I’m old and I’m lazy. That was the realization (acceptance?) that I came to this week. Although I had a great idea (at least in my opinion) for a test mini-campaign that combined elements of The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde, The Lost City of Barakus, and, at least as inspiration, some elements of Ptolus, I’ve decided to shelve it. Why? Like I said, I’m old and I’m lazy. As one of those 40+ GMs with a full-time job and other hobbies (drinking beer counts as a hobby, right?), I don’t have a lot of free time to start with. I came to the realization that my campaign idea would take a whole lot of time and, to be honest, I’m just not willing to devote that much time to it.
So, instead, we’ll be using a mini-campaign published by Paizo, “The Price of Immortality,” consisting of three modules that takes the characters from 1st to around 6th or 7th level. That should give us a good feel for the PFRPG (all three modules are specifically written for it) before we jump into a full campaign. We started with the first of these, “Crypt of the Everflame,” at our last session. Crypt is written as an introductory adventure for PFRPG newbies so it is appropriate. Although I like the backstory/adventure background well enough and it does lay the groundwork for the future modules, it does have some inconsistencies and issues but we’ll just overlook them for now.
Of course, the PCs spent a bunch of time in Kassen interacting with each other and with various NPCs. When they did head out, well, let’s just say that they didn’t quite head in the right direction due to a rather botched Survival check (Thomas rolled a 1 for Monte’s check).
We may only get one more session in before the holidays hit and we take a couple of weeks off. It’ll probably also take us a few months to get through these three modules. It’s all good though as it gives me time (assuming I use it) to read up on Golarion, Pathfinder RPG, and some of the various Paizo adventures and Adventure Paths. Although I’ve never been a huge fan of the latter, regardless of how well-written and interesting they might be, there is a good chance I’ll use one for the main campaign. I’ve got a few of them from back when I subscribed to their stuff after their run with Dragon and Dungeon ended and I do keep hearing how great they are for the time-limited (or lazy) GM. My players and I will just have to adjust our expectations and perhaps show a little more willingness to stay “on the rails” when necessary.
Campaign log for our first “Price of Immortality” session should be up later this week but, in the meantime, here are two out-of-character quotes that I enjoyed from the session. The first followed a fairly lengthy ooc discussion of the limitations of Wiki type sites, their potential lack of accuracy, and the inappropriateness of using them as citations in university assignments. The second followed Lilac’s late night hijinks involving Monte’s tent being collapsed upon him and the out-of-character rumor that Lilac is neutral evil.
- “Bardic knowledge is Wikipedia.”
- “Isn’t that a bit sophomoric evil?”
