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What does the timeframe look like on Strange Aeons?

I haven’t played through it, but my impression is that it is one of those “chase” APs, where the PCs are trying to catch up to the BBEG but are always a step behind him.

This is what I mean by the APs feeling like they’re on a timer even though JJ says that’s not the intent. I just can’t see my players feeling comfortable with training, crafting items or doing some bespoke/unrelated side adventures when e.g. they’re supposed to be racing to catch Count Lowls!

One counterexample that comes to mind is the Legacy of Fire AP. I think you could easily put a significant amount of downtime after each of the first three books in that AP. In fact, the AP recommends a year of downtime between books 1 and 2! It’s only in the fourth book that the PCs get on the “non-stop rollercoaster ride to the end.” Which actually is fine - I don’t mind some AP books needing to follow right after the other, I’m just looking for campaigns where the characters do occasionally get a break to go do their own thing for a while.

Hi all, I was wondering which APs provide for long periods (months or years) of in-game time, so PCs can mature, get older, train, craft items, etc. rather than having a PC race from 1st level to 15th in a few weeks? For the avoidance of doubt I’m talking about campaign/in-world time, not how long it takes to play the AP in real life.

I know Kingmaker suggests a year or two of in-game time can pass between each book in the path, and Rise of the Runelords is also episodic enough to allow for the passing of months or years in-game. Are there any other APs that either explicitly call for long periods of time to pass or that could be easily adapted for that (maybe Skull & Shackles)? A lot of the APs feel to me like there is an implied timer on them (or allowing them to stretch too long would defy logic), although James Jacobs has said that is not the intent.

Thanks in advance!

So my sense is that PF 2.0 is unnecessary because PF 1.0 is not what Paizo is selling. Paizo is selling Adventure Paths (that's why the game is called Pathfinder rather than e.g. Crypts & Conquistadors).

There is an urban legend in the games industry that "adventures don't sell." The argument is that only GMs buy adventures, so adventures by definition only target ~20% of the potential RPG market. I think this view is misguided.

While it's true at some level that adventures only sell to GMs, my impression is that the vast majority of tabletop RPG campaigns are run off published adventures, because most GMs don't have the time or the inclination to do their own adventure design. Therefore while adventures only sell to GMs, if you don't produce and sell adventures, you don't sell any core books either, because no one plays a game that doesn't have adequate supplement support. You can have all the coolest crunch books in the world, but without copious numbers of adventures to run the players through, you get nowhere,

This is why the greatest and most long-lasting RPGs are those with heavy adventure support rather than heavy rules support - D&D (all editions especially Holmes, Mentzer and AD&D 1E), Call of Cthulhu (all editions), Runequest 2E, Shadowrun, Traveller, and yes, Pathfinder, because of the APs.

Paizo doesn't need to do PF 2.0 because that's not the product. Paizo just needs to keep churning out top quality APs and stand-alone modules (as well as PFS scenarios) and all will be well.

Awesome. Totally agree. Best RPG ever with the best continuous product line support ever. Thank you Paizo and happy Thanksgiving!

I've started reading "Leviathan Wakes" by James Corey because I watched the Expanse TV show on Syfy and was blown away. I now so want to run an Eclipse Phase campaign modified for elements of this setting.

It's my favorite Umberto Eco novel.

Seconded. One of my favorite novels ever and I can read it again and again just for all the little digressions and side-tracks. As for "what's it about", you almost get to the point of "what isn't it about"?

some 90's comics

Oh man, I remember the various Marvel comics with the twelve different variant covers, usually on the first issues of series that would barely survive a year. I suspect there are a lot of "investors" waiting for those to inch up from their $1.25 cover price.

I am occasionally surprised that things like the first edition AD&D DMG only go for ~$30 but I guess there were just so many produced they don't really move the needle in terms of collectibility. I've heard that the first "wood grain" D&D boxes (hand assembled on Gary Gygax' kitchen table) can go for upwards of $5000 in good condition.

Yeah - anything which is created & sold specifically to be collectable very rarely goes up in value.

Exactly. Even things that have collectible value (coins, bank notes, antique furniture, art) usually get the caveat that you should buy them because you like them, not for potential future value.

I collect bank notes (paper currency, both US and foreign) and every reputable dealer in the field made sure to tell me that if I want to invest, I should buy stocks and bonds. I haven't got the slightest intention of ever selling my collection, and would assume I'd take a loss if I did, so I think it's all about going in with your eyes open and without unrealistic expectations.

Sounds like the guy in the OP may have believed the hype...

