I just finished running the “Harvest House” module out of the 5E Codex of Adventures Vol. I for my Living Arcanis campaign group. I’m seeking guidance on how to resolve an apparent discrepancy between the text of the adventure in the book and the certs for that adventure (which are available for download from the PCI website).

Here are the relevant facts:

1. According to the Living Arcanis Campaign Guide (v.3.2.2), at page 6, the “adventures within the [Codex of Adventures Vol. I] are campaign legal” for the living campaign.

2. The text of the “Harvest House” adventure says that the party can recover items from the house. Some of the items in the house that are specifically highlighted in the text imply that they can be taken and sold by the party for coin — perhaps a lot of coin.

[color=#0040FF] [SPOILERS]

REMOVED

Etc.

3. The adventure has no item certs.

4. [SPOILER] REMOVED

So, here are my questions:

How do I handle the fact that the adventure explicitly says there are items the party can recover and sell to the right buyer if the items don’t have item certs or don’t appear as a story achievement? Can I as the GM add something to the cert to reflect the fact that they salvaged one of the highlighted items? Or do I assume that the item is sold for cash to the right buyer? If sold, how do I assign value if a price isn’t specified in the text? Does any gold collected in this fashion get distributed equally among the party, or only to the character(s) that roleplayed their collection?

Also, I don’t usually see magic items appear on the story achievement cert instead of an item cert. The chronicle cert doesn’t indicate if the potion can be traded or sold. It’s categorized as very rare, but no sale price is listed. Do I assume that these are just one-use magic items that cannot be sold or traded among characters?

My players are waiting for me to issue the certs for the game. I’d appreciate any guidance y’all can give.

Hello,

Please don't post SPOILERS in this section. There is a specific SPOILER section where such can be posted or found.

If you are looking for official responses to your question, please email me (PCIHenry@gmail.com) or another of the campaign directors, whose emails can be found in the Living Arcanis 5E Campaign documentation. Players opinions, while certainly welcome in most instances, will not help you in correctly adjudicating issues like the one you have stated.

Now, on to your question:

The Codex of Adventures, vol. I was primarily written for Home play. It was only after the living campaign player base petitioned for it to be campaign legal, that we agreed to do so.

As such, this necessitated the changes to the adventure, as reflected in the campaign documentation, such as the certs and adventure records.

If you are running any of the adventures in the Codex of Adventurers, vol. I in the "legal" Living Arcanis 5E campaign, then you must use the certs and adventure records as provided and unmodified.

If there's any incongruity between the text of the adventure and the campaign documentation,. the documentation supersedes the text.

If you have any further questions on this topic, please feel free to contact me a the above email.

Thank you for running Arcanis and I hope you and your players enjoyed themselves.

Thanks for the response.

I will refrain from posting spoilers, even if relevant to the question being asked. Perhaps you can implement a text blackout option for spoilers in the forums, as the Discord groups have.

I posted here because it’s explicitly for Living Arcanis 5E rulings, which is what I thought I was asking for. If you would prefer private email from now on, I’ll do so and relay that to the group as well. Between the forums, the Discord channels, the Facebook groups, and the personal emails tucked in the campaign guide, it’s hard to guess sometimes where inquiries of what sort are supposed to be directed. I have received different guidance from different people on that.

I’ll break the news to my players about the coin and items. We’ll try to retcon something about why the text of the adventure doesn’t apply.

Ximonk,

I don't believe that we've listed either the forums, discord server, or the FB pages as places to post for official campaign rulings. If this is not correct, please advise, as we'll need to correct that.

The forums, FB Groups, and Discord are meant for players to exchange ideas and trade stories. However, you bring up a good point that we may have too many outlets for discussion. It's probably time to retire these forums, as they have been the target of hacker attacks, of late, and would certainly make my life easier.

For future reference, if you are seeking official rulings, I'd recommend sending your email to me (PCIHenry@gmail.com) and if I can't answer it, I'll pass it along to someone who can.

Wow, I see that you’re shutting down the forums. I hope my question about a ruling didn’t contribute to that decision. That would be a shame. There is a lot of accumulated institutional memory here, especially for newer players like me, that is not reproduced anywhere else to my knowledge. The forums are curated and well organized by game system and topic, with robust search functions that the other avenues don’t have. It would certainly be a loss to lose all that as a resource.

Yes, sorry, not quite correct. I was previously directed (and have seen similar responses to one or two others who posted) to the Facebook groups for rules questions, since the most knowledgeable rules folks don’t necessarily monitor the forums.

One of the FB groups is supposed to be just for history and lore of the game world, but the other does allow discussion of organized play campaigns. On FB, I saw that you asked participants “to direct any and all rules questions to either the PCI Forums” or the organized play FB group. However, the organized play group advises that “All Spoiler talk is kept over at the PCI Forums, as it's harder for people to accidently see something that will ruin their fun.”

Not trying to be critical here. Just highlighting why I thought I was following your guidance when posting on the forum a rules question that had to make reference to a spoiler from the adventure at issue.

Ximonk,

The Facebook group post has been edited and the offending language removed.

Thank you.