It’s Adventure (Explanation) Time!

Will there ever be something between a oneshot and an adventure? Like a mini adventure that takes only 3-6 sessions, a bit like the beginner's box adventure (but maybe something more than just a dungeon crawl).

Will there ever be something between a oneshot and an adventure? Like a mini adventure that takes only 3-6 sessions, a bit like the beginner's box adventure (but maybe something more than just a dungeon crawl).

For now, that nihce is being filled by Pathfinder Society scenarios, of which we publish a LOT. But we do have some other plans in the works... stay tuned!

I have mixed feeling on the change honestly. having 3 parters is nice, but I miss the 6 parters.

QUITE surprised no 6 parter (that we know of anyways) for the Mythic, shocked that would'nt warrent one honestly.

And if Wrath for PF II is'nt in the cards then perhaps a new Rift type concept/event opens up somewhere else to use the new mythic stuff upcoming in as of yet unexplored region might be quite interesting, and a 6 parter to please, LOL!!.

I really felt the lack of a 6 parter in Quest for the frozen flame as it is the first exploring the Northern Barbarian lands and a 6 parter would have fleshed out a lot more about the tribes, how when where they live and intertribal dynamics my players kept asking for info on but other than just making stuff up, I could'nt give then a reply, kinda bugged me more than a bit, still a great AP though and everyone is having fun with it.

Hoping we will get some cool info at Paizocon then GENCON on future projects and your new experiments in the AP line and await then next 6 parter whenever it shows up :).

Tom

Currently I am running

2 king games

1 Blood Lords

2 Age of Ashes

1 frozen flame

Rust then 7 Dooms

then some Starfinder games

I have run every AP except Outlaws (I just did'nt like it), Sky Kings Tomb but will when I find the right group, Season of Ghosties (fell apart before we started sadly) then might run Wardens but want to see how the other modules go.

Planning on running

Prey

Curtain Call

Tusk

for the gods death and mythic full storyline (Left a question post for ya James in the Prey product thread about that to!!)

Thoughts?

Tom

We will for sure have more info at PaizoCon.

As for mythic... we learned a very important lesson with Wrath of the Righteous. Do not do a mythic adventure or Adventure Path until we, the creators of the adventure in question, are comfortable with presenting mythic adventures. None of the adventures coming out this year will be written for mythic PCs, but we WILL be doing mythic adventures and Adventure Paths in the future, once we've had a chance to become comfortable with writing and developing adventures for those variants (and also, importantly, can actually provide our authors with those rules and that advice).

While we won't be doing a 1st to 20th level mythic adventure, neither will we only be doing one adventure or Adventure Path built for mythic characters. Stay tuned, but again... it'll not be this year.

My group has been playing Pathfinder since 2015, and we've almost exclusively played the 1-17/1-20 APs. When we heard that the death of Gorum was going to be in an 11-20 campaign, we were all very disappointed. I know you've mentioned that 1-20 campaigns aren't completely off the table, but from what I understand, there are no current plans for another 1-20 AP. Is that correct?

My group is an outlier in terms of playtime and consistency. We play every Saturday from 12:00 to 00:00, and we've done that for the past 10 years or so. We make it through a six-book AP in about six months. We purposefully waited until 2e had a decent backlog of APs before switching over from 1e to avoid blowing through all the available content too quickly. With the news that there are no plans for additional 1-20 APs, we are concerned for the future.

As of now, we plan on linking together some 1-10 campaigns and 11-20 campaigns. Our issue with that method is the lack of narrative connection between these campaigns. A few of them, like Quest for the Frozen Flame, occur in a time and place that makes connecting a higher-level AP to it almost impossible. There's also a severe lack of higher-level three-book APs.

The point is, we play a lot of Pathfinder. We buy a lot of books. We want more 1-20 campaigns. It is our preferred method of playing. I understand that you want to tell the right stories and that the shorter APs might make more sense for your future plans. I just want you all to know that we are a group of avid Pathfinder players who deeply enjoy your content and want more six-book APs. Soon, please. We are running out.