Think I may have gotten the "The Republic" thread locked. My apologies and a shout-out to BNW, CBD, TJ and others for my indiscretions - love you all madly and hope to engage in a gaming specific and more fun thread in future!

CBDunkerson, I understand your position and I don't think there's really anything to talk about. You're in the same place as BigNorseWolf: "I cannot." Let's leave it at that.

The problem with this exercise, which I think is generally a useful one, is that you run the risk of whitewashing real threats. You're coming up with your own excuses for someone else's bad behavior.

At the risk of Godwinning us, I can imagine a Jew in 1930s Germany making a similar list of reasons and deciding his neighbors really couldn't be that evil and it would all work out fine.

As I said in my original post, the exercise doesn't work for all positions and I referenced the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge as examples where "evil" was the only reasonable answer. I also suggested Flat Earthers as examples where "stupid/misinformed" was the only reasonable answer.

I also said that the view that half the US voting population going for Trump is in the same category as Hitler and the Holocaust is unserious and not worth engaging with. Trump is not Hitler and none of his statements or proposals are the Holocaust.

The benefit of the exercise, which debate teams, attorneys and negotiators engage in all the time, is that if you can't find a good faith explanation for your opponent's position (something that doesn't hinge on them being evil, racist, stupid or misinformed), then in the majority of cases the problem lies with your lack of understanding, not theirs. It challenges a person to think harder and understand other people's point of view better. Doesn't mean they have to agree with it or accept it, just acknowledge that people can have honest differences of opinion without being Nazis.

Yes, occasionally it comes down to the fact that your opponent really is Hitler or the Khmer Rouge - but not often.

1) River Kings, basically all of them, we loved it, really helped add a bit of storyline to the sandbox in a non-railroady way.

2) I'd like to see more Ultimate Relationships style add-ons like the one for Far East.

3) Definitely Mythos. Hell's Rebels feels like a good venue for a Relationships add-in. This one's probably a stretch, but I've always liked Legacy of Fire and thought you could do great things with this kind of 1001 Nights / Arabia AP (I recognize it's older and doesn't have the rep of e.g. RotRL, but maybe that's the angle - upgrading an AP that doesn't seem to be a fan favorite). I think the "Lost City" chapters of Serpent's Skull could really benefit - there's a lot of assumptions/expectation about GM supported sandbox action in this part of the AP which is where I think the add-ins can really shine.

4 & 5) Don't really do subscriptions (even though I usually buy all the products 1-off eventually). Compilations the same.

I suppose there is a level of "Hillary Clinton will start WW3 (and Trump won't) and must be stopped " that would let the vote happen without any racism, but would take a the whole bucket of cocoa puffs.

I have to admit I liked the clean simplicity of "I cannot."

So, then you are completely dismissing the notion that even if someone did not vote out of racism, they are still being complacent about it? The fact does remain that racist, xenophobic, hateful rhetoric was a large part of his campaign. Therefore, at the least this was not a deal breaker. there was also a large lack of details about how he was going to do any of the positive things that he promised.

I think we're having separate conversations. I was actually responding to a question asked by Ryric. So I suppose I'm saying what I'm saying, not what you're saying. Sorry for the confusion.

I cannot.

I appreciate your honesty.

One, he lost the popular vote. Two, about half the population did not vote. Three, evil is a rather strong word. A strong polarizing word.

Okay, put it differently, can you imagine a reason anyone could vote for Trump that didn't involve them being evil, stupid, racist or misinformed? In other words, could you imagine any reason a decent, well-meaning, informed, generally okay person might vote for Trump? If you could, what would it be? (All in the context that half of the voting population of the United States voted for him.)

For avoidance of doubt, "no" is a perfectly acceptable though depressing answer.

I feel the need to point out that racism isn't a superpower.

In Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average.

I'm racist. I try not to be, but I understand that I am. That doesn't make me evil. It makes me flawed... which is pretty normal for a human.

So you're going with half the population of the United States is flawed? Or is it all of us are racist, which essentially means none of us are?

To me though, the fact remains that Trump supporters were either fine with the racism or the type who do not really believe in it.

So you're going with half the population of the United States is evil? Okay.

You make a fair point. I tend to subscribe to "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence" myself. Usually I can put myself in another's place and try to comprehend their point of view, but I have nothing here. That's why I'm asking for help.

To be fair, there's nothing new about my exercise; debaters, attorneys and negotiators frequently do exercises where they argue one side of an argument, then switch sides of the table and argue the other side. It helps ensure your own arguments are robust and can stand up to challenge, while also helping to build bridges and find win-win solutions. Often people think they're opposed when they actually are arguing at cross-purposes and can both get what they want if they're more thoughtful and creative.

