Hey there. I've been reading alot of great reviews on the various adventure paths, on how great the stories are and deep the plots and such, and I've had an epiphany.

You see, in my campaigns there is no pre-designed plot, the plot develops and evolves entirely as I and the players roleplay the game, everything is entirely spur of the moment and pure creativity based, one encounter will lead down a line of logic and series of adventures, and so on, building a plot and eventually generating resolution of that plot one way or another. It's as much a surprise to me as to the players when the villain reveals itself etc.

Anyways... I've been thinking about the AP's, and longing to get to play or run one, and I realized that I wouldn't have to run them straight out of the books.

You see, I've always been one to absorb the information presented me, to be able to file it away for further use and apply and modify it as need be. So below is my idea for a way to incorporate AP's into my campaign, in your comments please assume that I am capable of doing so.

My idea, is to purchase the various adventure paths, and read them serveral times until I can commit their contents, NPC's, plot hooks etc to memory. Then, during our Sandbox sessions, when the PC's provoke something that would set them off on one of the AP's, for example hiring passage on a ship might lead to Crimson Tides or some such, then the AP can just evolve out of that, with me adjusting the difficulties and enemy abilities to the party level, bring some Paizo adventure design into the campaign.

Your thoughts on the idea? Would you enjoy such a situation? I've heard some GM's complain about players seeing them work out of a module book and try to 'cheat' so to speak, there deffinitely would be no threat of that here.

Maybe I put this in the wrong board to get the interest of people on the subject... I was hoping to get some feedback/thoughts.

I added some 0 level adventures to the AP I am currently running (RotRL), during which I introduced several additional storylines besides the Rise of the Thassilonian runelords. I am using slow experience rules, and have created some additional side adventure plots that will fill in the remaining "exp space" during leveling. So, in the end, my party will have run through nearly all the AP, but depending on which parts they remember best and focus on, it may not look like a straight AP run game and it might not seem like a Runelord driven game. For example, I have a whole evil druids capturing dangerous animals, creating new aberrations, and polymorphing people into animals, all for sale to rich collectors and underground animal pit fights. Also, there are a whole order of Hellknights seriously after an underground revolutionary Varisian group, whose goal is to cause Korvosa to collapse and either become a democracy or leave Varisia. The party has already intervened and assisted the rebels, so that side story is in full swing. Not quite what it sounds like you were doing, but a different twist on the regular AP. If they continue to follow this thread and leave the area for the rest of the RotRL adventure, then...

If you like sandbox type games, you should really enjoy the upcoming River Kingdoms AP called Kingmaker. I understand its going to be rather sandboxy in nature, and will include rules for the characters running their own kingdom.

I also recommend reading the Darkmoon Vale guide, since it seemed to me to be the perfect setting for a sandbox type game and adding a whole bunch of different factions and escalating power struggles. You could either use that plus the series of modules there as the foundation of your game, or take a lot of the darkmoon vale material and move it to Varisia. For example, I took the evil fey witch queen thread from Darkmoon and moved it up to Varisia, where it is very appropriate, given the proximity to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, etc. I think moving things around and adding your own ideas and materials into an existing purchased product is what the game is really all about as a DM. Your world will be a more tailored place for them to adventure in, and you will be able to answer questions about monsters, locations, etc with more authority since they are yours, rather than having to check a reference source to find the answer.

Maybe I put this in the wrong board to get the interest of people on the subject... I was hoping to get some feedback/thoughts.

I think this would be difficult. The adventure paths tend to be so tightly connected with location and NPCs, that the "sandbox" element is within the adventures themselves, not in the "connective tissue" between them.

Example from Rise of the Runelords:

Because you can't really head on to another sandbox area without the direction (because it won't make as much sense to "stumble" there, or because your players will lack the clues to succeed at it, etc.), I think converting an AP to a "sandbox" style of gaming would be difficult.

An inversion of this idea is the "Plot Point Settings" put out by Savage Worlds. Those are great big sandbox worlds, in which specific actions by the PCs trigger a short but fairly directed adventure. The adventures ultimately connect in the campaign plot, but it is expected (and, for the purposes of "leveling up" your characters, required) that the characters run around the sandbox in between the adventures.

Thanks for the oppinions guys. I deffinitely will have a look at that River King AP when it becomes available.

And about the whole no sandboxiness between them and all that, that's the beauty of how I run my games. The players choose what they do at all times. They'd be presented with the start of the adventure, could jump into it, could resist and end up getting dragged into it by the way they resist, or successfully jump ship at any point, even one scenario before the final battle (though at that stage I imagine the 'boss' of the final battle would pursue them, so they end up not really being able to bail at that point, the adventure changes with the whim and sway of the moment)

Here is a peripherally related Paizo blog post from July 9th that doesn't directly address your question, but might provide you with food for thought.

