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ecgbryt wrote:

Anyone else kinda wierded out by the mentions of death farms? Not just because they are so awful, to the point i think it will make my players defect to another country, but because they just don't make sense, humans are terrible livestock.

Take Greydirge. Population 9400, 75% undead. If only half of those undead are meat eaters and eat a pound of human a day, that's 1.75 tons of meat a day. assuming 200 lbs/human, that's 6400 people/year. since humans mature slowly, that means there are at least 6400*18, 115,000 people in these death farms in the countryside, just to feed Greydirge alone.

I think i'm just going to have them farm pigs instead. Ghouls can eat pig right? It just makes more sense than adding in millions of people as chattal to Geb, which kinda flies in the face of the Dead Laws as presented.

Honestly I totally disagree, and am somewhat disappointed the AP doesn't play up the evilness inherent in a nation ruled by Undead.

In my version of Geb, the quick are tolerated as they are seen as necessary but they are largely seens as animals by the undead and not respected. Most quick aspire to escape Gaal, or to have the honor to be risen as undead.

The campaign started with a zombie NPC who works for Berhline, they have need for "the human touch" when interacting with humans. This zombie NPC is always dismissive to the quick, and said to the PCs they would be happier on the humans farms, since many of the livestock are charmed, "you would be happy, in fields, mating with the other animals, it might be years before you were farmed for meat, wouldnt that be better for you? ". As for the efficiency of human meat, it is simple enough to say that many undead prefer human meat to animal meat (this is common in vampire lore.)

I believe in the Impossible Lands book, it specifically mentions that some undead prefer "free range" human meat, so the livestock are charmed to run the fields but not escape, rather then being locked up in pens. My pcs will definitely have a reason to visit this farm.

Of course I am running the AP more free flow, I expect the PCs will eventually consider overthrowing Geb, or escaping to Nex. I dont see how the poisoning plot would be interesting enough to keep PCs going for 20 levels, but perhaps it will. We are starting book 2 soon.


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Unicore wrote:

I will say, this second book makes me want to wait to run Bloodlords until the impossible lands LO book has come out. There is a lot of downtime, travel and location visiting that feel like they will be a little "movie set"-like, where all the depth is just painted backdrops that can't be probed too far yet.

We are midway through book one, and I think I have to totally change graveclaw because of this issue. Too much travel with no real depth anywhere. This would be fine at higher levels where travel can be waved away. But at lower levels it's essential for world building. I am thinking of having one or two witches with one based in corpselight. I can play into the farms of humans ide there too.


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I am considering a couple changes to Graveclaw, thought I'd post and ask if anyone had opinions on it. I also have only scanned it once or twice, and maybe I am missing a great part of the adventure, so if you think there is something I shouldnt "remove" I'd love to know about it.

First off I think 4 witches is way too much, my PCs would likely get bored by the third witch and begin to think of this as the witch campaign (not an undead campaign). So I am thinking I'll bring it down to 3 or less hags, as it might be a very long journey with 4 hags.

I am also feeling that the adventure doesnt really give a feel of Geb..

The first chapter with Iron Taviah in the forest, is a traditional trope haunted woods that could be anywhere.

The third chapter with Decrosia is a bit tech focused (guns, industry etc), and I get that its close to Alkenstar so that makes sense, I just feel my characters are excited about the undead not tech and gunslingers and its somewhat of a distraction.

The last chapter with Nathnelma in the necromancy school has tons of potential, I love the idea. I was somewhat disapointed to find its based outside Yeld and doesnt include quests in Yeld. I get why they did this as Yeld is a huge can of worms, but I would have preferred if the whole adventure focused on Yeld.

So one of my ideas is to move Nathnelma to corpselight so the school is outside of Farms of the living. Its close to GrayDirge, and what could be more exciting to navigate then Human/Elf farms. It seems like it might be something easy to homebrew (take a farm adventure and put humans in it). Who knows maybe my players want to free the farms, tons of potential for them to roleplay and not a ton of planning.

I might keep Iron Taviah and just play up the undead woods aspect a bit.

Anyone else feel like this adventure is a bit underwhelming for the setting, or have other ideas on how to make it feel more like an undead nation?

