat mechanics.
• Stolen Fate (2e): A sprawling, globe-trotting scavenger hunt using the Deck of Many Things.
• Carrion Crown (1e): Classic gothic horror monster-of-the-week, though books feel narratively disjointed.
• Quest for the Frozen Flame (2e): Immersive prehistoric nomadic survival; wraps up its final act too quickly.
• Legacy of Fire (1e): Genies, desert exploration, and Arabian Nights tropes.
• Reign of Winter (1e): A wild reality-hopping portal-fantasy (including WWI Earth) with polarizing tone shifts.
• Return of the Runelords (1e): High-level fan service tying together decades of lore; best reserved for veterans.
• Hell’s Vengeance (1e): The rare "play as the evil empire agents" campaign; requires a specific table dynamic.
• Ironfang Invasion (1e): Gritty guerrilla warfare against an invading hobgoblin army.
• Recent 2e Additions (Wardens of Wildwood, Curtain Call, Triumph of the Tusk, Seven Dooms for Sandpoint): Solid, well-received modern adventures that generally provide targeted, fun genre experiences.

C-Tier: Flawed but Workable - Copper

Fascinating core concepts dragged down by pacing issues, lethal early-edition math spikes, or structural disconnects.

• Age of Ashes (2e): Plagued by early-2e difficulty spikes and a disjointed "world tour" plot.
• Agents of Edgewatch (2e): Great urban encounters marred by tonal whiplash and punishing tactical lethality.
• Mummy’s Mask (1e): Incredible Egyptian tomb exploration, but suffers from massive dungeon burnout by Book 4.
• Outlaws of Alkenstar (2e): Incredible steampunk bank-heist opening that derails into an uninspired wilderness trek in Book 2.
• Shattered Star (1e): A straightforward, nostalgia-driven dungeon-delving fetch quest.
• Giantslayer (1e): A long, combat-heavy martial slog fighting giant variants.
• Ruins of Azlant (1e): Island colonization hampered by clunky underwater combat rules.
• Jade Regent (1e): A legendary caravan trek across the north, ruined by terrible caravan subsystems and NPC spotlight-stealing.
• Gatewalkers (2e) & Sky King's Tomb (2e): Compelling paranormal/dwarven hooks that suffer from disjointed chapter pacing and missing maps.

D-Tier: The Fixer-Uppers - Feet of Clay

The weakest links structurally. Playing these successfully requires the GM to fundamentally rewrite portions of the plot or mechanics.

• Extinction Curse (2e): Famous for introducing a circus theme and then entirely abandoning it after Book 1 for a standard subterranean lizardfolk crawl.
• Second Darkness (1e): Starts as a clever casino/crime syndicate intrigue before abruptly shifting into a generic Underdark drow war.
• Serpent’s Skull (1e): Features an iconic Chapter 1 shipwreck survival sandbox, followed by five books of tedious jungle slogging and an empty faction mega-dungeon.
• Council of Thieves (1e): Lacks focus outside of one famously brilliant, interactive theatrical play in Book 2.

Paizo Iconics - Mavaro

I've been doing these in batches of four, and that works out because I'll actually end the normal run just right; the total number is divisible by four. However, after that, if I go on, I've got a less nice number, so we'll see. However, sometimes it doesn't quite work out too; as Mavaro is the first of the "psionic" occultist classes, the actual Occultist, and he's the last for today. There are six total psionic classes, and I'll be mostly, but not quite, done in my next batch.

Of course, there are technically two entries for the Vigilante, even though they are the same character. It's a little bit like having Bruce Wayne and Batman being two separate iconic characters. Kinda dumb. 

In any case, I don't know if they were trying to go for a darker, edgier vibe to the occultist classes or not, but Mavaro is no hero. He's probably not actually a villain either, just a selfish jerk who unwittingly caused the death of every weirdo cultist that he grew up with, and then ran off to become a bit of a hedonist world traveler. I had kind of imagined him as a bit more like a Jules de Grandin with a few psychic powers of his own, but it doesn't seem like it.

I'm pretty curious about the whole Pathfinder 1e Occult line. It's obviously not at all the same take on Psionics as 3.5, which we get instead in the third party book Ultimate Psionics (mostly) but rather a completely different take on the concept.

Not being much of a mechanics head these days, and not caring nearly as much as I used to for alternative takes on magic, because I prefer a much lower magic concept anyway, I'm certainly less interested than I would have been twenty or twenty five years or so ago, or even ten or eleven years ago when this system was new. But I still have some interest in seeing exactly how this all plays out. I am listening to an actual play Carrion Crown podcast that features one of the PCs as an occultist, but it's hard to get a handle on what the class is really all about from that, honestly. She seems like a spellcasting fighter in many respects. No idea.

