Scoured Stars Adventure Path: Index

This page will collect links to each installment of my campaign journal for the Scoured Stars Adventure Path (Starfinder 1st Edition). 

Spoiler Warning: Unsurprisingly, these posts contain numerous spoilers for the AP. 

• Session Zero and Part 1 (Level 1; 4/22/2024): Meet our heroes; "The Commencement."
• Parts 2 and 3 (Levels 2-3; 7/22/2034): "The First Mandate"; "In Pursuit of the Scoured Past"
• Part 4 (Level 4; 11/30/2024): "On the Trail of History"
• Part 5 (Level 5; 12/28/2024): "Reclaiming the Time-Lost Tear"
• "The Scoured Stars Invasion"
• "Truth of the Seeker"
• "Treading History's Folly"
• "Heart of the Foe"
• "Honorbound Emissaries"
• "The Herald's War"
• "Fate of the Scoured God"

Other useful links for reference:

• Scoured Stars Adventure Path: Paizo product page.
• Narrative Starship Combat: We are using these alternate rules from Starfinder Enhanced.

Our heroes:

• Gambit: hanakan, evolutionist (mechanized niche), street magician; ship's gunner. 
• Sasha: borai maraquoi, enhanced envoy, bouncer; ship's pilot. (Multi-classed into solarian at 5th level.)
• Sssami Kuppa: ikeshti, enhanced technomancer, tinker; ship's engineer. (Junkomancer archetype at 2nd level.)
• Zzyssa: hanakan, vanguard, personal trainer; ship's captain. 

Update May 2026: We paused this campaign at the end of 2024 in order to participate in the playtest for Starfinder Second Edition. My group has proven much more enthusiastic about 2E than 1E, so it seems highly unlikely that we will resume Scoured Stars unless one of us is ambitious enough to convert it to 2E--a task which I confess that I find more than a little daunting. Even just converting the PCs to 2E would require a great deal of development work, because hanakans, evolutionists, and vanguards have not yet been published for the new edition.

Scoured Stars Adventure Path: Session Zero and Part 1

Spoiler Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Scoured Stars Adventure Path. 

See the Scoured Stars Adventure Path: Index page for links to all of my campaign journal blog posts for this AP. 

Earlier this year, Paizo released the Scoured Stars Adventure Path, which repackages the primary story arc from Season 1 of Starfinder Society into a level 1-15 campaign. This story line sees the Starfinder Society struggling to recover from a recent disaster: the loss of the majority of their ships and personnel in a massive expedition to the mysterious Scoured Stars system. Over the course of the twelve adventures that make up this AP, the PCs start as newly trained recruits but quickly become central to the Society's investigations of what happened in the Scoured Stars, their return to the system to rescue any survivors, and the resulting conflict with an aggressive new enemy that intends to reclaim the system for themselves.

I have played all twelve of the original Starfinder Society scenarios that make up this "metaplot" arc, and GMed a few of them myself. Some of them are among my favorite organized play experiences, so this book was an easy sell for me. Some of the players in my home group have played many of them as well, but none of us have played them in any coherent order with the same characters throughout, so much of this treatment will still be novel to them.

We had a "session zero" to work out characters a few weeks ago. For the AP, I decided to allow most of the species on the "always available" list for Society play, minus a few species that were first introduced during this arc, or who were first encountered in later seasons. This still allowed for a very unusual mix of characters, and the resulting party was made up of species that nobody in our group had played before. Our heroes are:

• Sasha, borai maraquoi, envoy, bouncer; ship's pilot. This character's concept was inspired by the "space monkey mafia" line from Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." She is a borai who used to be a maraquoi in life. This isn't one of the standard choices for the undead borai, so we decided that the species trait she would retain was prehensile tail. 
• Gambit, hanakan, evolutionist, street magician; ship's gunner. Hanakan are magical raptor-like aliens who normally distrust and avoid technology, but Gambit is a (literally) shocking exception: a mechanics evolutionist, who becomes part robot as they mutate during combat.
• Zzyssa, hanakan, vanguard, personal trainer; ship's captain. Zzyssa is a little more typical of their species, except for the fact that they're a Small species filling the the front line/tank role. 
• Sssami Kuppa, ikeshti, enhanced technomancer, tinker; ship's engineer. Having survived his species' brutal mating cycle, Sssami left Akiton to seek his fortune on a less impoverished world. 