Ask A Pro: Question Seven

It's a little more than two-thirds of the way down the page.

Depending on which APs you are selecting, there comes a point in each where the BBEG is going to come looking for them and drag them kicking and screaming (or perhaps their corpses?) back into the AP. You can only ruin so many plots and ambitious ventures and slaughter so many minions, before you make it onto someone's "People I really need to kill on my way to ruling the world" list. That is one good thing about adding one of the APs into your mix of options, unless they bail on that storyline hard and fast and avoid it like the plague, it will eventually rear its ugly head again and come to them. While this won't impeded their freedom, it definitely puts a crimp in any "happily building my fortress or temple" plans they might be looking forward to making.

Depending on which APs you are selecting, there comes a point in each where the BBEG is going to come looking for them and drag them kicking and screaming (or perhaps their corpses?) back into the AP. You can only ruin so many plots and ambitious ventures and slaughter so many minions, before you make it onto someone's "People I really need to kill on my way to ruling the world" list. That is one good thing about adding one of the APs into your mix of options, unless they bail on that storyline hard and fast and avoid it like the plague, it will eventually rear its ugly head again and come to them. While this won't impeded their freedom, it definitely puts a crimp in any "happily building my fortress or temple" plans they might be looking forward to making.

Actually, that fits really well into my style, people are always getting into the pc's faces, and villains often hold grudges even when the PC's stop being 'YOU MEDLING KIDS AND YOUR DOG TOO' and decide to go their own way.

In that way the game is always evolving, always moving, nothing is ever certain.

I know that my style of "sandbox" play comes from having player's who either are dead set in personal ambitions for their character, despite whatever the world has planned for them, or they are freedom fanatics and take perverse pleasure in going in the opposite direction any time they are pushed one way or the other. I reverted to this style after several well thought out adventure storylines were completed thwarted by player agendas, so now I just set up the world, factions, and key NPCs and let the player's cause ripples wherever they go. Usually these ripples in pre-set event chains become different adventures or series of adventures, resulting in "the game" as they know it.

What led you to the "sandbox" style?

Well, for me my 'sandbox' style is where the game is an ever evolving world that the group as a whole creates. When I start running a new campaign, there is no established world. No specific countries and races and locations.

All I start with, is the locations the PC's are, which, generally speaking, has them scatterred across a town tending to their various agendas and then they meet in some way that gets things under way. (The town gets attacked, the group's drawn to a meeting of some kind, any number of things.)

After they meet, events start rolling that kicks the game into gear. One of the PC's gets too friendly with a barmaid, which gets her boyfriend to attack them, and after they kick his ass they find out that he was part of (insert name) mob organization and that they'll kill the chick for 'letting their boy die like that' and there's the first hook, all off the top of my head.

From there, that can expand, the PC's might opt to go after this organization, they might opt to join them, they might say "Sorry girl, your problem" in which case she might tag along and become a pesky NPC slowing them down as the mob come after her.

Eventually it might turn out that she's secretly the owner of the organization, or the daughter of some wealthy noble who was being held in the 'custody' of the 'boyfriend' until a ransom were deliverred.

This goes on and on, each item randomly building into something else out of the combined creativity of myself and the group.

I took a somewhat different approach in that I created a bunch of hooks that take place 6-8 years before the AP starts and applied them to my party while they were children growing up in town (at least most of the party). What grew out of this is similar to what would happen in your sandbox setting, but I "forced" them into this chain of action/reaction events that enmeshed them deep within the AP storyline. Most of them now have personal agendas/quests that will lead them directly through a good portion of the AP story, so now they are driving the bus, but for the most part they are going places I want them to visit. I wasn't sure how well that would work, having never tried it before, but so far it has been excellent.

Do you develop the surrounding area, ie -political, geographical, power groups, religious circles, before they start or as you go along? I used to not do anything unless the party turned in that direction, but after a while my group seemed to need more initial local setting information to get started, and less completely free-form world building. Just curious how it works with your group.

Here is a peripherally related Paizo blog post from July 9th that doesn't directly address your question, but might provide you with food for thought.

Ask A Pro: Question Seven

It's a little more than two-thirds of the way down the page.

Yeah this was a particularly good question, and it was interesting to see how different game designers felt you should deal with this issue. I was suprised that several felt it was okay to be unrestrictive, but rather had expected them to have clever ways to re-route the party back to the adventure storyline.

I think this would be difficult. The adventure paths tend to be so tightly connected with location and NPCs, that the "sandbox" element is within the adventures themselves, not in the "connective tissue" between them.

