My group has decided we want to give an adventure path a try, as we feel going into it knowing that it has a given story will kind of edge us into actually following the story. We always feel really disappointed when our GM tells us about all the cool stuff we missed because we were busy doing crazy stuff. Which of the paths are the most enjoyable? Do each of them have unique systems like Kingmaker and its hex maps and kingdom building and Skulls and Shackles and its ship combat?
Most adventure paths have a fun little subsystem, there are enough of them now that there could be a giant book of alternate rules. From my experience Carrion Crown is scary fun as it is gothic horror, Serpent Skull is a bit more survival oriented but interesting, and Kingmaker was crazy fun. Those are the ones I've played in. I own print copies of all the Skull and Shackles books, and the setting books that go with it, and my players have a blast. If it is not for PFS credit your gm can even alter parts of the AP to suit their needs, creative juices, or make changes based on newer material that has come out (I know I have) because let's face it not every player wants to follow the railroad tracks. Yes the AP's are a little railroady, they have to be in some parts, after all it's a set story line that the players are being thrown into. But a good gm can cover the tracks and make it look like the players are making all of their own decisions.
I've played two, Rise of the Runelords and Legacy of Fire. Both are really good but I'd recommend Runelords every time.
I will probably be the only one to recommend this, but I really like Council of Thieves. It's an urban-based campaign, which offers a lot of cool options.
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Not all of them have crazy subsystems. As far as helping the players stay "on track", here's my 3 tier rating system:
railroad: The players pretty much follow the preassigned path. Leaving is a serious chore and may wreck the adventure.
gully: There is a preassigned path, but it is possible to deviate with effort. It's pretty easy to slide back to the path after a detour.
sandbox: Almost no preassigned path, go and do what you want.
I'm only going to speak about APs I've played/run.
Rise of the Runelords is just all around excellent. The only subsystem is the GM has to track a little bit of information about some player RP decisions. This one I'd call a gully, you can deviate but what you are "supposed" to do is pretty obvious.
Legacy of Fire needs conversion as it was written for 3.5. It's fun and involves genies and some planar travel. Downtime and shopping are in short supply in the latter half. It's actually fairly railroad. No new subsystems.
Kingmaker has the whole kingdom building and mass combat rules. It's very fun but can be slow paced as the PCs drive the action. Wide open sandbox. So sandboxy that I think it would be fun to play a second time and just do things differently. I still want to try creating a nightmarish dystopia.
Serpent's Skull is fun, but the middle adventures need some extra work to make better. There are a couple subsystems used for one adventure. The adventures alternate between sandbox and railroad.
Carrion Crown is a horror path. You'll be a little undergeared, but it's still doable. Not much shopping in the whole AP. No new subsystems. About a gully style of direction.
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I would say Rise of the Runelords. Council of Theives for a Urban based adventure. Kingmaker for a sandbox adventure. I will be the dissenting voice and point out that while I recommend these APS the npc design for them are very poor imo. If your party is even slightly optimized they will defeat most encounters quite easily. The ones I ran I found myself taking major npcs and rebuilding most of them from scratch.
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I'm in a RotRL campaign right now, and to be honest I'm bored. We just started the 2nd book, I think, but there really hasn't been anything about it that's grabbed me.
Do you only consider Paizo APs or are you open to 3PPs too?
There are some excellent 3PP APs out there:
From Fire Mountain Games: The excellent evil AP Way of the Wicked. Or even the upcoming Throne of Night...
ENWorld Publishing's Zeitgeist AP
0One Games' Urban Road to Revolution AP
There's a psionic AP in the making by Dreamscarred Press...
Kingmaker: I loved this AP. With the flexibility it offers it was just perfect for me. When, later, I GMed it for another group I noticed that this lack of focus was not what they had been looking for.
Carrion Crown: I started playing it expecting horror. And I love horror settings, like CoC and similar. What I got was a mix of Van Helsing the movie mixed with Scooby Doo the animated series. The monsters were not horrifying, we just slaughtered most of them. The only exception in book 1 were some fights in which part of the group had to be inactive bystanders (every time the same PCs) with no fault on their side.
The books had little connection to each others. In one the group is chasing some organisation, in book two they abandon that chase and do something entirely different. In book three they go to visit someone's dad (again no chasing) and the rest I don't know because I had enough and quit.