Sasha (L) and Gambit (R)

Our group frequently play characters who all learn an unusual language they can all use when they wish to talk amongst themselves without being understood by outsiders. For the Against the Aeon Throne AP, it was Eoxian (common in the Pact Worlds, not so much in Azlanti space). This time, with two hanakan PCs, they choose that species' native language, Akan.

This past weekend, we started the campaign proper by playing the first adventure, "The Commencement." In this adventure, the PCs have just finished their training as Starfinders, which has been accelerated due to the urgent need for more field agents. They are asked to perform some tasks for the leaders of the four of the most prominent factions (Acquisitives, Dataphiles, Exo-Guardians, and Wayfinders). 

In the original scenario, the Acquisitives mission involves a junk-cycle race that, in practice, frequently runs much longer then the other missions due to the number of skill checks and NPCs involved. For the AP, this was replaced with a starship combat from another scenario, which introduces an NPC who will reappear later in the AP. Starship combat is not my group's favorite subsystem of the rules, as it is frequently time-consuming, and characters who aren't pilots or gunners are regularly overshadowed. With this in mind, I decided that we would try the narrative starship combat rules in Starfinder Enhanced. These were new to us, because they aren't used in Society play, but for an AP, GMs have much more latitude to make changes for their own games. These rules promised to make combats more fun because they were vastly simplified and because every crew role has a more equal opportunity to contribute to victory. 

This adventure's starship combat was an honorable duel rather than a deadly encounter, so it made for a good test for the rules, before the stakes get higher in later missions. This first trial proved to be not just a resounding success, but a quick and flawless victory! The enemy ship failed its skill roll to attack, while the PCs had large enough success margins on their checks to force a surrender after one round. It took much longer to explain the (fairly simple) rules than to play out the combat. I don't expect the PCs to ever have it that easy in the future, but it was definitely more fun to run and play than the standard starship combat rules, which are my and my group's least favorite part of the game--especially when both sides are so evenly matched that the battle becomes a tedious slog of attrition.

None of the other three missions were nearly that easy, but they performed well on them, only achieving less than complete success on one (recruiting a hacker for the Dataphiles by faking their death). However, they did well enough to not lose out on any rewards.

Monster hunt in a warehouse intended for conversion into the Exo-Guardians' new base.

My mini for the feather stalker, a crinoid-like alien.

All my players seemed to enjoy the game a great deal, and are looking forward to the rest of the AP. Apart from GMing occasional PFS (1E) and SFS scenarios, this is the first campaign I've run in a few years. I've definitely been missing being in the GM's seat for a long-term game, so I'm excited to be running this one.

Next time: "The First Mandate," in which our heroes try to impress some dignitaries at a gala while helping out with security for the event. 

*****

Conversion Notes: For those who are interested, here is the Honorbound's stat block, converted for narrative starship combat following the guidelines in Starfinder Enhanced:

HONORBOUND (TIER 1)

Average DC 11; Hard DC 16

HP 5; Threshold 2

Skill Bonus +7

The Honorbound has no Special Abilities. Yuluzak will surrender after his ship has been reduced to 2 HP or less.

And here are the stat blocks for the party's options at this Tier:

DRAKE (TIER 2)

Average DC 13; Hard DC 18

HP 5

Skill Modifiers +1 to any three checks per round 

 

PEGASUS (TIER 2)

Average DC 13; Hard DC 18

HP 5

Skill Modifiers +1 to any two checks per round; +2 Computers; +1 Piloting

Note that the amount of simplification required for the narrative starship combat rules makes the differences between these two models' armor, weapons, and shields largely irrelevant unless they deviate significantly from the tier's norm. This is a significant change from the standard starship combat rules, where the Pegasus excels in speed, maneuverability, and sensors, but the Drake has heavier weapons and defenses. Here, the only real distinction between the two are the skill modifiers from their computers, sensors, and thrusters. (IIRC, my group chose the Drake this time out because they could use its skill bonuses on any of their checks.) At the highest tiers, the Pegasus will outperforms the Drake in all ways thanks to its superior computers and thrusters giving it more generous skill bonuses.

*****

[Edited 7/11/2024 to add the spoiler warning, a link to the Index page, and stat blocks for the Drake and Pegasus.]

