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View Full Version : Where to go after Barakus? Aka help me pick our next campaign.



laotze
2016-08-30, 11:43 PM
Hi all. I'm GMing a group of 5 (mostly new) players through a campaign based out of Lost City of Barakus, and they're absolutely loving it. Loving it so much, in fact, that we're blazing right through the sandbox much faster than I'd expected.

My question to all of you is, where to next? I love the Frog God Games flavor and would love to continue in the Lost Lands. Unfortunately, none of my city's local game stores carry FGG products, so I can't browse through to get a feel for the other books. I'm looking for another sandbox setting in the vein of Barakus to take my group from level 5 or 6, which they will likely be by the time they finish dealing with Devron. I adore Rappon Athuk's design but to be honest I think my party is more interested in vast fantasty worlds to explore than endless megadungeons; the city of Barakus itself was about as large of a dungeon as they enjoy dealing with at once.

Any recommendations? Again, looking for a true sandbox with at least one developed hub city in the vein of Barakus and Duskmoon/Penprie/Endhome, but having some kind of epic hook in there to anchor the story would be nice. Even better would be if it smoothly integrates into the Sinnar Coast region, but that's not a dealbreaker. I was eyeing Red Hand of Doom a while ago, but it hasn't been properly Pathfinder coverted and like I said I'd love to stick with that FGG quality. Currently considering Sword of Air, Adventures in the Borderland Provinces, and Cult of the Sundered Kingdoms, but I really don't know how to shop for these products given the scarcity of reviews and no way of browsing them ahead of time (boo on Frog God Games for not providing previews), and I'm not even sure of the recommended levels. I did rule out Stoneheart Valley because I heard it was explicitly designed for level 1-5 characters in the same vein as Barakus.
Thanks in advance, y'all.

hamlet
2016-08-31, 08:55 AM
If you want to stick with the FGG stuff, which I actually recommend, then I'd say it sort of depends on what you're looking for.

Adventures in the Borderlands is a fine book, but it's a series of non-connected adventures. All quite decent, but not connected to themselves or anything else except that they're set in the borderlands. If that's your thing, then you can also grab up the Quests of Doom series which is much more of the same, but spread out over all the world rather than just the Borderlands.

Sword of Air is a sandboxy adventure path, sort of lvl 1-20, but with a fair amount of wiggle room at least in the S&W version. You can probably make a go of it with lvl 5 or so characters at the start without them steam rolling things or just getting bored.

Same for Cults of the Shattered Kingdom, though it's as much setting material as adventure.

If you want to invent your own stuff, I cannot recommend the Borderlands book more. The setting book is just fantastic and full of really great stuff and you'll want to read it about a thousand times just for the fun of it. There isn't a single inch of that book that isn't interesting IMO.

Same should go for the Bard's Gate book which is coming out fairly soon.

laotze
2016-08-31, 09:15 AM
If you want to stick with the FGG stuff, which I actually recommend, then I'd say it sort of depends on what you're looking for.

Adventures in the Borderlands is a fine book, but it's a series of non-connected adventures. All quite decent, but not connected to themselves or anything else except that they're set in the borderlands. If that's your thing, then you can also grab up the Quests of Doom series which is much more of the same, but spread out over all the world rather than just the Borderlands.

Sword of Air is a sandboxy adventure path, sort of lvl 1-20, but with a fair amount of wiggle room at least in the S&W version. You can probably make a go of it with lvl 5 or so characters at the start without them steam rolling things or just getting bored.

Same for Cults of the Shattered Kingdom, though it's as much setting material as adventure.

If you want to invent your own stuff, I cannot recommend the Borderlands book more. The setting book is just fantastic and full of really great stuff and you'll want to read it about a thousand times just for the fun of it. There isn't a single inch of that book that isn't interesting IMO.

Same should go for the Bard's Gate book which is coming out fairly soon.

Grazie! From the sound of this I'd likely be leaning toward Sword of Air out of the above options. Does Cults of the Shattered Kingdom also have a strong central adventure path to anchor things whenever the players get tired of wandering around? Or if I were to go with a more generic setting like Borderlands or Bard's Gate, do those books at least have a good smattering of developed NPCs, side quests, dungeons I can use as backdrop to a homebrew central adventure?

And do you happen to have any experience with FGG's The Blight? It sounds like a really well developed Lost Lands horror campaign setting with a city even more enormous than Bard's Gate as the central hub, and my players do love horror, but it sounds like its central path is designed to take level 1 characters up from humble origins, and I wonder how much trouble I'd have starting our PCs partway through along whichever portion is more properly designated for the 5-6 level range.

hamlet
2016-09-02, 09:14 AM
1) I have not yet read my Cults of the Shattered Kingdoms closely. It's the newest of the books I've gotten and I haven't had the chance to get to it yet. My impression from a very quick glance is that it's about equal parts adventure path and sandbox setting.

2) The Borderlands setting is a strong setting and, I think, adjacent to the Shattered Kingdoms, though I'm fuzzy on the geography right now. I don't think it's got a lot of NPC's floating in there, but it really does assume that given a light framework that the DM would invent all else that he needed. There's a short adventure in the back of it called Rogues in Remballo which is fairly well thought of, so there's that.

3) Keep in mind that neither Bard's Gate nor the Blight have been printed yet. They succeeded as Kickstarters only lately and are yet to see publishing. Bard's Gate is due out to backers fairly soon, and at that point I can give you some more details on them.