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Hey
I am a huge fan of the PF APs, for the mere idea of a full campaign intrigues me.
I was first hooked to Paizo by reading the CotCT AP, which was (I think) one big stroke of genius.
However lately I am getting the feeling that APs are less focused than they used to be.
I'll try to explain:
in CotCT, all the different adventures created a long, overarching story line (spoiler ahoy):
CotCT 1 - players get to know Korvosa & key NPCs
CotCT 2 - players start realizing the queen might be kinda nasty
CotCT 3 - the identity of the bad guys for this campaign, Ileosa and her minions, is confirmed - players now have a clear goal in mind for the rest of the story.
CotCT 4 & 5 - the PCs gather the information and the power they need in order to defeat the big bad boss.
CotCT 6 - the final showdown.
in this story there is an incentive for the PCs to act, there are links between the different adventures and each part in the plot serves a clear purpose. The campaign feels tight, it feels like a campaign .
now let's take a look at, for example, Kingmaker:]
KM 1 to 5: PCs conquer and rule a kingdom
KM 6: final showdown
or Serpent's skull:
SS 1 - players learn about potential ancient threat (look good!)
SS 2 to 5 - PCs spend a LONG time hanging around Saventh-Yhi, doing absolutely NOTHING that has to do with Serpentfolk except kill them occasionally
SS 6 - oh, by the way, there is an ancient evil God of Serpents and a huge dormant civilization getting prepared to sweep the surface world.
in both of these APs the players don't even know what the campaign is all about until the final part of it. would you enjoy reading a trilogy of book where only in the last half of the final volume the reader can start figuring what are the antagonists of the story fighting for? I wouldn't...
all I'm saying is, I really miss the old way of doing APs, where each adventure served as a step stone in a bigger story, and wasn't just awesome by itself. as a player I would enjoy playing in a CotCT type of story than, say a SS type of story.
does anyone else share those feelings? are am I the only one bothered by this?
and shall a Paizo staff member chance upon this thread - is there a change to the pattern in the foreseeable future?
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I was thinking something similar too, but with some caveats.
I'm running Kingmaker at the moment, and it is a very Sandboxy AP, I've been weaving hints and clues as to a larger meta-plot throughout the campaign.
Serpent's Skull Spoilers follow:
Serpent's Skull - I like the Indiana Jones type of AP but you're right in that their is a lack of a strong villainous opponent for the PCs to unite against during the game (aside from the competing factions).
From what I've seen Carrion Crown has a much more focused Metaplot, as does Jade Regent. So for the next 12 months at least, Paizo seems to be out of the sandbox.
That said: It's a lot easier to put some rails in a sandbox, than it is to make a sandbox on rails.
SPOILERS! SERPENTS SKULL
Also, in Serpent's Skull you know the serpentfolk are up to something in part 4, fight them in part 5 and unravel their master plan just before part 6. I'm seeding the campaign with lots of foreshadowing too, but its a pretty decent lead in, its not like they only find out the baddies are serpentfolk in the last adventure, thats obvious from the first adventure and the name of the campaign. Exactly why Savith-Yhi was built is discoverable in the third adventure, so when serpentfolk reclaim the lower city, the PCs will figure shit out pretty quickly.
Rise of the Runelords has the same element of finding out the villain, many great fantasy stories don't tell you the big plot behind the activity until a ways in, and even then keep many mysteries and twists until near the end. Brian Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy has a different focus in each book for example.
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Brian Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy has a different focus in each book for example.
spoilers!
Remeber, so does CotCT - your PCs will fight a plague, encounter Cthulhu-Things-Of-Many-Tentcles, have some urban fun, get eaten by giant fire breathing worms, stunble through a haunted castle...that was precisley what I was talking about. each module in CotCT has a unique style and tone, but overall they all work togather and feel like diffrent parts of the same story.
in SS... well, yeah sure you get to bash some serpents in each module (or nearly each one, don't remember anything snaky in Race to Ruin), but each time you do, it feels like fighting a diffrent foe, because you end up venquishing stand alone cells and not fighting the same united force all the time.
I really do hope Carrion Crown will show a return to the "rail-road" AP type, since I see too much freedom as simply scattering your story all over the place.
