SoG Feedback
So with Xin Yue defeated last week, this week we did some lightning round catch up for all the weeks of autumn so we can start the winter book just on time with next Sunday’s solstice as we succeed in keeping all four books running season by season. Basically we did 9 “weeks” worth of the chapter 1 content (I had covered the first 3 weeks events out of order ahead of time) in one sitting as well as front loaded the research into the mindscape shift ritual so next week we will do the Red Smoke, Gold Eyes series of events and can go to the governor’s mindscape immediately after.
With “Let the Leaves Fall” we basically did the ritual to open the wall of ghosts on the equinox week and then spent 11 sessions (1/week with one week off) arriving to and ten clearing the monestary, leaving only one session to do the sim city willowshore stuff from chapter 1 of this book. I think winter is going to be kind of the same with 1-2 sessions exorcism, 1-2 sessions with the governor, 1 session for Shinzo and the seance, and then about 6 sessions for haunting Karahai and one week I’m not available with about 1 session leftover to do the sim city willowshore for the winter events of chapter 2… while the plan has been to follow real world calendar for the seasons, the events of this third chapter can technically go until the summer solstice without issue, or resolve sooner without really messing with the story so it should be fine either way. This means in terms of the “winter timeline” of No Breath To Cry (book 3) day 1 is Dec 22 so the “Day 21” event 10: claylight festival which is supposed to occur on the solstice is actually “week 10” or about 70 days after Dec 22. Also, because the timeline can vary I will ensure that “Event 12: the Seance” occurs after returning to willowshore after meeting the governor, after meeting Shinzo, before the haunting part of the book in Ch.3.
Looking ahead… I’m not sure how to ask players to add the spirit powers temporarily to their character sheets from the section on “Haunting the Living” in the Adventure Toolbox. I’ll probably print to PDF the four pages and hand them out to the players and not use demiplane for this.
Also looking ahead, I’m seeing that there’s no easy way for players to select reincarnated feats from To Bloom Below the Web as their ancestry feats. It’s really specific to this adventure path so my hopes aren’t high, but could there be a toggle in the “Getting Started” > “Preferences and Rules” for Reincarnated to grant access to these feats?
In terms of running this session… as the GM I needed to track the levels of hope, food and security, as well as reputation with both factions and a text list of who disappeared in week 12… when GM tools are launched, text notes, a task list and “clocks” or creation of number trackers would really help GMs running Pathfinder APs …
For me today without such tools… I upped my owlbear rodeo game and made a chart where players could place tokens for what their characters did each week with a tracker for resolving the events in the book at the top, hope/food/security trackers and yami/investigate spell/and a spotlight scene for each character… In a single 3 hour session we covered nine weeks of stuff.
We had a lot of fun. It’s a great adventure. Demiplane helped us because I could easily look up stats for absent players (2 of 5 players were absent) but there’s more that could be done for an ever GM like me… 