the players's guides are supposed to do this - the PCs should work with the DM to integrate their character (created with the assistance of the player's guide) into the campaign world (which the DM theoretically knows how he wants to run it).When considering an AP the most important factor for me is "will a PC be personally invested"?
Stopping the Big Bad Evil Dude is not a great motivation, no matter how much it is sold in the roleplaying business. Stopping the BBEG who murdered your village, sold you into slavery and many years later you have broken free and want to stop him doing the same unto others (:the world), is a great motivation.
Very few APs will go the mileage and involve PCs visceraly into its world. This is why I believe that Skull and Shackles is one of the best and most engaging APs because it makes this extremely personal from the get go. Furthermore the characters are expected to have ambitions and thinking processes similar to us normal people. This makes for a much more natural flow of things.
To add to the fine replies to this, many Player Guides come out before their story seems to have been decided in the detail. There is a huge disconnect often between how certain NPCs act in early volumes vs late or the ambiance (see: Council of Thieves, changing to a behind the curtains elite group to a standard thief guild dungeon by the later volumes).
What I mean is that Players Guides often do not represent an AP well or set the expectations quite where they should be - I believe they do a great job with the information at hand - yet the feel that they deal more with the theme rather than the nature of the story structure.
Disclaimer, have not run or played any of the newer APs, Paizo is very good at learning from the past though. (Shifter class not included in this veredict)
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the players's guides are supposed to do this - the PCs should work with the DM to integrate their character (created with the assistance of the player's guide) into the campaign world (which the DM theoretically knows how he wants to run it).When considering an AP the most important factor for me is "will a PC be personally invested"?
Stopping the Big Bad Evil Dude is not a great motivation, no matter how much it is sold in the roleplaying business. Stopping the BBEG who murdered your village, sold you into slavery and many years later you have broken free and want to stop him doing the same unto others (:the world), is a great motivation.
Very few APs will go the mileage and involve PCs visceraly into its world. This is why I believe that Skull and Shackles is one of the best and most engaging APs because it makes this extremely personal from the get go. Furthermore the characters are expected to have ambitions and thinking processes similar to us normal people. This makes for a much more natural flow of things.
To add to the fine replies to this, many Player Guides come out before their story seems to have been decided in the detail. There is a huge disconnect often between how certain NPCs act in early volumes vs late or the ambiance (see: Council of Thieves, changing to a behind the curtains elite group to a standard thief guild dungeon by the later volumes).
What I mean is that Players Guides often do not represent an AP well or set the expectations quite where they should be - I believe they do a great job with the information at hand - yet the feel that they deal more with the theme rather than the nature of the story structure.
Disclaimer, have not run or played any of the newer APs, Paizo is very good at learning from the past though. (Shifter class not included in this veredict)
THEY do an okay job. But I think they could be better. The initial framework of the adventure, namely, how the PCs get together, should be mentioned every time.
Essentially, every player's guide should demand: If you want to play this, you have to have a PC who is can be at this place at this time.
Also, Player's Guides should explain the initial hook, which can really help a PC make a character that can jump into the AP Setting with two feet, rather than make a character and then shoehorn them in, as another poster mentioned.
Most APs start with a bang. It's not giving away the plot of the AP if players are told what the bang is. But it can really help you make a great character who can take up the call of ADVENTURE with that bang.
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Crovax the Shadowed is pretty awesome.
I don't doubt that. And the beauty of writing your own campaign is that you can cater to your players and modify it according to their character choices (or, even better, built it around their character).
I can do the same with published campaigns, but that can lead to a lot of modifications and might lead to a result that is far away from what's written in the books. Might still be worth it though, if you have the time to do it.
I get the impression that if you do want to run a published AP, you need to write your own supplemental Player's Guide that goes beyond what I most often see in PbP Recruitment threads (the first posts usually have character creation rules and house rules).
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I get the impression that if you do want to run a published AP, you need to write your own supplemental Player's Guide that goes beyond what I most often see in PbP Recruitment threads (the first posts usually have character creation rules and house rules).
PbPs have a certain advantage in that the game is slower and often more story- and charactercentric, so you can have a deeper and more complex built-up in the game after character creation. But yeah, if you look at the WotR PG as an example, while there's a lot of stuff about the themes and certain elements of that AP, there's near to no information about the starting location and its inhabitants in the PG, so if your PCs want to have lived there for a time, there's a certain amount of material you might have to give them access to beforehand.
The good thing is that this material is already there, through supporting articles in the AP's single issues or via the campaign and companion lines, so any GM running a published AP should have access to the stuff.
But it is something to keep in mind when you're writing your own campaign and want to have a player handout or a whole player's guide for your players to use.