The Adventures of Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast

Patricia "Trick" Tillinghast is one of the two main characters who I played in "Grey Angels," a Buffy/Angel RPG campaign that ran from 2005 to 2009, and that later resumed as a play-by-post game from 2012 to 2014. I have talked about Trick in a very piecemeal fashion in several past Studded Plate columns:

• The characters who become a part of you (3/19/2015): How Trick affected my tastes in music.
• #RPGaDay 2016: Days 1-6 (8/6/2016): How Trick got a sister.
• #RPGaDay 2016: Day 11 (8/11/2016): How Trick has influenced how I play other heroes.
• #RPGaDay 2017: Day 7 (8/6/2017): How Trick got free of Dionysus (and bonus portrait).
• TBT: #Drawlloween 2016 (8/17/2017): Trick's Animal costume.
• #RPGaDay2018: Days 13-16 (8/17/2018): How Trick got free of Dionysus (shorter version).
• #RPGaDay2018: Days 28-31 (8/29/2018): No longer the straightest girl in town.
• #Inktober2018: Days 27-31 (10/31/2018): Two portraits of Trick.
• Cassilda Tillinghast (11/13/2018): My Pathfinder Society character who was very loosely inspired by Trick.

Just before this past Christmas, GA's co-GMs announced their wish to run a reunion story arc to finally wrap up some of the major plot lines that were still unresolved when we last shelved the campaign. We did some discussion online about what had happened to our characters since we last saw them (in 2010, in game), bringing them up to the current day (2019-2020), then did some plot-light PBP roleplaying to get reacquainted with our old friends and the changes they underwent in the jump forward. We're hoping to start some real-time RPing this spring, though that will also need to be done online since we no longer all live in the same state. (The others still live in the Greater Boston area, but I moved to Kentucky during our last PBP-only period.)

I never expected to be able to play Trick again, and the jump ahead means that many of the changes we were planning for her have taken effect, so I am very excited about this reunion game!

A Brief History of the World

To explain some of the changes Trick has gone through, I first need to summarize a few of the basic premises of the campaign:

• The "Greyverse" is inherently connected to the "Buffyverse": Slayers, Watchers, vampires, and demons all exist, and all are more or less as portrayed in the Buffy and Angel TV shows. Several characters from those shows have made appearances in GA, but the GMs are deliberately not making any of them the focus of our campaign. It's the same world, but we're interested in different characters, locations, and adventures. 
• Most of the campaign takes place in the fictional city of Shadowgard, located in northeastern Massachusetts, a few years after the mass activation of Slayers during Buffy's last season. This part of New England is the heart of Lovecraft country, so versions of Arkham and Innsmouth exist here. In game, Lovecraft's works were based on some germ of truth, though he regularly changed the details to pass them off as fiction.
• One of the main plots of "Grey Angels" is the resurgence of the Thyrian nation: a lost ancient civilization of Amazon-like warrior women who predated the Slayers (and served as inspiration for the Shadowmen's creation of the First Slayer). Many of the PCs are reincarnated Thyrians, and they and their friends spent much of the original campaign delving into prophecies about the return of Thyria, and learning how to unlock that power for themselves.
• The three senior Thyrians (all sisters, and initially Slayers) can join their powers with that of certain ancient relics in order to grant supernatural powers to new Thyrians. This can either unlock the full potential of a reincarnated Thyrian, or empower a trusted ally with no previous mystical ties to that group. At the time that the game last ended, this process had recently been formalized into a probationary period for training new candidates in the history and combat skills needed by all Thyrians. 
• Over a dozen Thyrian "castes" or "legacies" exist, each with different powers, but all include enhanced physical traits and rapid healing similar to a Slayer's. Most, but far from all, Thyrians are women, and the organization as a whole is very outspoken about the rights of women and minorities of all kinds.
• The Thyrians also established a school for superpowered teens, the Phoenix Academy, in order to give those children a safer place to learn how to use and control their powers. 
• The existence of the supernatural was forcibly revealed to the world in 2008 during the Ragnarok, a war in which a new pantheon of evil gods attempted to seize power. Battles took place in Shadowgard, New York City, London, and elsewhere. An alliance of Thyrians, Watchers, Slayers, and other heroes defeated the Dark Pantheon, and then shouldered the responsibility of educating the world about the true nature of reality.

