Serpent's Skull (AP complete) quick impressions

[cibet44]

Serpent's Skull was the 5th consecutive AP I've GM'd start to finish. It took us a full two years. I'd like to share my thoughts on it for future GM's of the path.

- Overall, though much maligned, it was an enjoyable campaign. It requires a significant amount of GM tweaking and flat out rewriting but it still provides a good framework for adventure.

- It uses very little (maybe nothing) of non-core rule book rules. This is probably the last Paizo AP to do so. My group is still a "core rule book only" group, probably one of the last in the world, but I thought I'd mention this. It's a bit of a milestone for Paizo I think.

- That being said it basically begs to add the mass combat rules for the last chapter. Which I did to pretty good effect. The mass combat rules worked well for the 3 or 4 mass combats we had. A pretty concise rule-set overall and worth a look.

- Chapter 1 of the AP was a fine adventure but very isolated from the rest of the path. One of the first changes I made was to make the alliances they formed on the island have impact all the way through to the last chapter of the AP. It's been over two years at this point since we played part 1 so I can't recall all the details but I suggest other GMs do the same.

- The AP as written really struggles in parts 3 and 4. This is probably the section that needs the most GM modification. You have to really take a hands on approach to pull the campaign through these parts. The written adventures require more work from the GM than any other AP I've run and leave things very open for the PCs with little direction. The AP can really go off the rails here.

- To get through the AP I would suggest reading the Conan "Red Nails" story and using that as your inspiration for the Serpentfolk overall.

- If your players are Golarianphiles there is a significant amount of Golarian history buried in this AP. If your players have the interest I think there is a lot to mine. Between this AP and Second Darkness (oddly two of the most universally disliked APs) a large amount of Goalrian history and back-story are revealed.

- For my group I used any victories they achieved using mass combat to weaken the Aspect of Ydersius for the final battle. For my group Ydersius would be pretty much unbeatable without this (remember we are core rulebook only). I took away resistances or spell like abilities, etc, for each time one of there armies defeated an opposing army of Serpentfolk.

- Overall I think the AP is a good one. I don't think it can be run without GM enhancement so be prepared to do this. If all the APs were written like this one I don't think the AP line would be the success that it is today.

[Fletch]

I'm so glad to hear this, because Serpent's Skull was one of my favorite APs to read and the one I hoped the most would be fun to play.

Interesting comment on the disassociation of Chapter 1, though, since I felt the impact of how the PCs treat their fellow castaways already impacts future developments, while the discovery of the existence of Savinth Yhi (and how to find it) kicks off the whole thing in a self-motivating, let's-get-rich way that I really appreciate.

For me, it was Chapter 2 which seemed the most divorced from the campaign, with the weird lack of a "race," minimal interaction with their faction, and the eins-zwei, hopscotch encounters as they walked casually across the savannah.

[walter mcwilliams]

I am so psyched to run this for my group. I've been planning for over a year waiting my turn in our DM rotation!!

[claidheamh]

Thanks for the comments on the AP - your notes mirror what a number of other posters have brought up. We'll be starting this AP in January, and I'm already considering fairly major changes to AP 2,3,4 (enhancements for 3 and 4, rewrites for 2).

I'm downloading Red Nails from Gutenberg to give it a read.

[TheMonocleRogue]

I've taken your notes with great consideration for this AP. I have to agree that parts 3 and 4 need some major revision. Here's what I've done so far for those books:

Spoiler:

I decided to combine books 3 and 4 into one, with book 4 starting as soon as the party finds out about the existence of the vaults. I've also removed the Juliver/Kline sub-plot since I've had a fair share of bad experiences with NPCentric campaigns where big name NPCs ended up taking the spotlight away from the players. I instead decided to replace them with morlock slaves who escaped their serpentfolk captors and had their memories wiped when the portal was destroyed, yet they remembered just enough to understand how to get the portals working again.