eew... yeah. The Cave was one of the worst movies of the year for me. Of course, I saw it as a double feature with "A Sound of Thunder," and that made me like The Cave more than I would have... but still.
Off topic, but ... A Sound of Thunder. What the hell was up with Ben Kingsley and that wig? It was like a giant egg was trying to eat his head.
how did "I am very opposed to shortening Second Darkness by 10 pages and adding Set Piece Adventures" devolve into a movie discussion
lol
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eew... yeah. The Cave was one of the worst movies of the year for me. Of course, I saw it as a double feature with "A Sound of Thunder," and that made me like The Cave more than I would have... but still.Off topic, but ... A Sound of Thunder. What the hell was up with Ben Kingsley and that wig? It was like a giant egg was trying to eat his head.
I haven't seen a Sound of Thunder, but I lost all respect for Ben Kingsley as an artist after watching Bloodrayne. :/ ;)
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how did "I am very opposed to shortening Second Darkness by 10 pages and adding Set Piece Adventures" devolve into a movie discussion
lol
I said something about fleshing out the blood caves (which I think was on topic, or I meant it to be), the main man threw out some flicks for motivation, and there you have it...
I, personally, am a walking talking human thread derailment device; it wasn't intentional."It can't be helped. It's beyond my control."
Michelle Pfeiffer.......schwing!!!
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how did "I am very opposed to shortening Second Darkness by 10 pages and adding Set Piece Adventures" devolve into a movie discussion
lol
I said something about fleshing out the blood caves (which I think was on topic, or I meant it to be), the main man threw out some flicks for motivation, and there you have it...
I, personally, am a walking talking human thread derailment device; it wasn't intentional."It can't be helped. It's beyond my control."
Michelle Pfeiffer.......schwing!!!
I am very opposed to shortening movie threads by off thread discussions about set piece adventures!
"It can't be helped. It's beyond my control."
If you find yourself saying those lines to Michelle Pfeiffer, there's something seriously wrong with you. Which, in Malkovich's case, is quite true. (Anybody see him in the "J'cuzzi" on Sat Nite Live?)
...Dog Soldiers, plot holes aside, has easily become one of my favorite werewolf movies (I especially love the scene with the soldier boxing the monster) ...
Around these parts we call that a "Spoon Moment" and it's fun to occasionally give a well liked NPC one of these as they meet their gruesome and inevitable death.
how did "I am very opposed to shortening Second Darkness by 10 pages and adding Set Piece Adventures" devolve into a movie discussion
Hand wave. Ninja smoke. So, anyone see "My Name is Bruce?" :P
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Around these parts we call that a "Spoon Moment" and it's fun to occasionally give a well liked NPC one of these as they meet their gruesome and inevitable death....Dog Soldiers, plot holes aside, has easily become one of my favorite werewolf movies (I especially love the scene with the soldier boxing the monster) ...
Spoon Moment...lol!!!
Well, judging by the dates on these last few posts, I think it's safe to say we've all seen the first few Set Pieces from Second Darkness. And I for one really enjoyed reading them. I think my favorite by far is the 3rd one, "Lament for Emerald Rains" (That was the title right?) I just really liked that one. I think it was the little bit of poetry at the beginning, I actually read it out-loud to my Mom, and thought it was very moving, nicely worded.
I'm in the process of closing up some 4e games I've been doing (one a homebrew, one a Forgotten Realms) and expressed my desire to return to v.3.5 and Pathfinder, and both groups are willing and eager. One group gets to go back to CotCT (since they died between Chapter One and Chapter Two) but they are starting off as NEW 4th level characters.
The other group... I have too much I want to do. "Crucible of Chaos" is probably my all-time favorite GameMastery module. But I'd really like to run "Rise of the Runelords" from start to finish. Of course running "Second Darkness" would be great as well. (Anyway... sorry about the ramble and the "almost" thread-jacking.) The Set Pieces Rule!
Dean, The_Minstrel_Wyrm
I'm in the process of closing up some 4e games I've been doing (one a homebrew, one a Forgotten Realms) and expressed my desire to return to v.3.5 and Pathfinder, and both groups are willing and eager.
4E is utter trash is it not? just worthless garbage! good for you sir! 3.5 awaits your attention.
I think it was the little bit of poetry at the beginning, I actually read it out-loud to my Mom, and thought it was very moving, nicely worded.
I was a TA for a few poetry courses back in college and sometimes it slips out. Glad someone enjoyed it! I LOVE writing those little intro bits - it usually falls to me as 9 out of 10 authors forget to write them, and really I'm cool with that. They're fast immersive little bits that really help make Golarion feel real. I think my three favs are probably this one, the section from "Galdyce's Guest" in PF#8, and the intro to the Shoanti article in #10 (though that was all Jake Frazier's, it made me laugh out loud).