Trick Tillinghast,
by Tim Emrick (2006)

The Old Adventures of Trick Tillinghast

During the original campaign, Trick started as a normal human with no supernatural gifts whatsoever. She was, however, a highly trained fencer who had become familiar with many other weapons through her obsession with the martial arts, medieval reenactment, and similar activities. Around the start of her junior year of high school, she had her first encounter with the supernatural, and joined her friends--a Slayer, a Totem Warrior, a witch, and a Watcher's daughter--in fighting the forces of darkness. 

Partway through that year, she attracted the attention of the Greek god Dionysus, who gifted her with the powers of a Maenad to become his champion. At first, she was ecstatic about these gifts, because enhanced her skill and durability, making it far less likely that she would become a liability in a fight. However, her relationship with her patron soon soured, and she began to use her status as a Maenad as an excuse for increasingly wild behavior. By the end of a year as the wine god's champion, she wanted out--and mostly through sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness, she was released. She was fully human again, and now suffered from painful visions, but had her freedom again.

By then, however, Trick's bad behavior had alienated most of her friends, and as the time to apply for colleges approached, she felt an urgent need to get away and start over elsewhere. She matriculated at Columbia College in New York City, where she also worked with the local Watchers, Slayers, witches, and other champions. Though lacking any powers, she was easily the most experienced of the new class of student heroes, and found her niche in helping to train the others.

Trick's visions became an increasingly urgent problem for her, as her merely mortal body wasn't built to withstand them. (Think Cordelia after receiving Doyle's "gift.") She eventually found a solution when she was given the opportunity to become a Slayer--and after a horrifying vision of a monstrous attack on NYC, and her sorry fate if she refused this chance, she paid the price to become one. This gift was a godsend to her--she finally had the power she had always envied in her Slayer best friend, and could safely return to actively fighting against the forces of darkness.

A few months later, Trick's vision came true as the Ragnarok erupted in New York. That battle was the most harrowing of her life--she lost her girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, and ex-patron in one night, was forced to kill a human being for the first time, and dueled with fire giants as Central Park burned around them. The forces of good triumphed, but at a painful price.

Eva Amurri as Patricia Tillinghast,
by Tim Emrick (2018)

The New Adventures of Patricia Tillinghast

Just before "Grey Angels" was shelved last time, we had started discussion of jumping ahead a few years to a time when the brewing war with the Old Ones would come to a head. We had decided the following, as far as Trick was concerned: 

• Following the Ragnarok, Trick was given a second chance with her girlfriend Diana, who had died during that conflict but was returned to life as a champion of Persephone. However, Diana had to spend each winter as a ghost in the underworld with her patron, which made it nearly impossible to maintain any relationship with a living lover, and the couple parted amicably after two bittersweet summers. 
• Trick has a younger sister, Sheila, who was adopted after Trick rescued her from enslavement by the sidhe of Tir na n'Og. When Sheila turned 18, she finally spoke out publicly about her experiences in that world, which resulted in public pressure for the sidhe to change their society. 
• After college, Trick vowed to reconcile with old friends, and sought a teaching position at the Phoenix Academy. She was determined to prove to herself and the Thyrian leadership that she was no longer the spoiled, angry, wild child that she had been in the past. She eventually applied to become a Thyrian herself, and impressed her trainers with her persistence and discipline.
• She now defaults to using her given name, Patricia, because it sounds far more professional than "Trick" for the educator and public figure she has become--though family and other longtime acquaintances occasionally still use her old nickname in private.

The reunion arc picks up some six years or so after Patricia's empowerment as a Thyrian Sword (a legacy that seemed tailor-made for her mastery of weapons!). She has become one of that organization's most formidable warriors, a devoted teacher to her students, and a skilled musician who has achieved some minor renown despite the demands of her higher calling. 

The one part of her life that isn't on the track she hoped for is her love life. Patricia is an unapologetic hedonist who is disinclined to deny herself when she desires companionship. However, ever since losing Diana, she has yet to find another partner who she can fully connect with as a warrior, a teacher, and an artist. Almost all of her closest friends have ended up happily married over the past decade, so she's been feeling that lack in her own life more and more acutely.

