Just a quick question, I know the AP authors are working from an outline created by the editors, but I was wondering how much creative freedom the authors are given for their individual parts?
Creative Director
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Just a quick question, I know the AP authors are working from an outline created by the editors, but I was wondering how much creative freedom the authors are given for their individual parts?
A fair amount; we came up with the outline and plot for the adventures, but each author gets to decide exactly HOW the adventure accomplishes the plot. To take an adventure from "Age of Worms" as an example... [WARNING: Age of Worms Spoilers ahead!}
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In "Library of Last Resort" we asked Nick to write us an adventure in which the PCs have to go to an island that bans undead. There, they had to explore the island (and should fight some giant monsters) in order to reach the Library, and in there they would find information that told them about the location of Dragotha's phylactery. We didn't want the PCs to find this information by looking it up in a book. We also told him to include a competing party, and that their leader should have the Hand of Vecna.
That's about it; everything else in the adventure's from Nick, including the brilliant method of handing out that information in a strange vision/flashback sequence, the whole section on the beach, the cool NPC villains, the nature of the four challenges on the island itself, the new monster, etc.
Other authors added other thigns to the Age of Worms that we didn't expect; Jesse Decker's new monsters, Tito Leati's connections to the Shackled City adventure path, Greg and Rich's "Honest Fabler" character, etc.
If anything this lets us know the high standard that must be met to become a regular contributor to Dungeon and Dragon magazines and why these guys are picked to create your adventure paths.
If I am honest, a cynical part of me (I'm very cynical, can't help it!) wondered at why the usual suspects always popped up for the adventure paths. The above helps to show that they raise the bar by many notches.
Just speaking from personal experience, I found writing the AP adventures pretty much the same as doing a normal adventure from my own submission. I found trying to fit my interpretation of what I felt James, Erik and co wanted was easily as much fun as writing my own adventure from start to finish, challenging without being shackled too much. Looking at Greg Vaughan and the young master's adventures from Age of Worms they did a fantastic job in interpreting the brief into their own unique styles whilst keeping in harmony with the path, plus of course having a few different authors means that most players and DMs styles will have some champion along the way.
I've completed my Savage Tide segment and it was the sort of adventure I would never have written myself and yet is based upon the way a few submission of mine had gone lately - I hadn't picked up on that but James and Co did and played to those strengths, hopefully you'll enjoy the result of this in my part of the Savage Tide.
Credit (without being creepy of course) to the editors for this as they know who is strongest at what.
Rich