Pathfinder 616: War for the Crown, Episode 2.8 - The Doom that Came to Jambis

[@bryanstephens4800]

There are two Players plans. 1. Get in and fight. 2. Spend hours creating a 17+ point plan doing everything it can to avoid a fight. That results in a fight.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@bryanstephens4800 the Aurelius / Diyanah dynamic in a nutshell

[@thundrspirit]

Hahaha

[@RyanVonAegir]

The scene with Marius and the Nightswan was tense and I loved it. I could feel the player for Marius having a "oh God what do I say in this situation" and debating what to do. When the patron for the Nightswan appeared, I thought "this could go badly" and I loved it. And some Rankle backstory? Wasn't expecting the under ground exploration and deeply personal nature of it. The chase he went on was a clever use of combat for how fast and tricky he is. These past 3 episodes have done a good job highlighting the strengths of each party member. Aurelius is the magic expert and tied with Demi for political minded front person. Marius is good at talking to people who aren't nobles and befriending people. Rankle is great at espionage and monster identification. Demi is politically minded and has a wealth of knowledge and support. And then there's Diyanah who I'm for now labeling as "wine and wild card" haha.

[@TheMythkeeper]

The Marius / Night Swan discussion was so great. Even though it only involved one player at the table, you could see the entire playgroup was really locked into what was happening. Very happy my players are always willing to let any one individual player to grab the spotlight for a while. And as for Diyanah! Haha! He's the unsung hero of the group - and every team needs a wild card!

[@bryanstephens4800]

We have a character defining moment during a trial which solidifed our Tribune. These moments are the stuff games are made upon.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@bryanstephens4800 absolutely

[@zimmerwald1915]

I dunno, I thought Lucrecia made some excellent points.

[@PresidentofSolos]

Another great episode! I love the pay off with Rankle's backstory that was set up during the trog attack on the farm. Even though this is a published adventure you've most certainly made it your own in the best way. Can't wait for next week!

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thanks! This has been a labor of love and I feel like its been steadily improving in terms of the quality of writing and narration. Definitely learned a lot from this.

[@thundrspirit]

This was awesome. I enjoyed the changes you wove into this, and stealing, er, borrowing maps from other adventures is always sound advice. 😁

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thanks!

[@SonicSanctuary]

Man i get so drawn in by the story.

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thank you! ♥

[@1DrAwesome]

Another great episode MK. You did a superb job incorporating your own changes to the AP as written. Your modifications made for an even better overall campaign for your players. You have a great group. They have really done a fine job crafting the personalities of their PC's, which I know is a very rewarding thing for the GM to watch.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@1DrAwesome yeah I’m so glad this is the campaign I chose for a campaign diary. What a great and rewarding group this has been.

[@ThatGamerG]

I wish these got more views! Just know all your hard work is much appreciated!

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thank you kindly!

[@samstriker5584]

I love Rankle poking out from the side watching Aurelius and Titus

[@TheMythkeeper]

World's greatest spy 🤣

[@phil_______]

Another great episode! Love the whole cast, but I gotta say, Marius is swiftly becoming my favorite of the bunch!

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thanks as always for watching and commenting! ❤️

[@dmeep]

This is great and more people should be watching it

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@dmeep thank you!

[@SuperMadman41]

Thanks for the vid

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thanks for the comment!

[@davdav1370]

Another great episode. Also I have two questions, if you don't mind :) 1. Have you finished this AP with your player group (I remember in some episode you mentioned this is still ongoing if memory serves me) 2. Did your player (Rankle) figured out on his own that mine could be actually be something else besides abandoned mine, or you gave him some hints ? Specially with name wording at 30:31 (Zora Caldrayne -> Zora Caldrana)

[@TheMythkeeper]

1. We are currently in the final stretch of Book 5. I would imagine that we'll finish the AP in February sometime. 2. Rankle's player (like Rankle himself) plays his cards close to his chest. The idea to explore the mine was his - I didn't incept this. But as to what he thought was going on, I'm not sure as he didn't say. What I can reveal was that this was a surprise for me as a GM. I went into this session assuming they'd go to visit with the Baron, be presented to the Lady Caldrana instead, and eventually decide to assault the Baron's manor. I did not prepare for the mine approach at all, so I just winged that at the game table, which ultimately had them wind up in the dungeon below the manor all the same.

[@davdav1370]

@@TheMythkeeper oh that's great insight to this game session, thanks MythKeeper

[@joshuachapman247]

Man that was pretty awesome episode. That fight sounded intense. Also the players got a lot done. I really like how you weaved in the separate parts of the story. Also I totally ship Marius and the Nightswan.

