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Why does this get me so exited?

Oh man, a few questions:
- Will a noob end user like myself be able to add art to the gallery and give them tags?
- Can this module replace the art of any actor, even in compendia?
- On an unrelated note, how long is the GenCon Discount Code gonna be valid? *innocent-smile*

Looks great

Hi! While it's definitely possible for users to add their own art to the gallery, it's not something we currently have a UI for, so it does require a little bit of comfort with very basic Foundry VTT modding. Basically, it's a bit more of a developer feature at the moment, albeit a potentially powerful one. If you're interested in learning more about modding, it could be a good first project, though!

The module, like all of our other token packs, can replace the artwork of compendium actors with its own. However, unlike our previous token back, which was bestiaries-based and thus had a corresponding "stat block" for each piece of art, this one is NPC-focused. As a result, only about 100 pieces are mapped to compendium actors by default (mostly the GMG NPC Gallery actors). This is why we created the gallery application- the idea is that you use the compendiums when you need a specific stat block, like a merchant, and you use the gallery when you want a specific piece of art. That merchant could be of any ancestry, background, etc, after all, and conversely the art of the Poacher could work just as well for a hunter, or a guide, or a scout, or a ranger, or an explorer.

AV impressed the hell out of me as my first AP from Paizo with Foundry support, but Outlaws has done the opposite and now has me on the fence about the quality and worthiness of other APs because of it.

Hello, I'm part of the team that worked on AV! I'm glad you liked our adventure. I wanted to speak up here to clarify on some points of misunderstanding that I noticed in your post and (hopefully) encourage you to continue making use of this content in the places where it can improve your game or save you some time on prep. I certainly don't mean to imply that your review was wrong, unhelpful, or rude- I actually find reading feedback on these modules very helpful when making decisions about how to approach future projects. What I'd like to do is shed some light on aspects of our development that might help to explain the differences you identified and "defend" the work of the Outlaws team a little. At the end of the day, people worked very hard to bring this content to light, and put in far more hard work and love than would have been necessary if they only wanted to bring a "bare minimum" product to market.

The main clarification I want to make here is that the team that made this module is different from the team that made the AV module. That's why you've noticed several procedural and stylistic differences- the teams comprise different people, working with different resources and different priorities.

On the specific points, there were two other things I wanted to raise:

Also, several NPCs just aren't there and have to be theatre of the minded.

Both AV and OoA pull from the system compendium for actors, so there should not be a meaningful gap between the two adventures in this regard. It may be that there are small differences due to the personal style of the person responsible, though.

Several scenes are missing that would have been useful to have (Longhorn Lounge, Hotfoot Hippodrome, Ryka's Reagents, something for the chase sequence in chapter 2) I had to find or make scenes for all of those.

I do understand why you feel this way, but I'd also like to raise some thoughts that might help you to see behind the curtain on this.

Firstly, with regards to scenes, AV has an obvious edge here- as a megadungeon, almost all of the events of the adventure are going to take place within the same ~13 maps. That resulted in an unusually low number of maps for us to remake, and it meant that- even if they are also unusually large- they always had a source to base our remake on. It's easier to remake a map than to create a new one from scratch, after all. While we did include a new map in one single instance, the graveyard, it's hardly something that AV did in spades- it occurred once across three books.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the graveyard was a combat encounter. In comparison, all of the scenes that you list are non-combat roleplay locations, no different from any of the locations of interest within the town of Otari. We didn't include maps for Wrin's Wonders or Odd Stories, for example, both of which are more appropriate comparisons. We never had a "chase" sequence to convert in AV, but if we did, I don't think that I would have chosen to do it by recreating the entire thing at battlemap scale. The needs of the challenge are not best suited by adding a 5-foot scale gridded map of several city blocks, since it's not a type of gameplay where precise locations are important.

We always need to consider that remaking the maps (and even moreso creating new maps) constitutes a considerable portion of a module's budget. Short of charging more or paying artists less, neither of which are attractive choices, there is a limit to how much artwork can be included. Sometimes, difficult decisions need to be made about which scenes to add and which to leave out. However, in all cases, these are still *extra* scenes- content being added in the conversion that was not present in the original adventure. Even remaking the maps at all is "extra" content.