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Of course, the problem with railroad APs is that it's rather easy to blow it up by having one poor adventure that forces you to rewrite the metaplot. And such blunders can happen rather easily if each AP episode is written by a different author.
Second Darkness, and to a lesser extent Council of Thieves, I am ho so looking at you.
Sandbox APs, by very definition, aren't as risky with that.
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I have been getting everything ready to start Kingmaker. I like the whole sandbox set up. I think that a game like this works a lot better if you wait for the whole thing to be published. That way you can add in foreshadowing and personalise the ties that bind the whole storyline together. There are some ties written into the AP but they can, due to the very sandbox nature of the game, be skipped over. Like DM_aka_dudemister said "It's a lot easier to put some rails in a sandbox, than it is to make a sandbox on rails". I would much rather put some rails down in the sandbox. It has been a lot harder running Shackled City for the past 2+ years, making the sandbox, and rewriting large chunks due to players taking the path less (or never) travelled.
also 'Council of Thieves' is in the line of what you miss form the days of CotCT. And in my opinion its a much more interresting campaign
I read through CotCT and I'm playing Council of Thieves (half way through the 4th chapter) and I don't really agree. Spoilers ahead.
The only mention so far of Council of Thieves was in one and only one place in first chapter and then NOTHING afterwards. Second chapter is breaking in to mayor's palace to steal a key (or something like that) for a haunted Pathfinder Lodge. Third chapter is going into that Pathfinder Lodge and fighting some vampires. Fourth chapter is about a Pit Fiend who is breaking loose from his prison.
So, from player's perspective there's nothing linking those chapters or even any mention of the Council of Thieves (aside from that vary vague note on the start), let alone the architect/final boss of it all.
Now, I know that there is something connecting all those tiny dots into one story, and when we get to it it will be clear, but it all seems so disconnected right now. That's a design flaw, IMO.
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That's not a design flaw. In RotRL, which is pretty much universally held as at least very good, the PCs don't learn the identity of the BBEG until the 4th book. Yet, it works.
CoT has a share of problems (adventure 1 is a big "meh", level cap is too low, something that could be an awesome urban guerilla warfare against oppresive devil nazi regime campaign turns out to be
Of course, it still has nothing on Second Darkness.
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Horses for courses. Sandbox vs railroad (hate that term) is an argument I have heard a lot over the years. Both have their merits and flaws and both have their champions.
Personally I can appreciate both styles and I think either is valid if it creates a good game.
As to the OP well I don't really see it. Legacy of Fire doesn't have anything to do with the overall plot until the very end of the 3rd book and even then it is unlikely the players will really get a clue to what is going on until the 6th book.
Serpent's Skull has the entire 5th and 6th books to build up the bad guy. Mind you, I do understand that the 6th book of KM can come out of nowhere if it is not foreshadowed properly. I have been making some cryptic comments from numerous sources the players meet to suggest something else is going on...
Personally I can appreciate both styles and I think either is valid if it creates a good game.
+1.
I also think that the DM makes a big difference. I suppose you can run the AP exactly as it's written without doing any additional embellishing but for myself, I like to seed earlier adventures with hints and follow up with them as we go so that even if the party is focused on something else, the overall plot arc is still very much on their minds. That takes a little additional thought and slightly more work but it's easy enough to do, particularly after reading the other books.
Edit to add: And I as a DM, I like that there's so much room for me to add or rearrange things as I go. Even the more railroad-y paths seem to have plenty of room for me to make small modifications to provide foreshadowing and that's as it should be.
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I've run Runelords and Second Darkness, and we're currently in the middle of Legacy of Fire. Of the three, my players all rave about Second Darkness. They loved every minute of it, and yes, it took more work on my part, but it played out really well.
That said, obviously my players love being railroaded with a strong story arc. I'm running Kingmaker next which my players would probably hate as written. The good news is that the sandboxy feel will allow me to put my own strong story in place. I like having choices among the APs. When I have a great story of my own, it saves me time to use a sandbox to play it in. When I have less time, an AP with its own strong story is very desirable. I hope Paizo will continue to offer a variety of APs. Maybe one Story Driven AP per year and one sandbox.
