Yakman's page

Yakman wrote:

they don't always come out on time.

not worth worrying about.

Counterpoint: I would like the Player's Guide because I wanna build characters!

You can always build characters... just sometimes they'll be better off riding bench for a bit... ;-)

Here4daFreeSwag wrote:

Prolly still a wee bit too early yet to bring out the Player's Guide for this, methinks. ;)

It comes out on April 2nd, so if anything it's late. They seem to drop the PGs two to three weeks before the street date, and we're just under 2 weeks away now. I know that I was hoping for it this past week.

they don't always come out on time.

not worth worrying about.

Arkat wrote:

Darth Game Master wrote:

In this case the hypothetical enemy would be Cheliax, which Camilia Drannoch has already supported rebellions against, and is less of a direct risk since Andoran could be a buffer against counter-invasion. I agree it probably wouldn't go over too well, but people make bad decisions sometimes, so it's not entirely out of the question. Either way, I'd certainly be surprised if Galt immediately joined the war on Andoran's side.

There would have to be some sort of provocation or a false flag operation conducted to get the people of Galt to believe Cheliax poses enough of a threat for them to ally with Andoran.

Which brings up the question of why Andoran would even bother. Galt is weak, and unlike other weak powers (e.g., Isger, Ravounel) doesn't even have the advantage of offering a strategic base from which to strike at the enemy. An alliance with Galt would at best offer Andoran a quite small army of militia fighting far from home for a cause not their own--thus an army that is unlikely to be useful on the offense or cohesive on the defense.

The only scenario where Galt involving itself in the war makes any degree of sense is one where Taldor intervenes against Andoran with the express or implied aim of suppressing Common Rule, because such a campaign naturally turns against Galt itself after Andoran is dealt with. But that is a thing which Taldor has no good reason to do. The advantages to Taldor of neutrality have already been hashed out at length. And even if it did, for instance by jumping in opportunistically against an Andoran which has suffered reverses, such a Taldan campaign is not one in which Galt could expect to make much difference (because, again, it is weak).

We have no idea of the political leanings of most important player here: Taldoggis.

Yes, how will the lore survive without the gameplay canonicity of a biologically superior master race, represented in mechanics that simply don't mean the same thing anymore.

the mechanical bonus was just a straight up bait for an argument between a DM and a player who really wanted the free bonuses.

DM: "Jake, that sure does sound like a fun gnome barbarian... he'll be a great fit in our campaign... Bob, who are you playing..."

Bob: "My guy was frozen in ice for 10,000 years, but he's been thawed out now, and since he's Azlanti, he gets +2 on all ability scores. Says so right here in the World Guide."

Also... Jirelga and Krohan just... vanish? Like... where do they go? Would there be good places to bring them back into the AP? Jirelga just, like... jets before the Court, and Krohan kinda... evaporates?

I'm thinking that the PCs get

So... I was reading Book 2's back half for the first time, and while I didn't go into detail, I saw that it just... ends?

And then Book 3 starts in a whole other place. There's no guidance for how to get out of the broader situation in the end of Book 2, ramifications, etc.

Any thoughts on how to get the PCs effectively from Book 2 to 3? Particularly on the extrication from the almost certainly LETHAL situation they'll find themselves in at the end of Book 2?

Did anyone else wonder how the spitty things in the mushroom worked? It seems like from the text that they only shoot on the inside, but shouldn't they be a defense from the outside as well [or instead?]

I have a player who just relishes the idea of an evil campaign. When we were ending our 1E game and I was looking at the 2E campaigns, I looked at Blood Lords and was like... well... it's Parks and Recreation in a Nightmare Before Christmas.

I like it, but BL is just not an evil campaign.

To make it one, maybe the 'bad guys' are really trying to increase the rights of the Quick and overthrow the evil necromancers? LIke they are Pharasmites and Geb is run by foul Urgathoans exclusively?