The Hulk was awesome.
Ha! Awesome.
Chief Technical Officer
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I think it was the little bit of poetry at the beginning, I actually read it out-loud to my Mom, and thought it was very moving, nicely worded.I was a TA for a few poetry courses back in college and sometimes it slips out. Glad someone enjoyed it! I LOVE writing those little intro bits - it usually falls to me as 9 out of 10 authors forget to write them, and really I'm cool with that. They're fast immersive little bits that really help make Golarion feel real. I think my three favs are probably this one, the section from "Galdyce's Guest" in PF#8, and the intro to the Shoanti article in #10 (though that was all Jake Frazier's, it made me laugh out loud).
The Hulk was awesome.Ha! Awesome.
Ha! Poetry.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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I think it was the little bit of poetry at the beginning, I actually read it out-loud to my Mom, and thought it was very moving, nicely worded.I was a TA for a few poetry courses back in college and sometimes it slips out. Glad someone enjoyed it! I LOVE writing those little intro bits - it usually falls to me as 9 out of 10 authors forget to write them, and really I'm cool with that. They're fast immersive little bits that really help make Golarion feel real. I think my three favs are probably this one, the section from "Galdyce's Guest" in PF#8, and the intro to the Shoanti article in #10 (though that was all Jake Frazier's, it made me laugh out loud).
The Hulk was awesome.Ha! Awesome.
I love the little intro bits. Both of those intros you mention make me long for the rest of the imaginary book they came out of. I could put down Jack Whyte's Uther and pick up The Shoanti Wars any day if there were more fiction set in Golarion.
Another thing that I thought made "Golarion feel real" was Amber Scott's article in PF#7. I love how she quotes from three books by three authors and all three books are called "A History of the Varisians". That was a nice, subtle touch.
Another thing that I thought made "Golarion feel real" was Amber Scott's article in PF#7. I love how she quotes from three books by three authors and all three books are called "A History of the Varisians". That was a nice, subtle touch.
Amber on Varisians was a textbook case of matching the perfect person with the perfect job. In my mind that stands out as one of the best articles we've run in PF and is the bar by which I measure all of the other "Peoples" articles we commission. Next time she makes it down Seattle way I'm totally going to kidnap her into making that Varisian recipe too! It's that kind of stuff, like from the old Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home books that I get a HUGE kick out of.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Amber on Varisians was a textbook case of matching the perfect person with the perfect job. In my mind that stands out as one of the best articles we've run in PF and is the bar by which I measure all of the other "Peoples" articles we commission. Next time she makes it down Seattle way I'm totally going to kidnap her into making that Varisian recipe too! It's that kind of stuff, like from the old Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home books that I get a HUGE kick out of.
I'm a bit behind on my adventure paths. I've read the Shoanti and the Varisians people's articles and loved both of them. What are the others?
I loved the Varisians article. I would have liked a little more insight into their language though. I imagine it to be a romance language with plenty of loanwords from Common and Shoanti. The Shoanti article gave us some phrases but I was still left wondering about how they translated. It was a nice start though.
I think I could scrape together an auroch stew recipe for that recipe book. (You can substitute beef for the auroch in a pinch.)
Uh-oh, looks like there's definite interest in a Pathfinder novel series...
I do not enjoy the fiction pieces. But that's just me, and you can't please everyone all the time.
I do, however, enjoy the set pieces. I find there is more flexability as to when they are run in the campaign. I never run anything exactly as it is written, mostly because *my* rotten players just have to read the adventures and spoil it for themselves. So for me, the SPs are just fodder for the imagination a lot of times, to get me thinking about new monsters and encounters.
I buy pre-written adventures not so much because I'm lazy, but because I know that I am set in my own way a bit too much for my player's tastes. We all get tired of Nicole's favorite monster of the campaign. (Currently it's low-level undead.) I enjoy having a great variance in motives and villains from AP to AP. Having different authors in the same volume freshens it up even more. <Fresh brains...>
I like having the "fluff" as well. Reading the setting background helps get me in the mood for the setting. The goblins were initially comical, the drow ruthless. It also creates a sense of motive for why things are going on. Goblin menace? Sounds like a perfect opportunity to distract from some illegal goings-on, since the guard is preoccupied...
The beastiary is my favorite section, again because of those rotten players who know monster resistances, etc. Although I really want to sub harpy for sphinx in my game. I'm not a big fan of the unique creatures, like Calean's herald or the Sandpoint Devil horse. I like new monsters that can appear over and over again, something that can become the new classic monster in my games.