You should definitely be looking forward to Carrion Crown, picking up this month. There's a thread elsewhere on the forum specifically asking about the sandbox nature of the recent APs and Carrion Crown.
Here's a quote from James Jacobs in that thread:
Carrion Crown is quite linear. After the sandboxy nature of Kingmaker and Serpent's Skull... we (and many of our readers) seemed pretty eager to get back to a more story-driven AP.
And even more details from F. Wesley Schneider:
This is an interesting point, as we're trying something a little different with this one. While Carrion Crown is certainly not like Kingmaker in the "Here's the Setting: Go!" sense, we're trying to give PCs a chance to take the reigns on big portions of the adventures by presenting a variety of mysteries. At this point, nearly every adventure in the series has some sort of mystery that it will be up to the PCs to investigate. How they go about this, what paths they take, what clues they turn up, and what conclusions that leads them to can result in very different ends for each adventure. While some are simple "who-done-its?" others get into full-on detective style investigations, historical mysteries, or arcane puzzles.
Carrion Crown is also something of a tour of Ustalav, visiting some of the most exciting locales in the country and touching on a variety of tropes common to horror film, fiction, and roleplaying. At the same time - as I was mentioning above - while the framing elements of the campaign do lead you toward new places and set you on the path to new adventures, there's a ton of flexibility to chart your own courses once you get to some of these settlements, townships, outposts, castles, cities, ruins, and whatnot to learn about the histories of the places, the secrets of the people, and what dangers might lurk just out of sight.
Creative Director
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I'm honestly not surprised to see some sandbox backlash, since it does confirm my suspicion that linear adventures ARE pretty popular. After all, we were doing quite well with more linear adventures before Kingmaker. But there was a quite vocal outcry against linear adventures. Folks calling them "railroads" and bemoaning the fact that their PCs never get to make actual choices that matter. (I personally think that kind of comment is narrow-minded, misleading, and flat-out wrong, but whatever.)
So in light of those complaints, which I did feel had a certain amount of validity, we tried out a super sandboxy campaign with Kingmaker. It was INCREDIBLY popular and won awards. With Serpent's Skull, we tried to combine the two styles a bit, but erred on the sandbox style there again. And THAT one turned out to be popular... although not as much as Kingmaker.
And now I'm starting to see lots of "Sandboxes ruined my campaign!" type posts.
So, what have I learned from all this?
It's best to vary the Adventure Paths.
As a result, from this point on, you'll be seeing something of a mix between sandbox and railroad adventures. Some will "land" squarely on one of those zones, while others will straddle them.
With Carrion Crown and the next AP, Jade Regent, they'll land squarely on the rails. They've got pretty strong stories and, while there are a lot of choices the PCs can make in each adventure to adjust outcomes, there's a pretty focused overall story. Jade Regent's is even more focused than Carrion Crown's in fact.
Which means, of course, what we do AFTER Jade Regent should probably skew back toward the sandbox... especially if, by the start of Jade Regent, we have folks complaining about not having any choices.
now let's take a look at, for example, Kingmaker:]
KM 1 to 5: PCs conquer and rule a kingdom
KM 6: final showdown
[...]
in both of these APs the players don't even know what the campaign is all about until the final part of it.
You've got that wrong. Kingmaker is not about what happens in the final part, it is explicitly about building, ruling and defending your kingdom.
fwiw I love me some story-driven adventures, and that's one of the reasons I'm so looking forward to running Carrion Crown after my RotRL campaign ends.
It's just more relaxing for me as a GM to retell a story that someone's plotted out for me already -- I can work on embellishing the details and embroidering on little sidequests instead of doing the heavy lifting myself. Spinning a plot out of thin air is fun too, but I get enough of that while writing; it is really really not what I'm looking for in gaming. As far as I'm concerned, the APs are a godsend, and the more plot-focused they are, the more I love 'em.
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In a lot of ways what happens in Kingmaker could be about what happens in Book 5.
Ultimately though I do think it's a good idea to vary the APs between Sandbox styles and more Story-Driven styles. Honestly I'd like to see an AP where the PCs know who the enemy is from book 1 - not just the nameless minions (serpent folk/drow), but the architect of evil. I think part of the reason so many people above love CotCT so much is because not only is the final villain memorable, but because she interacts with the PCs regularly from book 1-3 and is the focus of book 6.