As the campaign continues, I'll post some more updates on Patricia's continuing adventures--and introduce my other PC, Baz Olmstead. I've been playing Baz for a longer than I have Trick, but he achieved more closure last time around, and my larger-than-life lesbian knight-errant is by far the more fun to play of the two.

[UPDATE 4/17/2020: Trick's Nightwatch Dossier collects the links above as well as columns about her posted after this bio.]

Time of the Tarrasque: Almost Time Again!

My "Time of the Tarrasque" campaign has been on an extended hiatus due to two of our players leaving the state (see the note at the end of session summary #13). Around the same time, I and at least one other member of our group started dealing with work transitions of our own, which made scheduling a regular game extremely challenging.

In order to keep getting our gaming fix during this time, my wife and I stayed active with Pathfinder Society, and we both finally started GMing occasional scenarios. We eventually started a PFS home game for our regular gaming group, so that those of us who remained local could still get together and game on a semi-regular basis despite the hiatus from my campaign.

(Side note: If you ever try any kind of organized play yourself, whether it's PFS, D&D Adventurer's League, or another group, please consider running some adventures yourself once you're familiar with the extra rules peculiar to these events. This will help reduce the burden on the more established GMs, who can get burnt out if they have to run constantly. It's also great practice for running your own campaigns. In addition, GMs often get access to special rewards beyond those available to other players, which might include special in-character boons or a few dollars of store credit from the shop hosting the event.)

Now, after several months off from "Time of the Tarrasque," we're all itching to get back to it. I spent some time thinking about the possibility of continuing the game with our two departing players through some sort of remote link. However, I decided that I wasn't entirely comfortable with the extra effort that would be required to learn to use the technology on top of the usual prep needed for a homebrew campaign. I also prefer gaming face-to-face, and have found that it's much easier to GM for 4 players rather than 6. For these reasons, I decided to continue the game without Jubair and Lucretia's players, and they were very understanding about that decision. (They've also found a D&D group in their new town, which is wonderful.)

Continuing without two of our original players also means continuing without their characters. Lucretia's backstory already came with an easy out there, which the rest of the party may or may not learn about when she bids them farewell. Jubair, on the other hand, doesn't have any particular ties to anyone except for the other PCs, so I needed to come up with a plausible in-game reason for him to part ways with them. His player suggested that Jubair die of a burst stomach from eating too much barbeque. While this is perfectly in character for our class clown, I felt it would be a too much grief to pile on top of the remaining PCs so soon after ZhaZha's death, and its meaninglessness would cheapen hers.

Thinking on this some more, I was struck again about how darn inconvenient it was that the death in our last fight didn't claim one of the characters who was departing anyway! I was inspired to offer a bit of retconning to the group: Instead of ZhaZha dying and needing a reincarnate spell, it was Jubair who fell in battle. This will help with a number of things besides the obvious question of Jubair's departure:

• Selling Jubair's magical amulet would pay for the spell's material components by itself. This would allow the other PCs to be reimbursed the funds they chipped in to help pay for ZhaZha's return. I'm still getting used to the fast advancement track requiring me to give the party more wealth, too, so draining their purses for this expensive spell would just put them more behind.
• ZhaZha's reincarnation was a bit rushed because we were trying to fit it at the end of a long session after a brutal combat. I would much prefer to give the players a bit more time to roleplay through huge dramatic moments like that, especially since they are fated to be big damn heroes someday. Rewinding a little bit will give us a chance to do that properly, and changing it to Jubair will allow the others to concentrate on their other goals rather than having ZhaZha's new burdens taking up too much of the spotlight.
• I can also use Jubair's reincarnation to lay some more ground work for Jumari's Lost Egg cult, which she told the other PCs about when they were traveling to acquire components for the spell. It's the perfect opportunity to introduce a couple NPCs tied to that, then having Jubair step off-stage for an indefinite time to get his brand-new head on straight. (I didn't want to push this too much with ZhaZha, but I've been given free reign with Jubair as an NPC.)
• And frankly, it seems a lot more fun to keep ZhaZha around as a half-orc. We've barely even begun to delve into her background, and her race is an essential part of that.