Here's another cover that prominently features Mavaro, also by Wayne Reynolds.

I honestly kind of wish that there had been an adventure path focused on the Occult line. There were five products for it, all starting with the word Occult...; ...Adventures, Bestiary, Origins, Realms, and Mysteries. It's not clear to me if one of the adventure paths kinda sorta played to the Occult themes, but there clearly wasn't one that really focused on them.

Paizo Iconics - Adowyn

At one point, the Meet the Iconics bios were actually bios, brief, but they made actually playing one of these iconics as a pregen pretty doable. At some point later on, they became very short origin stories that offer very little of what you need to do that, and just became self-indulgent stories written by would-be writers who didn't want to actually write a book or real short story. This particular problem plagues most of the second half, if not more, of the iconics bios, which is a bit part of the reason why the later iconics are not actually at all iconic.

Adowyn is also kind of a tough girl tragic girlboss, so not an interesting or likeable character at all either. Being kind of a hybrid of the ranger and druid classes and really focusing on the animal companion is not something that I ever had any interest in, so this is a class that I honestly don't have much interest in, and the iconic character certainly doesn't convince me otherwise.

Paizo Iconics - Shardra Geltl

I have little to no interest in the shaman class, and Shardra Geltl is one of the worst of an already sorry collection of iconics. Written by Crystal Frasier, a very confused man who presents himself as if he were a woman, it seems that Shardra is the same; a dwarf man who was confused and self-indulgent and decided because of the "spirits" or whatever, that he was actually a woman. The backstory is one of the most over-wrought, self-indulgent trite pieces of trash that I've read even in this kind of short game-related fiction, where those flaws are not uncommon. "Crystal" wasn't courageous enough to be too clear about this, though, so there's the (slim, but not impossible) possibility that I'm misinterpreting. But I don't think so.

Not only that, the design. What in the world is he wearing on his head? Is that stone? Bone? Bronze? And that weird lizardy thing is called a tuatara, which it mostly certainly is not. I've seen real tuataras, and they look nothing like that. 

What a disaster. I'm reading (as of the time of this posting) the Second Darkness adventure path, which is one of the really early ones; written before the Pathfinder RPG was even conceived, so it's still just a D&D 3.5 product. It's still painfully woke, and sadly, they only got worse from there.

Paizo Iconics - Zadim

The Slayer class is a kind of hybrid of the rogue and the ranger, and in practice, plays out a bit like a ranged attack focused assassin. Zadim is the iconic slayer, and he's literally a Middle Eastern religious cult assassin, which is perhaps not the most interesting use of the class, honestly. 

I like the idea of the class immensely, but I'm very much a confirmed fan of the idea of alt.rangers, alt.rogues, and other alt.fighter in general that lean towards assassin or swashbuckler. I think the Freeport class (for Pathfinder) called Freebooter is probably my favorite, but the Slayer is a good one.

Of course, I don't particularly love Zadim himself. I get it; going for the original hashassin cult vibe, but I'd never create one like that.

Still, it's hard to complain too much. The class is too good.

Sadly, or not because I have no interest in playing it, but the Slayer was not ported to 2e, although Zadim came on board as the iconc Avenger or something like that. Whatever, 2e.

Cult of Undeath ... tonight

My current gamer buddies are a bit unusual. I often get invited to join their "side group" (more accurately, I am part of the side group; I often get invited to join the main group) often with very little notice, and I'm often asked if I want to run. So yesterday evening, I was asked if I wanted to run a one-shot tonight. Sadly, my schedule is a bit constrained; I can do it, but it's going to make for a tight evening. I have a first pass job interview at 6 PM, missionaries over for dinner at 6:30, and D&D at 7:30. And, naturally, my day was packed full as it always is with no free time during the day to look at anything. I re-read, or skimmed rather, "Curse of the Brine Witch" and took some notes, which I printed off. I printed off a few AI generated pictures; one of Bridgetown and one of the Blackwater Hag, and I asked ChatGPT to generate me some 1st level renditions of the Scooby Gang as D&D characters, which I also printed off. Technically, I have five characters, because it made Scooby-doo into one too.