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I think that when it comes to Adventure Paths, as in with all things, people occasionally need a change of pace.
As well, I also think that sometimes people need to relearn the reasons why some decisions were made in the past to do a certain thing. In this case, the “certain thing” is to create Adventure Paths with a strong story outline where there is an overarching campaign goal and the campaign grows in a logical manner that marches in step with that goal and story.
Some people see that as being “railroady” and some prefer to view it as a “plot driven” campaign. I’m playing in Kingmaker now and while I have enjoyed the campaign so far, to be honest, I really do think that is could have used more story in parts 1-3 than have been present to date. You can go too far with the sandbox theme, in my view.
There are others who have a different opinion and perhaps, to them, sandboxes are what they want and story driven campaigns are what they don’t want. Okay. If everybody only loved the exact same things, it would be a boring world.
To the extent that Paizo has responded to these concerns with the stated intention of varying the nature and degree of their campaigns by appealing to one, the other, or straddling the line between both? I think that is an excellent response. There is no way at all to make everybody happy with ONE single adventure path. Won’t happen; it can’t happen. Different things appeal to different groups of players – and to different GMs, too. That’s reality.
So instead, if Paizo takes a longer view of things and tries to please the broad mass of their customers over the long haul, by releasing campaigns over the course of, say, 18 months, that provides 3 campaigns within that span of time, at least one of which is very likely to appeal to the broad mass of their customers? Then Paizo will have done the best they can reasonably do, imo.
Further, given that it takes a great deal of time to play an Adventure Path from start to finish, taking a longer view of customer satisfaction (i.e., keeping the customers happy with at least one AP released over a 12-18 month snapshot in time) seems very logical to me.
After all, Paizo can release three campaigns in a row which I would LOVE to play in or GM – but the fact is – it takes too much time to play one to its conclusion already. There is more AP material out there than I have time to play in or GM. I assure you that this is so, as I’ve tried to either play in or GM every AP they have for Pathfinder for the purposes of podcast review. Fact is, at a certain point? It just can’t be done. I simply don’t have enough time to do it no matter how much I want to – and I’m sure 99% of posters have similar demands upon their time.
All by way of saying? One (or two) out of three ain’t bad.
It's best to vary the Adventure Paths.
Sounds good to me!
To respond to the OP, my answer would be no. The APs have remained of a very high quality and focus. In fact, I would say the Paizo team has been more focused on the best ways to present AP type adventures. What has changed is the styles (ie story-driven, railroady, etc).
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smart staff
Hey and thanks for the comment.
However, neither you nor most of the commenters actually addressed the matter that bothered me, so I guess I wasn't clear enough.
I don't care if a story is a sandbox or a "railroad" (I don't like the term either). but I want it to feel like a story. I want to have the players feel that they are advancing not only in power but in development.
For example I think the CoT, while very fun to play, is not nearly as well constructed as CotCT. (spoilers)
the Council of Thieves is not mentioned even passingly as something with sagnificant until very lately, and then suddenly the PCs should care about defeating them. I know that CoT is more about Westcrown than it is about the council itself but it still feels a little fulse ahere CotCT felt true.
my feeling is that the storys of the last 3 - 4 campaigns are simply not very strong, as opposed to CotCT and SD.
thoughts?
In the case of CoT it is a 6 adventure package dealing with the exploration of Cheliax as much as it is about the plot it is working towards, I am actually fine with that, it is in part how you represent it as a DM I guess.
In the case of CoT it is a 6 adventure package dealing with the exploration of Cheliax as much as it is about the plot it is working towards, I am actually fine with that, it is in part how you represent it as a DM I guess.
I own CoT but had never read through them as took a one year hiatus from gaming. Anyway, after reading all about it on the boards I scanned through them last weekend. My impresion was that the 1st book was a little weak, the 2-5 got quite good and book 6 felt totally flat to me due to the sandox nature of it.
Which is interesting, because I really like Kingmaker (agree that book 6 feels out of place somewhat).