All in all, very pleased. I was unsure about the current AP when I read the trailer on #13, but since I enjoyed the others, I bought it. I'm glad I did.
I've been waiting to have a few set piece to be able to say with foundation. And I must say that after seeing them consider them a bad idea. I do not like the set pieces. They haven’t connection to the main adventure, and make it poorer. What makes a particular AP special is its continuity. Set pieces, having no relation to the main adventure, break this continuity. If I want to put scenes extras and secondary plots in my campaign I can do very easily without needing these poor set piece you are providing. I'd rather buy a very solid and long main adventure.
Please, remove the set pieces. The result was better before. And I suspect that the set pieces are the cause of low levels of Legacy of Fire (which I do not like anything, I find easy to create an low-level adventure as DM, but I consume a lot of time to make a high-level adventure...)
Please, I buy an AP to get campaigns. I can buy modules in many places.
Sorry for my poor English :(
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Creative Director
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I've been waiting to have a few set piece to be able to say with foundation. And I must say that after seeing them consider them a bad idea. I do not like the set pieces. They haven’t connection to the main adventure, and make it poorer. What makes a particular AP special is its continuity. Set pieces, having no relation to the main adventure, break this continuity. If I want to put scenes extras and secondary plots in my campaign I can do very easily without needing these poor set piece you are providing. I'd rather buy a very solid and long main adventure.
Please, remove the set pieces. The result was better before. And I suspect that the set pieces are the cause of low levels of Legacy of Fire (which I do not like anything, I find easy to create an low-level adventure as DM, but I consume a lot of time to make a high-level adventure...)
Please, I buy an AP to get campaigns. I can buy modules in many places.
Sorry for my poor English :(
I've said this before in other threads... but the length of the main adventure is more or less locked in at this point at 30,000 words. With "Howl of the Carrion King" we did a tentative experiment and went back to 35,000 words, but I was comfortable doing this only because Erik Mona was writing the adventure, and Erik's a great editor as WELL as a great designer; that combination of skills is not as common as one might think.
Pathfinder's on a monthly schedule, and the realities of editing and developing an adventure are such that it's not a good idea to split the task up among different folks; ONE person needs to edit and develop the whole thing, if only so that one person can catch continuity errors in the adventure's flow. And again, the average time it takes a person to develop and edit a set number of words is more or less a constant, and as a result that effectively creates a limit to the amount of words someone can edit/develop in the limited amount of time we have for a volume of Pathfinder.
Discovering that limit has been a large part of the process of doing Pathfinder for me. With Dungeon's adventure paths, each installment was a mere 22,000 words or so; the LONGEST ones we ran barely crested above 30,000 words.
When we started Pathfinder with Rise of the Runelords, we bit off a bit more than we could chew; we set each adventure at 40,000 words, and in some cases went as high as 50,000 or 55,000 words. And as a result... we havn't actually shipped a single volume of Pathfinder to the printer on the due date, with the exception of Pathfinder #1. It didn't take long before we were over a month behind (long-term subscribers will remember how long some of those volumes took to get out!). That's not only bad for subscribers, but REALLY bad for a business like Paizo that's built on the cyclic nature of monthly payments. If a month's anticipated product is late, that creates some relatively devastating ripples all along the business front.
So as a result, it was obvious that 40,000 word adventures were not the way to go. With Second Darkness, we dropped that down to 30,000, and have been able to catch up as a result; we still haven't actually shipped a Pathinder on its actually scheduled "ship to printer" day, but we're generally only a few days off now, and getting closer with every volume.
So that's the whole complicated reason why the main adventure's "only" 30,000 words (about 40 pages long). And that's why we tried out the set pieces; wit the extra 10,000 words of space, we could expand the support articles a bit, but we were worried that the loss of adventuring material in an adventure product would be trouble. With a set piece, we can get a different author than the one writing the main adventure if we wish, and we certainly can have different developers and editors working on them. It's been a little rough getting the set-pieces to work exactly the way we wanted them to (part of the problem is training authors to write short adventures; a lot seem to think that they can fit every great idea they've ever had into 5,000 words and that just causes all sorts of problems), but we're getting closer to getting things right, I think.
Feedback on the set pieces is an important part of this process, and the feedback in this thread in particular has had a major change on how we're using them. With "Legacy of Fire," the set pieces are going to be much more tightly integrated into their companion adventures; not quite as tightly, say, as the Graul farmstead or the Vekker cabin was in Rise of the Runelords, but tightly enough that it's going to be an easy matter to move between the main adventure and the set piece in ways that should be pretty much invisible to the players (unless they're keeping a close eye on what pages the GM's Pathfinder is open to).