I'm about to start running this AP, first time as a PF2e GM. None of the players bit on the player's guide backgrounds. I'm looking for suggestions on tying in one player's backstory in particular, but thoughts on any of them would be appreciated. (Players are pretty easy-going and will play even if their backstories aren't tied to the campaign, but I'd like to think of something that makes their choices not completely irrelevant.)

One of the players wants to play a human noble whose land has been taken away through unspecified evil manipulation left up to the GM. The family's broke. He has traveled to Highhelm with his father and daughter, whom he offers to the GM to use as I see fit. I think maybe his father is a scholar of some sort and so it was father who got invited to the family festival. Any thoughts on how to make Narseigus behind his family's trouble?
My other players are:
a Minotaur mercenary-maybe his minotaur village was the first to fall to Narseigus aggression? Or he is aware of the seals on the well weakening, in HH to try to get someone to listen to him?
dwarf kineticist with ancient blooded dwarf background-could have had a vague dream of taaargick.
a gnome magus played by a new player, so I'm helping feed backstory ideas, I thought maybe sister to Ria, interested in tracking down dwarven artifacts?

Narsegius could be tied up with any kind of malific force on the surface.

He's been actively evil for a long time - maybe the father and Narsegius have old scores to settle against each other. The father was part of an adventuring party which did X and impacted Narsegius with Y. Maybe they were hunting worms in the underdark and stole something that Narsegius wanted... have the player come up with some weird 'darklands' themed macguffin which was always in the family house and father always was a bit evasive about how he got it. When the house is destroyed, THE THINGIE is missing....

Personally, I'm bringing Narsegius into the AP in Book 1, as a guest of the Tolorr Festival. He's a scholar, and not everyone at the festival is exactly of sterling reputation.

Maybe the PC is there at the festival, his father's there... sees his father arguing with Narsegius... then all the STUFF happens... and when the PC & co. are done with the stuff... dad's gone. And he's found dead. And ole N's got a smile on his face and nothing connecting him to the crime.

BOOM. You gotta hook, you gotta motivated PC. You gotta balla villain.

For the other PCs what 'backgrounds' are they looking at? These are really important tools for storytelling and shouldn't be ignored/disregarded.

Has anyone created a complete list of the things that Resolve Points can be used for. I know there are some general uses and some specialized uses but has anyone consolidated a list of all the Class Features with their Class that use Resolve Points or know of someone that has done this?

Not in one place w/ every class. That wouldn't really be helpful.

A list of non-class, non-core functions, which are optional uses of the resolve points can be found in the back of Starfinder Enhanced.

Paizo has THREE of these same characters:

Arazni, Nocticula, Shorsen

Each of them is IRREDEEMABLY EVIL. One is a bloody handed tyrant manipulator and schemer, the other is a DEMON PRINCESS, the last has controlled the bodies of others for millennia to do what they want, and advocated that more of this is better than less.

They do like, one kinda altruistic thing, and BOOM. REDEEMED.

They make for fun villains. They do not make for fun patrons.

As for me, Arazni is PERMA-DED in my homegame. She ain't gonna make that transition to divinity.

Allen Cohn wrote:

GM Cthulhu wrote:

Is it just me or is this module too top heavy with magic loot?

I think the same.

This is pure conjecture...but when this AP was being written most of the Paizo people were deep in the development of PF2. So I suspect that this AP got substandard editing, including matching loot to level.

I'm finding errors in game mechanics, plot holes, etc. all over the place!

Allen

This is one a few APs that assume that the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to go shopping in certain parts, this AP also sort of assume the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to rest during certain parts.

This.

There's zero opportunities for shopping between midway through Books 3 until the start of Book 5. So, there's gotta be a lotta loot.

NerdOver9000 wrote:

Yakman wrote:

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Earlier, I wrote:

^The Runelords Strike Again!? The Infernal Empire Strikes Back? Heist of the Crown?

Here's a Runelord idea: A new generation of Runelords has arisen, but rather than staying secreted away in demiplanes or castles, these brazenly move among the public, actively moving the levers of political power and swaying the masses with crude yet glitzy demagoguery, as they seek World Domination through Political Action.