One thing to add: Watching some movies is less railroading then playing this AP.
Edit: I think book 1 of CC could be nice as a solo adventure. And I think about GMing it. But the AP was horrifying only in how bad it was (at least for my)
The group has quite a bit of interest in Serpent's Skull, so I think we may end up running that.
Edit: Though Way of the Wicked does seem really interesting!
Also, I am interested in playing a Cavalier, which adventure paths would allow me to be mounted relatively often?
Kingmaker is the obvious choice for being mount friendly with its overland exploration. I would say Jade Regent is as well. If i had it to do over again i would go cavalier in a heartbeat as i really like the class.
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Since no one else has I'll put in a plug for Curse of the Crimson Throne.
If you like urban campaigns I would say it is excellent and being that most of it is urban it is easy to avoid that railroaded feeling.
The only down side is it is written for 3.5 but the conversions are fairly easy and you can find most of what you need already converted be someone else.
So my GM absolutely loves the idea of Way of the Wicked, so I think we might end up doing that unless a player objects. Which I don't think any will considering they are always trying to play evil characters in good campaigns.
Depends what you like. I've played at least parts of...5 APs now?
ROTRL is excellent, and WOTR is just spectacular. If you like a sandbox, Kinmaker is the best there is and everyone wants more like it.
So my GM absolutely loves the idea of Way of the Wicked, so I think we might end up doing that unless a player objects. Which I don't think any will considering they are always trying to play evil characters in good campaigns.
I'm playing that right now. Tip: don't let organization management slow the campaign down too much, players wanna kill things.
I'm a big fan of Council of Thieves. It's an urban campaign, which is cool. It has some very oddball scenarios to roleplay through. The Pathfinder Lodge is a really cool dungeon.
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I'm in a RotRL campaign right now, and to be honest I'm bored. We just started the 2nd book, I think, but there really hasn't been anything about it that's grabbed me.Well, then, good news! Things are about to get ugly...
Yes. This exactly.
Also, if OP wants to play a Cavalier, I can say for sure that:
In RotRL you will be frustrated a lot, but will have some (brief) moments of glory.
In Skull and Shackles, just don't, unless you're a dolphin riding Undine or something.
In Kingmaker, you will have a ton of fun.
The Cavalier in our Kingmaker group gets to 'do his thing' in at least 2/3 of encounters. Granted, he has to run off and set up a charge a lot, but it's still spectacular when it works and there's usually plenty of room for it.
It fits the theme pretty well too.
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If it's your first AP Rise of the Runelords is nice because it will only pull from the Core Rulebook and Bestiary 1... it's rather annoying how many supplement books RoW pulls from.
Just want to point out that the Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Runelords actually uses monsters from Bestiaries 1-3. A lot of the new monsters printed in the original AP issues now exist in the later bestiaries and therefore don't have their stats reprinted in the AE.
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I will give some advice for the third module in Rise of the Runelords.
I am only going to speak to APs I have actual experience with...
Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition, for that old-school D&D feel. Good mix of dungeon, town/urban, and wilderness/exploration. Many RP opportunities. This AP also has the most robust community support, with lots of side-quests/custom maps/alternate storylines and other GM support available. (This is the only AP I've GMed.)
Curse of the Crimson Throne for an excellent (mostly) urban campaign, complete with political intrigue and with a some survival-horror elements. It's 3.5, so it would need conversion to PFRPG, but there are a good amount of GM resources available. (I've only read this one. I'm currently running a non-CotCT homebrew campaign set in Korvosa, and I'm relying heavily on the AP for flavor. I am also lifting individual encounters and a couple of sub-plots from the AP.)
I am playing in Skull & Shackles, and it's a hoot. Avast mateys! We be raidin' the Fever Sea! Make the Chelish dogs walk the plank!
Shattered Star is NOT RotRL 2, it is its own beast, and quite deadly! i actually like Shattered Star a little bit more then Rise
Rise Of The Runelords is still their best AP so look into that one.
Check out Frog God Games Slumbering Tsar if you want an open sand boxed campaign, it is an amazing game as well.
