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I agree with Günther. If I am to understand (having not been there myself), Paizo developed the concept of the Adventure Path in the first place.. And now has developed a business model around it, in Pathfinder.
I completely understand that you would want the first couple AP's to follow the formula perfected in Dunegon magazine. After the 3rd or 4th AP, it might time to experiment again.. particularly since there does seem to be feedback supporting it.
I just wanted to express my dis-interest in an adventure path with a drastically reduced advancement rate. I personally like the current leveling rate (one level every 3 sessions or so), and I enjoy both low-level and mid- to high-level play, so the current range seen in the adventure paths (1-15~ish) is perfect for me. All other things being equal, I'd vote to keep things as they are.
This is just my opinion, and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone else's opinion or change people's minds. Just that for most of this thread, everyone's been in agreement on the issue of slowing down advancement, and I wanted to express an opposing viewpoint before the Paizo staff got the impression that this was a near unanimous opinion. :)
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I've been tinkering with some ideas on how to do a full 6-month adventure path that only levels up characters twice per adventure, so that by the time you finish the last one, your characters will be 12th (13th after you finish the last boss fight). This keeps the entire campaign to what Dungeon under Paizo identified as the low- and mid-level band. Of course, this WOULD require us to include something in the first two adventures that say something like this:
Why does the path have to last 6 issues? Why not try a 4 issue path that stops early as an experiment? If you set the plot up like STAP, you could reuse some of the setting details in another series. You could even do a 4/8 test, where you offer a 1-20 path, compared directly to a shorter series.
to be honest, advancement in 3E happens at the rate the GM let's it happen (and I feel quite peachy with the way it happens right now, ruleswise ), since most XP hearken from combat encounters and challenges overcome.
Since the most fun in roleplaying - to our group - comes from a solid mix of (non-XP) social endeavours and activities of the characters and some solid tactical combat, the more you lean to and expend time on the former, the slower things progress, levels wise. And if you play biweekly, advancement every three or four sessions is quite ok.
Especially if you play in a five player group, where xp are divided up further than for a four player setup.
And yes, more encounters with low-level (yet prepared) goons helps keeping the tactical factor up to snuff, while limiting the overall XP
My group plays every other Sunday afternoon/evening for 5-6 hours, and even though they enjoyed SCAP, by the time they were 17th level, it was getting boring and combats were taking way to much time.
I would like to expand on what someone proposed earlier. A six book AP that started around third level, regular XP to fifth level, then half XP to about tenth level, and then regular XP to about fifteenth level.
Other than one newbie who asks at the end of most every combat "Did we level?" (less than 2 years playing), everyone has played at least 20 years, and they enjoy the sweet spot of about 5th to 10th level, and would not mind being there for a while.
-- david
Papa-DRB
Grognard
My better half and me
Creative Director
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Why does the path have to last 6 issues? Why not try a 4 issue path that stops early as an experiment? If you set the plot up like STAP, you could reuse some of the setting details in another series. You could even do a 4/8 test, where you offer a 1-20 path, compared directly to a shorter series.
Because six-part Adventure Paths is one of the core things we're trying to establish with Pathfinder. We may switch to shorter or longer APs in the future, but for now it's very important to establish Pathfinder's presence as the six-month AP source. There's actually a lot of little reasons for a six month arc too, but the most important of them is that starting up an AP takes a lot of time and work... I'm not sure we COULD get one going and off the ground in 4 months.
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I agree with Günther. If I am to understand (having not been there myself), Paizo developed the concept of the Adventure Path in the first place.. And now has developed a business model around it, in Pathfinder.
I completely understand that you would want the first couple AP's to follow the formula perfected in Dunegon magazine. After the 3rd or 4th AP, it might time to experiment again.. particularly since there does seem to be feedback supporting it.
I just wanted to express my dis-interest in an adventure path with a drastically reduced advancement rate. I personally like the current leveling rate (one level every 3 sessions or so), and I enjoy both low-level and mid- to high-level play, so the current range seen in the adventure paths (1-15~ish) is perfect for me. All other things being equal, I'd vote to keep things as they are.
