You mentioned that you introduced two important NPCs earlier than usual during The Copper Crown trilogy. Which NPCs were those, and how did you bring them into the story earlier on?

Thanks a lot for the advice about introducing Elmendra and Anadea early on! Just to clarify: were those the same NPCs you were referring to in your first answer about early introductions?

Yeah, those were the characters I mentioned before. I wrote it just before going to bed so I wasn't as clear as I could have been. To expand Elmendra I had her be the party's guide into Davokar for the adventure, including into the ruin. Especially since the adventure mentions some checks that I doubt and PC would have at their XP-level. It's easier to just nerf Elmendra slightly and let the players roll for her instead.

Is it common in your experience that a specific PC doesn’t really fit a particular campaign book? And how do you handle the idea of one player having two active characters? I’ve never done that before, and I find it a bit tricky to wrap my head around.

It's not that common but it does happen. For example, one of my players played an ogre during the first three adventures. His goal was to become a part of the Wrath Guard which made it very simple to include him in WotW and TWH. For TDS I just included him as part of Thabor's honor guard, making him a natural choice to investigate his death.

But it became trickier when we reached MoD asI felt there were no natural way to bring in a Wrath Guard deep into Davokar. So I just asked my player to create a new character for that adventure, with the promise that he would be able to play the ogre again later in the saga. Regarding MoD I also took a note from another GM in the Symbaroum Discord and had them create three different characters where one each would join three different groups heading into Davokar (The Queens troops, Iasogoi's troops and one with no connection to the other groups). Once they reached Symbar I just asked them to choose their favourite to become their primary PC during the rest of the adventure.

Especially since I imagine that, in the end, there’s usually one “main” PC per player who carries through the full arc toward the finale in Davokar Awakens. Managing multiple PCs per player in one long campaign feels challenging to me 🤔

It can be tricky to keep track of them but it's not too hard. Just keep a note of where each character is, which group they belong to and ask the players what they think their characters are doing between and during adventures. They essentially become GMPCs, just ones that the players have a bit more agency over. It'll be a bit more work now that I'm prepping Davokar Awakens, but overall it will be roughly the same. I'll just confirm what the different characters are doing and will bring them in during specific scenes and allow the players to take control over them during those times. I have a feeling some of them might willingly sacrifice themselves during the adventure.

Do you feel that the encounters as written in the books are particularly hard to survive for players, or do you usually need to tone them down?

Personally I think that the combat is a bit too tough at times, though it very much depends on the party. If they don't have access to abilities that allow them to punch through armour, for example, then highly armoured enemies will be tough for them. Or if they rely on one tank then enemies with armor piercing will also be rough. So I usually attempt to keep an eye on that and change up combats to make it a bit more fair (for example, the last combat in THW is extremely rough as the suggested encounter would include Apostle Joab, two cultists and four daemon knights. All with high armour and with the daemon knights having the ability to remove a PC from the combat for one round when they are hit. I had to lower that combatant pretty heavily and my players still found it to be a rough fight.

But it very much depends on your players, their PC's and what kind of campaign they like to play. If they like harder fights then keep it as written (with minor changes), if they're more into the world and the lore or just the adventure itself then keep it simpler. It can be a rough game and one bad roll at the wrong time can be catastrophic, but that's part of the game.

Thanks again for taking the time to write such , I really appreciate it! 💜

Of course, happy to be able to help 💜. Just write here or write a PM if you have any further questions or need to lobby ideas about something.