A Runelord striking north into the Linnorm Kings would be a fun Viking-based AP.

Oh I like that. A Viking AP would be a fun redux to Skulls and Shackles... instead of being a morally gray pirate AP run a morally gray Viking AP, striking south at Varisia or even further south into Ravounel or Cheliax. Scratches a very similar itch in my mind.

Actually, not even "morally gray." Within Norse culture of the time, Vikings were upstanding heroes.

Save us oh Lord, from the wrath of the North men.

Am reading Roger Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT and did my first yoga class in almost 5 years yesterday, and boy oh boy, would a Vudran adventure w/ rakshasas would be a lot of fun.

CastleDour wrote:

I like that they have a centaur hellknight, it looks cool! Not a fan of colonizing in general, but taming the wild and savage lands of Belkzen does have a certain appeal.

Uhhh, mate, please don't take this as an insult, but that thing you just said is in fact extremely colonialist. Calling an environment where people live wild and untamed, with the implication of taming it by turning it to agricultural land that can be better exploited by state powers as an unambiguous positive is pretty much colonialism 101.

Like, if you want to play this character, absolutely sure, go have fun! But do be aware that the organisation your character serves is monstrous.

it's the "monster ancestry" AP.

hobgoblins, gholos, orcs, goblins, etc. battling undead, abominations born from a dead god's blood, and other evils (I assume) in a savage land of horrors.

man wants to be a hellknight centaur, more power to him.

I would say though that in many Paizo APs the maps are TEENY TINY. Check w/ your GM if you should play a large PC before committing to the concept.

Before the player's guide came out, I was thinking a Human Diplomat Kineticist who was a survivor of the goblinblood wars, was raised by the church of Asmodeus, and is being sent by Isger to respond to Ardax's call. After reading the player's guide, I think I would go with a hobgoblin swashbuckler from Oprak.

This looks really fun. We just started up SKY KING'S TOMB and I was thinking we'd delay that to at least take a look at the orc game. Having a blast, but boy, I do like the concept of a buncha orky-boyz smashin' hedz and diplomasyzin.

Alas, I suspect that the opening will be yet another festival... which makes for four festivals starting the last 6 most recent APs... Wardens, Season, Sky Kings...

so... what's an appropriate fix to this?

Marking my calendar with a TPK for my table... say... next March?

Would love having more direct or indirect sequel APs. Making a 10th (or higher) level character in second edition can be an ordeal, especially for newer players. It would be much easier to be able to bring old PCs over if the higher level APs had stronger thematic or at least locational connections. If I create a rootin' tootin' gritty cowboy for Outlaws of Alkenstar I might feel a little out of place if we end up transitioning to Curtain Call, but if I'm a newer player I might not have the system knowledge to create a high-level replacement. Or, on a more basic level I might not enjoy playing a character made for one genre and transferring them to another.

honestly, i would love to run higher level stuff, but paizo should provide pregens for all their higher level adventures. it's hard to ask players to create 10th level PCs.

It's the same with Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicle by the time book 3 comes out it'll have been 14 years... That's just too long for me to care anymore.

dropped that series halfway through book 2. what a miserable slog.

bought it hard cover the day it released when i had very, very little money.

never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, going back.

Yeah! Do it! I'd love to have a direct sequel to something I haven't run [HONEST!].

If the guys want to play a high-level AP we can open it up and there'd a wealth of NPCs, themes, etc. to mine from an AP which we haven't even run.

NoxiousMiasma wrote:

considering one is a big sleepy lizard

Wait what?

does some googling

...huh. welp, that's going to change how I approach my homebrew Sky King's Tomb continuation. Thanks for teaching me about Bokrug.

As for the topic on hand, I'd love for something that deals with the Dominion of Black. Other than that my only wish is that it is an 11-20 AP so that it can work as a sorta follow-up to Gatewalker.

Started running DEVASTATION ARK for Starfinder, and I realized that this might be the last time I get to run some fun SF1E enemies, so I started off the AP with a homebrewed attack on the PCs starship by the Dominion of the Black.