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Creative Director
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One more thing:
Legacy of Fire is not that much lower level than the other three Adventure Paths. Our initial estimate on how much adventure we could fit into 30,000 words is still being worked out... but with the first Legacy of Fire adventure, "Howl of the Carrion King," PCs will start at 1st level and get close to 5th level as a result. The level ranges you see listed at paizo.com aren't set in stone until things arrive on shelves, in other words.
At this point, my best guess is that player characters will probably reach 14th level by the end of the last adventure in Legacy of Fire, maybe even 15th level. We'll see.
James, what are you doing working on Christmas? Too bad! To enjoy the holidays! ;) Much work is bad! :P
I understand your problem, but I have not really enjoyed the result in SD. I am not concerned that the modules are not monthly, but I understand that you do so. But I do not want to lie: I feel that the adventure has less quality. I did not expect to reach the quality of CoCT, because this is a fantastic adventure and very original, really big (my party is very pleased with CoCT), but SD is missing something, and I feel that the blame is on all of the Set Pieces.
I would not want either shorter articles (though I agree with a previous reader that these must be tied to the main adventure) nor shorter bestiary.
If you need to shorten the work of an author with the adventure, how about remove (o shorten) space fiction and expand the main adventure but breaking it into two parts, and that is a different author in charge of each part?
I will wait to see what may result in Legacy of Fire. I shall be very happy if the Set Pieces are better integrated and are more interesting. Now, if I want to be honest, I can only say that I do not like Set Pieces in SD and do not consider them a good idea. But I appreciate very much your work and communication you have with the buyers. I just want to give my opinion.
About Legacy of Fire: I'm glad the adventure do not have levels as low as I feared, though I would prefer to reach levels 15-16 as in previous APs. I hope that this decline in levels does not become something normal in future APs.
Thanks for answering, James. And Merry Christmas!
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Creative Director
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James, what are you doing working on Christmas? Too bad! To enjoy the holidays! ;) Much work is bad! :P
Seattle got hit hard with a winter storm and we got a LOT of snow dumped on us as a result. When you mix snow with areas like Seattle that don't get exposed to snow much (and thus don't have the infrastructure to handle it) AND have terrain that includes a LOT of hill and mountain roads that turn into deathtraps, traffic comes to a total halt. As a result, I spent most of last week (Christmas included) trapped in my apartment. Answering messageboard posts was one of the ways to stay sane.
At the same time, it's also an indication of how much work we ARE putting into Pathfinder. Part of that is obsessive dedication, sure, but a good part of it is necessity. Especially when we had those longer adventures. At 40,000 words, 60 to 70 hour weeks (or more) were pretty much required for three (sometimes four) weeks a month for a year, and even THEN we missed more than 90% of our ship dates, sometimes as much as by more than a month.
The solution isn't to lengthen the adventures again. The solution is to do adventures that don't require 40,000 or more words and then try to cram those adventures into 30,000 words, which I fear is part of what caused some of these problems with Second Darkness. We've hopefully learned from that error (just as we've learned from the error that it's impossible to do 40,000 word adventures every month) with Legacy of Fire.
It's unfair to blame the set pieces, though. They're in there not because we wanted them in there so much that we cut the main adventure, but because we COULDN'T DO main adventures that long, and we decided that putting a second, related adventure into that space that opened up was the best solution to losing adventure content.
As for the "decline in levels," not every AP will have the same span of levels. And EVERY AP we've published, particularly the 1 to 20 level ones we did in Dungeon, had a VERY noticable drop-off in sales once the levels get up to 14 or higher. Since above 14th level, adventures take progressively more room and sell less, that's not something you'll see us do that often, unfortunately.
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And EVERY AP we've published, particularly the 1 to 20 level ones we did in Dungeon, had a VERY noticable drop-off in sales...
This surprises me as I've always felt that the AP's really started to shine towards the end when the ability of the author was put to the test in making high level adventures. For instance, I never really got into Savage Tide until you hit Scuttleport, and the Age of Worms didn't really pick up until The Spire of Long Shadows.
Curse of the Crimson Throne was different though, it was great from start to finish (even though I didn't expect to like it until after I saw the first issue).
So, please make sure we have at least some high level action in all the upcoming AP's.
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Creative Director
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And EVERY AP we've published, particularly the 1 to 20 level ones we did in Dungeon, had a VERY noticable drop-off in sales...This surprises me as I've always felt that the AP's really started to shine towards the end when the ability of the author was put to the test in making high level adventures. For instance, I never really got into Savage Tide until you hit Scuttleport, and the Age of Worms didn't really pick up until The Spire of Long Shadows.
Curse of the Crimson Throne was different though, it was great from start to finish (even though I didn't expect to like it until after I saw the first issue).
So, please make sure we have at least some high level action in all the upcoming AP's.