While we have no 1–20 Adventure Paths announced and none planned for next year, I do have some story ideas that WOULD work better as a 1-20 campaign, or at the very least as a 1–10 and 11–20 two parter. If and when we get to those stories we'll for sure let folks know.

I HAVE already leaked that there's going to be a very good choice for folks to play after Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint at some point, so if you play that one, save those PCs for later. We haven't announced more about that yet though.

And also going forward I'm trying harder to build in narrative links with the high level Adventure Paths... either built in to the story (as in the upcoming Curtain Call, which serves great as a continuation for ANY 1st to 10th campaign), or supported in the Player's Guide.

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

I HAVE already leaked that there's going to be a very good choice for folks to play after Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint at some point, so if you play that one, save those PCs for later. We haven't announced more about that yet though.

For the purposes of scheduling my upcoming Seven Dooms campaign, can we get a rough estimate for when that adventure is expected to release? Sometime in 2025?

While we have no 1–20 Adventure Paths announced and none planned for next year, I do have some story ideas that WOULD work better as a 1-20 campaign, or at the very least as a 1–10 and 11–20 two parter. If and when we get to those stories we'll for sure let folks know.

I HAVE already leaked that there's going to be a very good choice for folks to play after Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint at some point, so if you play that one, save those PCs for later. We haven't announced more about that yet though.

And also going forward I'm trying harder to build in narrative links with the high level Adventure Paths... either built in to the story (as in the upcoming Curtain Call, which serves great as a continuation for ANY 1st to 10th campaign), or supported in the Player's Guide.

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

Linked APs that go to 20 would be a great way to split the difference, especially if they weren't done consecutively. You could even announce the sequel in the last part of the first AP.

James Jacobs wrote:

I HAVE already leaked that there's going to be a very good choice for folks to play after Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint at some point, so if you play that one, save those PCs for later. We haven't announced more about that yet though.

For the purposes of scheduling my upcoming Seven Dooms campaign, can we get a rough estimate for when that adventure is expected to release? Sometime in 2025?

I'm wary about saying, since until an Adventure Path is announced it can shift. This one in particular has already done that, moving several months into the future. Sometime in 2025 would be the earliest possible landing date, but not a guaranteed one.

When an announced product gets delayed, it's frustrating for everyone. So I'm trying to temper expectations, while also trying to let folks know there ARE plans for an Adventure Path that would be a good choice to play after Seven Dooms, since it WON'T be out this year.

Linked APs that go to 20 would be a great way to split the difference, especially if they weren't done consecutively. You could even announce the sequel in the last part of the first AP.

As mentioned in my previous post on this thread, mentioning things too early can cause frustration and confusion. When an announced product is delayed, that can do damage and cause disconnects, so we try to be careful. One thing I can do though is, like in the case of Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, I can say "Hold on to these PCs; there's more coming" or something like that.

Not a perfect solution, alas.

While we have no 1–20 Adventure Paths announced and none planned for next year, I do have some story ideas that WOULD work better as a 1-20 campaign, or at the very least as a 1–10 and 11–20 two parter. If and when we get to those stories we'll for sure let folks know.

I HAVE already leaked that there's going to be a very good choice for folks to play after Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint at some point, so if you play that one, save those PCs for later. We haven't announced more about that yet though.

And also going forward I'm trying harder to build in narrative links with the high level Adventure Paths... either built in to the story (as in the upcoming Curtain Call, which serves great as a continuation for ANY 1st to 10th campaign), or supported in the Player's Guide.

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

All very encouraging. Onward and forward! :)

Excited to see standalone 128-page adventures coming out. I think this will be a nice length to sprinkle in some more variety for my group without having to commit to a much longer campaign. More experimental stuff works great for this purpose, so thumbs up for that.

