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is it possible to bring additional material from the original draft as a web enhancement to the adventures, so we may be able to play them as they were intended (something like a director's cut of the adventures...this is the point were I am sitting back on my haunches and look square in to your eyes... please! - similarities to Shrek 2 are definitely intended...)?
PS: If not, this would be a great thing for a compilation of all thiose adventures in one volume... with additional info about Cauldron and so on...sigh! (This adventure path is way better than the original one for 3.0 in the 8 modules...)
Creative Director
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In many cases, when we refer to material that was "cut" from an adventure, that material was cut by the author of the adventure as he or she wrote it, so it can't be easilly dressed up for a web enhancement since it never existed in the first place. In the case of the last few installments of the Adventure Path, most of what was cut ended up getting replaced with options that just didn't take up as much space. In this case, restoring the cut material just duplicates the effort and makes things confusing. And by splitting the last two adventures each into two-part adventures, we were able to avoid making some really deep and painful cuts. (Incidentally, splitting these last two adventures into two-part adventures is what ended up giving "Thirteen Cages" such a strange, truncated opening. It's better to think of "Foundation of Flame" and "Thirteen Cages" as one huge 40,000 word or so adventure rather than two unconnected 20,000 word adventures.)
Of course, there's also some encounters and plotlines that do, sadly, end up on the editing room floor in order to make the adventure fit into the magazine. We keep all of these "pieces." Web enhancements take a fair amount of time to edit and prepare, time we don't have to spare. Chances are fairly good that some day we'll compile the Cauldron Adventure Path, though, and at this time, all the stuff that got cut will most likely find its way back in, in some way or another.
I certainly don't enjoy cutting material from adventures, and I get nervous about doing it every time. But every once in a while it has to happen; I try to keep the author in the loop about the cuts, so he'll have a chance to have his say, but sometimes time just doesn't permit this luxury.
A peak behind the curtain as to how an adventure might get shortened: Say I have an adventure where the PCs are exploring a pyramid, and a band of competing mercenaries (composed of fighters, wizards, rogues, bard/clerics, and led by a mind flayer) is also exploring it at the same time. The focus of the adventure is the exploration of the pyramid, but the side-plot of the mercenaries is interesting as well. The problem is, the adventure's 1,000 words too long. One thing I'd do in this case is to recast the mercenaries all as rogues, thus cutting the stat blocks for the fighters, wizards, and bard/clerics and saving about 1,000 words in the process. The end result is a band of mercenary rogues led by a mind flayer, and as a subplot, this works just as well as if the band were made up of various different classes. I could spend the time and effort to edit those stat blocks up as a web enhancement, but for the most part, that time is better spent on material that goes into the magazine and reaches all of the readers rather than just those who happen to have internet access. In a more extreme case, were I needed to cut 3,000 words, I'd probably cut the entire mercenary sub-plot but keep it in a handy file. In this case, the material might eventually see the light of day as a web enhancement or something like that.