Long / short: They killed one of the PCs and the player rage quit.

So... yeah. Gimme more Dominion. They are awesome.

NoxiousMiasma wrote:

Alright, poking over the 1e list of Great Old Ones... I will confess to a soft spot for both Bokrug and Yig, but I'm not sure either of them makes for a very good center of a campaign - considering one is a big sleepy lizard and the other literally doesn't care unless you're mean to snakes. Maybe we could do something with Atlach-Nacha and Leng Spiders, poking about with webs of dreaming minds and lucid dreamers? Or go back to the Lands of Black Blood, with Orgesh (bonus points for giving a perfect excuse for a 2e version of the Black Blood Oracle, and a look at the Darklands now that they're not full of drow. Black Blood serpentfolk could be cool).

I could see Yig having a presence in the Valeshai Jungle. It’s very Saurion.

the serpentfolk are also the leading villain in the Darklands these days.

Arkat wrote:

keftiu wrote:

A full six books, but inexplicably full of framing corrupt policing (getting paid under the table for strike-breaking, delivering striking workers to execution, stealing from those you arrest) as Good-aligned... and came out just as massive anti-police protests rocked the nation.

The only good thing I'll say for it is that one volume has a lovely overview of Vudra in the back. One volume's author donated all their profits from it after a public apology, and Paizo claimed it was reworking internal policies after it released despite internal pushback.

Thanks.

Sounds like an AP I definitely don't want to play.

I hate it when game companies feel like they have to go on a crusade by making changing current products to somehow reflect on current real world events.

If they want to come up with a new game to reflect their personal political views, fine. People who buy such things would know what they're getting into.

I play Pathfinder to get AWAY from real-world bulls**t.

The thing is, that seemed to be exactly what Paizo thought they were doing - being as apolitical as possible. They just wanted a turn-of-the-century seedy urban crime story, structured it a certain way, and decided that because it was fiction they wouldn't be tarred by the real-world context that would be read into it. And it blew up in their faces, because leadership ignored the voices warning about how it would be received, looking catastrophically insensitive on two levels.

Personally, I never understood the decision to make them cops in the first place. If you're going to lean into Sherlock Holmes tropes, the whole point of Holmes is that he isn't a cop, he doesn't have a boss, he doesn't have bureaucracy, he takes his own jobs, he plays by his own rules. You'd think a small company of private detectives would be perfect for Pathfinder adventurers.

Pinkertons are better?

Sorry, but this gnome is just BUGGIN' me.

Looking through Book 2 and like... she's a guide to what should be a fairly well known location in the Darklands. And... that's it. And why isn't she at all connected to the original expedition to her destroyed home earlier in the book?

Like, you could just hire someone to take you there. So... what's the reason that she in particular is important?

==

One of the PCs has involvement with forgery and artifact dealing. I think what I'll do to tie in Jirelga is have her sell some relic - maybe something that 'fell' off the worm??? which our intrepid PC comes across and it's got some hints to Felgunn / Targick [still thinking if I should go for it being a 'relic' or just a powerless item]. That would then help with Targick pointing out the need to find her in Part 3. BUT... I dunno.

Seems kinda weak. What do you guys think?

James Jacobs wrote:

Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.

I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.

Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.

My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th...

That’s fine James, but telling us after the fact we bought the entire AP doesn’t help us there. If you do feel that strongly about this to respond twice to our feedback thread and really believe we’re in the right here, I’d call for an errata because this AP is suffering the most so far from it. You have every reason to revisit and fix this one considering what you yourself have just said.

From what I can see Curtain Call is suffering just as much if not worse, but I...

this is a mildly outlandish request / expectation.

No company is going to say "Just cancel your subscription for a few months, our product is gonna be sub-standard."

The one-two punch of Valenar’s murder never being solved in the story and then Ruzadoya’s return never being explained is one of the most egregious missteps in a Pathfinder AP I can think of. Both of these plot points FEEL like they should be part of a massive reveal, and they just never go anywhere.