Because we're starting again after a long hiatus, and because the party will be significantly smaller, I will be allowing all my continuing players to make some tweaks to their characters. I had already been considering introducing the Background Skills rules from Pathfinder Unchained. The 2 additional skill ranks per level will be a godsend to the more skill-starved classes, and a nice bonus for the others. With the party losing some useful abilities due to Lucretia and Zubair's departure, these extra skills will help make up some of that deficit. 

In the longer-term, at least two of PCs had already planned to take the Leadership feat when they reach 7th level. When they do that, they can recruit cohorts who can contribute class abilities that they still lack. Meanwhile, they might decide to adjust their own future feat selection, or even do a bit of multiclassing, if they feel the party can't wait that long to regain (for example) a skilled archer, scout, or trap expert.

Another necessity after such a long break was a recap of the story so far. Naturally, my session write-ups here provide the most complete summaries of the campaign's events. (See the links at the end of this post.) But I also highlighted some of the more important plot threads for my players, and we discussed the ones they wanted to follow up on. The general consensus at the moment is that taking on Asmolon's death cult has proven a bit too deadly for them at their current capabilities. They will be pursuing some other things for while, as they acquire the experience needed to survive their next encounter with the cult. The other subject that has their attention now is learning more about the desert giants and the ruined city of Tibul, but that too will likely require some lengthy preparation (and a bit more guidance on my part, as GM).

Our first in-character session after the hiatus will begin with a little rewinding to retcon the death and reincarnation scenes. I expect it will be mostly roleplaying, as we work through the aftermath of that tragedy and determine in character where the party will go next. Lucretia and Jubair will continue as NPCs for a short time (a session or two at most?), until we have enabled their departures.

Going forward from there, our party of heroes will consist of:

• Edel Naergon, high elf bard (magician) 3.
• Fatou, human wizard (evoker) 2/cleric of Yaziel 1; and Nochaesh, owl familiar.
• Jumari Boneface, half-orc inquisitor of the Lost Egg 3.
• ZhaZha, half-orc cavalier (order of the dragon) 3; and Zafira, camel mount.

-----

Appendix: Previous Sessions

• #1: New Companions
• #2: Featherclaw, Terror of the Sands
• #3: Under an Autumn Moon
• #4: Rock Bits on a Dais 
• #5: Beetle Mania
• #6: Where All the Bodies are Buried
• #7: Zombie Dogs
• #8: Privy of the Void Cult
• #9: I Double Dog Dare You
• #10: Where Do I Get a Bird Like That?
• #11: Where's the Cactus?
• #12: Alarming Some Orcs
• #13: Death Pleases the War Goddess

2017 in Review: The Blog

2017 has been a momentous year, for myself, for my blog, and for our country. However, I try to avoid discussing politics here, so I'll keep the focus of my review of the past year on my own work. I started this blog in late 2014, and have managed to keep it going on a weekly basis for most of the time since then, which is an accomplishment I'm quite proud of.

For those new to this blog, I write about roleplaying games, LEGO toys, and how I combine the two, with occasional forays into my other hobbies. I have a number of ongoing series that I add to as I find the time and inspiration. These include session summaries for the campaigns that I Game Master, reviews of RPG and LEGO products, and other subjects. Each item below includes a link to the most recent installment; most of those pages include links to previous columns in that series.

"Building the Bestiary" is my series on how I build LEGO miniatures for my tabletop role-playing games. It focuses on the first Pathfinder RPG Bestiary and the D&D 5E Monster Manual. It's my longest-running series here, with 17 installments, and I added an Index this year to help readers quickly find specific monsters I've covered.

I also post reviews of the collectible LEGO Minifigures Series once I acquire enough of each new set. I only wrote one such column in 2017 (The LEGO Batman Movie Minifigures), but I anticipate doing one of The Ninjago Movie Minifigures series sometime soon, as well as the upcoming second The LEGO Batman Movie series.

"Time of the Tarrasque" is a homebrew Pathfinder campaign that I started in January 2017. This is a world that I've been tinkering with for years (decades, really), so was very pleased for it to see actual play. We are currently on hiatus due to many of our players having changes in jobs and/or residences this fall and winter, but we hope to resume again soon. The heroes have reached 3rd level and I hope to see them advance to 20th level (and possibly some mythic tiers) by the end of the campaign.

