Huh, I wonder why I never thought of GM guides before...
Anyway, if you ever have issues with an AP, Paizo's forums here are a great help. Just go the AP's specific sub-forum and scan the page for assistance threads or start your own. You'll find more than enough people are willing to work with you on helping you understand and expland the points of the APs so that the campaign and villains work.
I believe some APs actually provide that level of detail in the first two pages of each part. That said, Paizo also recommends owning all six books of an AP before running it so you have a better idea of what is going on.
And I might suggest Hell's Rebels as a good AP that does provide a sense of NPCs that drive the conflict forward.
I was going to say that I've seen GM Reference Threads for APs around here, but I'm not sure that they actually have what you're looking for; I haven't looked very far into any of them, though.
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Huh, I wonder why I never thought of GM guides before...
Anyway, if you ever have issues with an AP, Paizo's forums here are a great help. Just go the AP's specific sub-forum and scan the page for assistance threads or start your own. You'll find more than enough people are willing to work with you on helping you understand and expland the points of the APs so that the campaign and villains work.
I've looked at the various Assistance threads here and they are a great resource. I'm running Carrion Crown module 1 right now and some of the haunting ideas I seen on these boards for Harrowstone Prison have been fantastic.
But the downside of them is that data is very spread out and it doesn't really work well for a GM looking for a clean and comprehensive layout of the AP's plan.
Carrion Crown is notorious for its big bad feeling disconnected from the story. I haven't read a huge number of APs, but the ones I have looked over seem to do a better job of bringing out the main antagonist and outlining their goals and what they plan on doing to achieve them (Reign of Winter and Hell's Rebels being good examples, even if it takes until book 2 for the PCs to realize who they are fighting in Reign of Winter).
Unfortunately, the assumption does seem to be "read at least the outlines of all six books in an AP before you start," which I recognize can be frustrating. Perhaps you could be a pioneer in this as of yet unexplored field on the boards? I'm sure if you posted the information you seek in the Carrion Crown threads (once you have said information) people would be grateful :-) I think I may do that with Reign of Winter some day soon... hmmmm...
^By any chance, is that as a PbP on these (or some other publicly accessible) boards?
:-(
Okay -- campaign journal anywhere online?
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Someday i'll achieve the dream of running Carrion Crown as Ghostbusters. Someday...
In the first part of each Adventure Path, there's a two page spread (usually at the back of the book) giving an outline of the entire campaign. It's probably not enough detail to know you main villain's every motivation, but it should be enough to tell you if you'd be interested in buying the rest of the books.
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Part of the issue is the way print matter works. When the first volume goes to the printers, they may be still working on the 3rd 4th 5 th and 6th books of the AP. ( I believe the print deadline for the early August books is May, so I'm guessing 2-3 months average) this means that if they were to wait for a gm book yo be written they would either have to wait for the last manuscript to come in to get the level of detail you are asking for, meaning it would come out at least 6 months after the last book, or write it in house.. And many paizo staffers are already doing 60 hours weeks at least nice a month
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I believe one of the forwards for Carrion Crown includes regrets about not introducing some of the villains earlier and suggestions for how to deal with it. Something along the lines of leaving letters for the PCs on the bodies of lesser villains they kill.
I also recommend Hell's Rebels as an AP that makes the BBEG and his motivations clear from the get-go. I still recommend having the whole AP in hand before running it, as you don't have all the information about Kintargo in volume 1, despite the great city guide.
Wrath of the Righteous includes the status of major allies and villains on the inside front and back cover of each AP. But Wrath of the Righteous also has some mythic-related issues that require their own set of work to run.
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I believe one of the forwards for Carrion Crown includes regrets about not introducing some of the villains earlier and suggestions for how to deal with it. Something along the lines of leaving letters for the PCs on the bodies of lesser villains they kill.
Book 6, specifically. ^_^
Wrath of the Righteous includes the status of major allies and villains on the inside front and back cover of each AP. But Wrath of the Righteous also has some mythic-related issues that require their own set of work to run.
+1000%
Great AP... but be ready to do a lot of work.
There is no point in putting it out then, especially when the community has already done their job for them.
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One of the potential issues with creating a new product for these older Paths is the partial unavailability of physical copies. If someone buys the Carrion Crown guide, only to find that print copies are unavailable from Paizo (and command ludicrous prices on the secondary market), they probably won't have a lot of good feeling for Paizo. Even if only a few react this way, it's still a factor for the people at the top who have to approve such a product.