I finished running the AP yesterday and somehow missed in my initial prep that Zibik actually had nothing to do with where Ruzadoya was getting her power. I don’t really understand all of the painful visions of Zibik PCs are supposed to have if it turns out he’s a totally nice guy? I ended up explaining it as Ruzadoya’s power and the visions being a trick executed by Ayrzul, who was trying to manipulate Ruzadoya into spreading his blight to the material plane. But yeesh, this is one of the messiest Pathfinder APs to come out of 2nd edition.

finished running it? what's your schedule!!?

AestheticDialectic wrote:

I must have communicated what I meant poorly because your first paragraph misses the point I was trying to make. Gygax sucks, I don't like the dude and I've made it very apparent in these very forums. My point isn't that the legacy isn't here for us to contend with, but that if Paizo can do a pretty decent job getting away from that, overcoming that, we can't direct the blame away from WotC to a dead guy who didn't make the decisions WotC did in not properly dismantling that legacy. The continuation of the reactionary ideas of Gygax within D&D today are the fault of WotC. WotC is to blame, Gygax didn't make them keep his nonsense and them fumbling by changing race to species is not the ghost of Gygax moving their hands. We can only say the ghost of Gygax haunts d20 fantasy, and if you're going to make a d20 fantasy game you have to put in the effort to exercise that ghost. It's no longer something we can blame on Gygax when it is up to "us", in this case WotC, to exercise that

No, no, I get where you're coming from and that would be a very good point about the responsibility to change cultural institutions into something better... except that, as fairly recent history has proven time and time again, nerd spaces are often a lot more conservative and reactionary than people expect. When Gygax laid the foundations of D&D he sort of set the conceptual boundaries of what it could be. People closer to you and I were more likely to just overlook that parts they did not like than agitate for change. The conceptual space was limited.

New editions did push the boundaries a bit but the boundaries were defined more by nostalgia and cultural inertia than active effort. Both of those are things people are famously reluctant to examine. Does WotC take some of the blame? Definitely, but they are chasing a profit in a space defined by what came before.

My point is a lot more in line with yours than you might think. I'm just not going to expect better of the company that released the...

People were changing stuff about D&D / TTRPGs right from the start.

Gygax & Co. might have taken the step from changing war gaming into dungeon crawling, but they only had a monopoly on defining its boundaries for as long as it took to get copies of D&D into the hands of customers [or rather, for customers to put those copies to use at their tables].

We are starting a new campaign and one of my players is going kobold w/ the dragonblood versatile heritage. He's pretty excited about it. I think they are way more fun now that they aren't exclusively tied to dragons.

Just wanted to say that I bought this in preparation for running SKY KING'S TOMB, and it's a magnificent setting book. Tons of detail, great art... all the stuff which made me love the hobby from back in the day [namely the Mystara gazetteers]. And just the right length.

A pair of my players also bought a copy, and they have built some great dwarven PCs, with clan identifications and all these fun details from the book. They also agreed that the book is great.

Session 1 on Tuesday! Wish us luck!

JiCi wrote:

Can we get steampunk-esque mechs in Pathfinder now?

I'd far prefer Paizo to use their time on something else.

IT would make for a fun pathfinder infinite supplement though.

It would be fun to finally get the Dominion of the Black AP which is hinted at in almost every single CONTINUING THE CAMPAIGN section...

I'm in the process of running Sky King's Tomb and I really enjoy the context it provides to the history of the Dwarves. I added some content to a certain location in book 2 ** spoiler omitted **

I've also run Agents of Edgewatch and it required some minor tweaking as well. I had each of my players write up at least three NPCs- an ally, an enemy, and a rival, which I wove into the story. With ABP and a salary/requisition system instead of loot-based pay, it was a big hit. Unfortunately, this was run in person and a couple of key players moved away, killing the game about mid book 4.

