olshanski's page

I had the same concern Tem had, about the capital city getting wiped out, but I had another concern about the blooms as well:

The blooms say that they spread to neighboring hexes at a rate of 1 hex per day. The text says that may take several days for the players to get notified of some blooms, I think the text mentioned that some blooms may go for weeks before the party is notified... If the blooms are destroying 1 hex per day, that is a huge number of hexes wiped out before the party even knows that damage is being done.

I'm not sure I understand the hate for the set pieces.
As far as I could tell, they were just little side-treks... an encounter or two that was only tangentally related to the overarching AP.

In theory, they are just as related to the AP as the gazeteer material and/or the fiction... If I had to choose between fiction and gazeteer or a set piece, I'd take the set piece.

I really cannot figure out why a fully fleshed out encounter was so bad? Perhaps I should peruse the boards and find the threads where this is hashed out.

...or, upon further review, it's more like asking us to just serve everyone a larger entree instead of a salad. It's just as unfeasible for Paizo as it is for a restaurant.

I didn't necessarily ask for more adventure, I asked for less fluff (less fiction and gazeteer stuff).

I had thought that maybe you had other product lines to cater to people who liked fiction and setting sourcebook material, and that it might be worth considering having a more tightly focused product.

Just because you have an great selling product doesn't mean there is no room for improvement or customer feedback.

I hadn't purchased the Pathfinder Campaign Setting subscription, but it seems to me that people who really like the campaign setting material but don't like prefabricated adventures might be put off having to purchase an Adventure Path subscription just to get the 30% of the sourcebook material that they care about, and likewise, those of us that want to purchase only prefabricated adventres are somewhat put off thinking that we are subsidizing the creation of sourcebook material and short fiction.

At a steakhouse I can order the steak and then separately order sides of mashed potatoes or steamed broccoli.

On another note: the serious feedback and honest responses from the staff here (Mr Jacobs and Wertz) has impressed me enough to tip back to the "subscribing" side of the fence. I'll resubscribe to the AP in September when I am back from vacation.

There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.

In the AP you mention the demons are given an article because it gives the underpinnings of the drow culture detailed in the adventure. The drow are deeply connected with the demons of the world and the only way to understand the drow is to also understand the demons that they work with. The mood and consistency of the story simply wouldn't be the same if you didn't understand the background before moving it to your own world, the game just won't be as fulfilling.

I don't buy this argument. The drow gods that are relevant to the AP are described in the adventure. There are demon lords listed in the back that have absolutely nothing to do with the Adventure Path. Alevrah does not need to be beholden to any particular demon lord, even a demon lord of secrets, in order for the adventure path to work fine as written. The demon lord of secrets is an entertaining bit for the GMs but I don't see it impacting he players in any way.

Why would a game be less fulfilling if I place it in my homebrew world with homebrewed demons and gods? What if four years ago in a different campaign the players found themselves getting screwed over by a spider trickster god named Anansi... and now in the Second Darkness AP it turns out that Anansi was leaking secrets to Alevrah?
I find it more rewarding to expand on the adventure path my homebrew material rather than the published material.

Regarding Second Darkness:

The railroad is a problem, and especally the weak links between the issues was a problem.
One issue I haven't figured out: How could Allevrah's notes, found at the end of "Memory of Darkness", possibly lead the party to "Descent into Midnight". Allevrah had been an elf planning to bomb the drow, she wouldn't have been planning to desroy the elven capital until after she transformed to drow and took over one of the drow houses. The notes from "Memory of Darkness" couldn't possibly lead the party to "Descent into Midnight". Maybe I am missing something?

The biggest problem of all is this:
Chekhov's advice to Schoukin: "If in the first chapter you say that a gun hung on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must without fail be discharged."
In Second Darkness, the bad gals have the means to drop a significant meteor on the planet. The players know the threat exists at the end of the first AP. In my opinion, the fifth act should have had a collapse-of-civilization impact, and the sixth act should have been dealing with the aftermath.
Clearly if the APs are supposed to exist in Golarion, you can't exactly destroy Golarion during one AP and then pick up the next AP as if nothing happened... but I play the APs in a homebrew world, and it seems a shame not to destroy the world, when this AP so clearly calls for it.

That makes sense. I'd stick with the sandwich metaphor I referred to earlier: you don't like a lot of bread with your sandwich, but you can't expect them to slice the bread thinner just for you, and at any rate the sandwich wouldn't be any cheaper.

I didn't realize that Fluff was considerably less expensive to produce than Adventure. I thought that development costs were roughly equal between the two. It also seemed to me that if it took 20% longer to write 20% more Adventure material, that the authors could just be provided with 20% more lead time.

Using your analogy, I didn't know that Adventure was pastrami and Fluff was rye bread.

I didn't know the details of the industry, and how much Mr. Jacobs has to juggle, so it was just idle speculation on my part. I've now heard an answer I can live with.