This is just my opinion, and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone else's opinion or change people's minds. Just that for most of this thread, everyone's been in agreement on the issue of slowing down advancement, and I wanted to express an opposing viewpoint before the Paizo staff got the impression that this was a near unanimous opinion. :)
I agree 100% with you.
Why not offer some possible adjustments in each issue to the number/type/preparation/arrangement of opponents or obstacles that would make the mechanical pacing de/accelerate as the group's tastes dictate? A sidebar could suffice without breaking the flow of the adventure-as-written, or taking up too much space.
The publication formula stays constant, but people have some ideas on how to customize their AP straight from the writing-editorial staff (so groups know the changes won't "break" the AP).
Why not offer some possible adjustments in each issue to the number/type/preparation/arrangement of opponents or obstacles that would make the mechanical pacing de/accelerate as the group's tastes dictate? A sidebar could suffice without breaking the flow of the adventure-as-written, or taking up too much space.
The publication formula stays constant, but people have some ideas on how to customize their AP straight from the writing-editorial staff (so groups know the changes won't "break" the AP).
Or you could do exactly this yourself.
I understand DMs wanting to slow down the rate of advancement. This is only the third campaign I have run (and the 1st 2 ended around 5th level or so), so I haven't had this problem in my own groups, but I understand it. But seriously, if you want to slow down the progression, cut the XP you award in half. And BAM! now you have your slower progression.
Sure, now you will have to re balance the later adventures, but the modules as printed will give you a pretty good guide for the rebuilds of NPCs, and for monsters, the easy solution is to use monsters of your required CR, but use the description given in the module. So for instance Stone Giants have the stats of Ogres.
Because expecting the staff to do all this work is not going to happen. And seriously the sidebar will say words to the effect of "Reduce all NPC levels by an amount that your PCs differ form the expected levels. Power down these monsters, and maybe reduce their number, or use these other, lower CR monsters instead." And I don't want that kind of redundant information cluttering up my pathfinder. It is pressed for space as it is.
I just don't understand this bleating about the advancement in pathfinder being too fast. If it is too quick for your group, dial it back yourself. JUST GIVE LESS XP! Then, either rebalance the later fights, or fill the level gaps out with side treks. Game Mastery modules and old Dungeon magazines are great for this.
In fact, one of my biggest gripes with APS is that absolutely everything seems to be tied to the main plot, with very few side treks. Runelords is better than the rest, but even it is pretty one track after HMM. Slowing it down allows more space for character quests etc.
I just don't understand this bleating about the advancement in pathfinder being too fast. If it is too quick for your group, dial it back yourself. JUST GIVE LESS XP! Then, either rebalance the later fights, or fill the level gaps out with side treks. Game Mastery modules and old Dungeon magazines are great for this.
We tried cutting advancement plus weakening monsters with SCAP to a limited extent, but it worked very badly for us.
(1) By the end, cutting down the monsters was nearly as much work as writing an adventure from scratch; almost all the usefulness of the AP was gone.
(2) Having familiar monsters with modified stats makes it hard for the players to grasp the game-world, and can easily lead to a horrid sense of "the GM is just fudging, my PCs could never really fight that." It was particularly tough with demons and devils, where the player had strong expectations about what the creature should be like, and a weaker substitute was not necessarily available.
(3) The adventure was intrinsically high-level and didn't make much sense for mid-level PCs. (Eventually this factor got the better of the GM and we had a TPK because cutting it down far enough just made no sense.)
We also tried the side-trek approach. This was better but it made little sense to put side-treks in some of the later module gaps. We're trying to save the world, but let's do a little unconnected side adventure first? As the PCs become more able to choose their own path (Teleport, Planeshift, etc.) it becomes less and less easy for the GM to remove them from the (usually rather forcing) AP path. This was true in RotRL as well.
