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.