Example from Rise of the Runelords:

Spoiler: *omitted*

Because you can't really head on to another sandbox area without the direction (because it won't make as much sense to "stumble" there, or because your players will lack the clues to succeed at it, etc.), I think converting an AP to a "sandbox" style of gaming would be difficult.

An inversion of this idea is the "Plot Point Settings" put out by Savage Worlds. Those are great big sandbox worlds, in which specific actions by the PCs trigger a short but fairly directed adventure. The adventures ultimately connect in the campaign plot, but it is expected (and, for the purposes of "leveling up" your characters, required) that the characters run around the sandbox in between the adventures.

I do agree that the APs are expected to be run in a fairly linear fashion eventwise, and modifying them to be more multi-pathed is not easy to do. You would probably be better off trying to get your players' characters embedded and invested in the storyline and sympathetic to the right causes early in the game, like before the action starts. You can do this will 1 on 1 storyteller type sessions with each player before they join the party, with character traits specific to the AP, and by tying key NPCs directly into their backstory. For example, the druid in my game was given his animal companion as a bear cub when he was a novice (0-level) by one of the main NPCs in the AP, who plays a major role later in the storyline bringing news and updates to the party to help them move in the right direction. Because of that backstory the druid is friendly with her and will listen to what she has to say and take it seriously.

Or you could wait for Kingmaker... :)

I took a somewhat different approach in that I created a bunch of hooks that take place 6-8 years before the AP starts and applied them to my party while they were children growing up in town (at least most of the party). What grew out of this is similar to what would happen in your sandbox setting, but I "forced" them into this chain of action/reaction events that enmeshed them deep within the AP storyline. Most of them now have personal agendas/quests that will lead them directly through a good portion of the AP story, so now they are driving the bus, but for the most part they are going places I want them to visit. I wasn't sure how well that would work, having never tried it before, but so far it has been excellent.

Do you develop the surrounding area, ie -political, geographical, power groups, religious circles, before they start or as you go along? I used to not do anything unless the party turned in that direction, but after a while my group seemed to need more initial local setting information to get started, and less completely free-form world building. Just curious how it works with your group.

I don't even develop the surrounding area when they turn in that direction. All the world building, from who owns what to who does what to who hates who to who worships what, is all done spontaneously at the table. It all happens in game.

Somebody asks what races live in a town, boom, an answer is given that defines that town for the campaign.

Somebody asks what they do for a living, boom, an answer is given for the campaign.

Somebody asks who runs the show and how the people feel about it.....

you get the idea. My world is created on the spot between my players and I. I tell them to come to me with character concepts they like, we build a backstory, I usually design the town they want to grow up in on the spot with them during the character creation, and then everybody shows up on the day they all connect, each plays their separate parts, and the party is formed (and it's not super uncommon for the characters to do so begrudgingly and for there to be inter-party tension, the stuff that makes stories so much more interesting and dramatic)

Not that I don't enjoy an occasional campaign where everybody gets along well like bestest best buds, or knew eachother beforehand and are friends or whatnot, but for that to be a constant thing (more than maybe 60% of the time) just doesn't fit my sense of reality. People are people, whether they are modern real world humans, elves, dwarves, or fantasy humans. Everybody's got their own interests and often people rub eachother the wrong way.

I think I misunderstood your use of the term sandbox. When someone says sandbox, I think of lots of different encounters, regions, adventures, etc, scattered over a large fantasy landscape, to be encountered or interacted with in whatever order the players choose. It sounds like you are talking more about building the world and encounters, etc up from scratch on the fly as the players go there. That is an amazing talent to have, and one that I try not to have to overuse too much because it gets me in trouble. I reserve that skill for times when the players get waaaay far off of where I expected or planned for them to go, even in a relaxed framwork.

There is nothing at all wrong with running your game that way, but that is almost contradictory to Paizo's APs. One of the best things about the APs is that they have so much detail built into them, down to the favorite colors or behavorial quirks of many minor NPCS, primarily to allow the DM to add flavor to the game. They are really some of the best "canned" material I have ever seen, primarily for this reason. I do not have to build my world as a DM to run one, just pick it up, absorb the world outlined in detail in the AP and go. If I want to world build some, I slow down the exp and add my own content. However, any creating I do is constrained with the limits of the main construct of the AP and its environments. With the style your group prefers, you might not be able to get much more out of the APs than the compartmentalized "dungeon" type sites, NPC personas, and perhaps some of the maps of towns and cities. There will just end up being a lot of inconsistencies if you create on the fly because there are just too many details, a lot of which are reinforced by details in dungeons, fights, with BBEGs, etc, to make that world area come alive and be consistent with itself during the AP.