We'll generally be going to 12th to 15th level with the Adventure Paths. How far they go isn't gonna be set in stone until we actually see the adventures, because now and then we get in an adventure that goes further than we thought it would (Howl of the Carrion King) or doesn't go as far as we expected (Children of the Void). But somewhere in the 12th to 15th range is going to probably be pretty standard in the long run.
Anyway, it's always good to hear that some folk enjoy the higher level stuff. It's a LOT harder to pull those off, and I won't lie: It's a little frustrating to see that the parts of an adventure path that you've put so much work into ends up being the ones that sell the worst. :(
And EVERY AP we've published, particularly the 1 to 20 level ones we did in Dungeon, had a VERY noticable drop-off in sales...This surprises me as I've always felt that the AP's really started to shine towards the end when the ability of the author was put to the test in making high level adventures. For instance, I never really got into Savage Tide until you hit Scuttleport, and the Age of Worms didn't really pick up until The Spire of Long Shadows.
Curse of the Crimson Throne was different though, it was great from start to finish (even though I didn't expect to like it until after I saw the first issue).
So, please make sure we have at least some high level action in all the upcoming AP's.
I suspect the fall off has more to do with some people picking up the first few issues of an AP thinking the theme sounds cool but deciding that this is not for them and, maybe more important, I suspect that only a fraction of groups, probably around 1 in 20 actually manage to play an AP all the way through. Most games die an inglorious death, thats just the nature of RPGs. If a game dies a DM may well choose to simply stop purchasing the product. Not only is it no longer useful but its quite possible that the whole thing is associated with bitter or sour memories of the collapse of the game.
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, maybe more important, I suspect that only a fraction of groups, probably around 1 in 20 actually manage to play an AP all the way through. Most games die an inglorious death, thats just the nature of RPGs. If a game dies a DM may well choose to simply stop purchasing the product. Not only is it no longer useful but its quite possible that the whole thing is associated with bitter or sour memories of the collapse of the game.
I have Started 4 APs going back to the Dungeon Ones..
I have not Completed any of them... Closest I got was Shackled City when I got the Group up to 10th level..
It is hard to Complete an AP in the Military with your Players constantly Deploying or moving to another Location..
For the First time I have found a Stable group that will be stable for 2 years... and they already have a DM.. DOH!!!!..*The DM has never heard of Paizo But all his players have and love them!*
We'll generally be going to 12th to 15th level with the Adventure Paths. How far they go isn't gonna be set in stone until we actually see the adventures, because now and then we get in an adventure that goes further than we thought it would (Howl of the Carrion King) or doesn't go as far as we expected (Children of the Void). But somewhere in the 12th to 15th range is going to probably be pretty standard in the long run.Anyway, it's always good to hear that some folk enjoy the higher level stuff. It's a LOT harder to pull those off, and I won't lie: It's a little frustrating to see that the parts of an adventure path that you've put so much work into ends up being the ones that sell the worst. :(
I have a stable playing group. So I love to play AP's. However I am a completist so i will always finish the AP. I do find high level play less fun than mid level and so would prefer to have a game that ended with the characters finishing at 13th-17th level. From my POV the AP's finish at about the perfect spot.
I do really like the kobold king series though. As I enjoyed Red Hand of Doom and the Istvin series of Dungeons. This 4-6 level AP style progression seemed to fit both the desire to complete an interseting story and to have characters develop through a few scenarios. How well does this stuff sell?
..With "Howl of the Carrion King" we did a tentative experiment and went back to 35,000 words.....Pathfinder's on a monthly schedule, and the realities of editing and developing an adventure are such that it's not a good idea to split the task up among different folks; .... <etc..>
Sounds to me like a reasonable compromise that you're working on, JJ (have they nicknamed you "Jameson" yet, incidentally ? :-P )
I'll look forward to it with interest.
In the meantime, Merry Yithmas all...
James, what are you doing working on Christmas? Too bad! To enjoy the holidays! ;) Much work is bad! :PSeattle got hit hard with a winter storm and we got a LOT of snow dumped on us as a result. When you mix snow with areas like Seattle that don't get exposed to snow much (and thus don't have the infrastructure to handle it) AND have terrain that includes a LOT of hill and mountain roads that turn into deathtraps, traffic comes to a total halt. As a result, I spent most of last week (Christmas included) trapped in my apartment. Answering messageboard posts was one of the ways to stay sane.
At the same time, it's also an indication of how much work we ARE putting into Pathfinder. Part of that is obsessive dedication, sure, but a good part of it is necessity. Especially when we had those longer adventures. At 40,000 words, 60 to 70 hour weeks (or more) were pretty much required for three (sometimes four) weeks a month for a year, and even THEN we missed more than 90% of our ship dates, sometimes as much as by more than a month.