I hear some of the longer multi-volume releases have had issues with keeping a cohesive storyline that runs throughout (we're fairly new to Pathfinder so haven't run into this personally). I imagine single-volume releases will make it easier to avoid this problem, is that something you're thinking about here?

I'm also curious what the plans are for Foundry releases of these adventures, since that's how we play. Will you be doing them for every release like you do for Adventure Paths?

Excited to see standalone 128-page adventures coming out. I think this will be a nice length to sprinkle in some more variety for my group without having to commit to a much longer campaign. More experimental stuff works great for this purpose, so thumbs up for that.

I hear some of the longer multi-volume releases have had issues with keeping a cohesive storyline that runs throughout (we're fairly new to Pathfinder so haven't run into this personally). I imagine single-volume releases will make it easier to avoid this problem, is that something you're thinking about here?

I'm also curious what the plans are for Foundry releases of these adventures, since that's how we play. Will you be doing them for every release like you do for Adventure Paths?

It's not so much single-volume releases as single-author releases that have a stronger method of keeping a strong narrative through-line. Part of our jobs as developers for Adventure Paths is to do our best to adjust the multiple adventures so that they DO have that throguh line, and we are more successful sometimes than we are at others... but also, the simple fact that an Adventure Path is so long does it no real favors there. That's another factor in favor of the three part shorter Adventure Paths—it's easier for the players to keep up with the story since the story doesn't play out at the table over the course of nearly as long. (I know from personal experience that it's hard as a player to keep up on a complex campaign plot if, for example, the group doesn't meet that often or that regularly.)

As for Foundry releases, that's not my department so you'll have to ask elsewhere—I get nervous making predictions and promises about other folks' work schedules! For sure we do want to continue doing them though!

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

What if there was one 1st to 20th adventure and two three-parters per year ?

James Jacobs wrote:

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

What if there was one 1st to 20th adventure and two three-parters per year ?

They tried it early in the PF2 cycle.

One year and a half of only 6 parters (the first 3 APs were 6-parters, I only put the last one on my timeline above cause it was the only one relevant to the "pattern" I wanted to talk about).
Then two full years of two 2-parters and one 6-parters.
Then there was almost a year of 3-parters, the last one being the special 4-parter that stepped over to the current year.
Then a month off, and the "two-in-one, but actually almost a three-in-one" 200th book.
And now going back to 3-parters.

I do feel like they really tried to make the 6 parters work, and they experimented with diverse configurations.

I am excited to see more standalone adventures that are levels 1-whatever. I’m still getting my Rusthenge group together but it would have been nice to have a greater variety of options to for ease of jumping into the other, higher level Adventures and AP’s afterwards.

Ideally each “region” in the inner sea and beyond should have a standalone adventure in one of its countries (or other locales) to aid this launch towards the more complex adventures near it. This would take considerable coordination between writers but would be well worth it IMO. Why not have a couple of starter “shining kingdoms” adventures? Starter “Golden Road” adventures and so forth?

James Jacobs wrote:

I do hear that some folks want more 1st to 20th campaigns, and I hope we can do some again. They're not FOREVER off the table, but the reality is that it's healthier for Paizo for us to do four 3 part Adventure Paths a year than it is two 6 part ones. In the meantime, building a healthier and more balanced offering of low and high level ones with better guidance for linking them is my goal.

What if there was one 1st to 20th adventure and two three-parters per year ?

IF we decide at some future point to do another 1st to 20th level Adventure Path, I strongly suspect this is the route we'd take, but at this point that would need to be a decision we plan ahead for a few years in advance so we can be sure to have the resources to do this (currently our work schedules assume developers are working on non-consecutave 3 part stories, and having one work on a 6 part one would require some scheduling stuntwork) and that management is comfortable pursuing an Adventure Path that would almost surely earn Paizo less money than two three part ones.

Again... the three part ones are a healthier business model overall, so a 6 parter would have to be a special occasion that the company decides to do eyes open and be comfortable with the situation. It's not the type of thing, say, we'd risk in a volatile year like 2023, when the OGL situation made the future hard to plan for.