Heh, sorry for misleading you, when I'd described my GMing style to someone before they called it sandbox, though I suppose I may have explained it with insufficient detail.

You might find this surprising, but I LOVE detail, fleshing out my world and making it come to life, seasons, flaura, fauna, locales etc. Its just that all that information normally comes to me as the story evolves on it's own.

Part of the reason I thought it might be cool to... absorb the adventure paths to incorporate into my game, is that obviously the players are constantly moving and shifting, they are always walking themselves into and out of trouble in different ways, and I thought it would be cool to have those in my head to bust out, modified with my own hand to suit their level or whatnot of course, whenever they step into a situation that would trigger it.

For the record, kyrt-ryder's definition of "sandbox" is entirely correct. Imagine being 8 years old and actually sitting in a sandbox. You've probably got a trowel and a bucket. Surrounding you are pebbles, sticks, pine cones, and similar monsters and heroes to place on the landscape you create.

The idea of "a bunch of stuff you don't have to do in order but which is still entirely pre-determined" is a CRPG methodology which allows the illusion of player freedom while still being able to put production bling on top of it all. (And it's largely unnecessary for games which wholeheardedly put gameplay ahead of cut scenes, voice acting and proactive storytelling. But good luck getting one of those published.)

I suppose my own style is kind of a hybrid. I don't entirely let the players lead; I invite them over to play in my sandbox, in which I've already built some bucket castles and set up stick patrols, and I know there's a pine cone just behind that hill plotting some dastardly scheme. But they get to bring their own trowels and pebbles, and explore the sandscape in whatever way they wish. And if necessary, a fresh box will be set up adjacent.

How do you remember all that stuff you make up on the spot?

Hust wondering if you jot it down as it comes to you:

"The farmer's wife is *jot* bitter and angry, because her husband is cheating on her *(note-may come up later in game)"

Or do you just remember it?

Also, when you incorporate the adventure paths into your game, you do realize that the events detailed in them are world changing?

Not, world changing because the evil wizard is scourging the countryside, but world changing because the Meteorite is going to hit the world and obliterate all life on the surface if you don't stop it.

How do you remember all that stuff you make up on the spot?

Hust wondering if you jot it down as it comes to you:

"The farmer's wife is *jot* bitter and angry, because her husband is cheating on her *(note-may come up later in game)"

Or do you just remember it?

Also, when you incorporate the adventure paths into your game, you do realize that the events detailed in them are world changing?

Not, world changing because the evil wizard is scourging the countryside, but world changing because the Meteorite is going to hit the world and obliterate all life on the surface if you don't stop it.

I've got the kind of memory that hangs onto details like that really well for a reasonable amount of time. It always sticks throughout the session for me to use as needed, and I appoint a reliable player to act as scribe, detailing the various things that happen in game in a notebook for me to reference later and lock into the setting.

About the Meteorite going to obliterate all life on the surface point, in my game the party aren't anything extra special, perhaps 4% of the population are adventurers, there are a good number of peers for the party, both good and evil, and just because the party decides not to pursue the AP, doesn't mean that it's result automatically blows the world up.

One option I'm more likely to use than to just handwave that somebody else saved the world, is that some other party is trying to and runs a delaying action, ending up slowing the progress etc, and my party will likely come into the situation at some random point along the storyline.

Remember, the key to any story in a flexible game is flexibility, there are no fixed timelines until the GM officially determines that there is.

But why not add that element of urgency to your games?

But why not add that element of urgency to your games?

To quote myself, "There are no concrete deadlines until the GM decides there are."

That means I do use those, and generate the senses of urgency and rush and "OH S!%+ WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IF WE DON'T GET THERE FASTER!" *Human Barbarian scoops up the halfling as the rest of the party runs down the corridor to certain doom MWAHAHAHA* etc etc.

The element of urgency is a beautiful literary plot tool, and inspires great roleplay from players, but in the kind of campaign I run the GM has to determine the right time to do that. To let a module tell you when that time is, before your party is ready to give a damn about it, is to let a great opportunity pass by.

Ahhh, but sir, it is not a module, but an Adventure Path. Which APs have you read so far?

I think if you run your own world, but try to incorporate the APs, which have their own campaign setting, your players would be missing out on fluff and the yummy bit that make the AP fun and interesting.

Ahhh, but sir, it is not a module, but an Adventure Path. Which APs have you read so far?

I think if you run your own world, but try to incorporate the APs, which have their own campaign setting, your players would be missing out on fluff and the yummy bit that make the AP fun and interesting.

When I said module I was making a blanket statement regarding published adventures (perhaps I've misused the word and its a smaller part of a published adventure?)