[@TheMythkeeper]

That fight was more intense than was probably reflected in the video. Turns out capturing how intense the combat encounters actually are is quite difficult.

[@Zeathian]

Damn, class traitor Marius.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@Zeathian 😅

[@Kuglovitz]

Another excellent episode!

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thank you kindly!

[@raptordaraptor7861]

We always hear about morality of Good vs Evil. But in my opinion this is far more nuanced! Law vs Chaos is far less clean-cut. Interesting to see even Marius has his limit to LG, basically giving the lady the go-ahead on their targeted lord.

[@TheMythkeeper]

This may or may not come as a surprise but as a GM I stopped playing with the classic D&D alignment system as far back as the early 2000s. Marius doesn't have a specific alignment. Many watching have ascribed LG to him, but I think that's just because he's earnest and tries to do the right thing. Marius is a pretty ambitious social climber (as we've seen by his desire to own property and be recognized as a gentleman) and this has caused him to turn a blind eye to certain inequities (like when he didn't say anything to Diyanah for making the halfling carry the tapestry in Season 1). Conversations like this have caused Marius to really think about his worldview and what causes he supports. Not everyone will agree with his choices. He (and all the characters) each have a morality of their own making - and I found my players more open to this once I dispensed with alignment. Just my own experience.

[@raptordaraptor7861]

How do you handle effects the are based on alignment like Smite Evil, Detect Evil, Smite Chaos, etc? Pathfinder has a lot of rules based off of alignment, after all.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@raptordaraptor7861 Detect Evil and Detect Chaos are replaced by a general ability called Detect Supernatural that identifies creatures of the Undead, Outsider, Fey and Aberration types. Detect alignment is rarer but it when it crops up from time to time I generally replace it with Detect Thoughts at a higher DC. Smite Evil is Smite Supernatural. You typically can't smite a mortal, but I do make an exception if they're a cleric (or other divine class) tied to a deity the paladin's deity is opposed.

[@watdahill]

Sir you're audiobook sounds more alive compared to the godsrain audiobook.

[@TheMythkeeper]

Thank you! ❤ And tell Paizo! Maybe get me a recording gig. 😄

[@sjoerddz]

What an episode! Great exchange between Marius and Night swan. I love that Marius is able to see that true nobility earns as many duties as privileges, more even. (Much like any good aligned hero, risking life and limb for the good of all, often earning privileges like fame and riches) Definitely something that is less seen in fiction these days. The only thing I was thinking when hearing the party's plan in the tunnel was, "and when you are in, what then?" but it is a typical player plan if I've ever heard one haha. Your additions to the campaign are great imo, this format of video is just so great, how far behind the actual campaign are we right now?

[@TheMythkeeper]

I am probably 1 or 2 sessions away from finishing Book 5. Should wrap the whole campaign by end of January or maybe early February.

[@ivanivanovic5586]

Just the ticket for relaxation before another week of work(state holiday too). Shame about the baron tho, not the best way to go out, cursed like that(as one writer(talking about his granma cussing his grampa out) put it: poor (insert deity of choice) would have their work cut out for them, to transform me into things ranging from speck of sand to a donkey, being hot in ice or cold in fire, being eaten/cooked alive very slowly(or by candles), etc etc). I see we covered something out of rankle's background now, demi and marius didn't have their moment of that yet.

[@TheMythkeeper]

More character backstory stuff is coming, don't fear ;-)

[@raptordaraptor7861]

31:45 why does it say Forked-tail Wyvern?

[@TheMythkeeper]

Copy/paste error on my part that was never corrected. I think I overlaid that text on my previous episode when discussing the wyvern on the bridge incident, and somehow that ended up here on this episode. Sorry!

[@faethlyss]

I’m not sure if someone has asked this already, but, how long on average does it take for you to prepare one of these chapters? Without changes vs with changes? Major changes vs minor changes? These are so well done and are presented so well I’m curious as to your time commitment. Thanks for these posts, I’m sure your players love playing in them. I love the way you post them here on KZbin, I wish more creators used your presentation style/editing to post their sessions.