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I found Serpent Skull to be very bad. The first adventure is quite good and offers an intersting hook to get the PCs into the rest of the thing, but everything after that seemed thrown together with many things that could have been cool like discovering the history and secrets of a lost city (which you get to do twice) turning into repetitive, uninspired combat encounters against non-threats (in both cases). What bugged me most was that for an AP seemingly invested in discovery, the main turning point comes in the shape of an all knowing NPC who has everything figured out and tells the PCs whats going on and what to do with it. Instead of all the cleaning of ruined cities block by block, the AP should have given us the real adventure instead of sending Eador Kline (?) on it.
Second Darkness was cool, but suffers from first adventure dissociation syndrom. Everything you get involved in and attached to in the first adventure plays no part in the rest of the AP (and there is no way to bring it back it either). All in all, I liked it much better than Serpent Skull as it manages to have a lot more variation, tell an interesting story with cool twists and actual have the PCs involved in the actual adventure ;).
Wrath of the Righteous seems quite good so far. Starting to GM the second book this sunday. Let's see how the mythic stuff works.
Do you intend to play the whole AP?
The 1st two mods of most are fair to good. Serpents part 1 seemed to go on too long IMO
It's part 3 where I have yet to find one I enjoyed, KM 3 being the best of these worst
I've played the first 3.5 parts of Serpents Skull and am in the middle of the third part of Kingmaker. I'm running Carrion Crown, where we are just finishing the forth book, have run the first book of Skull and Shackles and am just preparing to start CotCT.
The groups I play with are more into roleplaying than roll-playing. We love challenging combats and big bads, but endless mook fights and the like are not our thing. Most of us try to talk our way through encounters first. With that in mind ...
The first two books of Serpents Skull were absolutely awesome, but we found it lost focus in the middle parts. At first, the story was intriguing, the NPCs were great, the setting interesting, but then all that seemed to vanish and it descended into something of a grinding slog. We've put it into hiatus for the moment, although we will probably return to it, once the GM has had time to trim it a little.
Kingmaker is fantastic, but very, very different to anything else I have played. There is a lot of roleplaying, but it’s roleplaying on a grand scale – diplomacy with other nations, inspiring the populace, preparing for war and the like. We don't do a lot of combat, but I am not sure whether that's the campaign or the way we are playing it (we have a nation so we can hire other people to do our wet work). I’ll admit that I not really into the mechanics of nation building mini game, but fortunately another member of the party is, so most of us just say vaguely what we want to do and let him take the running. However, as fun as this campaign is, in the right hands, it has the potential to be become rather directionless, so I’d only recommend it for an experienced GM and players.
I have loved every moment of running Carrion Crown. It’s got a great mix of mystery, interesting combat, great atmosphere and fun roleplaying. I’ve portrayed Ustalav as more gaslight than Medieval, so it’s a nice change of atmosphere from the usual sword & sorcery fantasy, and the setting really comes alive through the plot and the assortment of classic foes. That’s not to say there are not problems. Players are led around by the nose and, as someone above said, while each adventure is great, they don’t hang together that well and you have to do some work to pull the campaign off. Difficult or obstinate players could easily things by not doing what they are clearly meant to. However, providing you have a party that is happy to just go with it and enjoy the story, as it is clearly intended, I couldn’t recommend CC more highly.
Skull and Shackles seems really fun. My players absolutely hated the first mate within moments of meeting him and the quickly made friends and enemies ont he ship and even started talking like pirates. However, I realised pretty quickly that my players are into being heroes who save the world, so they had issues with the whole “piracy” part of this adventure. I suggest being upfront with your players about what this is about - booty, plunder, making a name for yourself and freedom, not heroics - before kicking off. I’d seriously love to run it for a different bunch of players.
CoTCT also looks fabulous - an urban adventure with lots of opportunity for roleplaying, great NPCs, a hateful villain and a setting the PCs can really grow to care about. Unfortunately, though, I can’t say much more, having not run it yet.
Here's my list (in order):
Rise of the Runelords
Kingmaker
Curse of the Crimson Throne
Carrion Crown
Non-Paizo ones I'd recommend:
Rappan Athuk
Slumbering Tsar
Way of the Wicked
I heartily recommend Curse of the Crimson Throne. It needs conversion to the Pathfinder ruleset, but it may be the single best one of the bunch.
Right now I'm prepping a Rise of the Runelords campaign and it looks mightily impressive. Be sure to get the Anniversary Edition, though.
Jade Regent is plain awesome, too, but might need some modifications. Same goes for Legacy of Fire. Both APs got some great flavor to them.