To me personally, the normally-paced APs are like sitting down at a six course banquet. You pick up your spoon, take a taste--and the waiter snatches the dish away and brings another one. The stuff tastes good, but the experience is still unsatisfying. My best home-made campaign to date took a couple of years. At the same rate of play, AP campaigns self-destruct within 6-9 months. I try to put in side material to slow them down--we are planning a drastic slowdown attempt with CotCT--but I would sure love one that didn't require continual surgery to work for us.
Mary
Having DM'ed Shackled City and DM'ing Age of Worms at the moment, I have always inserted other adventures to slow level advancement. Of course with Dungeon Magazine that was easier, because we also got other adventures that we could use after a bit of tweaking.
Now that becomes harder, which is exactly why I would like the second half of the Pathfinder books to give some extra adventure or side trek ideas, some of which could be entirely based on roleplaying. This way DMs and their groups could choose a faster or slower pace, while sticking to the same adventure.
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I just don't understand this bleating about the advancement in pathfinder being too fast. If it is too quick for your group, dial it back yourself. JUST GIVE LESS XP! Then, either rebalance the later fights, or fill the level gaps out with side treks. Game Mastery modules and old Dungeon magazines are great for this.
Hello mevers,
as much as I understand your point of view, I have to agree with the two posters above: It didn't work that way for me, either.
On the one hand the effort of lowering npc stats is almost as high as re-writing an adventure. Even worse: As pointed out above the story line doesn't work any more. You just can't play a high level scenario with mid level pcs (for this very reason: compare the thread name).
On the other hand inserting more and more side track adventures (whatever their source) blurs the main story line. At least my players don't pay much attention any more to the main plot line after being led into side track after side track. The continuity of plot evaporates.
I'd really love to see a solution in future APs which addresses both readers' preferences: fast level progressing *and* a long stay in the so called "sweet spot levels". I think it is obvious that it is hard to satisfy both tastes in *one* AP, though.
One last thing: I kindly asked people at the start of this thread to behave respectful to each other (foreseeing the clash of different opinions). Most people managed to do so very fine. Some of them even expressed their enjoyment about people's civil and cooperative exchange of arguments.
Calling other people's diverging attitude "bleating" doesn't demonstrate a high level of either respect or tolerance for other people's opinions, though. There are enough trolls out there which "bleat" or "bloat" their opinions and nobody cares much about it. Therefore I invite you to contribute to this thread in a more civil form and help to find a solution which addresses as many readers' wishes as possible (and of course the Paizo staff's plans! ;-) ). Wouldn't that be a great achievement?
Looking forward to your input,
Günther
Why not offer some possible adjustments in each issue to the number/type/preparation/arrangement of opponents or obstacles that would make the mechanical pacing de/accelerate as the group's tastes dictate?
Would be quite a bit of space used up for this: In the beginning it doesn't look so bad (one orc instead of 2, or use the red values instead of the black ones in the stat block, one indicating a lower-level enemy), but as things progress, the level gap would widen, and the changes would get more extreme. And sooner or later, the the assumptions about player abilities will get in the way. The high-level guys will be able to deal with obstacles that would absolutely baffle the low-level ones.
Anyway, it would mean additional work for the authors (and from all we hear, they are swamped as it is), but you can't know how many people would pick up the product because of this fact. Is it enough to justify the extra effort?
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What about a six issue AP that only goes to 9th or 10th level, but to pace it right, allow your writers to go into more details on encounters, surrounding territory, personalities and roleplaying notes?
Because that treads dangerously close to overwriting. It's easily possible to go too far into unnecessary description and clutter up the text; this tends to make the adventure harder to read (since it has too many digressions) and therefore less fun to run. Like a person, an adventure is at its most healthy somewhere between being emaciated and obese.