I do feel like they really tried to make the 6 parters work, and they experimented with diverse configurations.

Exactly right. We tried hard to make it work, but 3 part ones are just healthier for the bottom line (and thus healthier for Paizo employees and their salaries, to be blunt), more creatively rewarding for us (since we get to tell twice as many stories), and less intimidating for players and GMs to take a shot at playing.

I am excited to see more standalone adventures that are levels 1-whatever. I’m still getting my Rusthenge group together but it would have been nice to have a greater variety of options to for ease of jumping into the other, higher level Adventures and AP’s afterwards.

Ideally each “region” in the inner sea and beyond should have a standalone adventure in one of its countries (or other locales) to aid this launch towards the more complex adventures near it. This would take considerable coordination between writers but would be well worth it IMO. Why not have a couple of starter “shining kingdoms” adventures? Starter “Golden Road” adventures and so forth?

We'll continue to release standalone 1st level (or at least low level) adventures in greater numbers overall than mid or high level ones. Rusthenge, Crown of the Kobold King, and The Enmity Cycle are three recent examples, and now that we've got the OGL crisis behind us and the Remastered game more or less out, I'm hopeful we can get back to producing a more regular offering of standalone adventures. Including ones that explore regions that aren't explored in the Adventure Path.

There's far too many regions in the campaign setting to responsibly produce starter adventures for all of them though, especially since we DO want to do higher level standalones now and then. Even when things are back and up and running smoothly, I don't anticipate us publishing more than two 128 page standalone adventures in a year, so that amount of additional work that doing a starter adventure for each region would take a LONG time to realize.

Thanks for the great reply James to mine and to the other ones! Its so much easier for me to deal with (IE less frustration, and guessing Paizo intent/thoughts) what my players and I feel we want and what we get when we get comms on this from you guys "checking in". And seeing if anything has changed to the old and newer player and GM base out there!!!

Keep up[ the good work and forum replies as you usually do for you and others at the Paizo and Starfinder teams. :)

Tom

We'll continue to release standalone 1st level (or at least low level) adventures in greater numbers overall than mid or high level ones. Rusthenge, Crown of the Kobold King, and The Enmity Cycle are three recent examples,

Enmity Cycle is level 4. (Edit. I missed that low level caveat. My bad)

I appreciate the reply however and am happy to hear of more variety

I'm really excited to hear that you're considering ways to link 3 part APs in some cases, its not needed for every story but I think that sounds like a really good compromise for those wanting to go 1-20, having your cake and eating it too so to speak. I think that also helps with some cases where folks have complained about an AP changing its premise too much over the course of 6 books (something ive seen a lot with Extinction Curse or Blood Lords) but with two linked 3 parters those might have been received a lot better theoretically.

Part of the problem I think that folks are seeing is that the currentlly published options for High Level 3 part Adventure Paths are slim. There's only two choices out now, and while we did try to make those thematically work with any group (both Fist of the Ruby Phoenix and Stolen Fate expect your PCs to be famous heroes, which any 1st to 10th level Adventure Path sets up), but seeing the reactions to how "generic" those ties were I've been working to address it going forward in two ways:

1) We're doing more high level Adventure Paths going forward. Curtain Call is coming out very soon, and then starting next year I'm working on two more high level ones, the first of which I'll be announcing this weekend at Paizocon. My hope is that as long as we're doing 4 3-part Adventure Paths a year, that half of those will skew high level.

2) For all three of those Adventure Paths, I'm either building into the plot specific ties to previous adventures (Curtain Call does so by being about your group creating an opera based on the first adventure), making them specific sequels to lower level Adventure Paths (this will be less common overall since this runs the risk of the perception of not being able to run that Adventure Path on its own, which is a problem if the one it's a sequel to goes out of print), or providing more support in the Player's Guide for how you and your GM can set things up as a continuation for previously published Adventure Paths (this first shows up in the not-yet-released Curtain Call adventure path, but also in the GM-facing text for that Adventure Path).