The solution isn't to lengthen the adventures again. The solution is to do adventures that don't require 40,000 or more words and then try to cram those adventures into 30,000 words, which I fear is part of what caused some of these problems with Second Darkness. We've hopefully learned from that error (just as we've learned from the error that it's impossible to do 40,000 word adventures every month) with Legacy of Fire.
It's unfair to blame the set pieces, though. They're in there not because we wanted them in there so much that we cut the main adventure, but because we COULDN'T DO main adventures that long, and we decided that putting a second, related adventure into that space that opened up was the best solution to losing adventure content.
As for the "decline in levels," not every AP will have the same span of levels. And EVERY AP we've published, particularly the 1 to 20 level ones we did in Dungeon, had a VERY noticable drop-off in sales...
I comprehend the idea that you'll have a better chance to make the story's and such fit if they were designed from the ground up as 30,000 word adventures. Still I'm particularly concerned with what material gets cut when you loose 10,000 words. I pretty much get the impression that encounters are basically fixed. PCs need to earn X amount of XP in the 1st instalment of the AP so that they will be about the right level for the 2nd instalment etc.
So it seems to me that when your considering what is likely to drop from the AP would be a lot of the interesting little add one bits we have come to expect from Pathfinder. Sidebars, interesting NPCs that are not part of the XP system, background material on the locals etc. If we loose that then I'm particularly opposed to the change because thats a good part of what makes Pathfinder a step above any other product out there. If on the other hand they can be maintained and the small adventure finds its niche then I can live with this.
...If not then I say we go with option B and work James until he has a nervous break down and then discard him like used tissue to be replaced by another English Major who wants to work in RPG industry. I figure there are enough English Majors out there that want to be in the RPG industry that we could keep this up for a decade - maybe a couple.
As for the used up editors...they could form one of those survivor support groups.
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Creative Director
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Shorter adventures = adventure paths that don't go as high level, which is why Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne both took player characters up to 16th level or above. Second Darkness probably only gets player characters up to 14th level or maybe 15th level, and even that has stuff like the "level gap" between adventure 2 and adventure 3.
With Legacy of Fire, you're seeing the result of the shorter adventures in that the Adventure Path is looking like it'll top out at 13th or maybe 14th level. We aren't going to have a "level gap" and we're being a bit more ruthless to the support articles and bestiary at times (if an adventure runs long by 2 or 4 or 8 pages, we'll be more likely to cut material from support articles before the adventure), and we built the plot for Legacy of Fire with shorter adventures in mind (not something we did well with Second Darkness), so it should result in a stronger-feeling adventure path.
We're also very strongly considering opening up the set pieces to the public once we finish Legacy of Darkness. Which means that those short adventures suddenly turn into another way for us to find new authors. We don't want to do this until we have a firm grasp on what we WANT for the set pieces, though.
Just my coppers.
I love the set piece adventures as they are with links to the main campaign for those of us that want to tie em in. I like the slightly shorter APs too, as long as they dont get any shorter.
There have been a few times that parties may have been too big or too small so level advancement might not be where it should be (larger parties) or PC's are ahead of the curve (like smaller parties), set pieces fix this though that may not have been the intent. If your party isnt high enough, add a set piece, if your party is ahead of the curve you can skip it.
Im not thrilled about opening the set pieces to the public though, you could always do that in a seperate book (monthly? bimonthly?) and choose the best authors to work on your flagship title. :)
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Im not thrilled about opening the set pieces to the public though, you could always do that in a seperate book (monthly? bimonthly?) and choose the best authors to work on your flagship title. :)
Just becasue we're opening them to the public doesn't mean the quality will drop, of course. Every author we currently use was a new author at one point, after all; and we do always need new authors. And we won't greenlight a new author just because we need one... if we can't find a good author for a particular set piece we can always go to one of our standbys after all.
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We're also very strongly considering opening up the set pieces to the public once we finish Legacy of Darkness. Which means that those short adventures suddenly turn into another way for us to find new authors. We don't want to do this until we have a firm grasp on what we WANT for the set pieces, though.
Legacy of Darkness? Is that AP 6? =p
RIP set pieces, viva longer adventures!
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Creative Director
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RIP set pieces, viva longer adventures!
Just to manage expectations... this doesn't mean that adventrues will always be longer. Some will be... some won't. In the case of Pathfinder #25, for example, the adventure's not much longer but the set piece articles are a bit meatier PLUS there's an adventure path outline as well. The loss of the set pieces lets us be more fluid about article and adventure lengths across the board; the extra space won't always go to the adventure though.