In any event... I am tinkering with methods to vary up the length of adventure paths as regards what levels they cover. And that includes reading these messageboards. Keep in mind that the Adventure Paths that go from 1st to 20th level were among the most popular things Paizo's ever done, so it's a bit scary going in and fixing what might not be broken after all. So far, seems that people are generally excited about Runelords not going all the way to 20th level, but there HAS been some backlash from readers who prefer the 1st through 20th level model. For Crimson Throne, we aren't going to change that formula, really, although we might for Second Darkness. Stay tuned!
I agree, a 6 part adventure for 9-10 would be not so good. But a 3 or 4 part Mid-level AP would be quite nice. Say from level 8-12. Of course you could just releast those as a Gamemastery set of modules. But if released as a Pathfinder series, it could have lots of juicy background information on our lovely new Campaign world. I do like the new campaign world also, great job. I'm an Eberron GM atm, but will definitely keep up with all the 3.5 Paizo stuff!
One last thing: I kindly asked people at the start of this thread to behave respectful to each other (foreseeing the clash of different opinions). Most people managed to do so very fine. Some of them even expressed their enjoyment about people's civil and cooperative exchange of arguments.
Calling other people's diverging attitude "bleating" doesn't demonstrate a high level of either respect or tolerance for other people's opinions, though. There are enough trolls out there which "bleat" or "bloat" their opinions and nobody cares much about it. Therefore I invite you to contribute to this thread in a more civil form and help to find a solution which addresses as many readers' wishes as possible (and of course the Paizo staff's plans! ;-) ). Wouldn't that be a great achievement?
Fair enough point. I am sorry, it wasn't constructive at all. That was unhelpful, and I will try to choose my words better in the future.
I suppose part of my reaction to this issue is the fact that I use AP's for the exact opposite reason than it seems most of the posters in this thread. It's not the numbers NPCs, etc I need help with (I can come up with those on my own). It is the plot and story line and personality of the NPCs I need help with. That is by far the weakest aspect of my DMing, and the part I rely most on Modules for. As such, I would find it pretty easy to dial down / replace the NPC and monsters with lower level ones.
As for the comment that the plot doesn't work unless you are at a high level, why do only high level PCs need to save the world? What is wrong with PCs at level 12 or 13 stopping Karzoug? It's not only high level PCs who save the world after all.
To me personally, the normally-paced APs are like sitting down at a six course banquet. You pick up your spoon, take a taste--and the waiter snatches the dish away and brings another one. The stuff tastes good, but the experience is still unsatisfying.
I really like this description of the APs. There is just too much dungeon in them, not enough time spent out of the dungeon. The plot almost seems to be simply an excuse to move from one dungeon the next slightly higher level one. And it's a shame. I want the APs to do the things I can't easily do myself. Like NPC interaction. Some ideas on how to play out the travel sequences (especially as in RotR we seem to be traipsing all across Varisia, but we never actually get to stop and see it.) Sure, we get the Guide to Varisia, but I really do need you to take me by the hand and show me exactly how it is done. Something like The Sea Wyverns Wake from STAP, but obviously on a much smaller scale.
Unlike the OP, I like APs that have the 'save the world' climax. To me, that's sort of the point of going through an entire AP.
Further on that, I think the (current) 15th level cap is too low. I far prefer the Dungeon mag APs that went all the way to 20th level. I'd rather see much more of those (as those levels need the most support, anyways). 15th level is a bit of a disappointment.
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Unlike the OP, I like APs that have the 'save the world' climax. To me, that's sort of the point of going through an entire AP.
Further on that, I think the (current) 15th level cap is too low. I far prefer the Dungeon mag APs that went all the way to 20th level. I'd rather see much more of those (as those levels need the most support, anyways). 15th level is a bit of a disappointment.
As a fan of 'kill the foozle,' I'd like the paths to hit at least 17th level, so that the PCs get to use ninth level spells, not just th ebad guys. Otherwise, why bother giving villains specific spells, when you could just describe the special effects they do, and say "it's magic."
