Adventure Path (and its sequal)


Shackled City Adventure Path


After reading all of the installments of the Adventure Path series (bar the finale, still waiting for it in Australia) I seem somewhat uninspired.
Initially the propsect of following an entire story/campaign through to completion appealed to me, recently only a handful of modules supplied a storyline that existed beyond one adventure. But as I read each adventure one-by-one, I felt a little, cheated...
Stay with me, I can hear a multitude of people screaming injustice as I condemn a storyline which they loved dearly. In fact many segments I enjoyed greatly myself, but again many points soured me a little.
It seems that the Adventure Path is hardly a original idea, if fact creating a unique storyline is very difficult, especially to the level required within Dungeon. But have the designers fell into their own traps? In the writers guidelines it says: "There are many more overused plot devices that might seem new and fresh to you, but that we see many times each month."
Does this include: beginning an adventure with a kidnapping (#97 - Life's Bazaar), the destruction of an artifact (#114 - Thirteen Cages), or the invasion of the prime plane by demons (um...just list all of them here)?
I'm far from complaining about the storyline, I find it quite good and most of the individual adventures are very well introduced. But the fact that the entire story is based upon the premise of releasing a Demon Lord? Is that not the most cliched idea of them all?
Perhaps I'm preaching to the wrong crowd, but I'd hoped that the writers that I'd come to enjoy would create a unique storyline that would put all of us DMs to shame. Need I mention the Demon Lord again? *sigh*
The concept was fantastic! The delivery was good...The background was poor...The plot?...ewwww...
I have read that in Adventure Path 2 the storyline will be a lot clearer from the beginning. Fantastic! Could you also look into a few other points:
-> If you're going to set the adventure around an exciting locale like a volcano, don't rest on your laurels or follow a predictable path (the volcano erupting), we can do that at home and without your help, for free.
-> NPCs. I liked them, they were very pretty numbers. I even eventually got a feeling that they played a purpose in the plot apart from simply showing the PCs where to go and what to kill.
-> Bad guys. Get some. The Cagewrights were quite cool, had an excellent name, and apparently let any one with a sufficent Challenge Rating to join. A Tattooed Monk? What did she bring to the conspiracy? Dress sense? Early in the adventure the 'bad guys' noticed the PCs, and attempted to deal with them. Obviously not realising they had several dozen spells that would've worked quite well to 'erase' them. Pick bad guys with a little more vision and appropriate abilities, or make the nice grunts simple minions.
-> A World. Get one. I realise that the adventures are designed to simply 'fall' into any campaign world easily, so everyone can enjoy it. But the same time it takes the DM to drop it into his world will not change if you simply say: 'It's in Greyhawk/FR/Ebberon/Dark Sun/Mystara/Blackmoor' If we want to play it, we'll do the ground work. You have a fantastic mythology in the existing worlds, allow them to grow as each story is created for them. Create less 'Stand Alones' and build on the stories that you already have...

Let me reiterate. I enjoyed the Adventure Path for what it was, an experiment. The story was good, some of the locales were good, it was good. But it was cliched, and I hope that DMs as a whole recognise the need for the writers on a project such as this provide ground-breaking ideas and plots.


"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9

Didn't mean to go biblical on anyone, but it's been said many times that everything's been done before. No matter how original or ground-breaking something might be, when broken down to its basic parts, it will essentially be the same as something else.

I think it was L.E. Modessit Jr. that said that what makes a story different is the details. Even with another story about a kidnapping, destroying another aritifact, repelling an invasion of demons, saving a paladin... what makes it original is the details that come from the groups and individuals that play it and make Cauldron their home.

What turns these adventures into the ground-breaking arena is that this experiment was vastly successful and filled the void of published adventure paths.

I also enjoyed the Adventure Path, and I also hope to see the next group of writers push the stories into new and exciting directions.


Big Jake, one of the best posts I've read in a long time. Very, very well put.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Big jake, you nearly said it all. Basically all the basic story elements are known and treaded territory... what makes a story significant are details or twists in the story making the basic story idea jump from one theme to another as a surprise.