"Teeth of Araska" in _Children of the Void_ totally saved my butt. Not because I ran it as such, but because I kept needing pirate ships, drow ships, crime-boss ships, and there it was with a ship map and some sailors! The PCs ended up *owning* two copies of that ship by the end of _Children_.
So for me, the absolute ideal side adventure is one that contains pieces which are likely to be useful in the AP module it's in, or possibly the ones before or after. (Further off than that and it will be the wrong level, and therefore less useful.) For example, if the AP episode is a city adventure, a vignette set in the city would be most helpful.
I tried to run the side adventure for _Armageddon_ but the PCs wouldn't bite. I ran the one for _Endless Night_ but it was not a challenge for the PCs in any way, and I might as well not have bothered--something went wrong with the challenge level there. I didn't attempt any of the others. But "Araska" redeemed the whole concept for me--it was just the right material at the right time.
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"Teeth of Araska" in _Children of the Void_ totally saved my butt. Not because I ran it as such, but because I kept needing pirate ships, drow ships, crime-boss ships, and there it was with a ship map and some sailors! The PCs ended up *owning* two copies of that ship by the end of _Children_.
So for me, the absolute ideal side adventure is one that contains pieces which are likely to be useful in the AP module it's in, or possibly the ones before or after. (Further off than that and it will be the wrong level, and therefore less useful.) For example, if the AP episode is a city adventure, a vignette set in the city would be most helpful.
I tried to run the side adventure for _Armageddon_ but the PCs wouldn't bite. I ran the one for _Endless Night_ but it was not a challenge for the PCs in any way, and I might as well not have bothered--something went wrong with the challenge level there. I didn't attempt any of the others. But "Araska" redeemed the whole concept for me--it was just the right material at the right time.
I actually went out of my way to skip the araska one, even though the name appealed to me so much (Araska is originally was in the Elves of Evermeet, it is a small island in the harbour of the main city, but I digress.) What I couldn't get about the set piece is how to make it work, the concept, you sneaky/fight a pirate ship. How the hell do to ships come together in which one of them is clearly a sinister pirate ship, and not have everyone on high alert fighting on the decks? like WTF?
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"Teeth of Araska" in _Children of the Void_ totally saved my butt.I actually went out of my way to skip the araska one, even though the name appealed to me so much
I had planned on not using "Teeth of Araska" while running SD - my group was going to break up due to players moving across country and I wanted to give it a little resolution by getting to the end of the adventure asap...but the players would not explore the island, and even forgot to care about the drow in their desperate desire for starmetal. In a desperate attempt to goad them, I introduced the pirates random encounter and one wearing Samaritha's coat. As they'd rescued samaritha and one party member was pursuing romance with her, this sent them back to the harbor to investigate what terrible fate had fallen on the cyphermages they'd left at the harbor to await the arrival of the next ship. Thus they got the chance to sneak up on the ship. I did get an evil thrill out of the sheer annoyance and frustation my party experienced fighting a Bard build.
I used the capture of the ship to encourage them to investigate the island from the sea and catch sight of the sea caves at night from the southern end of the island. They skipped Clegg completely and proceeded directly to the final encounter.
I found it very useful, myself.
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Creative Director
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I actually went out of my way to skip the araska one, even though the name appealed to me so much (Araska is originally was in the Elves of Evermeet, it is a small island in the harbour of the main city, but I digress.) What I couldn't get about the set piece is how to make it work, the concept, you sneaky/fight a pirate ship. How the hell do to ships come together in which one of them is clearly a sinister pirate ship, and not have everyone on high alert fighting on the decks? like WTF?
1) The PC ship could be disguised as an allied pirate ship or a merchant vessel, and while the enemy pirates are trying to board and/or investigate the PCs' ship, the PCs sneak onto the pirate ship and do some counter investigating.
or
2) The pirate ship is moored or anchored just off shore, and the PCs sneak out to attack it or infiltrate it.
or
3) The PCs, stranded on Devil's Elbow, note that a pirate ship has arrived, and they disguise themselves as pirate types in order to "get hired" by the crew and, as undercover pirates, do their thing on board (whatever that might be).
or
4) The PCs are captured by the pirate ship and have to break out of their cell or brig, recover their gear, and take over the ship.
or
5) The pirate ship is allied to one of the factions already on the island, and the pirates on board the ship come on shore to augment a group or to investigate on their own, in which case you the GM get to use the pirates against the PCs on land, and perhaps leave enough back on the ship to defend it if the PCs try to seize it.
Etc. The goal of the set-pieces wasn't as much to do the work for WHY the party goes to the place presented, but to give the GM a pre-made modular encounter area that he/she can then use when the need arises. Be that need one that arises during play of "Children of the Void," or one that arises during any other adventure you might be running before or after.
