freeport series tips?

[discjacker]

Hail and well met, I am new to these parts but like what I have seen and plan on staying a bit.

Anyway, My Groups last game ended 4hours before it was supposed to with the players piles of goo under the hammer of an Ogre Warrior, A mean 11hd Howler and an evil elven ranger. Hence the new campaign and this question.

I have been interested for some time in running the Freeport series and have decided that now would be a fine time to start. The question is simply were there areas in the module that ran rougher than others, or areas that other GM's found troublesome that could be avoided? I have read all three of the first Adventures just thought I would ask What the general population thought.

Anyway nice to be here.

thanks

- Disc

[discjacker]

..........hmmm...........
just checking something

[anoxos]

The only module-specific thing I can think of would be the rock crusher trap in TiF. I had to be really generous and stretch things to let people make more checks and fudge it so they had some success chance to survive. It is way too easy to turn that into a TPK. I only killed one, who failed every check I let him make miserably. They dubbed me a killer GM because of that encounter, not realizing how nice I was being to them...

Other than that, any roughness in my campaign was due to my party, not the modules. They brought it on themselves...

[discjacker]

Killer GM, yeah I have heard that before. The problem with players is they never understand how far you go for them.

[anoxos]

Actually I've kinda taken the moniker to heart And the glove off.

At least they know they've worked for every thing they get!

[Kalendraf]

The biggest problem I've run into with the series so far is the experience situation. Let me explain...

At the end of DiF, the 5 member party was almost up to 2nd level, I think. I ran the "Holiday in the Sun" mini adventure to push them up to 2nd level. Then ran them on a couple side adventures at sea to bring them up to 3rd level.

The just finished TiF, and they are still 3rd level. TiF flows directly into MiF, but indicates that the party should be about 4th to 6th level to start it. So again I'm having to run a mini-adventure to bring them up a bit more.

So before starting TiF, I think the party should actually be about mid-point of 3rd level and well on their way to 4th level. The stuff they'll face in MiF is quite a bit more challenging, especially in the final act.

Personally, I would have liked to see some guidelines that spell this out a bit more to indicate that the DM will have to improvise between this or that part of the series. They've provided some nice leads to use, but I would have liked more in the way of experience estimates to work off of.

[timemrick]

On 2002-03-05 11:50, Kalendraf wrote:
The biggest problem I've run into with the series so far is the experience situation. Let me explain...

At the end of DiF, the 5 member party was almost up to 2nd level, I think. I ran the "Holiday in the Sun" mini adventure to push them up to 2nd level. Then ran them on a couple side adventures at sea to bring them up to 3rd level.

My group (4 PCs at the time) reached 2nd level at the end of DiF. I've also been giving some roleplaying XP (the up to 50/level per session suggested in the DMG), which might have helped (I don't recall all the details anymore).

I ran an adventure of my own, then "Holiday in the Sun." We added a 5th player between these two, and one player changed PCs, so they were 3 L3 and 2 L2 going into TiF, and 1 L4 (barely) and 4 L3 by the end.

The just finished TiF, and they are still 3rd level. TiF flows directly into MiF, but indicates that the party should be about 4th to 6th level to start it. So again I'm having to run a mini-adventure to bring them up a bit more.

So before starting TiF, I think the party should actually be about mid-point of 3rd level and well on their way to 4th level. The stuff they'll face in MiF is quite a bit more challenging, especially in the final act.

Checking the notes in TiF & MiF, I saw that the two modules assume about a month of game-time between the two. So I ran a couple short adventures that got them all up to about the middle of 4th level for MiF.

Because of the challenges they're facing in MiF (which we're in the middle of), I'm awarding XP between sessions, and will let them level mid-adventure. One PC started close to 5th, and will level as soon as they take a short breather in-game.

Personally, I would have liked to see some guidelines that spell this out a bit more to indicate that the DM will have to improvise between this or that part of the series. They've provided some nice leads to use, but I would have liked more in the way of experience estimates to work off of.

Same here. I've been spending some time calculating all the XP available in each adventure (and in my own in between), to guestimate where the PCs should be after each adventure. The party hasn't always followed those projections.

It's pretty clear from both the intros and the pregen PCs in DiF & TiF where they intend the party to be (1st & 3rd, respectively). MiF didn't give any pregens (probably because it makes little sense unless you've run DiF & TiF first), or state the intended level more narrowly than "4th-6th." Based on the encounters and the gap between the first two modules, I'd say it's probably aimed at 5th.

My own group is 5 PCs, not 4, who aren't min-maxed as well as they could be. They should all reach 5th level during MiF, so if they survive the first few parts, the final confrontation should be about the right challenge level (i.e., tough but not *instantly* fatal).

Tim

[Kalendraf]

On 2002-03-06 08:28, timemrick wrote:

Checking the notes in TiF & MiF, I saw that the two modules assume about a month of game-time between the two.

Is that listed in MiF? I recall reading something that seemed to imply that TiF follows DiF by about a month or two, and it can be inferred somewhat from the notes about the lighthouse as well. I didn't see the note about having another month between TiF to MiF, but I may have simply missed it.

[timemrick]

I don't think TiF & MiF make any explicit statement of "it's been X since last adventure," but I'm pretty sure that if you check the introduction of each module, you'll find the time remaining until the completion of the lighthouse (IIRC, DiF: a few months, TiF: about a month, MiF: a few days). I don't have them on hand to quote specifics, but that's how I planned out how much time we had to work with between modules.

And you can infer the phase of the moon for MiF (no moon = new?), which nicely allowed for a full-moon-lit haunted house adventure between TiF & MiF.

BTW, that reminds me: A couple of my players are Mythos CCG fans, as am I. They're paranoid about the implications of New Moon + Outside Country Gate location, which in the CCG allows you to summon Nyarlathotep. Not quite right in this case, but not *too* far off. B-) I'm going to have to build a deck based on the Freeport trilogy one of these days...

Tim

_________________
Tim Emrick, time@sluggy.net
Tim's Green Ronin Errata & Notes:
http://www.geocities.com/thastygliax/grp-errata/
"Every hour wounds. The last one kills."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: timemrick on 2002-03-06 11:56 ]</font>