In terms of Trump voters, an easy position to start from is that many people thought both candidates were awful and voted for Trump because he wouldn't be as bad for them as Hillary. Why might they do that?

- Hillary is pro-renewable energy and talked about putting coal miners out of jobs and coal companies out of business. Trump did not and spoke frequently about the plight of blue collar workers without a college degree. If I'm a coal miner, I don't need to be evil or stupid to decide Trump makes more sense for me than Clinton.

- The above can be expanded more generally to cover blue collar workers who are opposed to illegal immigration for economic reasons rather than evil/racist ones. Trump takes a harder line than Clinton on this front.

- People who are first generation legal immigrants or those married to first generation legal immigrants (like, for instance, me) might prefer Trump's stance on illegal immigration simply because they or their loved ones went through great effort to legally come to this country and they don't agree with letting others flout the law and jump the line.

- Proponents of individual freedom who prefer smaller government may support Trump for first taking on and defeating the entrenched Republican political elite and then taking on and defeating the entrenched Democrat political elite. This is one of the positions I personally am most sympathetic to.

- From a foreign policy perspective, people could be opposed to Obama's wars of choice in the Middle East; the nuclear deal with Iran; the weakened or deteriorating relations between the US and Israel, the US and UK, the US and Russia; the failure to identify or deal with the threat of ISIS; the relative lack of progress from the pivot to Asia. Clinton is widely viewed as a continuation of these policies or a creator of them while SoS while Trump represents an opportunity for change (for better or worse).

- Many, many people on both left and right are deeply opposed to free trade agreements for reasons that cannot be easily labeled as evil or stupid. Trump is vocally willing to go protectionist/fair trade and Clinton is not (or waffles depending on her audience).

- A fair number of voters may have been bothered by the fact that out of a population of 300 million people, the Democrats thought the best choice for President just happened to be the wife of a previous President. That's as bad as Jeb Bush or Dubya being President. The United States isn't supposed to have royal families or aristocracies and the very fact that both parties were pushing nepotism in the primaries and (for Democrats) the general suggests an entrenched and corrupt political elite that believes it rules the people rather than serves them. For better or worse, Trump is not part of a political dynasty and is very much an outsider.

There are more reasons not based on Trump being the lesser of two evils, but that's a start for now. Do you think you could add any more now or are you still pretty much in the stupid/evil camp?

CBDunkerson and BigNorseWolf, I hear you and note your position.

"You can fool half the people all of the time... and that's usually enough."

The saying (in part) is: "You can fool some of the people all of the time."

Not half. If you know someone who can fool half of the people all of the time, give me their contact details because I want them working for me.

That said, I note your position.

Since there are people on this thread that clearly think the results of the most recent election are good, I'd like to hear their justification for that attitude. From my POV, we have elected a [various bad things].

I'm not a Trump supporter, but when I find myself disagreeing with someone, I often try to do an intellectual exercise where I assume that person is neither evil nor stupid, and then try to defend/justify that person's position to myself. I ask myself, "If I wasn't evil or stupid, what would be the reasons I might hold that position?"

I can do that for Trump supporters if you'd like, but you might find it interesting to have a go at it first yourself. I would be genuinely interested in what you come up with.

Note that this exercise doesn't work for all positions, e.g. there is no argument for the Holocaust or the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge that wouldn't point any reasonable person to "evil". Similarly, the arguments of a Flat Earther almost certainly point to "stupid" (or more charitably, "misinformed").

For the avoidance of doubt, insisting that half the population just elected the next Hitler because they were too stupid to know he was Hitler or too evil to care is not a reasonable position. Or at the very least not a position worth engaging in discussion.

On the other hand, you may just be commenting on things that interest you, which is also cool. This is the Paizo blogs after all, not the Federalist Papers.

And I can go on long riffs as to why my catfolk barbarian is fricking cool from a role-playing/awesome standpoint even though he 's completely unoptimized for the role.

Thejeff, I'm making the argument that in the context of the electoral college, Hillary Clinton made a strategic misstep in failing to address the economic plight of Rust Belt voters. I'm further suggesting that Trump used this gap to his advantage to win the election by seizing on the issue to win key firewall states. Finally, I'm suggesting, in the context of the electoral college, that the Democrats not make this mistake again.

I haven't articulated it fully yet, but I'm starting to suspect that Clinton's campaigning served mainly to run up the score (in popular vote terms) in states she was already going to win, while doing nothing or even costing her votes in states that were still up for grabs. I'd suggest the Democrats not make that mistake again either, because the popular vote is irrelevant in determining who wins the Presidency.