I actually went out of my way to skip the araska one, even though the name appealed to me so much (Araska is originally was in the Elves of Evermeet, it is a small island in the harbour of the main city, but I digress.) What I couldn't get about the set piece is how to make it work, the concept, you sneaky/fight a pirate ship. How the hell do to ships come together in which one of them is clearly a sinister pirate ship, and not have everyone on high alert fighting on the decks? like WTF?1) The PC ship could be disguised as an allied pirate ship or a merchant vessel, and while the enemy pirates are trying to board and/or investigate the PCs' ship, the PCs sneak onto the pirate ship and do some counter investigating.
or
2) The pirate ship is moored or anchored just off shore, and the PCs sneak out to attack it or infiltrate it.
or
3) The PCs, stranded on Devil's Elbow, note that a pirate ship has arrived, and they disguise themselves as pirate types in order to "get hired" by the crew and, as undercover pirates, do their thing on board (whatever that might be).
or
4) The PCs are captured by the pirate ship and have to break out of their cell or brig, recover their gear, and take over the ship.
or
5) The pirate ship is allied to one of the factions already on the island, and the pirates on board the ship come on shore to augment a group or to investigate on their own, in which case you the GM get to use the pirates against the PCs on land, and perhaps leave enough back on the ship to defend it if the PCs try to seize it.
Etc. The goal of the set-pieces wasn't as much to do the work for WHY the party goes to the place presented, but to give the GM a pre-made modular encounter area that he/she can then use when the need arises. Be that need one that arises during play of "Children of the Void," or one that arises during any other adventure you might be running before or after.
I ran this a few months ago and I had the pirate ship capture Capt. Creesy ( I think that is his name, it's been awhile) while he came back when it was time to pick the pc's back up. The pc's, seeing the pirates boat a couple hundred yards away from Creesy's, and finding Creesy's boat empty with evidence of a battle, put two and two together and finagled there way on board the pirate ship. It actually worked out quite well.
My PCs realized that they needed a way to Devil's Elbow very early on, much earlier than the module seems to expect. So they came up with the idea of grabbing the first ship into port and sailing it out there. (They were higher level than the module expects, due to the way I was running it, and could reasonably try this.) Since I was told that a crime boss was doing the exact same thing, I had them both go for the ship--Araska, of course--but the PCs got there first. So they snuck aboard in harbor, trashed the pirates, dumped them onto the docks, boarded their own crew and sailed away just as the crime boss was arriving. Very satisfying, though it got them in trouble later when they came back to Riddleport.
They then used Araska to interdict Devil's Elbow until their help (needed, in their opinion, to be sure of the drow) arrived from Crying Leaf. And captured their second ship at Devil's Elbow, the one the drow came in (which is not in the module, but it must exist....) Of course that was Araska too, with some cosmetic changes.
I just got done looking at the set pieces from _Memory_ and _Midnight_ and I doubt very much I can use either one. The levels seem a bit odd in the later adventures. The Blood Caves are a total pushover for PCs of their rated level with any kind of tactics--the lesser morlocks won't be able to hit them, so there is really only one enemy and she'll go down in a flash. If the PCs fly, there is nothing here at all. It might run well for 7ths. I didn't look at the Sundagger one in detail but I had the same impression about it--much easier than the main line.
It does worry me some that we lose a page from every module doing setup for the side adventure that would not be needed if it were integrated, but then I've never found mining scenes out of APs all that difficult, so making them more detached is not a win for me.
Still, thank you for Araska! Would have been a pain to make those ships and sailors myself.
I too, had problems coming up with ways of integrating Araska into my campaign. At the moment I am leaning towards scrapping it, or having the ship attack at night on the PCs way out.
Okay, we've now run the set pieces from _Endless Night_ and _Memory of Darkness_. Both were utter pushovers for a party of the level expected by the module. In both cases, most of the creatures are low-level melee fighters which cannot hit the PCs at all. "Blood Caves" makes this worse by putting them in high-ceiling caves, so that a standard Fly approach would render the entire adventure moot.
My player's PCs went into "Sundagger" with the intention of not killing a single Elf, which does make it a bit harder. They were never even hit on the lower level. It looked to me as though a single PC fighter could have taken the entire level by himself. We have not yet done the upper level, but the player thinks it will be only mildly difficult.
"Blood Caves" could work okay for 7ths, I think. "Sundagger" is problematic because a lower-level party will be wiped out by Blasphemy unless they manage to stop it from being cast. It's a TPK setup for low-level PCs, but not really challenging for high-level ones.
They need to be rethought in terms of expected PC level.
They need to be rethought in terms of expected PC level.
Or just dropped from the line ;)