I really like the idea of Quest for the Frozen Flame, and if it had better Foundry support I'd probably run it next. As it is, I'm looking seriously at Season of Ghosts or Kingmaker as my next campaign. The last time I tried to run a Kingmaker campaign I cut the Kingdom rules out, but that group fizzled out.

That sounds like a good idea in SKT... I'm running Session 0 this Tuesday!

I have a player who really perked up when I mentioned that this was announced at GenCon.

We are just starting SKY KING'S TOMB, so we won't get to run this when it comes out, barring a glorious TPK, but I am looking forward to reading it, and maybe running it.

also, I really liked

Going over the Hive stuff from Pathfinder.

The two are very similar in theme, if not game mechanics, and fill a similar role. Are they supposed to be the same thing or does the Swarm simply replace the Hive?

no.

"The Hive" is, iirc, supposed to be a way to fight xenomorphs. Similar to X-Men's "The Brood"

"The Swarm" is a malevolent hive mind which controls an insectoid space faring race - which have independent thought, but it's just all focused on EVIL due to the hive mind's influence. In theory, you could remove Swarm components from the hive mind's control and they'd be able to have healthy lives, like the Shirren.

Yakman wrote:

I've been holding onto starship combat since Starfinder came out... and last night was my final straw.

3 hours of low stakes, wasted table time. Captain just says "you get a +2", one guy moves the token around the roll20 screen, i move my ships around, we roll, and it's just... we spent the last 30 minutes actually doing fun things when we got back to players controlling their PCs. That was great.

I'm done. Out. I'll just run starship chases from now on.

This is pretty much why they are taking a deep look at the starship stuff before doing playtests on it. The current system just doesn't hit the mark the pilot is doing most of the actions while everybody else is I will do my one somewhat generic action and then it moves on. It would be really nice if they can incorporate the 3 action system and make your characters still feel like they are playing their characters in space combat.

I don't know what the answer is. Make it all narrative in core, and then have a later supplement on the topic, which just covers starships and more detailed starship combat?

That being said, I have two players who LOVE building starships and were mildly put out, if understanding, about my decision.

We had fun running a homebrew starship combat in our last adventure path [had a Tier 20 and a Tier 19 ship blasting away at each other]. That was pretty fun - it did eat up a whole session though. I don't want to waste table time like that.

Okay, so Jirelga [sp?] the gnome survivor, it alternately says that she disappeared and that she's in this private prison... did she disappear from the private prison?

This part of the plotline just doesn't quite make sense to me.

I agree that the comms and advertising on this AP are off, as I too expected the big bad to be someone from Andoran, Galt, or Taldor. Admittedly, I'm not too upset about this as it makes the campaign more approachable for my largely moderate-to-less-than-moderate conservative playgroup. But as the lone liberal guy that believes in anthropogenic climate change, I too was left scratching my head.

Even if extractive economic actors are the secondary villains, I've yet to hear word on any secondary big bad who would represent that. This in my mind is where the adventure falls flat. The AP should have had a subthread where the characters figure out who was behind the *event* that caused the eco-extremism, and tie that threat to bad faith actors on the lumber-industry side. The nature-aligned players would then eliminate the threat of the (evil) loggers responsible of initial war-crimes, before moving on to eliminate extremists on their own side.

Had they done this, Paizo would have delivered an AP badly needed in the world right now, where horrific reprisal is met with ever disproportionate reprisal. Ignoble means are not justified by noble ends.

the lumber consortium is that villain. you run into some of them in book 1.

it's easy enough to add scenes with NPCs who can discuss the destruction caused by the lumber consortium, easy enough to have scenes where the PCs come across clear cut areas as they cross the forest.

But to keep the PCs from joining the villains, they have to be forest-outsiders who recognize that THEIR SIDE is the one who started this, and it's going to have to be THEIR SIDE which fixes the problem.

heck, now that I'm looking at this AP a little differently, I think you could easily reflavor it to be a little more palatable.