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I don't think AP-specific GM Guides are a terrible idea, but three things:
1) The Philosophical Objection: I actually think that sorting through the community-created content is better. Yeah, it takes longer, but you have more options. Some of them you'll love, and some of them you'll hate ... but the ones you hate, someone else will love, and vice-versa.
2) The Practical Objection: Paizo is producing all the content they can with the staff they have in the time they have available. It's not like they're kicking around at the end of the month, playing solitaire and checking Facebook, wondering if there's something else they could be doing with their time. Heck, their schedule slips a month behind at least once every year in one of the product lines. Producing a new book twice a year would require hiring new employees or cutting current production.
3) The Capitalist Objection: Paizo's business is kept afloat by subscriptions, people buying new product every month when it is first released. They want everything they're doing to be pushing their new APs, not harkening back to old products, because they want to attract new subscribers more than they want to empty their warehouse. People buying old stuff they still have around is great ... but not as great as people committing to buying the stuff that's going to be coming out every month.
I've been running games almost constantly for about 15 years now. We've changed games, players, real-life cities, but GMing has been a constant that whole time. So just this last year I started GMing a Pathfinder game and I am both thrilled by the material and sorely disappointed by it.
As modules the Adventure Paths are fantastic. The art, writing, and challenges are great. But from a campaign perspective they are CRAP. Sorry, but they are. Let me explain, then please prove me wrong. I would like to be wrong here because I really like the game. ^_^
Now the issue might be that there's a book or resource that I don't know about, please tell me if that's the case.
As a GM I like to know what the point is for my campaigns. I plan out the villains, their goals, and how they plan to achieve those goals. I layout clues like bread crumbs for players to follow. But the Adventure Paths don't seem to be designed with that style of GMing in mind.Take Carrion Crown for example. The first module sets up a very vague idea of what the main plot of the campaign will be, but it fails to setup anything on the NPCs that are meant to drive the conflict forward. The main antagonist is vaguely described and his plans are not elaborated on at all. In order to get even a vague idea of what's going on, a GM needs to read through every single adventure module before running that first adventure. That's a very tall order, especially if you're not sure that a game will last long enough to make buying the whole AP worth it.
As the GM, I have a slightly better idea of what's going on than the players, but the gap is not that large.
What would help and what I would really really appreciate is a GM Guide to each AP. I would happily pay for a GM version of the Players Guides that Paizo produces for each AP for the players. A book laying out who the main Antagonists are, 1-2 NPCs of note from each module (the most important ones), what the Antagonists plans are and an outline of the events that will occur during the AP. I...
I think that sometimes the last books are still being written when the first books are out so it is hard to be too specific, but I don't see why some crumbs for the GM can't be done unless Paizo is worried about boxing themselves into a corner.
All you need to run an AP is all six books. That's all, everything else is just gravy. If you can't wait until all six books are released, that's on you. :-)
Creative Director
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A GM guide to an AP is an interesting idea, but in a perfect world, the AP itself is the GM's guide. An AP that needs a supplementary guide for the GM to play it, to me, indicates that the AP isn't functioning in its intended role.
And yeah, I'm fully aware that means that some of our APs are more successful in this area than others. It's a constant struggle! :-P
IMO, albeit from limited experience, the amount of GM material in an AP book far exceeds that of the module description itself. This viewpoint considers the gazeteers, sidebars, tales, forewards, etc. Maybe the older APS weren't as detailed (the OP was for an OGL/3.5E AP, correct?), but the several newer ones I have read are chock full of GM guidance. I'm learning how to GM on them, in fact.
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One of the potential issues with creating a new product for these older Paths is the partial unavailability of physical copies. If someone buys the Carrion Crown guide, only to find that print copies are unavailable from Paizo (and command ludicrous prices on the secondary market), they probably won't have a lot of good feeling for Paizo. Even if only a few react this way, it's still a factor for the people at the top who have to approve such a product.Aren't many of the AP's available as PDFs on the Paizo store here on the website?
Oh, yes. But I still see a lot of complaints from people who want a printed copy, and are frustrated by the unavailability.
Earlier adventure paths didn't even have the campaign outline in book 1.
So, yay for progress!
I've played a few, looked through a bunch, and only ran 2 (my current Carrion Crown, and co-GMing 2 modules of Kingmaker).
Your sample may be a little skewed, as Kingmaker and Carrion Crown are the APs most often criticized for not telegraphing their endgame. (Second Darkness probably belongs on that list, too, for staring book 1 with one focus and then going in a completely different direction.) Ironically, Kingmaker was made that way on purpose in answer to criticism of the BBEG of previous APs being obvious from book one but a final confrontation artificially put off until book six.
Take a look at Hell's Rebels.