As for the idea of a 6 part Adventure Path changing its premise too much, that's a result of us trying to make those 6 part Adventure Paths varied enough so that the individual adventures avoid the risk of feeling repetitive. The switch to 3 part ones allows us to more confidently avoid this fear.

I really don’t mind the 3 part adventures and am glad to hear we’ll get more variety with them. So far, they have been the strongest APs of PF2, in my opinion.

At the same time, I feel like we never really got a traditional 1-20 PF2 AP, to compete with the likes of Rise of the Rune Lords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Tyrant’s Grasp, Kingmaker, etc.

The 1-20 campaigns we got with PF2 were:
Age of Ashes: a campaign that really suffered from being developed before the rules were written and could probably be revised into a really strong AP now.
Extinction Curse: A murderous first book and a confused theme/gimmick that really misdirects players away from seeing a strong, traditional fantasy Dungeon crawl that explores interesting lore about Aroden, and doesn’t well address the issue of keeping up with equipment for high level heroes in a kinda rural campaign that is actually really close to Absalom.
Agents of Edgewatch: A kinda Cop procedural AP that had a horrible issue with handling wealth even before it was released at a wrong time for this AP.
Strength of Thousands: A strong AP, but with such a heavy experimental theme for a traditional fantasy adventure path that it gets passed over a bit too easily by folks looking for traditional fantasy adventures.
Bloodlords: An evil, undead leaning AP with some major crossed mechanics in its development with the “will the party be undead?” And what does that mean for adventure design, negative healing, and outlawing the most common type of magic used.

I think a future, dungeon crawly AP that goes from local issues to a big regional/world threat, developed to utilize the strengths of PF2 and all of its more developed and established GM subsystems could be a very strongly selling AP, and a system defining classic. I hope we eventually see it.

Still waiting for Return of the Return of the Runelords. ^^

SheepishEidolon wrote:

To be fair, published adventures have other benefits, too. They save you from writer's block, and they help you to provide your players with something innovative, something you wouldn't have come up yourself.

To me, one of the greatest benefits published adventures gave me was education. By reading and studying published adventures from a wide range of games and rules over the decades, I bolstered and improved my own ability to write adventures, in the same way a great writer can become a better writer by reading a lot. And now that I'm in the position of being a professional adventure writer and developer, I feel that it's important to pay it forward to the next few generations of adventure writers by both creating adventures that are inspiring and challenging and present new ways to do things but also to help give out advice in places like this.

Until "RPG Adventure Writing" becomes a widely supported area of study in college courses (which, admittedly, is much more of a thing today than it was when I was in college back in the early 90s), published adventures are the closest things folks can get to textbooks for those who want to become professional adventure writers themselves (also admittedly not the most financially rewarding profession one could go into, so keep that in mind!).

From an amateur DM point of view I personally found the second edition AD&D Van Richten's Guide series useful, too, in that they got me thinking about what an investigation/monster hunt adventure could look like and how NPC villains and monsters might think. I think there were four spinoff 'Children of the Night' compilations of mini-adventures too, each themed for one of the 'Guides', trying to explore the range of things you could actually *do* with, say, a golem/'The Created' adventure.

I think TSR occasionally experimented with three-parter adventures. I recall there being something mindflayer themed in 2nd edition AD&D. (edit: TSR's mindflayer trilogy might have collectively been fan-named something like 'The Illithiad'.)

James Jacobs your insights are always appreciated, especially if/when some folks don't read through the entire thread and you answer the same question 4-5 times but in slightly different ways. ;)

I'm very happy to be back on the Pathfinder bandwagon.

Cheers!

Hmm. Just re-read the blog and noticed the bit about standalones going hardcover. Will be interesting from the point of view of those with dead-tree versions whether that ends up being a net-positive/neutral/net-loss.