[@TheMythkeeper]

I honestly don't know how long it takes to make one of these videos all in. Its a multi-stage process. First I have to write the script, and I generally don't write these one episode at a time, I write these a whole season at a time. So when I embarked on this effort, before I recorded a single word, I wrote the whole script for Season 1 (the first 5 episodes, 1.1 - 1.5). I did this any time I had free time. I had a vacation to see family in that period and I wrote a lot whenever we weren't out and about and people were resting. I did this initially to see if I could actually write a season (I didn't want to start something and give up halfway through) and then as I began working on Season 2 I realized it was useful to be able to edit earlier episodes to emphasize things that were going to get a callback. Second I have to record everything. Just like with my lore videos, this is significant effort. The room I record in is not very well sound-proofed and I live in a big city with plenty of street noise so there's a ton of cutting out street sounds that I have to do. I also don't record just one episode at a time. When I have quiet day (usually a Sunday) to myself, I'll try to record as much as possible. That's also why sometimes my voice is deeper than at other times. In the morning my voice runs a little deeper, but by late afternoon my voice softens. Then I have to edit the videos themselves, and the time that takes varies pretty considerably. Any episode with a battlemap and a complicated movement of PCs and NPCs takes much longer to animate than a mostly RP session. In total, I'm not sure how much any individual episode takes but I suspect generally its somewhere around 10x the length of the video itself in production time.

[@faethlyss]

@ ok, that sounds like serious work but I for one appreciate it. How long does the actual table top prep take you? The kingmaker path prep, the changes and such? I should’ve said that better before but I didn’t want to write too much since I don’t comment on anything very often but I DM so I was trying to see the time it takes to make an adventure path work as well as you seem to. Thanks for reading and responding.

[@TheMythkeeper]

@@faethlyss This takes far less time for me than making the videos does. I've been GMing some version of this game since I was in high school (so like 25+ years now) so I know the rules system pretty intimately. I'm pretty comfortable with a fairly high level of improv at the game table if I have had that much time to prep. If I know I'll need some specific monsters for an upcoming game, I'll print a cheat sheet before the game with all the monsters I'll need handy in one place to help with the game. For story planning, I do most of that well in advance. I read all the books before I start a campaign for any story adjustments I want to make. I keep a loose notebook. I also print a bunch of character cards for each of the major NPCs to hand out as I've described in one of these videos. That takes a bit of time, but honestly its fun easy work. It is WAY easier/faster to run an AP than it is to create your own story. If you have a busy life, I strongly recommend this.

[@faethlyss]

@@TheMythkeeperthank you. I’ve been DMing on and off since I was 16, so 30+ years and I usually just improv details with a loose frame of the over arching story but I always like reading the APs and wondered if it was rewarding to run as a DM. Seems so. Thank you for the feedback. Keep up the awesome entertainment, I for one, really appreciate the work that goes into it.

[@derskalde4973]

General question: how could you integrate PC backstories into the Kingmaker AP? Or is that even needed? I plan to start running Kingmaker for my group soon, and this, together with another video I just watched, reminded me of the topic of integrating backstories into the game. Thing is, I don't have any Idea how that could be done in Kingmaker. Additionally, while my players haven't finalized their characters yet, so far the plan is more or less, that they all come from the same tribe of kobolds, so I don't know how much of a background story arc I could make of this.

[@TheMythkeeper]

I think you've mentioned this game in the comments before. Honestly, an all-Kobold Kingmaker game is so *specific* a version of that AP that you're already integrating backstories just by supporting this choice. Presumably they intend to lead a Kobold kingdom, so those kobolds must come from somewhere. The Windswept Wastes? The Darklands? Or do these kobolds plan to rule over a human kingdom? And if so how do they plan to keep the humans inline?

[@derskalde4973]

@TheMythkeeper Thank you, that's already helping. The closer I get to running this AP, the more do my nerves get the better of me. I GMed before, but those games always flickered out before I could really implement anything from their backstories in any meaningful way, or are Starter stories, to introduce Players to a system.

[@Briar7862]

What are everyone’s classes? I can’t figure out Marius’ class, and I swear some of your players are multiclassing.

[@TheMythkeeper]

It's in the video description 😅

[@raptordaraptor7861]

Seeing as this was leading to a corrupted spider baron, why was House Caldrana used as opposed to House Moivas? I get that Drow are Drow, so all of them might like spiders to some extent, but still. Does that house just already have a foothold under that section of Taldor?

[@TheMythkeeper]

Moivas would have maybe been a better choice in the end because of the spider thing. I chose Caldrana because I knew they were going to take a mine, and I thought the house that would most value a mine rich in iron and silver was Caldrana.

[@Discolittle]

There a chance that there going to be a creature feature (or whatever it count as) for the Spawn of Rovagug

[@TheMythkeeper]

Yeah that's a great topic for a future vid 🙂

[@Diasus3205]

you on bluesky?

[@TheMythkeeper]

No sorry, but feel free to join my MK discord server linked in the channel links.