Kingmaker just didn't work for me, which is not the AP's fault.
Shattered Star is very dungeon-centric, so be sure you and your players enjoy this kind of stuff.
As many have mentioned, Serpent's Skull needs a lot of work. My players are in chapter 3 right now, so I know what I'm talking about. If you're willing to go the extra mile, however, it's very rewarding and may become one of the best campaigns I've run.
Im currently running RotRL, and my players are loving it. We have a mixed group of old hat gamers, people who've played in a handful, and a brand, spanking-new player. The classic elements and monsters are picture perfect (IMO). I'm looking ahead to what I'll run next. I'm leaning towards Legacy of Fire, because the Arabian Nights feel is really evocative, but I'm hot sure about how rail-roady it is. All the APs are rail-roady, but some fake it better than others. Anyone have any advice on Legacy of Firem or want to steer me towards a different AP?
Carrion Crown
Kingmaker
Rise of the Runelords
Skulls & Shackles
All excellent and fun.
Serpents Skull...bored senseless. The only AP I have walked from
While I'll throw in my lot with the others and say that Rise of the Runelords is probably the best one to get into as your first AP, I absolutely love Reign of Winter. It's all about Eastern European-inspired mythology, combined with a bit of surrealism. And on top of that you visit some very, very exotic locales via the Pathfinder equivalent of the TARDIS.
The only downsides is that it's not for players who like staying in one region. Reign of Winter doesn't even stay in the same solar system for long.
Rise of the Runelord is my top
Council of Thieves is pretty good if your group likes intrigue and your GM is willing to put in effort to make the city alive and interesting.
My caution with Skull & Shackles is that I think the quality of the campaign varies greatly based on party composition. If you have players and a GM that will dive into being piratey head-first, and enjoy a sandboxey campaign, it will be great. I am playing it with a group that contains no piratey PCs and the GM is not a big pirate fan, and it has been kind of a flop. My sense is that most of the APs provide solid stories that any party can be pretty happy with, but Skull & Shackles is somewhat reliant on the party buying into the "You are pirates! Be pirates!" aspect of the campaign.
Skull and Shackles and Kingmaker are my favorites by far:) followed close behind by Shattered Star:)
Rise of the Runelord is my top
Council of Thieves is pretty good if your group likes intrigue and your GM is willing to put in effort to make the city alive and interesting.My caution with Skull & Shackles is that I think the quality of the campaign varies greatly based on party composition. If you have players and a GM that will dive into being piratey head-first, and enjoy a sandboxey campaign, it will be great. I am playing it with a group that contains no piratey PCs and the GM is not a big pirate fan, and it has been kind of a flop. My sense is that most of the APs provide solid stories that any party can be pretty happy with, but Skull & Shackles is somewhat reliant on the party buying into the "You are pirates! Be pirates!" aspect of the campaign.
so let me get this right, none of you like pirates and your GM doesn't like pirates, yet you pick... a pirate campaign....... do you see where ya lost me?
what exactly were you expecting? why on earth did you pick this AP with like 12 others to choose from? was it so you had something to complain about? (my wife's parents do this they'll go places they dislike, just so they can complain about it during and after)
Rise of the Runelord is my top
Council of Thieves is pretty good if your group likes intrigue and your GM is willing to put in effort to make the city alive and interesting.My caution with Skull & Shackles is that I think the quality of the campaign varies greatly based on party composition. If you have players and a GM that will dive into being piratey head-first, and enjoy a sandboxey campaign, it will be great. I am playing it with a group that contains no piratey PCs and the GM is not a big pirate fan, and it has been kind of a flop. My sense is that most of the APs provide solid stories that any party can be pretty happy with, but Skull & Shackles is somewhat reliant on the party buying into the "You are pirates! Be pirates!" aspect of the campaign.
so let me get this right, none of you like pirates and your GM doesn't like pirates, yet you pick... a pirate campaign....... do you see where ya lost me?
what exactly were you expecting? why on earth did you pick this AP with like 12 others to choose from? was it so you had something to complain about? (my wife's parents do this they'll go places they dislike, just so they can complain about it during and after)
Same question here.
Were the AP volumes a present or something?