To be perfectly honest in a VTT setting, everything should be there, no theatre of the mind, or very very little. It defeats the purpose of using the VTT and having to do alot of theatre of the mind. It also defeats the purpose of buying he AP from Paizo if I have to still build a bunch of scenes, download music, and build out NPCs defeats especially for $35 per entry. So not only is this a more expensive AP than Abomination Vaults, but its lacking as mentioned above.

I quite strongly disagree with this position, and I'd like to raise some counterpoints. Firstly, I don't agree with the premise- no VTT will completely remove the need for theatre of the mind. Even a CRPG will use abstraction- the Kingmaker video game has an overworld map rather than showing you exploring the world at 1:1 scale, for example. Even if it were possible to completely negate the need for imagination in an RPG, though, I don't think that a VTT that failed to do so would have defeated its purpose. In my opinion, the purpose of a VTT is not to attempt to replace the human imagination. Not even video games or cinema attempt that, after all. I could argue for several other potential uses of a VTT- allowing a game group to continue to play and interact remotely even after they are no longer geographically close to one another, or streamlining the process of playing a mechanically complex system- and I'm sure you would get the idea.

Again, I'm glad that you enjoyed your experience with Abomination Vaults so much, and I'm sorry that you had a negative experience with Outlaws of Alkenstar. Just to close off, I would like to again reiterate that these products were developed by different teams, both of which worked very hard on their modules and which have a lot of varied (and different) talents and specialisations. It may be that what you're identifying as discrepancies could more fairly be ascribed to a personal stylistic preference for the work of one group of individuals over another, rather than an objective difference in quality. Just as an example, I have seen AV be critiqued for not including the nifty "landing page macro" that many of the Sigil APs include. Perhaps to some people, that feature is more important than having some extra music, because they'll just use their own audio from Youtube anyway!

We play both PF2e and 5e, on loading I am seeing overhead tokens, not ring tokens.

The images and such show ring tokens. Has this changed? Does it load one type for 5e and another for P2e (which I don't have loaded to check).

Sounds like you haven't disabled 5e's default tokens! Make sure you do so in the system settings to use the ones from this module.

Saw the announcment notification on foundry yesterday.

High resolution maps is all I dreamed for, but have to say the extra stuff is really amazing too!

Just a little question about maps...

Is there by any chance the possibility to also get maps meant for "generic encounters" that were not added within the AP

To make a quick example, from EC BOOK 3
** spoiler omitted **

Hi! I'm one of the people working on the AV conversion as well as a member of the PF2E system's development team.

I haven't played or run EC so I may be misunderstanding your question, but I will try to answer:

- If you're asking about the generic "encounter maps" that are sometimes included (I recall an example from Age of Ashes), where they just have four maps that you can use for any random encounter in the AP:

While AV doesn't (that I recall) have any such maps, I can assure you that if we were to convert an adventure that did, they would absolutely be included. These encounter maps are a critical part of the adventure and would not be left out!

- If you're asking about encounters in the AP that have no provided map but would logically require one:

AV does have such an encounter- I won't mention where, because it may be a spoiler, but in this case, we are providing an entirely new map to play the encounter on which we hope maintains the feeling of the official maps. Of course, using it would be entirely option, and GMs are free to provide their own map, reuse another map, or pull from Foundry's huge pool of exclusive content to get an alternative that they like more!

I hope that answers your question!

Does anyone else find it strange that the "Corrupt Guards" are lawful evil? The description under False Arrest implies that Chiselrock has given them a fake conspiracy and has led them astray. I'm thinking I'll change them to lawful neutral.

That reasoning makes sense to me. I had the captain be a little more in on it than the others, but I played the guard more as conspiracy theorists that got suckered than actual fascists.

Just got up to this book! I'm amazed there's so little discussion here, it seems like it has so much to unpack. It looks like it's continuing the trend from book 4 of having the players become more important political agents, which is great!