1. I think you need to have the party find some 'goodly' inhabitants of the Darklands and learn about the destruction the dwarves wrought during the Quest firsthand. The help from this group - probably met in Book 2 - should be critical in some way to the victory in Book 3. We are thinking about running this, and depending on what PCs are on the table, I might go with some cavern elves or fleshwarps or umbral gnomes... but you could easily choose almost any of the less evil races of the Darklands.
2. Narsegius could be met in Book 2. Heck, you could meet him in Book 1 as a guest of Clan Tolorr!
3. I think you could easily make Highhelm a little more crude, a little more brutal. And lean harder into the veneration of Targick as a paragon of virtue in Book 1.

Just some quick thoughts.

As I'm learning more about this AP, I feel like there's two "path" one might go to make it a cohesive adventure that won't derail.

One is as Yakman said, to make the party "human"/stranger to the forest working for or on behalf of andoran or taldor, that want the forest to remain peacefully and not wildly attack everyone around. In which case it's a whimsical AP about being stranger in an enchanted forest, allying with the good animal and fey trying to defend their home against their more evil counterparts.

The other is to cut the human element as much as possible, sideline andoran and taldor as much as possible, and have the party be mostly (or better, only) enchanted woodland creatures trying to defend their home against a rising corruption/autocracy(?). In which case it's also whimsical but there isn't that "fish out of water" element since the forest is the party's home. From what I heard it would be like a game of Root with the story being a conflict between forest creatures about who get to rule it. If I do end up running it, I think it's what I'll go for.

In that second scenario, the "human side" should be sidelined as much as possible because if the player are creatures of the woods, they are likely to want to fight the humans if their lumbering is shown as an actual threat to the woods. So it should be shown more as a small issue being overblown by the villains to not derail the AP by having player side with the bad guy or go on a anti human crusade themselves.

Having the humans (or the lumber consortium in particular) play a much bigger role as secondary villain like Vyshan said would be a third option, but from what I've heard it would ask for a much, much bigger amount of legwork from the DM to work, since it's apparently not supported at all in the modules themselves.

the problem with the second path is I can't imagine my players not wanting to side w/ the BBEG

Hi, Yakman,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my post. It is at least reassuring that others found some aspects of this AP perplexing.

I'm starting to brainstorm changes that make the endgame scheme work better for me. I will study what you did carefully.

Best,
Allen

happy to be your sounding board.

Yakman wrote:

This really would have been a great opportunity for Paizo to put out an 'evil' AP. Henchmen for the BBEG, doing horrible things to those who threaten the forest.

They already published Blood Lords for PF2...

Blood Lords is basically Parks and Recreation meets a Nightmare Before Christmas

It's hardly an 'evil' AP.

You can be an "evil" PC, but there's no evil being done.

I have spent the better part of an hour poring through all three volumes trying to work out who sabotaged the gala, before thinking to check here. How the GM is supposed to resolve this without making massive changes to the campaign as written is beyond me. Either Ruzadoya is the mastermind and does not get turned into a graveknight since she knows what's coming, or Zibik is much more hostile and pro-active than presented in the adventure. Either option would require massive re-writes to make sense.

I'm flabbergasted this was overlooked.

EDIT: Ok, how about this. Ruzadoya is responsible (possibly working with a third party), but her sister Vandalya is not aware of her intent. When the seedbag erupts, Vandalya is killed. Ruzadoya is overcome with rage and guilt, and proceeds with her plan to take over the Wildwood Lodge as written, blaming everyone but herself for her sister's fate.

EDIT 2: Maybe Vandalya is the one to come back as a graveknight, working with Ruzadoya without realizing who is responsible for her death. If the PCs can prove her sister's guilt, she fights along the PCs to defeat Ruzadoya.

I was thinking about running this AP, but I keep coming back to the fact that my players would side with the BBEG at the end of Book 1.

This really would have been a great opportunity for Paizo to put out an 'evil' AP. Henchmen for the BBEG, doing horrible things to those who threaten the forest.