I also started running Tales from the Yawning Portal (D&D 5E) for my wife and children this past year. We have completed The Sunless Citadel, and started The Forge of Fury over the kids' winter break. I'll be posting summaries of our first two sessions of Forge over the next couple weeks. (We previously started Lost Mine of Phandelver with some friends, but had to put that game on hiatus. Yawning Portal has allowed us to move forward with a more regular game.)

I am a long-time fan of Green Ronin's Freeport setting. My long-running third Freeport campaign, which ended in 2016, used D&D v.3.5 and later Pathfinder, but I've been considering using D&D 5E for my next foray into that setting. My Freeport 5E articles include reviews of Wizards of the Coasts' "Unearthed Arcana" and Plane Shift articles, Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous, and other 5E titles with an eye to using them with Freeport. I recently acquired Volo's Guide to Monsters and Xanathar's Guide to Everything, so expect columns about them within the next month or two.

I am also making an effort to get more experience with Green Ronin's Fantasy AGE system, and have started posting my thoughts on that game. 

Campaigns Update

Due to many recent changes affecting my various gaming groups, it seems necessary to give a quick update on the various campaigns that I feature here on my blog.

Time of the Tarrasque (Pathfinder)

I noted in my last session summary that we have a couple players who are in the process of moving to another state. Since then, job changes have affected the short-term availability of another player in the group. I have also started a new job, which is absorbing more of my time and energy than expected as I settle into the new routine. Because of all these disruptions, I have decided to put the game on hold for now. Hopefully we can resume in a few months, once life becomes less hectic for most of us.

Lost Mine of Phandelver (D&D 5E)

School and other scheduling issues have kept this game on indefinite hiatus. We've only managed to fit in one session in the past year (in May), so I may as well pronounce this campaign over. Meanwhile, my kids and I still have Yawning Portal (below) available, which doesn't require coordinating schedules with anyone outside the household.

Tales from the Yawning Portal: The Sunless Citadel (D&D 5E)

I've just posted a summary of our latest session, from this past weekend. I think we will be able to finish The Sunless Citadel in one more session (probably this weekend). After that, we will either continue on to The Forge of Fury, or take a break for a different game. The kids and I would like to try out the AGE system, either Fantasy AGE or Blue Rose, so we may do that next.

2015 in Review

One tradition that I try to keep each year at this time is a letter to friends and extended family summarizing some of the most important and interesting experiences that my family has had in the past year. That letter always includes a paragraph or two about our RPG activities; a draft of this year's follows in italics:

[My wife] Erika and I continue to pursue role-playing games as one of our chief hobbies. This past year, we have been playing a mix of Big Eyes Small Mouth, Pathfinder, and D&D 5th Edition. We've been doing more gaming with the kids, though at ages 11 and 10, they're still most comfortable with shorter sessions tailored to them. 

Just over a year ago, Tim started rebuilding and adding to his RPG fan errata site and started a blog titled "Studded Plate" about RPGs, LEGO, and his other geeky hobbies. These projects provide another creative outlet, as well as a more substantial writing portfolio to share with potential employers.

I try to keep that section pretty short, since not all of our family and friends are gamers. However, this blog gives me an opportunity to expand on this subject for those of you who are.  

I last wrote about what I've been playing back in March. Since then, Erika has converted Dungeon Crawl Classics: Dungeon Interludes to Pathfinder and run the first installment of that series for our group. I continue to run "The Kynthiad," a solo BESM game, for her.

In my Pathfinder Freeport: The City of Adventure campaign, we have started the final grand adventure for this crew of miscreants (though we're currently on a holiday-induced hiatus). Once "Gorilla Island" wraps up, we'll be bidding farewell to Freeport for a while so that I can finally start a new Pathfinder campaign, "Time of the Tarrasque." 

But before we get to that, I intend to run a couple of one-shots. The first, "Winter Holiday," is a Christmas-themed adventure from Polyhedron Newszine that I ran many years ago using AD&D 2nd Edition. I'm converting it to Pathfinder to run it for my current group around or just after New Year's. I also plan to run the sample adventure from the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook for my children (and a few adults) sometime soon so that we can all try out that system. (Expect blog posts about those adventures once I've run them.)

A little over a year ago, I had to migrate my gaming websites to new homes at Google Sites. These wikis include: Tim's Errata Archive, my unofficial fan errata site; player background for my ongoing and upcoming campaigns (The Kynthiad, Winds of Freeport, and Time of the Tarrasque); and Thastygliax's Vault, which houses all my other gaming pages. I continue to add new material to those sites, and occasionally write about those updates here.