So with that said, could you elaborate on the argument you are making? It seems to be something about social issues and racists/bigots but I'm not following the finer points of your thesis.

I agree and would love to see that campaign run.

I'm curious what the result would be but personally suspect it would be a bad idea. Although they are still premised on an EC as opposed to popular vote system, the county-by-county election result maps give one pause. If the President was always decided by the votes of Los Angeles, NYC, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and DC and the rest of the country outside the mega-cities just had to live with the result... talk about the Districts and Panem.

There's a reason the founders created a union of sovereign states rather than a central government with administrative sub-districts. One civil war is enough.

OTOH, while nothing magically happened overnight in 2016, a lot has happened since 2012 - Black Lives Matter and all the protests around it came into existence, the same sex marriage decision and the religious freedom cases and laws, including the bathrooms bills. Social issues were a lot more prominent in the last few years.

Exactly. Instead of talking about the Americans who lose from globalization and free trade, both the Democrats and Republicans wanted to talk about social issues (from opposite ends of the spectrum). The Rust Belters watched the news and could only think, "No one even wants to talk about me and my problems."

Remember, Trump destroyed the Republican establishment before he destroyed the Democratic one.

Going back to the topic of the thread, none of this would matter much in a country where the popular vote decides the election. But since it is an electoral college, this stuff does matter. And going back to my first post in the thread, if the election was decided by the popular vote, both candidates would have run very different campaigns.

That's the thing... Clinton was essentially right [...] you have the racists, misogynists, and other bigots [...] you have people who are willing to vote for a racist / misogynist / bigot because they think he will make things better for them economically [...] Trump has spent his entire life screwing over the little guy. The Republican party as a whole has spent the past 50+ years robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

I do hear all of this. But these aren't facts. They're an appeal to emotion, and a very particular and narrow appeal that starts from the premise that half the nation has been beyond the pale for the last 50+ years. That's a tough sell. No one who doesn't already agree with it is going to be persuaded by it. Unfortunately, righteous indignation doesn't win elections no matter how much it feels like it should.

Bill Clinton understood this. Hillary Clinton didn't. And now Donald Trump is President-elect.

Most, I am willing to wager, voted despite Trump's worst policies and rhetoric because they wanted change and they were not going to get it from Clinton.

This is it, I think. Based on the post-mortems, I think the folks who put Trump over the top are the ones tired of living hand to mouth and wanting decent jobs doing hard work that they can be proud of. When that's your context, you don't have to be racist, homophobic or bigoted to vote for the candidate talking about your problems rather than the candidate talking about fighting for transgender bathrooms, Syrian immigrants and BLM.

Many of these Trump voters are probably sympathetic to those issues -- Trump after all breached Clinton's "firewall" by winning counties that supported Obama in 2008 and 2012. It's unlikely something magical happened in 2016 to turn those counties racist overnight. However, that list of issues is probably less important to Rust Belt voters than reopening the mothballed factory that their parents and grandparents used to work at before all the jobs went away.

The big (and very doubtful) question is whether a President Trump can or will do anything to reopen that mothballed factory. But Trump is probably the first candidate since Bill Clinton to even bother acting like he cares whether the factory gets reopened. Hillary Clinton certainly didn't and I suspect that made the difference.

I think it's important to remember that the goal of every Presidential election since the founding has NOT been to win the popular vote. That makes it difficult to say what would happen if the EC was abolished, because neither party has ever really had the goal of maximizing the popular vote. If that was the goal, the campaigns would be different, the issues would be different, the candidates would be different and I suspect the political parties themselves would be fundamentally different.

As it is, saying that a candidate lost the EC but won the popular vote is a bit like an American football coach arguing that they might have lost the game on points but they racked up the most yardage. That might be true, but the problem is they weren't playing against a team trying to get the most yardage, they were playing against a team trying to get the most points. If maximum yardage was the goal, the other team would have played differently.

European posters who follow Association football ("soccer"), please feel free to substitute "ball possession" for "yardage" in the above.

So while I'm disappointed in the election outcome, I'm not buying the "popular vote" argument. The only reasonable response to the argument that Clinton won the popular vote is that it clearly demonstrates she should have put more effort into winning the EC and less into the popular. The popular isn't how you win and that has been the case for over 200 years. If the other team isn't putting any special effort into winning the popular, why did you?

"Gamer boy" could work as I'm not aware of "skater boys" being bothered by the diminutive - though they often spell it with a z (boyz) in the plural.

I can't remember if the Bad Boys/z movies with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence used an "s" or a "z".