Kingmaker feels like an easy sell, so I won't try to push that one too hard. If you have run Rise, Seven Dooms is a natural follow-up that would be fun. Season of Ghosts in narratively one of my most favorite. Curtain Call is also going to be very popular. Take what I say with a grain of salt if you must though haha.

also, if you are gaming on a budget, Seven Dooms is a single volume, which should be less pricey than going with one of the three volume APs.

To be honest, I'm agog that this piece of information was cut for space. This is a detail that the PCs will absolutely obsess over; "who killed Valenar and what is their plot" is something they as players need to find out at some point, even if it is just a random grudge. And as a DM, I needed to know if this dangling plot thread is something I need to hold onto because it would come back in book 3.

I still very much enjoy the campaign, but I hope editors make different value judgements in the future. Prismati or Flyting could have been greatly simplified or cut entirely to make space for this kind of important information.

Still also feels weird to have a canonically level 15 druid get oneshot by a level 8 monster? I fully thought that there HAD to be a bigger plot because of that. Like maybe Valenar had been brainwhammied by Ayrzul or something? I love the idea of this being random pettiness, but the execution was fumbled here.

totally concur.

there's a few data points that an intrepid DM can build on [add any that I missed]:

1 - his soul doesn't want to be resurrected
2 - the Taldans skeedaddled immediately [except for the ones who remained on the island for whatever reason in Book 3???]
3 - a bipedal humanoid presumably took the weapon
4 - same bipedal humanoid knew where / what it was
5 - somehow a map to the bunker falls into the possession of an ally

This is the central THING that happens. It propels not only book 1, but b/c it creates the BBEG [was this intentional???] it moves the whole AP forward.

There isn't even a mention of resolving the plotline in the 'continuing the campaign' section.

I'd really like to run this AP, but cutting this out is just... I know my players won't ignore it like the AP itself seems to do.

I was wondering if I'd missed the reveal in the first read through. Huh.

Dunno. Started reading PACTBREAKER last week, and it seems really fun. hadn't been thinking of running it, but I really like it so far.

Warped Savant wrote:

That being said, I think Hell's Rebels does the same type of story much better, but can be a lot more nuanced and more role-play heavy than some groups would like / it might not be what new players or groups expect, especially if they're more into fighting.

Curse benefits from its authors having a rather better sense of the society they were creating and its implications for what an overthrow and replacement of tyrannical power would look like in its context than Rebels does. You have to do quite a bit more detective work into Ravounel's society than you do Korvosa's to get a good sense of it (or rely on these forums to do it for you which, to be fair, we have). This is a problem not just for verisimilitude, but because it leaves internal faction management -- what should be a high priority for leaders of a mass party uniting everyone from the despised and otherized proletarians of Devil's Nursery to the most august if liberal personages of the Court of Coin on the basis of lowest-common-denominator politics -- completely unexplored.

I dunno... I really think Hell's Rebels does a fantastic job of getting you into Ravounel really quickly. The mechanics and the Player's Guide and a good DM should pull you in immediately.

And b/c it doesn't do a 2 book excursion from the city in the way that Curse does, you are right there in the thick of it the whole time. I like Curse, but honestly, Hell's Rebels seems to me like the superior AP (that vol. 100 is something else (admittedly, I've only read it, the group I was playing in broke apart early in Book 2).

KoolKobold wrote:

I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?

I have not played Giantslayer, but I heard that some people were disappointed that after they grew attached to protecting a town from orcs in the 1st module, they abandoned the town to battle giants in the 2nd module.

In a recent post in No more 6-parts APs? comment #80 Creative Director James Jacobs said,

James Jacobs wrote:

Souls At War wrote:

Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.

Especially if that idea doesn't really lend itself well to six volumes. One that immediately comes to mind is Giantslayer—that one would have probably done better as a high-level 3 part Adventure Path, because at low levels, giants are simply things you shouldn't be fighting at all, let alone in numbers.

I think that means that since Giantslayer could not start with low-level characters fighting giants, the 1st module had the wrong foes for the theme of the adventure path. In retrospect, it should have been a shorter adventure path starting with higher-level characters who could fight giants immediately.

the first volume of the Giantslayer AP is the best one.