That's all for now. The best way to keep updated on my gaming activities--short of being part of them yourself--is to keep watching this blog. I wish a very merry holiday season to you and yours, and good gaming!

What I've been playing

When my wife Erika and I moved from Boston to Kentucky a year and a half ago, I had to put my v.3.5 Freeport game on hiatus. Fortunately, two of the other three players in our group--my wife's co-worker and best friend, and her husband--were making the move with us due to the job relocation. This meant that the four long-term members of the group would still be able to play together (as we have for over 10 years), and we could continue the same campaign in some form or other.

I delayed restarting Freeport for a while, in large part because Green Ronin had announced a Kickstarter for a new Pathfinder edition of Freeport: The City of Adventure. I had started to look at that system shortly before then, and liked what I saw, so I pitched the idea to my players of converting our game to Pathfinder when we resumed play. The book was delayed for some time, so I eventually decided to go ahead and convert things as best I could with the core rules and a couple supplements, and wait for the Freeport book's release to do some revamping as needed. Early, backer-only drafts of the book became available as we worked on those conversions, which saved us a great deal of work with setting-specific things like my wife's azhari corsair. 

We continued to game in other ways during that long hiatus (which ended up lasting almost exactly a year). Erika continued the Earthdawn game she had been running for us on and off before the move. We used Google Hangouts to include our fifth member, who remained in Massachusetts. We also introduced our children (ages 9 and 10) to Earthdawn, though it quickly became clear that they lacked the attention span for the level of commitment we adults regularly put into our games.

Chris, one of my other players, ran some Pathfinder for us--specifically, "The Shadow's Dungeon," from the Kickstarter for The Gamers: The Hands of Fate--so that we could all get more practice with the system. We also introduced the kids to this system, though they dropped out of the module after the first session or two.

We started looking for new recruits to make up for the loss of our fifth player (who would not be continuing in the Freeport game for a number of reasons). By the time we finally restarted Freeport this past fall, we had made some new local friends who were looking for a game to join. One had been gaming for some years, while her fiance was new to tabletop but had a lot of experience with D&D-based CRPGs. With the group's consent, I invited them to play a one-shot adventure with us: the short, low-level Pathfinder adventure Risen from the Sands, which I had acquired through Free RPG Day earlier that year. This would give them a gaming fix and give us a change of pace, and we could see how well they fit in with our playing style. That session was an unqualified success, and we warmly welcomed them into the group. They created characters for my Freeport game, which we had resumed playing a session or two before this. 

As the holidays approached, my job entered its annual crunch-time. One of our new players (the tabletop newbie) offered to run some D&D 5th Edition during this time to give me some time off while work was crazy. That game wrapped up last month, but Tim, the DM (AKA "Tim the Younger," to distinguish him from me), promised to run more for us someday. At the moment, though, our new players are buried under wedding planning and writing their dissertations. We will be resuming Freeport when their schedule settles down a bit, hopefully within the next month or two. Before we dive back into the City of Adventure, however, Chris will be running a high-level tower defense-style Pathfinder one-shot, just to give us all a chance to play with 20th-level characters for a change.

Next up in Freeport will be one last, lengthy adventure to give us a spectacular finale before we shelve the Freeport game again (indefinitely this time). After that, we will finally start the "Time of the Tarrasque" campaign that I've been tinkering with for ages (in various editions, but we've settled on Pathfinder). I'll be posting a great deal more about that game as we gear up for it and start play. I've already started a separate game for my children set in that world, but far from where the adult group will be starting. I'll post more about that later, too, but we've only played a couple sessions so far.

Erika plans to run more Earthdawn again sometime this year, too, without our original fifth player but including our two new recruits. That system just had a Kickstarter for a 4th edition, so we'll be converting to that when we start again. (We continuing players are already doing so for our characters.) Thankfully, that transition will involve far, far fewer changes than a new D&D edition does!

And through all this time, I've continued running "The Kynthiad," the solo BESM Third Edition game for Erika that we started years ago. It's set in the Bronze Age, and based on the myths and history of Greece and its neighbors in the Mediterranean and Near East. I'll blog more about that in time, too.