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Rise of the Runelord is my top
Council of Thieves is pretty good if your group likes intrigue and your GM is willing to put in effort to make the city alive and interesting.My caution with Skull & Shackles is that I think the quality of the campaign varies greatly based on party composition. If you have players and a GM that will dive into being piratey head-first, and enjoy a sandboxey campaign, it will be great. I am playing it with a group that contains no piratey PCs and the GM is not a big pirate fan, and it has been kind of a flop. My sense is that most of the APs provide solid stories that any party can be pretty happy with, but Skull & Shackles is somewhat reliant on the party buying into the "You are pirates! Be pirates!" aspect of the campaign.
so let me get this right, none of you like pirates and your GM doesn't like pirates, yet you pick... a pirate campaign....... do you see where ya lost me?
what exactly were you expecting? why on earth did you pick this AP with like 12 others to choose from? was it so you had something to complain about? (my wife's parents do this they'll go places they dislike, just so they can complain about it during and after)
Same question here.
Were the AP volumes a present or something?
The campaign is a friend's first stab at GMing, and she decided to let the players choose the AP. Of the original 5 party members, 2 didn't particularly want to play S&S (including me, I wanted Reign of Winter), and 3 really did (including the GM's fiance). The GM incorrectly figured that she could run a campaign well without having much interest in it (against my advice). I figured that I may not play a natural pirate, but I can play a character that gets swept up in it, so sure, I'll stick around. Then, 1 of the 3 pro-S&S people dropped 2 sessions in, and the other 2 pro-S&S people brought forward the most bland, flat, and inactive characters I have seen to the table. One has no character to speak of (honestly, remove the character completely and not much will have changed), the other only drinks and complains that he is not actively killing something (I am not exaggerating, I can count the number of non-drink/killing related things he has said/done on one hand, and we are in book 4). The character that acts the most like a pirate is my character, who was supposed to be a reluctant pirate, but ended up Captain and trying to lead the group to some semblance of being piratey. So the issue is the people who like pirates aren't actually acting like pirates, and the ones who don't really like pirates are trying to pull up the slack. Not ideal.
The GM thus far has not cancelled it due to the fact anytime she broaches the subject of stopping the 2 pirate-loving ones (again, one of which is her fiance) persuade her that it is really fun and they want to keep going. Yeah, it doesn't make sense at all. The main reason I haven't dropped out of the group yet is due to not wanting to deal with the social fallout and the GM's continued promises me that she will turn it around. I think I finally have persuaded the GM to drop the campaign soon though.
Anyway, all my personal group dysfunction aside, I definitely see the potential of S&S. I have another group that I kind of want to run it for, because I think they would have a blast with it. I just think that compared to the other APs I have read/played/GMed, having the right group for it is far more important. I mean, you don't have to have the group commit to a particular theme for Rise of the Runelords or Reign of Winter to be good For Skull and Shackles I think having the group buy into the theme is about as important as what is in the books.
i see! I just had to ask:) it all makes sense now:)
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Honestly, having the right group is the single most important thing in any game.
Having the wrong game to go with the group can make a "sorta right" group into a very not right group, yes, I agree. But having the most amazing setting or adventure ever is not going to save a bad group.
If you start with all the right (and really right) people in the first place, what system or setting or game you're playing is not as important.
(And I do get the having fun with "sorta right" groups. I've had people I gamed with where I can have fun, but know that I just have to check certain expectations at the door, and make sure that the game has a certain tone, before I will try it with that group.)
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Age of Worms
Stop at nothing. Become Invincible. Slay a God!
A tough campaign that gives clerics a reason to use turn/rebuke undead. Certainly hearkens back to olde school D&D.
Rise of the Runelords is the best if you want good old fashioned dungeon crawl.
Jade Regent has great pacing and feels like a right-proper "Epic Journey."
Reign of Winter just... Felt fresh and fun for me, not to mention the love-sick Winter Wolf Waifu was fantastic.
Kingmaker is a mix-up; the storyline itself is forgettable and the pacing is frankly just plain bad, but everyone loves it (for good reason) because it's got kingdom building mechanics... Which has become irrelevant because those kingdom building mechanics were released in "Ultimate Campaign."
Skulls and Shackles + Serpent's Skull are fun because it's one DM/Player conversation away from jungle fever, which is all sorts of hot.
Rise of the Runelords is the best if you want good old fashioned dungeon crawl.
No RotRL isn't an old fashioned dungeon crawl, that is Shattered Star and in my opinion that AP isn't very good.