As "Gamer Man", my superpower would be the ability to properly execute the rules for grappling including creatures with the Grab special attack.

I think it would be "gamer guy" to keep the alliteration that goes with "gamer girl."

"Gamer man" and "gamer woman" wouldn't roll off the tongue and sound like two very dorky superheroes.

My group always prefer one-shots to hit and run for narrative reasons so I generally don't need to convince them. If we experience a 15 minute adventuring day we generally assume the adventure is broken (though occasionally it has been simply the baddest of bad luck). That said, my players will hit and run if the alternative is character death.

Our experience to date is that Akhentepi is a pretty reliable one shot, but we had two high-damage melee types which meant the hardness and/or DR of multiple encounters was manageable. Pentheru took two tries but the party started it still first level and were almost certainly going to retreat to level up even if events hadn't forced them to.

I like the idea of using the token to encourage a one-shot but I'm pretty sure my players would just climb the necropolis wall somewhere to evade the gate guards.

Fair point James Keegan - I've done the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale thing so the magic item shop also resonates with me. Maybe Conan didn't do it but admittedly that's the 1930's.

In my recent Mummy's Mask campaign, I stole an "outlander" magic shop merchant from the old City of Delights Al-Qadim setting to help my players spend their wealth and prepare for future challenges. Unknown to the players (who hopefully don't know my online handle!) the merchant is actually an ancient red dragon seeking a thief in the city of Wati. The role playing has been fun and I'm pretty sure I'm going to let the players in on the merchant's secret (some of them have guessed).

It's not a bad way of letting players spend gold and prepare for future challenges while delivering some roleplaying fun and a magic item shop that is impervious to robbery. Well, it's been robbed, but the perpetrator was later found burned to death by an intense fire with the word 'thief' carved into his char-grilled skin by a knife or a claw...

As an extreme old timer who started in the J. Eric Holmes and 1st edition days where gold was how you earned XP, I'm sympathetic to the notion that changing paradigms might be hard to adapt to.

That said, the fact that 5e doesn't require you to spend huge amounts of gold to be competitive / stay alive strikes me as a good reason to investigate that edition which I have avoided doing until now (old dogs and new tricks, you know...)

I agree that the 'spending gold to advance' paradigm is one part of PF I've never liked, and like yourself for narrative reasons. In an odd way, one of the positives of 1E was that you needed gold for XP reasons but you didn't need it to buy magic items to stay alive. Robert E Howard's Conan stole a lot of gemstone eyes from pagan idols (which he promptly lost in drunken debauchery) but he never bought a +3 sword at the magic shop...

Love the AP - thanks Jim! The old school "adventurers go tomb raiding" but with a developing story arc is landing well with my group. The Egypt feel is also a big winner.

I'm DMing a party of 5:
CG human rogue
CG human summoner
CG catfolk barbarian
NG human wizard with hawk familiar
NG human cleric of Sarenrae

The party are framing the CG's as out and out tomb robbers (with hearts of gold) while the NG's are well-intentioned historians & antiquarians so there is a little inter-party disagreement about their purpose in the Necropolis.

The catfolk barbarian and the summoner's eidolon are the front-line melee types with support from the rogue & cleric. The arcanes have been using crossbows & acid splash/ray of frost in ranged support. The rogue serves as trapfinder, the cleric heals and the wizard is the magic-item identifier and Knowledge specialist.

We've done Akhentepi and Pentheru so far. Because there are five characters instead of four the party aren't leveling up when the AP suggests, so I ran the Refuge of Nethys set piece from the Legacy of Fire AP after Pentheru. This puts everyone at 3rd level before doing Erudite Eye and provided a fair number of dramatic encounters. I set it up with the priesthood of Pharasma calling a one-week halt to exploration of the Necropolis so they could evaluate how opening it up to outsiders was working. In the downtime the characters heard rumors of a mysterious hermit lurking around an abandoned shrine in the desert east of Wati... I thought there was probably a good way to link it to the Scorched Hand given the connection with Nethys, but I couldn't figure out the angle before game night rolled around so I just let it lie.

I would usually say characters not leveling up when expected is balanced by the fact that there is an extra character so no need to alter the AP as written. However, my impression is that Erudite Eye runs best from a story perspective as a one-shot rather than having the characters explore, retreat to heal, return, etc. which is why I inserted the extra adventure to level up. I'm really concerned about the aghash div for a similar reason - it's not a threat of TPK but could seriously derail the story's timeline if the players have to retreat to find a remove curse spell(s). Haven't run it yet so curious how others have handled it (other than planting a remove curse wand as mentioned upthread which it is too late for in my game).