The Emerald Spire

Game Ads

• Ad id: 7522
  Thread: The Emerald Spire
  

Game Description

So, it's true. The Emerald Spire has finally been released. Yes, it's every bit as awesome as they promised it would be. And no, you can't buy it yet. To get it at this early date, you had to donate a bunch of money in the Kickstarter for the upcoming Paizo MMO. But you can be one of the first to play it.

It's big. Really big. Second Darkness is the biggest AP I've seen before this one, and this looks to be about 25% bigger than that. The list of authors reads like a Who's Who in the world of Role-playing. I'm extremely impressed, and I hope you will be also. I just hope that my GMing skills are up to the task of giving the campaign the presentation that it deserves.

You can read the rules on Character Creation here.
You can read the Expected Posting Rate here.

Both of those posts are longer and more complicated than I wanted them to be, but I try to be as thorough as possible to ensure that potential players can more accurately judge whether the game will suit their preferences.

I''m going to give you a little bit of (spoiler-free) background to enable you to better design an appropriate character. Bear in mind that I've only read through the material once, so I may be missing a nuance or two here and there. Still, much better than nothing. You start out here:

The background to Part I

Between the Echo Wood and the broad expanse of the West Sellen River stands a resolute stronghold of law and order: the walled town of Fort Inevitable. From its stern keep, companies of Hellknights ride forth to enforce the strict laws of their commander and bring authority to the unclaimed lands of the Crusader Road. While the taxes imposed by the town’s rulers are heavy and the laws inflexible, no one can deny that prosperity has followed the Hellknights’ establishment of hard justice in this small corner of the River Kingdoms. Merchants, travelers, and adventurers journeying on the Crusader Road find that Fort Inevitable provides a rare island of safety in an otherwise lawless land—so long as one is careful not to run afoul of the Hellknights’ laws.

The beginning of the game has sort of an MMO feeling to it. Lots of people in Fort Inevitable have errands they'd like you to run. If you go get their MacGuffin, they give you money. Other people have information to sell you. If you use their information wisely, you'll make a nice profit. Two important things, though:

1. Unless you're more clever than I am, you won't be able to find a way to complete all of the quests. Completing some quests will make you enemies within the town. Your new enemies aren't going to be paying you to do stuff for them. The politics in this place is pretty rough.

2. You can bypass all of the quests and just go right to the main dungeon. I don't really recommend it, though. You'll be fine for the first couple of encounters, but the difficulty scales up sharply. I'm pretty sure that they expect you to be about halfway to 2nd level before you set foot in the place.

Eventually, all the quests lead you to the local Dungeon:

The background to the rest of the campaign

Six miles northeast of Fort Inevitable lies one of the deepest and strangest dungeons to be found anywhere in the lands of the Inner Sea—the Emerald Spire. Like an iceberg, this weird structure shows only a small portion of itself above the surface; level upon level of hidden vaults and mysterious crypts lie buried deep below the ground. Few of the people living in Fort Inevitable or the surrounding lands have even the slightest inkling of the dungeon’s true extent, let alone its astounding age. Standing in a wide clearing within the Echo Wood, the Emerald Spire is the ruin of a large Azlanti tower that appears to be made of green glass harder than stone. The upper portions of the tower were destroyed long ago, leaving broken, halfmelted glass blocks lying jumbled around the tower’s perimeter and the ground nearby. The site is well known to locals from both Fort Inevitable and Thornkeep, and many travelers passing through the Crusader Road area make the trek into the forest to look on the ruins—from a safe distance. The Spire’s ruins are known to be infested with dangerous monsters, and the surroundings attract an unhealthy number of bandits, raiders, and hungry predators.

From here on, it's mostly a straight dungeon crawl. You're not going to clear out the entire Emerald Spire in one run, however. You'll be heading back to Fort Inevitable often. Remember those rough politics I discussed earlier? Well, the times, they may be a-changing. The quests you chose to take on at the beginning will affect the results of these politics, and if the wrong side (for you) wins, the place gets a lot less friendly, and you get a lot less support when you go back to rest.

That's probably more than you need to know to create your character. Any questions can be directed to the appropriate threads in the game forum.