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I'm curious as to whether Legacy of Fire will continue with the set pieces introduced in Second Darkness.
I'm assuming it's too late to actually change any decisions, but just in case, I'd like to vote against continuing them. Sorry, but they haven't seemed to work quite as well with the adventures (the most recent, The Blood Below, being a notable exception), and I think the shorter adventures have also suffered. Sure, it's possible I just haven't liked Second Darkness as much as the first two paths for other reasons - but I think the set pieces have been a part of that.
Alternatively, if you are continuing with the set pieces, are you making any changes to how you do them? As I mentioned, I found Blood Below a step up from the earlier pieces. Are you trying to integrate them a bit more tightly with the adventure, or making any other changes?
Thanks,
Drew Garrett
I'm curious as to whether Legacy of Fire will continue with the set pieces introduced in Second Darkness.
Yup, I'm working on the first one from the All Werecabbages Open Call right now, James Mackenzie's "The Refuge of Nethys."
I would rather not have the set pieces.
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I would rather not have the set pieces.
I would rather *have* set pieces, <dramatic little girl in pink dress>so there, neeerrr</dramatic little girl in pink dress>.
My *group* gets to meet up very rarely now, and the set pieces are perfect for an evenings entertainment.
Also, I struggle to read the longer adventures all the way through.....
Also, I wouldn't like to judge anything from only having seen 2/3 of them.....give it 10 or 12 before making a firm judgement.
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I'm assuming if you're running an adventure path that including the set pieces is kind of mandatory to keep your players with enough XP, treasure etc to face upcoming challenges in the path - unless the GM has some other method of doing so - so they should fit seamlessly into the adventure path in which they appear.
I see set pieces as serving two purposes:
1) Providing a self-contained adventure that GMs who are not running the adventure path can use - this might be useful for groups who break up before completing an adventure path, so those later chapters don't go to waste and can be used elsewhere; and
2) Providing a change of scenery, pace or goal during an adventure path, which can be a welcome inclusion, as long as it doesn't distract or stray too far from the main adventure path, it should still feel like it belongs.
My two groups have been meeting for a year and not completed chapter one from either Runelords or Crimson Throne yet (on hold twice due to house moves), so I see little chance that I'll get to play through every adventure path. I'm already seeing Bestiary creatures from Second Darkness that I'm thinking of bringing forward into my Runelords campaign, and if I can do a similar thing with set pieces, then this would be a good thing.
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My *group* gets to meet up very rarely now, and the set pieces are perfect for an evenings entertainment.
Adventure paths seem an odd vehicle for a group that only rarely meets. Still, to each his own - and it's not like I want to deny Paizo a sale.
But I do buy these for the adventure path. I loved the first two, but Second Darkness just isn't working well for me - surprising, since between the underworld and the Drow I'd expect to love this one. I think a big part of it is simply that the adventure is now so much less of the book. We're down to 42 pages of adventure. The first 3 set pieces were quite disconnected from the main adventure, though the most recent looks a lot better.
I'm glad James said they're looking to the most recent for where they want future set pieces to be. They've been quite responsive to feedback, so I wanted to give mine. I like the long adventures - it's a format you can't get anywhere else, and the first two paths used it very well. I'm still hoping to get it back, but could at least live with them at Blood Below level, if they can also make the shorter adventures seem a bit more complete, and unique at the same time...
Drew
Creative Director
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It's important to remember that publishing schedules aren't immediate. We're only just now getting some good feedback on the set pieces (and it seems to be pretty split down the middle for and against), but at the same time we're VERY close to assigning authors for Council of Thieves. Legacy of Fire is already well underway, and it's got set pieces in them, but we'll be trying to make them more closely tied to the adventures, I think... not sure.
It's important to remember that publishing schedules aren't immediate. We're only just now getting some good feedback on the set pieces (and it seems to be pretty split down the middle for and against), but at the same time we're VERY close to assigning authors for Council of Thieves. Legacy of Fire is already well underway, and it's got set pieces in them, but we'll be trying to make them more closely tied to the adventures, I think... not sure.
I have to say that personally, i am so far not that keen on the 'set peices' as seperate elements. That said, i did love the graul homestead(it was my very faverate thing in the HMM), which was argueably a set peice.
The difference is that the grauls where set fairly well into the adventure. Ideally, i would like to see the space given over to the adventure or an article.
I like the set pieces. I also like that moving a bit of the action out of the main adventure gives the authors and editors just that little bit of extra time to work on the main event.
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Any chapter within an adventure path is really composed of several separate scenes, which could each be their own adventure if played separately. I think this is where the idea of set pieces came from, Scarecow Farm, the Graul homestead, All the World's Meat, etc. any of which could be uprooted and re-planted in another campaign entirely, as a road-stop on a journey between two locations, or an encounter between events in a city.
However, even though the Goblin raid has become the iconic with Sandpoint, there is no reason that particular encounter couldn't have occurred to any other township in any other campaign. All it needs are some alternate adventure hooks.
Not all encounters are easy to transplant, but many are, and those that are should be marked as such. They don't need to be moved to an appendix, they can remain within the natural flow of the adventure path, they just need a brief but clearly identifiable intro, hooks and conclusion for those not running them as part of the adventure path.
And they don't need to be limited to only one "set piece" per chapter - if more than one grouping of encounters lend themselves to being played as separate, self-contained adventures, then there should be no reason why they can't each be presented that way, as long as it doesn't detract from the adventure path.
I think most of us are capable of customising encounters for our own purposes, eg transplanting the Goblin raid mentioned above, but it might help attract more customers to adventure paths for the individual adventures, even if they have no intention of running them together as an ongoing adventure path.
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My *group* gets to meet up very rarely now, and the set pieces are perfect for an evenings entertainment.
Adventure paths seem an odd vehicle for a group that only rarely meets. Still, to each his own - and it's not like I want to deny Paizo a sale.
Ahhh, but I buy them for the read, and the adventure ideas, and the hope that one day I will have a group I can play them through with; And I run them as pbp's, and I have children that I will be grooming into players in the next 5 or 6 years (not that they can be allowed to *read* RotRL until they hit 15 or anything, but hey).
But for now, the set pieces server a very nice little role for me, that gap between nothing, and a module, that my actual group would take weeks to finish, when we usually only have a single night.
I have mentioned this elsewhere, but I'll say it again, I am also fond of the Set Pieces... my current favorite was "Lament for Emerald Rains" which I thought was just awesome. (Again the poetry at the beginning really set the mood for me) and I'd like to see how they do in "Legacy of Fire." I'm really looking forward to this AP. As a long-time fan of Al~Qadim... this just has all kinds of promise for me. (That and the fact that Wolfgang Baur is doing a lot of the genie write-ups and other support articles.)
I don't feel that the bulk of the AP's have suffered for the trimmed-down status, or the inclusion of Set Pieces in lieu of 10 additional pages of adventure. (Which is in essence what the Set Pieces are.)
Well... that's that I s'pose.