It is a 17 page players guide that immerses your PCs in the town of Brindol before the first session even starts and hopefully can provide fodder for your PCs to come up with background for their characters.

It can be found here: http://scales-of-war.pbworks.com/f/SoW_Players_Guide.doc

Key features:

• History of the Elsir Vale
• History of the Red Hand of Doom
• Map of Elsir Vale
• Created a party that "completed" the Red hand of Doom for story hooks.
• Fleshed out Brindol - enhanced map with modern locations
• Listed a bunch of non-sensitive information on Brindol from the adventure path so the PCs have it on hand.
• Created the NPCs on the Brindol Council
• Created a bunch of "local happenings" for story tie-ins.
• A bunch of sweet artwork, mostly from RHoD, to make things feel even more immersive.

   

If you have anything else you'd like to add, please don't hesitate to contact the author, either via email (included in the guide) or by posting it onthe WotC forums here. This is only the first version of this document, and the author hopes to enhance it with feedback and suggestions from others. So, if for example, you feel the need to add in a local gang of troublemakers, and you think it might be applicable, contact the author. He'll add them in and credit you!

What follows below is the text of the first page of the guide, intended for DMs...

A quick note for DMs:

Delete this page before handing out this guide to your player characters.

Also, feel free to cut my name out of the corner, I have included it so you can contact me with any questions as theoretically my Scales of War campaign will be further along than yours.

I created this guide for my PCs as an introduction to the Scales of War adventure path currently being published in Dungeon Magazine. The inspiration was the fantastic player’s guide for Paizo’s Age of Worms adventure path, which really brought the town of Diamond Lake to life and set the stage for my party’s adventures.

I have created this guide in Microsoft Word so that it can be edited (you should be able to export it as a PDF after making any edits you like).

There are some very specific changes I have made that may be of significance to your campaign.

First, I have chosen to set the events in Scales of War forty years after the events in Red Hand of Doom, forty years in which Elsir Vale has seen peace and in which the PCs involved in RHoD have grown old and are no longer able to get involved in the events which will unfold. This also, IMHO, provides a good hook for players to be descendants or somehow related to the retired PCs from the Diamond League (see below).

Secondly, I have invented a name for the group of PCs that saved Elsir Vale in RHoD – the Diamond League. If your players ever played RHoD, you should find/replace and check carefully. I have edited the name of some places such as the museum in Brindol.

Thirdly, I am including some “foreshadowing” information about the Elsir Vale, information like the Vale being rich in planar magic.

Finally, I am placing the Eladrin City of Astrazalian (from the Manual of the Planes) near the Vale, in order to explain the presence of Eladrin PCs from my party and to further enhance the feeling that other planes are near the Vale. Feel free to remove that if you need to for your own campaign! This is just what works for me and my group.

I have tried my best to fill in as much information as possible without committing the adventure to any particular campaign world (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Ebberon, etc.) but as I don’t know all there is to know I could theoretically have written something that’s in conflict with the history of those worlds. There is one mention of Greyhawk as that is where I have set my campaign. But that’s why you’re going to adapt it for yourself, right?

It is also possible that events that occur in the adventure path that have not yet been published will render information in this guide factually incorrect. The original version of this guide was created in December of 2008, and the last adventure published was The Temple Between. If you find something bogus in this guide, by all means contact me and I will try to fix it up.

Most importantly, I would like to give credit where credit is due. A large amount of the information in this guide was adapted from, inspired by, or lifted and rewritten from a great Scales of War campaign site: http://elsirvale.blogspot.com/

The sweet improved Map of Brindol I stole from here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1108752 (I changed the statues around to match the Diamond League, and altered the key to more closely resemble the locations in the AP)

In addition, I am using both text and images directly lifted from the Scales of War adventure path books, and artwork from the Red Hand of Doom art gallery on the WotC home page at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ag/20060208a .

I hold no copyrights over any of this material and only include it based on the premise that it is impossible to run the SoW adventure path solely from material included here, and that you will still need your D&D Insider subscription to run the campaign.