I'm a little disappointed about the number of overpowered Triad goons in this. If they have this many disposable level 15 characters, why not send some after the Ring instead of Voz? Why's Laslunn the third in command? etc

You can explain a lot of this (someone suggested having some of the stronger Triad members be fellow Promise rejects which helps justify their fanatisicm too!) but I'm curious if anyone has tweaks in mind to help with that. I was considering throwing in a few of the lower level Triad stat blocks into every encounter as trash to get wiped by the party's AOEs, so they can really feel like they've outgrown this group and are a bunch of overpowered superheroes on a vengeful rampage.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Dahak's vision at the start of the book! What a powerful segment- I'd love to hear how it went for anyone that's run it. It seems so important to get right. Does anyone have any thoughts on moving it to the end of book 4 instead of the start of book 5? That might sell the idea it's *really* what's happened to Breachill (since it'd happen when they return) instead of being instantly obvious. On the other hand, where it happens right now mirrors where it happens for real in book 6 and I also don't want to make my players feel too pressured before they get their downtime!

Probably the most fascinating section to me in the book is the heist. Overall the book definitely does feel like a crunchier version of book 4 (which was my favourite so far by a long shot), but the heist especially is mind blowing and it seems so vital to get it perfect. Anyone got any ideas or thoughts or materials to share to help it go smoothly? It seems like such a fun idea and I want to make sure to nail it- I'm so worried the party will just feel confused.

Laslunn's still alive in my game so i'm debating where to put her in. I could swap an existing NPC for her or add her to the heist section somehow... If they do fight her I probably need to level her just a little bit so she can keep up too since she's from two books ago!

Anyway those are all my first thoughts on a quick read but I'm eager to hear everyone else's experience with this book c: I can't believe a book this interesting and different has so few comments!

I wonder if this is not the first time I've seen you post a question on these forums that is directly super relevant to me... I think I'm just a little bit behind your table!

I too want to know this. My players should reach Kovlar this week.

Well, good luck for you that I just finished the council meeting! :P

It went well. I think what was key to success was finding art for each council member to show my players, and making sure everything was rped so that they didn't just roll skills with no narration. Then I gave a +2 if their answer played to the regent's specific likes/dislikes (eg, +2 if your house suggestion to Torra is creative).

They ended up feeling like it went very well. I did my best to give hints of feedback of how they were being received by the regent so they could roughly have an idea of how successful they were being. On my end I had a spreadsheet of all the regents' likes/dislikes and their questions and so on to help not lose track of who had gone yet. Something that helped with the Deduce Traditions roll was also to grab not only the regent profiles from the council chapter but also the guild profiles from the appendix. This essentially doubled the info I had to lean on which is important in a highly RP/Improv focused sequence. Warning! Have a drink ready. Doing all these voices, especially some of the more gruff and grumpy ones, *destroyed* my throat x)

I'm continuing the sidequesting next game and so still would love some feedback if anyone expanded these at all. I'm changing the Archmage's from an escort mission to a fetch quest, since they didn't tell him about the portal- instead he's sending them to fetch a magical artefact from the caves for him, now that they've proven themselves against the gugs. I think I'm also going to give Kord a mission where she leverages her underground contacts to have the pcs strike a rival gang and take out some competition, which will be a good moment to have Chiselrock / the guard intervene to a potential misunderstanding. That can also throw suspicion on Kord, which I think will complement the similar sequence in the heist. Finally, I think I'll be shifting the deep terror mission to the physic guild and probably making a new monster hunting / patrolling mission for Hammersong, since the physic guild are more likely to be concerned about pollution in the lake.

The main goal of the above changes is to give every council member a sidequest- but again, any suggestions are welcome, because I'm happy to do more than that. The two we did so far (the walls and the fake swords) needed some expanding IMO as they're resolved by only one roll each! I had the players *describe* to me how they caught the fake smith and it was much more satisfying even if it came down to four rolls instead of one. From my experience so far, the key to these is the RP. Don't just run them as written or you'll be done with the chapter in half an hour and everyone will be bored. Of course reacting that dynamically is hard... but it seems to have paid off from the player feedback I got!

Good luck to anyone using this advice, of course! And I'd love any tips traded in return :)