Regretably, I've yet to read any of them, but I hear such great reviews, and I flipped through Legacy of fire at my FLGS recently, and it really seems like an awesome idea to put these works of art Paizo's published to memory and bring them into my campaign as the PC's end up working their way into them you know?

For the record, kyrt-ryder's definition of "sandbox" is entirely correct. Imagine being 8 years old and actually sitting in a sandbox. You've probably got a trowel and a bucket. Surrounding you are pebbles, sticks, pine cones, and similar monsters and heroes to place on the landscape you create.

The idea of "a bunch of stuff you don't have to do in order but which is still entirely pre-determined" is a CRPG methodology which allows the illusion of player freedom while still being able to put production bling on top of it all. (And it's largely unnecessary for games which wholeheardedly put gameplay ahead of cut scenes, voice acting and proactive storytelling. But good luck getting one of those published.)

I suppose my own style is kind of a hybrid. I don't entirely let the players lead; I invite them over to play in my sandbox, in which I've already built some bucket castles and set up stick patrols, and I know there's a pine cone just behind that hill plotting some dastardly scheme. But they get to bring their own trowels and pebbles, and explore the sandscape in whatever way they wish. And if necessary, a fresh box will be set up adjacent.

I have never heard the term sandbox to apply to creating your world on the spot as player questions and events demand. The only references I have ever heard to sandbox games are more what your style is, where you set up the world and then let players explore it. That style would allow you to incorporate an AP without too much work, each of the parts of it would represent an "option" shall we say, a place to go, and event to participate in. But you could absorb the details of each of those in advance and build them into your world. The style of GMing that the OP uses is way more dynamic and he would have to limit his creation to "all the world except that which is defined by the AP" simply because these are NOT modules or dungeons but rather a complete canned campaign experience. You could change the names, locations, and even some of the terrain in the AP without doing a major overhaul, but otherwise, I think it would be easier to skip the AP given the amount of work involved. That being said, obviously this is just my opinion and YMMV.

I will say though that if there were ever a case to be made for suspending your gaming style a bit and trying on a different style that is more linear, Paizo's AP are it. Grade A quality products by my reckoning, and I have been GMing and playing since the Blue box basic set of DnD in the late 70's. This doesn't mean I am an expert, but I have seen my fair share of adventures. :) Even if you hate the linear model, Kingmaker might be worth taking a second shot at the APs for, since it sounds a bit more open ended, with lots of options and directions for the players to go in.

While a 'sandbox' is great in theory, a level based system like pathfinder isnt friendly to the idea unless the bad guys level with the PCs.

I would advise against using APs, they are a very linear form of gaming (not there is anythign wrong with that, my group are loving RotRL at the moment) but for such an open world game just stick with your own stuff, maybe cherry pick certain elements from different adventure, like set pieces or plot ideas. However overall I think the money would be wasted on you if your group dont like to follow the breadcrumbs that have been laid before them.

When I said module I was making a blanket statement regarding published adventures (perhaps I've misused the word and its a smaller part of a published adventure?)

Regretably, I've yet to read any of them, but I hear such great reviews, and I flipped through Legacy of fire at my FLGS recently, and it really seems like an awesome idea to put these works of art Paizo's published to memory and bring them into my campaign as the PC's end up working their way into them you know?

I haven't read any published adventures in years (1st or 2nd edition AD&D I think), but as I recall, cribbing ideas / NPCs off them is doable. I have my own world and the amount of adaptation needed pretty much eliminated wholesale incorporation of the adventures, but reading another DMs ideas can be inspirational / useful. And significant bits can find there way into use. I've always found published settings more useful for ideas in the broad sense. As for the adventures in my game, some are plotted out and others have just happened. It's a good mix, especially if you're good at making it up on the fly (as apparently you are).

Wow, alot of thoughtful advice in here since I last posted.

The trick to incorporating them into my game wouldn't be to just bam, drop them in like a bomb and expect the PC's to follow, but let the PC's work their way into whichever one their situation generates.

As I said before redcelt, my world is created in the moment, so there would be no problem with the AP, heck it's one area we wouldn't have to come up with from scratch. Sure the players would add their bits in their narative parts, and I would tweak and twist it with my own style, but there's nothing wrong with taking a foundation and plugging it in so to speak.

Since my world is created in the moment I don't have to try to 'create everything but the AP' because I never create anything my players haven't gone to or researched yet.