Edit - Having just read the synopsis of Adventure 5, I see that its in Yled. Maybe I should keep it in adventure 2 for foreshadowing.


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Hi, I am hoping you can help me choose from a new(er) AP.

I haven't been back to Paizo in a while, I homebrewed my last couple campaigns after getting burnt out on kingmaker, but here I am again browsing APs that occurred after it.

I am looking for something a bit more straight forward, which doesnt take as much planning from me, I was interested in Giantslayer, but I am not sure if my players would be as interested in the same type of NPC for that long, so something varied would be great. While I like to challenge my players with some roleplaying, I find they like straight forward stuff as well, so anything overly bent towards non combat roleplaying I may have to skip or modify.

Also, I'd like an AP that is "easier to run". In the past I have purchased APs because I wanted to save on work. But with some APs they had so many NPCs, so much backstory, some much prose about the world altering plans of the BBEG, that after an hour I still wasn't sure what the adventure would be. I am wondering if there is an AP with a little less of this (but obviously not so simple that it is simply a few dungeon crawls tied togetger).

Is there an AP after kingmaker you would suggest I check out?

PS - my favourite AP pre kingmaker will always be age of worms, great starter town, standard lizard type adventure after that, then off to the free city to fight in an arena. And all pretty straight forward stuff the whole way too.

PPS - After some reading, and previewing... Strange Aeons sounds promising. Although maybe I am just a sucker for the starting hook


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15 deaths in the first booklet would lead me to have a discussion with my DM about being realistic in the expectations for the game, and what a fun night of rpg'ing is supposed to feel like. (That is unless this is a pro tournament or something)


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I have almost no use for the bestiary at all, mostly because I play "rules light" and wing my monsters quite a bit in session... but I personally would still place the bestiary far above the priority of the fiction, for me the bestiary serves the assumed purpose of an adventure (e.g. to help busy DMs run fantastic campaigns).

One thing I have loved about Paizo all the way back to when I was a subscriber of the magazines is that the company responds to customer feedback and I appreciate it.

Thank you for highlighting the logistical problems with a flowchart. I would agree with Warrant that if a flowchart is not feasible, perhaps more care could be taken on the "adventure synopsis" area. A step in the right direction would be if this small section focused on describing the flow of the adventure in a straight forward manner. That one change would make the product much more valuable to me. Thanks again for your responses everyone.

PS Tonight I am off to run my Skull and Shackles AP which started with "Souls for Smugglers Shiv", to "Raiders of the Fever Sea", onto "the lightless depths" (from Dungeon 144), "Tides of dread" (Dungeon 143) and tonight we are beginning "Curse of the Riven Sky". My "Skull and Shackles Campagin" managed to incorporate adventures from 3 different Paizo AP's and an module so far, as you can see I am a big fan mishmashing your excellent work :)


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Thurston Hillman wrote:

...

2) Each adventure has a section at the beginning listed as 'Adventure Summary' that should detail everything you're looking for in terms of preparing and knowing where the adventure goes. ...

That being said, these summaries do not describe every single encounter in the book, which IMHO is a good thing.

Warrant I hope you don't feel that my point is too much of a tangent and that I am hijacking the thread, but I take it since you agreed with one of my other threads you see how are two issues are related.

I agree that the adventure summary is useful, but in my opinion it is often not detailed enough. A dungeon master should be able to read it and know in general what happens in that adventure. I would find this particularly helpful because I often read 5-6 adventures before picking one that is suitable for my group (even when I run APs, I customize quite a bit). I imagine I am not alone. I'll use "Raiders of the Fever Sea" as an example.

Here is the summary for the first part of Raiders:

The adventure begins with the PCs in command of their new ship, the Man’s Promise. Despite their successful mutiny, they know that Captain Barnabas Harrigan is not likely to let the slight against him pass and that he will attempt to find them. To throw him off the trail, they must refit the ship to change its appearance and its name. To accomplish this, the PCs sail to a dry dock called Rickety’s Squibs, where they learn of the legend of Tidewater Rock and the good fortune that is supposedly brought by securing control of the castle there. Regardless of whether they choose to take on the Rock, the PCs know they need to increase their fame and fortune before they will be welcomed in the waters of the Shackles as Free Captains in their own right.