I told Tanya, the one who asked me, that I don't think my game is a one-shot. It's too hard to run a game, especially a 5e game, in 2½-3 hours. So, we'll call it a 2-3 shot... although I'm not going to point out until we get further along, that it's an optional campaign opener, because not knowing what else to do and having recently finished the Cult of Undeath outline, I decided to run Cult of Undeath. Honestly, it might well take more than 2-3 sessions to do this first part. But if it goes really well, and if we want to continue it, I'll be glad of the slower pace.

Alternate Blackwater Hag image

So tonight will be fairly low-key. I'll kill all of the PCs first, in their Scooby gang incarnation, which I'm going to give to them. Then, the regular PCs will be investigating the murder of the Scoobers. My favorite way to start a campaign, or even a season of an ongoing campaign. I've got enough roleplaying and investigatory notes, plus some towny random encounters, that'll keep them busy for easily two sessions, probably three, and possibly four depending on how hung up we get on looking in to anything that we end up looking in to. 

I'm not going to worry over-much beyond that. I'll have to adapt to D&D, which I'm not thrilled with, but which I absolutely am capable of doing. I hope I don't get a bunch of stupid Muppets characters, but I probably will. Probably have some dragonborn, some kenku, or some other crap like that. That's what I get for not disallowing them up front, but then again, this isn't even my normal group, this was last minute, and I don't know a lot of these players yet, at least not as players, to feel comfortable laying all kinds of restrictions on them yet. I'll just subtly influence them, I hope, by presenting a more grounded, darker fantasy, and hope that they get with the program if the campaign continues. If it doesn't... well, that's OK too, I guess. I'll at least have laid some seeds for the future. I never know what to expect from a last minute session like this, when I don't even know for sure who's playing or what kinds of characters I'll get. 

Anyway, I'll keep this post fairly short, and come edit it sometime tomorrow with a report of how it went.

UPDATE: As promised; the session went relatively well. It was a little rushed. I had little time to prepare, I had little warning that it was coming, I had no time to review characters (granted, from their perspective, these are one-shot characters, so I have no idea how much thought they even put into them—the guy who named his character Hey New Guy, which we decided to spell Hanu Guy obviously didn't create any backstory) and I had a busy evening, rushing from one thing to another to another until I got here, about fifteen minutes late compared to our targeted start time. We obviously didn't finish, but we did OK. I kind of rushed them through some investigation, threw them a lot of clues that I'd otherwise possibly have made them work a little harder for (although probably not)

It was otherwise pretty much what I'd hoped. Maybe a little sillier, but that's on me for giving them the Scooby gang as pregens to get killed at the beginning, and making it very obvious that they were, indeed, the Scooby gang. 

I do feel a little rusty as a GM. Other than a few one-shots here and there, I've not really run anything in several years, and I find that some of my bad habits, like moving too quickly through stuff, are ones that I definitely need to keep an eye on. Part of that was a function of me feeling so rushed, both to prepare for the game, to try and get a lot done in about three hours or even slightly less, and the whole hecticness of the evening in general. Without those factors, I'd have reviewed my notes and outline one more time, made a few more notes with some names of NPCs that they'd likely run into instead of having to improvise them on the spot, or if I did improvise them on the spot, I'd have taken a little bit more time to look them up on my DM screen's name list panel at least. I would have been just a bit more prepared, I guess. And I like running pretty fast and loose; don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'd be a lot more prepared; I'd just have spent a little more time in prep and reviewed what prep I did do one more time so the whole thing went a little bit smoother.

Good news is, we're meeting next week to continue, and because I know about it in advance, I can do that. Although there are two more players who are normally part of that group, so there's a possibility that I'll have more players and more things going on. While this "one shot" doesn't end on a cliff-hanger exactly, it does leave places for it to go as a more campaign-ish type thing. If we get to that point and people still want to play, then I'll need a little bit more on their characters.

I'm not super thrilled about adapting my campaign to 5e with a group where I'm kind of a back-up, but y'know... it beats not doing anything at all. And I feel like we did maybe a third of what I prepared. My outline is a good three sessions; probably four if I slow down a bit and take things a little bit more deliberately. Enough time to get my sea legs under me with running, I hope. River legs, maybe, as the case may be in this campaign.

Terror in Timischburg; first pass at expansion

Cutting and pasting my original Terror in Timischburg outline, and I'll add some more thoughts on how to expand.

1) The "white whale"—some kind of large, nasty sea monster that's been threatening the coast and shipping. It needs to be found and hunted. 