CPT Machine: My badguys DO level with the party. I love the dynamics of protracted rivalries, parties working in oposition to one another, etc. To quote Order of the Stick, whenever a PC levels so does his rival (Though to make things interesting I tend to roll a D6 when they meet again. 1-2 is one level lower, 3-4 is the same level, and 5-6 means the rival is one level higher)

And my PC's don't have to 'follow the breadcrumbs' if they don't want to, that's part of what sets my style apart from what seems the majority, they're free to completely abandon it. Sometimes they end up finding those breadcrumbs again further down their trail, sometimes those breadcrumbs animate and come after them, and sometimes they never see them again. It all just happens as the game evolves.

Thanks guys, I'm happy to discuss all this, and see where the discourse takes us.

There is no possible way to make a sandbox adventure path. I mean, even the title "Adventure Path" tells you that much.

That said, if you're looking for sandbox DMing tools, look up the various pathfinder chronicles books. The ones based around nations and regions, for example, are specifically designed to offer a lot of adventure hooks without having any kind of over-arching plot.

Hmm, perhaps you should ask your players about running a game set in Golarion. Then you could try the APs, so where it takes you, and maybe you'll find that Pathfinder's your bag, baby.

I am curious though, knowing your style, what were you thinking of when you asked if there were any "sandbox" adventures. I was wondering, if you would make your own sandbox adventure, what would you expect to find inside? Like, adventure seeds, general adventure outlines...?

I am curious though, knowing your style, what were you thinking of when you asked if there were any "sandbox" adventures. I was wondering, if you would make your own sandbox adventure, what would you expect to find inside? Like, adventure seeds, general adventure outlines...?

Well, I'm not the OP but I can think of a couple of "sandbox" products off the top of my head.

The old "Griffin Island" (or "Griffin Mountain" in some incarnations) for RuneQuest is a prime example. It gives a broad overview of an area, details of three rival citadels, pubs within each, stats for rulers, important figures and so forth, most of them with some sort of adventure hook or motivation attached. Further, there are wilderness locations to be slotted in whereever the GM fancies, wanderers, random monsters, treasures and various cults and cultural details. The "proper" adventure sees the adventurers trying to find a legendary sword and the eponymous Griffin Mountain, but really it could go anywhere, and there is no attempt to force the players onto this path.

A more modern product that takes pretty much the same approach is "Ruins of Intrigue" by Malhavoc Press. Again, a location with prime dungeoneering opportunity, fought over by (at least) two rival factions with different agendas. It's aimed at Arcana Evolved, but adaptable.

To address the OP's... er, OP...

It could be do-able if you are into mining other products for NPC stats and location maps. Certain parts of CoTC would work for any city-based adventure, for example. By the nature of APs, as you go further into each series the encounters are stitched more tightly into the plot-line, but if you enterprising (and you sound like you are) you can easily isolate them, particularly "dungeon" locations. The Temple of the Moon, from History of Ashes (COTC 4), for example, could be used elsewhere without too much trauma.

As for using the plotline part of an AP, well, doen't sound like you'd want to. I assume that you sometimes offer adventure seeds and not the whole campaign comes form your player's wishes (you are lucky if it does, I've found that players offered that level of freedom tend to flounder and head to the nearest inn to be given a quest!). If this is the case, there are various seeds that can be sown. Maybe they take similar line to the AP, maybe they don't, if you don't feel constrained by plot rails, then at the very least the game has spun off in a different direction.

I run my games exactly the same way you do (though lately I've been developing a pretty detailed setting to run in) and I've never found published adventures to be incredibly useful. In fact I've never found them to be useful at all even when running linear games, because you can never account for all contingencies. When players act in a way I didn't expect in my own games, I'm never blindsided by it, because the NPCs involved all have their own goals and motivations and so they react to player actions in a sensible way. When running published adventures I'm blindsided all the time because the players do something neither the module nor I thought of. Essentially I end up having to ret-con some motivation for an NPC that a)justifies everything that NPC has already done and b)provides a logical next action for him to take.

I don't think I've ever tried putting in an adventure path in the way you're describing... unless it was one of the rare times I was running a linear game, I pretty much stuck to what I made up myself. I can see what you're describing working, but I wouldn't get too attached to the events as they're listed in the published adventures, since your players will invariably do things that render the assumed progression illogical at best. The towns, locations, NPCs and goals are probably the most useful things to absorb. Figure out what the NPCs do afterward, so you can take into account what your players have changed.

kyrt-ryder - first off, welcome..

second, you might want to check out the chronicles line instead of the APs, especially the 'Guide to" books .. They detail a city, or geographical area, and give lots of plot hooks for various levels that could stimulate your playstyle, but are a lot more encyclopedic information on the inhabitants and less railroady than the APs or modules. These areas could then be dropped into your homeworld in whole, or piecemeal as you see fit

There is no possible way to make a sandbox adventure path. I mean, even the title "Adventure Path" tells you that much.