I guess what I am saying is that a railroad plot driven path if done well is a joy to run, and a sandbox adventure that has a few strong overriding narrative plots can be a joy to run.
But a railroad adventure path that throws in too much sandbox, especially at the start or end, is gonna being dissapointing.
I was all set to run CoT until I read book 6..I would need to do serious work as the conclusion just feels way to wishy washy.
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Mind you even in some of the linear APs the players had no idea what was going on until much later in the bookes (Shackled City and Rise of the Runelords are both the worst with this). And the big shift towards sandboxing was also a lot of backlash against Second Darkness, which is generally (and rightfully imho) considered the worst of the APs.
It all depends on DM though, as a DM I like to focus very heavily on story, but I do a lot of heavy editing of the story to mesh it well with the characters and give them a personal stake in it and throw in enough side stuff that it feels a lot more organic, despite being a pretty decent railroad. Illusion of choice, I know how to pull my player's strings so they make the choices to keep them on the tracks ;)
One of our other DMs in the group isn't so good at it, for example in Legacy of Fire
Oh and for what its worth, Second Darkness makes for an AWESOME Star Wars game. Just replace Elves with Jedi and Drow with Sith. Saul the Hutt was quite enjoyable =p
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Mind you even in some of the linear APs the players had no idea what was going on until much later in the bookes (Shackled City and Rise of the Runelords are both the worst with this). And the big shift towards sandboxing was also a lot of backlash against Second Darkness, which is generally (and rightfully imho) considered the worst of the APs.
It all depends on DM though, as a DM I like to focus very heavily on story, but I do a lot of heavy editing of the story to mesh it well with the characters and give them a personal stake in it and throw in enough side stuff that it feels a lot more organic, despite being a pretty decent railroad. Illusion of choice, I know how to pull my player's strings so they make the choices to keep them on the tracks ;)
One of our other DMs in the group isn't so good at it, for example in Legacy of Fire ** spoiler omitted **.
Oh and for what its worth, Second Darkness makes for an AWESOME Star Wars game. Just replace Elves with Jedi and Drow with Sith. Saul the Hutt was quite enjoyable =p
I actually was thinking of making Second Darkness a Sci-Fi adventure...
Any chance of linking some notes on how you made that work?
I've run Runelords and Second Darkness, and we're currently in the middle of Legacy of Fire. Of the three, my players all rave about Second Darkness. They loved every minute of it, and yes, it took more work on my part, but it played out really well.
That said, obviously my players love being railroaded with a strong story arc. I'm running Kingmaker next which my players would probably hate as written. The good news is that the sandboxy feel will allow me to put my own strong story in place. I like having choices among the APs. When I have a great story of my own, it saves me time to use a sandbox to play it in. When I have less time, an AP with its own strong story is very desirable. I hope Paizo will continue to offer a variety of APs. Maybe one Story Driven AP per year and one sandbox.
This is a good point as well. We tend to think of 'rail road' style as being very self contained but some 'rail roads' are a lot more focused then others. APs that are about NPCs and their interactions can make even other story driven APs appear to be sand boxes with the amount of track they have in them.
I've argued that at its best Savage Tide is the story of Lavina and her evil brother - sure there are Demon Princes and a plot to destroy the world running in the background but really this is Lavina's story and that the more rail lines the DM puts into place in that AP to focus on that story the better.
Now personally I'd love to see an AP that actually takes that one step further and straight up concedes that significant chunks of the plot are on rails and are actually about one of a small group of NPCs and their interactions with the PCs and each other. Especially if its about a great fantasy love story...a really good romance is something we have yet to see in an AP.
All that said I'm in agreement with those that argue that variety is the spice of life. I love Curse of the Crimson Throne but I've really been digging Serpent's Skull as well (so far - I'm not done with it so I suppose that could change).
In the end I think the fact that we are beginning to recognize these variations on how to do an AP is a really good thing for Paizo. I've contended that I believed that the concept of APs would run their course and I expected them to start to loose steam at some point but with all these different ways of presenting the idea I'm pretty sure I was just wrong...or at least there are a whole lot more great stories that Paizo could tell in the format then I had originally ever really believed. That's certianly good news for Paizo's flagship product.