Cauldron has some twists, but not really big ones. My players have not even entered Jzadirune and they suspect Lord Vhalantru of some villainy. The city is built on top of a volcano (how high is the chance, that the volcano will lay dormant for another 100 years...). The best twists in the Shackled City storyline are the little ones, tricking the group to rescue Zenith Splintershield on behalf of his "Father" or the "madness" of Alek Tercival.

The best part about the Adventure Path is the sense of continuity with the characters and the city Shensen Tesseril, Jenya Urekas, Maavu, the Stormblades. It's true you have to do some work, you have to collect all the NPC's through the different modules so that you can introduce them before they get really important to the story.

The worst part is that nearly every part of the Adventure Path leads to a dungeon crawl. Sure, there are some investigations, but they are not really the centerpiece of the advenutres, merely the search of where we cand find the dungeon.

In order to spice things up, you need to introduce a bit more intrigue between the members of the town council and the Chisel and the Striders. I also introduced a one-day pause between the delivery of Ruphus Laro to the Church of St. Cuthbert and the prophecy containing some very big clues to the solution of the investigation. This day was used by the group to visit the orphanage, to get a list of vitims from the city watch, to realize they were followed by the two Striders, to check on the abodes of two of those victims, to look for jobs in the city to pay for their living costs. Basically they got to know the city really well and then the prophecy propelled the story further.


Thanks guys.

'Ya know... everyone has good points to make on this. I was riding on the subway earlier today, and this topic popped back into my head. Here's some of the ramblings that came up:

Maybe there is a fine line between "tried and true" and "tired and lame." Over the years, I've read a lot more adventures that I've actually run or have been in. I think that by reading a lot of adventures I've thought of something being cliche or trite, but when it came into the game, I discovered that many of the players in my groups had never actually faced the challenge in question.

My current group consists of four twenty-somethings; the youngest just turned twenty last month, and is a first-time (although second-generation) gamer. I'm 35, and I find myself talking about the great modules I've been in, sharing experiences with my fellow thirty-somethings. They are all very excited about the adventure path, and they've said that this campaign has been the most rewarding they've been in.

Now, if that's a compliment to the DM or the modules themselves is up for debate... but if the adventures were truly lame, I don't expect that the players would stay interested over the long-haul.

And now with the topic of the 30 Greatest Adventures of All Time, it made me wonder... In ten-years time, will my players run into other (future) thirty-somethings and exchange their Shackled City Adventure Path experiences?

-------------

Oliver, I feel your pain. My first group that went through the adventure path also figured that Vhalntru was the guy behind the trouble. They actually started calling him "Lord Orbviously the Bad Guy."

To their role-playing credit, they never did anything in game until the PCs found out about him, in Lords of Oblivion. They were all like "Finally!" Then, "Wha...? He's a beholder?"

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I think, I am gonna let Mister Obvious be really helpful to the group, but not too obvious. Or I am bringing in some red herrings to indicate, that he is a leader of the "Last Laugh". In order for one of the jesters to obscure his own part in that organization from detection, he lays false leads pointing to Mr Obvious. Or could it be, that those false leads were planted by Mr Obvious himself and he asks the group to help him prove his "innocence"... oh those devious thoughts. *GRIN*

I think I will include this as a Side Trek, if my group has to gain some experience between adventures until "Lords of Oblivion".

Basically the best point to fit this in would be directly before the Demonskar episode...and Jil would be there to silence any people that could talk too much...oops.

I also know who will be the jester in question. My group will hate this...*Big Evil Grin*

This has to do with my group not staying at the Drunken Morkoth Inn (way too expensive, and I also did not want them to stumble directly into the Striding HQ). So they are staying in the Slippery Eel, that is run by the brother of the Captain of the City Watch, Hadamar Skellerang. Many guards are there after their shifts and many rumors and truths can be overheard. If the final clue to the identity could come from the Chisel, then the motivation of Terseon Skellerang to be so hostile toward Maavu and his comapnions would be perfectly understandable... hmmm *REALLY BIG EVIL GRIN*

And the group can also have another run-in with Jil who is trying to stop the group from discovering the jester's identity. She will also be responsible to silence any people that can talk too much at a later point.