Urmmmm ... actually, they could, although I agree that one generally presumes that an Adventure Path is linear.

For an "Adventure Sandbox", each Chapter contains areas, places and the baddies that the characters become aware of in the order that they become aware of them in, with innuendo / rumors / bad comedy hinting at things to come somewhere down the line.

For example, I can easily imagine Kingmaker being like this. When the player characters arrive from (wherever), they settle in, becoming aware of x, y, z and 33 and Chapter 1 has those four things ready to roll for the player characters to deal with, repercussions (if any) for whack-a-moling one of the four in regards to the other three and so on.

While a true "sandbox" campaign isn't best served by an Adventure Path (those types of games are better served by campaign settings and supplements), Kingmaker is indeed going to be our attempt to have an AP that's more open-ended and sandboxy than what we've been doing. I'm not sure of how all that's going to work, but it should be interesting to see!

Urmmmm ... actually, they could, although I agree that one generally presumes that an Adventure Path is linear.

For an "Adventure Sandbox", each Chapter contains areas, places and the baddies that the characters become aware of in the order that they become aware of them in, with innuendo / rumors / bad comedy hinting at things to come somewhere down the line.

For example, I can easily imagine Kingmaker being like this. When the player characters arrive from (wherever), they settle in, becoming aware of x, y, z and 33 and Chapter 1 has those four things ready to roll for the player characters to deal with, repercussions (if any) for whack-a-moling one of the four in regards to the other three and so on.

That doesn't really work, though. Remember, they only have, what, 50 or so pages to devote to each adventure, so about 300 pages for a whole path. If you want a nonlinear adventure, there have to be at least 3 to 4 viable paths throughout. That means that they can only devote 12-17ish pages to each path, which means they can only give vague details, no maps, only write up the most important characters in each path, etc.

It all comes back to the publisher's pyramid: you can have quantity, you can have quality, or you can have it done on time and on budget. There's no way whatsoever to have all three. The only difference from the standard application is that the "budget" here is page count, not $$. A "sandbox" AP would necessitate having quantity much higher than their standard APs and the budget is more-or-less fixed. That means they have to steal from quality.

Now, all that being said, I did misunderstand the original post. You can certainly still use the pathfinder APs in a sandbox campaign, but they're going to require a ton of work to make fit. Your players are going to be used to doing pretty much whatever they want, and that doesn't really fit with adventure paths, so you're going to have to railroad them some, heavily modify the AP, or figure out what the hell to do when the party abandons the AP partway through.

How do you remember all that stuff you make up on the spot?

Hust wondering if you jot it down as it comes to you:

"The farmer's wife is *jot* bitter and angry, because her husband is cheating on her *(note-may come up later in game)"

Or do you just remember it?

Also, when you incorporate the adventure paths into your game, you do realize that the events detailed in them are world changing?

Not, world changing because the evil wizard is scourging the countryside, but world changing because the Meteorite is going to hit the world and obliterate all life on the surface if you don't stop it.

But in "YOUR" world the meteorite could just hit a village of hobbits, and we never did like them sneaky hobbits did we precious? You can use the idea but change it to fit your needs.

Woah, lots to reply to here, guess I'd best get started.

Zurai and Jared I guess I wasn't very clear in my OP, I wasn't looking FOR a sandbox AP, I know their relatively linear published adventures, I use a very loose, sandbox style, and am planning to read and absorb the AP's to 'recreate' as it were, with my players when they enter a situation that might trigger it. (With legacy of fire for example, the PC's would have to be in a desert, and end up involving themselves in things that would draw somebody into the AP)

I'm extremely flexible and adaptable, and I was intent on taking the material (and most likely stealing the locations wholesale, since I don't make my locations until the moment in game that it becomes relevant, and then it just happens between my players and I) and presenting the story in game, and seeing what happens. There's no need for it to be railroady or even that linear in my game because of the way we operate, they could go all over the map, and do alot of things that don't exactly match, and the story would still come together like a work of art.

Dr Simon: thanks for the ideas, I will look into them and see if their worth purchasing in my case.

The bit about the encounters being stitched into the plot-line is fine, because that plot will come about when the encounters happen, whether they happen where they are supposed to or whether they happen in some other place, in some other way. I'm basically talking about memorizing the AP and recreating it in my game with the aid of my players.

Speaking of whom, my campaign does run on my players wishes, but seldom their general intentions. It's not often they go on a quest after a specific item for somebody, or whatnot. 80% of the time their adventures are their responses to the world around them. I gave an excellent example earlier with the barmaid, but another example is say they bump into a hunting party in the woods, that could expand 10 million different ways, none of which I know until we roleplay it out. The plot twists and turns just come to me off the top of my head, and how they respond to situations helps inspire that in different ways.