I never meant, of course, for the "white whale" to literally be a white whale. I'm actually leaning towards something like Scylla right now. Not sure how to do this, though, so it's more interesting that just "sail around for a while and then fight a monster in the ocean." The Leviathan chapter of Elder Evils might have some ideas that I need to look at again. I'm also thinking that it requires special equipment. Maybe special equipment made out of star-metal, which conveniently will be crashing on an island as part of another front below. So, there's this whole end times cult that's used some kind of ritual to call a meteor down to crash on an island as a test; a bigger and more deadly attack later. 

Not 100% sure how to tie this in to the sea monster other than that creating ballista heads of skymetal, and skymetal swords, or whatever, is necessary to slay the monster. But I'd like to think of an even tighter relationship.

2) The city-state of Rozovka has often born the brunt of vampiric slave raids, clandestinely. Joining up with Inganok, another victim, they are hoping to discourage them militarily. Although not capable of fighting them, they're looking to commission privateers via letters of marque against Timischburg's clandestine vampire raids. It's worth noting that the idea that vampires clandestinely rule Timischbrg is secret(ish), hidden behind plausible deniability, and many people don't believe in vampires.

I'm not sure what this looks like either. It sounds like sailing around hunting vampire (or at least vampire representative) pirates and attacking them, but that's not a very structured approach either. I think that I might be able to adapt some of the Freeport material, maybe particularly the one actual sailing ship combat module, "A Storm of Sails". I'm sure that there are more sailing modules out there, but I don't know them off-hand. There's a whole 5e campaign (3pp) called Call of the Deep I think, plus the Saltmarsh 5e collection, all of which I should probably read too. They're both on my radar, but not in the short term. I might consider pulling them ahead to read.

Either that, of course, or I don't finish this particular one until I get to those points in my reading. Which is fine. I'll probably leapfrog Curse of the Corsair Coast at least ahead of this, at least when I get to the final supercut.

3) Pirates have been hiding out in remote coves on the Nizrekh Islands and even hiding their treasure haul there. Of course, the locals are unfriendly, hostile, and xenophobic. And snake cultists, and cannibals. Seriously bad news. Probably undead too, some of them. And, well, Nizrekh is what's left of Atlantis, so there's even more bad news there too. 

This is where I'm thinking of adapting part 2 of Second Darkness, "Children of the Void." It's going to be a bit more bulked up, and I'll have a look at some of the jungle exploration modules that I've read earlier from Savage Tide, or maybe "Souls for the Smuggler's Shiv" adventure from Serpent's Skull. 

4) The seal mentioned elsewhere at Grozavest that keeps Tarush, the undead godling trapped underground, is weakening, and nastier, more primal and feral ghouls/vampires are slipping through. Not only in the wilds of Timischburg, but also in Nizrekh, and in the jungles to the east of the corsair cities can the PCs find out how to tighten up the seals and keep the already horrifying enough "secret" vampire aristocracy of Timischburg from being replaced by a ravening horde of daemons and undead.

This is a major change from the ship-based stuff otherwise going on. In some ways, this may be the closest to a dungeon-crawl that I've come up with; but primarily I need to focus on the PCs finding a way to strengthen or re-do the seal. Maybe the skymetal above on Nizrekh is important here, or the fellshard ore in Garskarfells. But ultimately, having Tarush somehow breaking his seal is the worst case scenario, so it needs to be prevented at all costs. 

5) The Godfather in Port Liure. A patron sends the PCs to disrupt dangerous drug and occult trade in the city of thieves which is wreaking havoc on more innocent Timischer people, and they get caught up in a gang war, among other problems.

Port Liure is already going to be the setting for Curse of the Corsair Coast, so I probably want to involve a different one of the Corsair City-states like Razina or St. Haspar or something. There are some Freeport modules that I can easily adapt to this; I need to go double check on them and see which ones best fit.

(Bonus) Innsburough in the Orlok Marches is deliberately meant to evoke Innsmouth of Lovecraft fame. Cults of Dagon threaten the entire coast, centered on this horrible town. Sea devils and deep ones and cultists. Can they be disrupted without it being fatal?

The final one, a bonus one, is just "Shadow Over Innsmouth" at least as its currently described. Again, I'm going to have a look at some existing modules for this one too. 

I think mostly my plan is pretty solid, but it's still a little light for many of these, and what I'd like to do is adapt existing material rather than make it up myself.  This post gives it a little more flesh, but it's still not enough to go on. But it's enough that I can go back and do some research with existing modules that I have, and then come back and do each of these six fronts as a separate, more detailed post.

EDIT: The current banner is probably the busiest that I've ever made for this site, but... I kinda like it. I'm sure I'll get restless with it in the future and change it again, but for now, I quite like it. I'll post it here just because at some point in the future it may not be the one that's on the header.