Though I realize the fact that there are only so many stories to tell, and so many encounters that could possibly be seen as 'truely' unique, for an older player like myself I like to see a little variety. Often issues on Dungeon produce adventures that stand apart from the rest, their plots being very different than what some people would typically use in their campaigns. Perhaps the plot could have been a little less 'typical' and a little more 'spicey'?
Again let me note I liked AP as a whole, it was clever, but it let me down in the 'grand scheme'. There are literally hundreds of different goals that the Cagewrights could have been persuing, why go for something so...used?


I think I hear you, Woontal. (Can I call you Woontie?)

I suppose the grand scheme of the adventure path wasn't a bold stroke away from the usual, as you say. But, I found that most of the adventures really appealed to me. There were also several specific things that were new to me:

The evacuation rules were a neat idea. The entire session ran on a lot of role-playing, with a good mix of big monsters to satisfy my fireball-flinging (and snowball-flinging, sonicball-flinging, etc.) archmage.

I thought that the spell weaver coffins were neat as well. Those coffins alone put my players on edge more than anything else. They were afraid to touch them. They were afraid to leave them alone. They're still asking me about what they were supposed to do with them. I might fill them in about them after the final battle with Adimarchus.

All of the city encounters were new to me as well. In my 20 years of gaming I've never run extensive city-based adventuring, and these adventures prompted me to purchase City Works (by Mike Mearls for Fantasy Flight Games) to make sure I could pull it off.

And you're right again... There are other adventures that have been published in Dungeon that have stood apart from the rest. I particularly enjoyed Practical Magic. I thought that the vampire mermaid was outstanding, as well as making "useful" undead. I actually included it in my campaign, right after the party captured Ike Iverson and recovered the soul cage from the Cathedral of Wee Jas.

I ran other side adventures as well, but I should save that for a new thread.

I understand that the next adventure path is going to be more "set down" for the writers, and broken into campaign arcs to facilitate moving the story along, without one writer waiting for the previous writer to finish before he/she can begin the next. (Is that really one sentence?)

I hope that the new tighter structure won't be so tight to limit the writers' creativity and desire to bring in some "spicy tidbits" to the game. Ideally having a good outline will create more opportunities for more varied encounters.

Erik and James (and everyone else involved) have proved to be able editors and listeners as well. I really think that the next adventure path will be quite exciting. As was this one.


Big Jake wrote:
I think I hear you, Woontal. (Can I call you Woontie?)

Why not, can I get a bowl with my name on it as well?

Actually some of the locales I enjoyed immensly, as well as many of the dungeon chambers. It seemed that in the end the actual events that drove the plot along was the...I won't say let-down, that's no entirely true...perhaps greatest disappointment of the series?

I liked very much the Abyssal plane, the spellweavers, and the volcanic events (even though I was critical of the event itself). Shatterthorn and the Cagewright's lairs were pretty disappointing, as was the premise around the PCs discovery of them...

Perhaps next time we can see events such as:

--> A legendary blackguard comes into conflict with his faith, and eventually 'falls from grace'. Fighting his former faith's plans he uses the PCs to foil the cult's mechanations, eventually leading to his conversion into a paladin. His new found faith allows him to see that the last mission that he has tricked the PCs to go on could hurt thousands, and must stop them before it's too late.
(I always hated the Paladin turning into a Blackguard story)

--> A cult of humans plan on bringing an arch-angel into the world to spread goodness and light. The rigid laws that it would set would create a repressive regime in the region and de-stabalise the kingdoms for decades, possibly leading to a great war.
(I also thought very little of summoning demonic lords)

--> The PCs are kidnapped! Though they have little idea why, or by who, they must eventually unravel a plot in which they (virtual no-ones) hold a very important part. To make things worse their souls are removed from their bodies and placed into evil beings (goblins, bugbears, etc...) They must get their bodies back, and stop the nasty, nasty plans.
(Ever get sick of rescuing other people? Why not rescue yourself?)

--> The world is in crisis! A great natural catastrophe is about to occur, one that even the most powerful of spellcasters cannot prevent. The answer? The PCs must discover ancient scripts in order to construct a legendary artifact to combat the occurance, then they realize that they have been duped, and they must defend the artifact with their lives...
(Why destroy an Artifact when you can create?)

I realise that all of the above storylines are simply tired, old and cliched topics turned on their head. But see how easy it is? Sure my 2mins of brainstorming hardy created the most exciting or detailed plots, but surely they write themselves?

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