Seeing as plans for me to become a player again have sadly fallen through (along with my lovely paladin of Wee-Jas), im going to be DM'ing for my group again (not a problem as I love DM'ing).
The last thing I ran was a SciFi campaign, so this time i'm going back to good old fantasy, and I've got a few questions if thats ok.
Out of the three AP's which one do you reckon is the best for a party of experienced, creative party? I've read most of The Savage Tide and I'm loving it, but my last sci-fi campaign had a large section where the characters were stuck on a premevil planet full of dinosuars and evil canibal monkeys, so im thinking that it might seem a bit to similar for them if I ran Savage Tide. I know a bit about the AoW (namely the ending) and i know the Shackled City book is in my local DnD shop, so getting hold of them shouldnt be a problem. so err....what was I saying? oh yeah, which of the three do you recommend?
Also, I usually like to give my players a quick oneliner to explain the campaign, do you know any good ones for the AP's.
And finally, whats the best thing for character creation? Im usually very 4d6, core rulebooks only for character gen, then splatbooks as you start to progress, is this generally recommended?
Cheers for your help
Stu
Well in order of choice I would say
Savage Tide
Age of Worms
Shackled City
Each has the pro's & con's, but I would agree that the Svaage tide may be a little too similar to previous campaign! So may get a little stale.
It is by far the best (I hate pirates and ninja's and all that nonsense) me and my players are loving every moment of it!
Age of worms, we got up to hall of harsh reflections, before another brutal TPK halted the campaign!
I've only ever played the Shackled Path, and it kind of pettered out due to a loss of interest, but Myabe due to being on the other side of the screen or for other reasons, i just did not enjoy it as much.
Ask your players what kind of game they are after, intrigue, high action, dungeoncrawl, city based, wilderness etc, prophecies, may get a better inkiling of what they are looking for then?
I haven't looked at Shackled City (a promise I made to someone who might run it at some point), but from the blurbs it sounds like a typical "high fantasy" campaign. Good and evil are pretty clear-cut and the PCs are assumed to be good. The entire campaign is based around a single city, which the PCs must save.
The Age of Worms, which I have taken over running in my current group, is a darker, gritty campaign. There is no strong assumption of goodness for the party (although there is an assumption of not being evil), but their opponents are either against them no matter what or their goals would result in such destruction that the PCs should be inspired to fight them no matter what. It is also primarily focused on dungeon exploration, with a handful of urban/NPC interaction episodes.
The Savage Tide is a more swashbuckling, character-driven campaign. There is no assumption of goodness for the party (in fact, each installment contains advice on how to adapt the campaign to a group that chooses to throw in with the Lotus Dragons). There is less emphasis on dungeon crawls and more on PC/NPC interaction.
As far as character creation goes, it depends on your group. All three adventure paths are designed to be difficult, but survivable for a group of well-designed, well-run characters. Teamwork and tactics are a MUST for many of the combat encounters.
Savage Tide it is! The skinwalkers are just too cool a baddy to miss out on. Thanks for the replies everyone!
I would recommend the Savage Tide but as you said the similarity to your last campaign may be too great. Second choice would be the Shackled City. The single location creates a lot of opportunity for repeat NPC encounters, character development, and attachment to people and places, something that I found sorely lacking in the picaresque Age of Worms. AoW had a lot of interesting locations but most of them turned out to be massive dungeonhacks (Prince of Redhand and Kings of the Rift excepted).