My problem with the way this is written, is it does not actually describe what happens in the first part of the adventure. Instead of solely summarizing the adventure. It talks about last adventure, it talks about what an NPC who is not in the adventure is likely to do, it foreshadows what the players might want and earn in future adventures.

Here's what actually happens::

The adventure begins with the players in charge of a pirate ship. The players are notified by their crew that they should "squib the ship", which means change it's appearance to throw off Captain Barnabase from finding them. The players set sail to "rickety squibs" and negotiate for this service. While they are waiting for there boat to be "squibbed", they are invited to stay and to explore the small community. A number of events happen during there stay that give the players a chance to be heroes. Some of these events include:
-a water naga creates some trouble with a local
-the town is attacked by a swarm of giant wasps and the players have a chance to be heroes
-the party is asked to journey to the location of a lookout pirate who has gone missing.
-once there ship is ready to go, Rickety tells them they should crack a fortress called "tidewater rock" for good luck.

Writing what happens and limiting on the overly descriptive prose would be a great help. Sure it might increase space a bit, but there are PLENTY of wastes of space in a typical adventure. For example, notice on page 6 there is a SECOND summary on the index page, again one that fails to tell me what actually happens however.

Another waste of space, how about the first paragraph of the adventure background

The Free Captains are the most obvious menace of that maze of hell-cursed waterways and a thousand perilous isles and knife-edged reefs called the Shackles, but they are not its only danger, nor the worst. Nearly a century ago, Free Captain Cyrus Wolfe, a black-hearted rogue with an even blacker gift for the dark arts, plied the waters off the western coast of Garund and brought fear to hundreds of ship’s captains and crews. His daring daylight raid on the fortified Thuvian port of Aspenthar directly under the nose of that city-state’s admiralty left a dozen of the principality’s warships in flames and over a hundred of its citizens carried off as captives for ransom. For that grand audacity, Wolfe was offered the Hurricane Crown by his fellow Free Captains, but it is said that he simply laughed in their faces.

How does this paragraph help me run the AP in any way? I had to read it 3-4 times just to understand it, feels like english class all over again.

So I think where I see Warren and my complaints linked, is that they are suggestions to actually HELP DMs. I don't care if it's graphical or written, but I would like a section dedicated to telling the busy DM how the adventure is going to work. Sometimes when I read a paizo adventure, it feels like I am reading a well written story. Interesting, with depth, amazing and detailed. But thats not what I need from an adventure, I just want some cool scenarios that fit my campaign so that I can entertain my friends tomorrow.

For all the "extra content" in the adventure, (e.g. a 5 page story from pg 72 - 77) no one thought that it might be helpful to instead use that space to present a better reason why exactly the players would want to attack tidewater rock, or summarize the adventure.

Don't get me wrong, solid 5 star on paizo work, especially in comparison to the competition (don't get me started on WOTC). But a lil more attention to busy DM's would certainly make me a happier customer.


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For once I'd like to see an AP with a "light" amount of backstory. Adventures that go easy on the "adventure background" and increase the size and detail of the "adventure synopsis". I'd like more content about how the players might get to this adventure, what they might do during it, and less content about what some NPC did 1000 years ago or what some other NPC plotted to do in in the final adventure that my players may never see.

I could really get into an AP that promised to be about the story, plot and encounters the PLAYERS will confront. Attention to making it make sense for the DM so they can run great campaigns. More sidebars with "what if your players want to do something else" advice. More encounters of a varied nature with new and unusual challenges.

For the amount of attention paid to campaign background, npc motivation and other aspects my players rarely get to see, I always find it frustrating when an AP forgets to address how players will move from one AP plot point to another, or when they pay so little attention to the tactics monsters will display during the actual adventure. I'd like this to be a theme for an AP soon :) I also find the "new sub mechanics" and "stories" in the back of the AP's as wasted space as well, some of the AP's have incredibly complicated adventures with many monsters, npc's and there is often very little "tactical" explanation which I would find useful.

This isn't about format or quality control, this is about an AP theme.