Sarandosil: Yeah, I'm not attached to events as their listed, I'm actually looking to expand the AP's into more of a broad series of reactionary events that build a plot. Basically letting somebody else do half the work for me (and, more importantly, actually getting to play the AP's I keep hearing so much about.)

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind.

Cpt_kirstov: thanks for the welcome, I've actually been here a long time, including an active participant in the Beta playtest, but I'll admit this is my first post concerning campaign running.

Yeah, the "Guide to" books could be useful for those days I'm mentally weaker or more fatigued. The party travels to a new city, bust out a small chart of different cities detailed in the books and BAM, that's the city their at and I can rattle off info from it.

Deffinitely a nice item to have from time to time. (Though it would be humorous to look at the map I have my scribe filling out as the adventures progress after using a bunch of those, and compare to the origonal map and see just how way different their relative locations are compared to eachother and the differences between the origonal continent and my own.)

Turin:

Darn you, inspiring me to lazyness! Now I'm starting to want to buy Kingmaker and just run it out of the box! lol, though that's actually speaking volumes of Paizo, that they'd publish something that flexible.

James: thanks for the heads up, I'm looking forward to checking it out.

*Whipes my forhead* There, finally lol. Generally good advice all around. I've decided I am going to roll with my initial plan, see how it goes. Probably pick up Savage Tides, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Rise of the Runelords, Legacy of Fire, and when it comes out, Kingmaker. Be interesting to see which one my party..... fires up first lol.

Turin the Mad wrote:

Urmmmm ... actually, they could, although I agree that one generally presumes that an Adventure Path is linear.

For an "Adventure Sandbox", each Chapter contains areas, places and the baddies that the characters become aware of in the order that they become aware of them in, with innuendo / rumors / bad comedy hinting at things to come somewhere down the line.

For example, I can easily imagine Kingmaker being like this. When the player characters arrive from (wherever), they settle in, becoming aware of x, y, z and 33 and Chapter 1 has those four things ready to roll for the player characters to deal with, repercussions (if any) for whack-a-moling one of the four in regards to the other three and so on.

That doesn't really work, though. Remember, they only have, what, 50 or so pages to devote to each adventure, so about 300 pages for a whole path. If you want a nonlinear adventure, there have to be at least 3 to 4 viable paths throughout. That means that they can only devote 12-17ish pages to each path, which means they can only give vague details, no maps, only write up the most important characters in each path, etc.

It all comes back to the publisher's pyramid: you can have quantity, you can have quality, or you can have it done on time and on budget. There's no way whatsoever to have all three. The only difference from the standard application is that the "budget" here is page count, not $$. A "sandbox" AP would necessitate having quantity much higher than their standard APs and the budget is more-or-less fixed. That means they have to steal from quality.

Ah, but they could easily assign more pages in a sandbox-built AP - and free up a great deal of page count by virtue of using a "Stat Your Own BBEGs" approach. "Sheriff Rottencrotch, Middle-aged Male Human Fighter 7, Neutral Evil" and a paragraph or two for personality and what Sheriff Rottencrotch is up to, for example. That by itself would free up tons of space for fleshing out a sandbox approach. If they cut down on the critter count and omit the flavor article, that adds a dozen or two dozen more pages bringing the sandbox page count availability to about 70 or 80.

"Ruins of Intrigue" would still be available as a PDF, possibly in print as well. As I said, it's for Arcana Evolved but close enough to D&D 3.5 to be useful.

"Griffin Mountain" was a 2nd Edition RuneQuest product and as such is likely to be an expensive Ebay purchase. It's quite tied into the world of Glorantha and may be less useful as a generic product. "Griffin Island" was the version that was produced for 3rd Edition RQ and is more generic (and, as an island, designed to be a stand-alone part of the world). Again, you'll need Ebay. As both products use the RQ rules they would be most useful to you for ideas only, but I'm not sure you'd need them for your game style.

As for the APs, I would recommend picking up the first, maybe second installments of each first, as you tend to get a breakdown of the campaign background (usually the plot of the BBEG) and overviews of the later adventures. With all the APs, the later installments tend to be reliant on the PCs taking a specific course of action in the earlier installments, or allying with a particular faction and so on, so for your style they would be less useful except as a source for maps and NPCs should you need them.

Semi-spoilers for the APs you mention:

Ah, but they could easily assign more pages in a sandbox-built AP - and free up a great deal of page count by virtue of using a "Stat Your Own BBEGs" approach.

Not really. Not without either increasing overall page count (and thus price) or eliminating the extras at the back of the module (the deities articles, new monsters, etc). I'm pretty certain neither is going to happen any time soon.