Of course, the problem with railroad APs is that it's rather easy to blow it up by having one poor adventure that forces you to rewrite the metaplot. And such blunders can happen rather easily if each AP episode is written by a different author.
Second Darkness, and to a lesser extent Council of Thieves, I am ho so looking at you.
Sandbox APs, by very definition, aren't as risky with that.
True but in a lot of ways Sandbox APs can fall apart on a much grander scale. If your players figure out that they don't actually want to run a kingdom in Kingmaker it is a lot more work to try and keep that campaign from collapsing then it is to rewrite some bad linkages between different adventures or add in some stuff of your own design to get through a bad clump of an adventure.
Once you realize that being King was not what you where looking for the whole premise behind Kingmaker crumbles and it may make more sense to abandon the campaign completely...much to every ones frustration.
Honestly I'd like to see an AP where the PCs know who the enemy is from book 1 - not just the nameless minions (serpent folk/drow), but the architect of evil. I think part of the reason so many people above love CotCT so much is because not only is the final villain memorable, but because she interacts with the PCs regularly from book 1-3 and is the focus of book 6.
Hear, hear.
I love Kingmaker. The fact that we're free to do things as we see fit. We now we're going to make enemies, it's inevitable. WE haven't even really set up shop yet and already ** spoiler omitted **
Second Darkness got very, very railroady. To the point that the players were barely hanging in. We never finished it. We never finished CoT either. We enjoyed RotRL (up until the dm had to go on deployment) and CotCT. We did feel kinda railroaded in those though.
Variety is a good thing. Make one a sandbox and the other with tracks wouldn't be a bad idea.
Sure...though I do also like the idea of seeing ones that are quite the mix and, also, seeing ones that tack very far to the extremes of each style.
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Honestly I'd like to see an AP where the PCs know who the enemy is from book 1 - not just the nameless minions (serpent folk/drow), but the architect of evil. I think part of the reason so many people above love CotCT so much is because not only is the final villain memorable, but because she interacts with the PCs regularly from book 1-3 and is the focus of book 6.Hear, hear.
It's the reason why the Baldur's Gate games are still better than the Dragon Age games.
But a railroad adventure path that throws in too much sandbox, especially at the start or end, is gonna being dissapointing.I was all set to run CoT until I read book 6..I would need to do serious work as the conclusion just feels way to wishy washy.
I really, really, liked the premise for book 6 of CoT. My problem was that it was trying to do far to much with far to little word count. I mean we finally got our 'battle the evil fantasy Nazi's in the streets' plot that was so greatly missed in CotCT, which I thought was awesome but, by this point, there was not that much time to develop this. I'd also have preferred a more 'sandboxy' layout. You kind of new this was a sandbox part of the campaign once your read it but it was difficult to envision how to do it in a matter that would feel dynamic.
It's the reason why the Baldur's Gate games are still better than the Dragon Age games.Honestly I'd like to see an AP where the PCs know who the enemy is from book 1 - not just the nameless minions (serpent folk/drow), but the architect of evil. I think part of the reason so many people above love CotCT so much is because not only is the final villain memorable, but because she interacts with the PCs regularly from book 1-3 and is the focus of book 6.Hear, hear.
All that said if they do this in every AP (have the villain be front and center and actually on the stage) then players will clue into this pretty quick. One of the cool things about CotCT was that it was possible to have your players initially believe she was OK, for a Queen anyway, and then they'd be constantly revising their opinion downward until they got to 'I'm going to f+~* that b&!+* up so bad when I get my hands on her (err...just give me time to level up about four more times). They won't fall for it if its always the same shtick.
Previewing the baddies is always good and should be done when possible but if the writers start forcing it where it does not belong that will turn good APs into bad ones IMO.
Could you give a bit more detail about this? I think I'll be running Kingmaker next for my group and would like to keep an eye out for it happening.
Once you realize that being King was not what you where looking for the whole premise behind Kingmaker crumbles and it may make more sense to abandon the campaign completely...much to every ones frustration.
Sorry - I feel the conclusion (the campaign itself collapses) follows from the premise (Players that come to the conclusion 'Damn - I never realized how freaken boring being king really was'!) but I've not actually played or run KM. Kevin Mack is the guy you really want to talk to - maybe he'll make a thread in the KM forum.
