Blog Archives
RotRL – Goblin Attack
Rise of the Runelords – Session Two
Having partaken in events of the Swallowtail Festival, the heroes now find themselves up to their elbows in combat as a large band of goblins have attacked the sleepy town of Sandpoint!
Blood, brutality, and the appearance of a masked hero? Yes, all of that and more! You can find the summary of the events over on our campaign World Anvil page by clicking HERE!
GM Thoughts
- The session introduced a few of the town’s NPCs, including Sheriff Belor Hemlock and owner of the Rusty Dragon, Ameiko Kaijitsu. It also briefly introduced a vigilante character that the party may bump into again. This character will have certain healing powers that may allow them to aid the party down the road. One of the players is a cleric; however he will rarely be able to attend sessions. The town has a cleric, but his healing powers are limited. The vigilante may become an NPC that could travel with the party and act as healer should they decided to add this mystery character. I hadn’t decided exactly what to do with the vigilante, and the players didn’t seem to show a great deal of interest when they made their appearance. So this mysterious hero may end up remaining in the shadows.
- What about the PC cleric? The player told me I could use the cleric as a healbot. I appreciate the effort on his part, but I don’t like using another player’s character. Should the dice go poorly and the character dies, I would feel guilty. My policy has always been that if a player can’t make it to a session, they just fade out of existence. When they can play, the character is there. In our last campaign, that resulted in some clutch strategy when the player ended up saving the party just by arriving in time.
- Level One is tricky for characters. They’re just so squishy! One day they’ll look back on facing a group of goblins and laugh. One day.
RotRL – Welcome to Sandpoint
Rise of the Runelords is one of the first adventure paths produced by Paizo for the Pathfinder RPG, and one of the most popular. My players voted on several options and they decided that they wanted to play this classic beauty. I got ahold of the Anniversary Edition and gave it a read.
Then, we gave it a play. You can find our Session One summary over on our World Anvil campaign page by clicking HERE!
I’ll go into the evolution of this campaign as we go along. Most of the campaign has been played over Roll20, and there have been issues with that as well. This session happened several months ago, but I’m posting it anyway for a) content, and b) continuity. I posted my last campaign, and there really isn’t alot of Pathfinder content online so I’m doing my part to spread the Good Word.
GM Thoughts
- This session revolved around getting the PC’s together and introducing some of the NPC’s from around town. They also met some characters who were not from the adventure path, but were actually from the previous Second Darkness campaign. They didn’t recall the characters until I mentioned it after the session.
- It was a good session in that it let everyone stretch their legs and roll some dice. The players had fun, and so did I… mostly.
- Right from the first session I knew I was going to have issues. I prepped for this session (overprepped actually – see my Party Time post) in record time. I thought I would like the fact that I didn’t need to do much of the heavy lifting with Rise of the Runelords. Unlike Second Darkness, Rise of the Runelords did not need any converting or fleshing out. It was fine to run right out of the box. It turns out I have a problem with this. That, coupled with COVID lockdowns and very little to do, got me twitching. I’d have to put my own spin on things because apparently I can’t help myself. But for Session One, I just briefly included a couple of NPC’s that were a nod to the previous campaign.
Rokk Talk 