So I assume, then, that you also promptly returned every DVD or Blue Ray you've ever purchased upon learning that the subtitles included languages you don't speak? "Oh noes! Trailers and Cantonese! 20% of the dollars I spent on this movie have been wasted!" No, of course you didn't. Because you paid for the main content, the subtitles are an extra and the ads keep costs down. You may not want them, but there they are. If you'd be content to pay the same price for just the AP, then why not suck it up and live with the 10 extra pages?

I'd like to thank everyone on the boards for engaging in civil discussion, especially given that many of you disagree with my opinion about the merits of the fiction and gazeteer. This poster above, though, seems to be uncivil and disrespectful, and with a token effort could have made his points in a constructive manner. I would have sent this via PM to Cheshirescott if the boards had that functionality.

Thanks Mr. Jacobs, for the feedback.

I am sure I will get slammed for this, but here goes:
I would feel better about buying the pathfinders at the same price, at a lower page count, without the fiction or gazeteer material. It doesn't make sense emperically, because I should just be able to ignore the extra stuff that I don't read... but nevertheless it makes me feel bad to see it.

Here's an analogy: I am allergic to lettuce. When I go to a restraunt and a salad is served with my dinner. I have no problem paying full price for an entree and asking the server to "Hold the salad". When I forget to ask to hold the salad, and it is delivered to me, I feel a little bad knowing that it is just going to be thrown away (especially if it is a gorgeous Ceasar salad with croutons and chunks of chicken, or a baby-greens salad with walnuts and mandarin oranges). In the same way, I feel bad looking at the last 1/3 of my APs, knowing that it is completely going to waste.

It seemed to me that if a lot of people would have been happier buying gazeteer material on its own, and Adventure material on its own, then I could buy exactly what I want (Adventure). It appears that only a few people agree with me, but many more are happy with the grab-bag of assorted adventure, fiction, gazeteer stuff merged together.

c'est la vie.

Your adventures are excellent, and I'll probably be back subscribing in another few months... I am subscribing in spite of the fluff though.

If that's all you want why don't you just buy something like War of the Burning Sky, the Modules, or Shackled City

I own war of the burning sky in hardcover, shackled city in hardcover, almost every module by goodman games and almost every module by Necromancer Games.

I love adventures and I buy them by the fistful. I NEVER purchase sourcebooks, splatbooks, gazeteers, or fantasy fiction, with the exception of a few Bestiaries (Tome of Horrors, Tome of Horrors 2, and WoTC MM3 & MM4). After MM4 I have abandoned buying bestiaries.

I have only purchased the 2nd darkness AP (all 6 issues) and the Kingmaker AP (all 6 issues). It seems to me that those are representative of the line and that $200 in purchases has been enough to give me a pretty informed opnion of what I like and dislike of the series. One of the 2nd darkness gazeteers had what seemed like 12+ pages devoted to all kinds of demon lords, and to me that was pretty useless. I haven't read more than 1 page of the fiction in any AP, and I've only read about 1/3 of the gazeteer style information.

As many posters have surmized, I run homebrew games and thus the gazeteer material is particularly wasted on me.

Zurai:
I had a longer post where I specifically called out the portions of AP31 and AP32 that dealt with the kingdom-creation mini-game as being worthwhile... in my mind, that is actually part of the play of the adventure path an stood out in stark contrast to the details about gods and other stuff that is only tangentally related to the AP.

Warforged Gardener: The pages of bestiary are sort of an annoyance, and I included it in my first draft of my list of grievances, but I have to pick my battles... I found the bestiary slightly less useless than the complete waste of space of the gazeteer and fiction. In other words, I at least look at the pictures in the bestaiary and sometimes read the beastiary. I don't read the gazeteer or fiction.

I am right on the cusp between subscribing and not, and looking at the fiction and gazeteer always pushes me to the "unsubscribe" side. I was really happy with AP31 and AP32, and that kept me going, but my goodwill ran out by the end of Kingmaker.

Strangely, I bet I would be happy with the exact same product, at the exact same price, at 12 pages shorter (without the gazeteer and fiction)... its that knowledge that may get me to resubscribe at some point in the future.

I dropped my subscription at the end of Kingmaker. I wanted to explain why:

I would like more "Adventure Path" in my adventure paths. I like the forward from the editor, but I'd rather see 1 page than 2 pages. I don't like the 6 pages of fiction, and I don't like the 6+ pages of gazeteer style information (information about gods or lands), and I am not terribly fond of the 2-3 pages of advertising.

If you scrapped the gazeteer stuff and the fiction, I would be very happy and feel that I was getting my moneys worth... as it is, I sort of feel like 20% of my purchase is completely wasted.

Where I am coming from: I purchased the entire 2nd darkness path at my FLGS, and I purchased Kingmaker via subscription. I had hoped that during the time between 2nd Darkness and Kingmaker that the format may have changed a bit to cut down on the gazeteer and fiction, but sadly it was not the case.

I know some people really like the fiction and gazeteer style substance, but those people are also probably subscribing to other lines of your products... it seems out of place in an adventure path to have pure world-building information.