The Kingmaker books do give some advice for what to do if your players don't wish to play Kings, though, so it's not that bad.
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However, neither you nor most of the commenters actually addressed the matter that bothered me, so I guess I wasn't clear enough.
I don't care if a story is a sandbox or a "railroad" (I don't like the term either). but I want it to feel like a story. I want to have the players feel that they are advancing not only in power but in development.
For example I think the CoT, while very fun to play, is not nearly as well constructed as CotCT. (spoilers)
the Council of Thieves is not mentioned even passingly as something with sagnificant until very lately, and then suddenly the PCs should care about defeating them. I know that CoT is more about Westcrown than it is about the council itself but it still feels a little fulse ahere CotCT felt true.
my feeling is that the storys of the last 3 - 4 campaigns are simply not very strong, as opposed to CotCT and SD.
thoughts?The big difference between CoT and CotCT is that in CoT, you're trying to figure out everything. You're trying to figure out who is behind the events. In CotCT, you pretty much know from the get-go and have to figure out how to defeat her.
SD was horrible. You start in a pirate town, get rewarded very early on, and the major good NPCs are written as a-holes. My group WANTED the elven nation wiped off the map. By the fifth book, they didn't care. And considering how it pretty much shoves a rail road track up where the shine don't shine...The good NPCs were a-holes and the drow were far more well fleshed out. SD needed to be heavily re-written in order to make it playable, and if I'm going to rewrite an adventure, just give me the sandbox.
second darkness spoilers
The good thing about Second Darkness is that it has a decent fix.
1. Demand heroic PCs.
2. Make Riddleport irredeemably scuzzy.
3. Make the elves nicer.
You don't have to change any statblocks, adventures or creatures: only a few bits of fluff need tweaking.
And, at the end, they've saved the world - which is ace.
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i.e Rewrite the AP and Elves of Golarion.second darkness spoilers
** spoiler omitted **...
I thought I addressed that, was I not clear enough about how small the changes would be?
Also, Elves of Golarion is pretty sweetness and light when it comes to Elven personality. I don't think it needs changing for SD.
I'm not defending the AP, it is definitely the most flawed of them all, I was just making the point that it can be redeemed. I've never run it but I have used elements in other campaigns.
It's best to vary the Adventure Paths.Sounds good to me!
To respond to the OP, my answer would be no. The APs have remained of a very high quality and focus. In fact, I would say the Paizo team has been more focused on the best ways to present AP type adventures. What has changed is the styles (ie story-driven, railroady, etc).
Agree 100%
As for the sandboxy campaign collapse potential, I disagree to a point. It's up to the GM to personalize that type of campaign to suit his/her players playstyle. I think a GM should definitely have a chat with the group before embarking on a campaign like kingmaker or serpent skull and let them know what kind of campaign it will be, without spoilers of course. Also running an AP as written to the letter isn't too good either. GMs need to foreshadow a tad more than what's written IMHO, which is hard to do if you are running them as they are released. This is why some GMs like to wait till most or all of the chapters are out. YMMV.
Varied APs are still great and glad im Paizo is doing both. I wouldn't change a thing about the AP formula (even the iconics in the back).
Put me in the "Straddle the fence" camp.
I appreciate a good story as much as the next person. However, as a GM, I can attest that some players rebel when they don't have adequate choice. Even the illusion of freedom to do what they want and go where they want is often all that's required.
Paizo has done a very impressive job of acknowledging this and accounting for it in their modules and APs. In the plot-heavy APs, a "probable course" is usually outlined but they also account for other chioces or possible "de-railing".
The biggest problem with heavy-story APs and adventures is that if bridge/tie between encounters & adventures is weak, it's easy for the whole thing to fall apart.
Sandbox elements allow PCs to say "screw that guy, I'm not going after that" & go do their thing. It allows for consequences of those decisions to come into play or give the players the freedom to return to the "main plot" when they're ready to do so -- players can get burned out on plots, too.
I would be very happy to see a return to the kingmaker mold in future. Both jade regent and carrion crown sound awesome, but i am itching to actually play in a king maker style story....preferably about pirate lords.