That said, I'll try and reconstruct a post that was timed out. I would not object to a year with a 4/8 split between the paths, rather than 6/6. Since lower levels are more popular, I could even see 5/7 being more palatable. 4/7/1, with the 1 being Revenge of the Runelords, or other very high level adventure might also work. You might also try 3/6/3, with the two 3s being in media res; say levels 4-11ish. The only downside to this proposal is it might mean the developers work harder, since the main base locations change more often.
I suppose part of my reaction to this issue is the fact that I use AP's for the exact opposite reason than it seems most of the posters in this thread. It's not the numbers NPCs, etc I need help with (I can come up with those on my own). It is the plot and story line and personality of the NPCs I need help with. That is by far the weakest aspect of my DMing, and the part I rely most on Modules for.
It seems to me that a lower-level, slower-advancement AP might actually provide some things to help. One thing I've noticed with RotRL is that the authors are finding it more and more difficult to fit everything into their pagecount as the level increases. A low-level adventure has much shorter stat blocks, and that means more pages for description, storyline, personality sketches etc. (If you compare the NPC descriptions from #1 to the descriptions from #5 you'll see what I mean.) So maybe you'd have something to look forward to if Paizo wrote such an AP, even if it meant you had to uplevel all the monsters.
As for the comment that the plot doesn't work unless you are at a high level, why do only high level PCs need to save the world? What is wrong with PCs at level 12 or 13 stopping Karzoug? It's not only high level PCs who save the world after all.
If the PCs are not substantially higher level than the local authorities, many PCs will logically involve the local authorities; that's one trouble I've encountered when cutting things down.
From what I can see (midway through RotRL #6) the plotline there is going to be extremely lethal, even if the monsters are cut down to PC level, unless the PCs have very rich resources for "get out of here now!" So it could possibly be run at 9th but not any lower than that: it will tend to turn into a lethal mob scene. Also, if you make the BBG a level appropriate for, say, 9th level PCs, he can't have done most of the things that the history/backstory say he did, unless you just declare he did it by GM fiat.
For me personally, an adventure with lower level PCs saving the world from something as big as the BBG in RotRL has to involve the PCs finding a special weakness (Frodo throwing the One Ring into Mt. Doom). The AP doesn't do that; it pits the PCs against the BBG in a head to head fight. Frodo vs. Sauron is not an easy scenario to make work; if you cut down Sauron too far the whole thing gets silly, and if you don't, what chance should Frodo have?
Alternatively you could save something--not the world, preferably--from a threat proportioned to lower level PCs. But that's a different AP, not a cut down version of the same one. In the case of RotRL I would probably want to lose the last scenario completely and do something quite different involving preventing the BBG, not beating him. Disabling the Runewell network, probably. Then you keep K. offstage, and keep the solution proportionate to the PCs.
I don't think Paizo should commit to doing lower-level, delayed-advancement APs frequently, but I would sure love to see a few. I'm the opposite of you--I can do plotline, but I am utterly incapable of writing all those stat blocks in the limited time I have available for gaming. I really need the stat blocks to be there, or I basically can't run at all. The side adventure I put between RotRL #3 and #4 took me about 8 hours to write, and I don't have that kind of free time often enough to sustain a game.
Mary
For me, artificially manipulating the mechanics really doesn't address the core issue. Slowing advancement only exchanges "Save the World" for "Save the ___." Why not service the need for variety by taking the advancement rate to heart when conceiving stories for an AP. Simply, take PCs rocketing up the levels as a given and tailor each story to that given. A War AP would be a good example. Survival in a large scale conflict almost necessitates D&D's pace of ability progression. A Mistborn-style "Overthrow the Evil Government" AP would also serve.
Obviously this doesn't address the issue of PCs constantly outgrowing abilities. And, if the above suggestion isn't done creatively, PCs against overwhelming forces, degenerates into railroading, TPKs and just plain overwhelming. But this is only one type of story. There are several stories that would fit the heroic mold that don't entail "Wack-A-Mole the Resurrected Evil" or "Take the hill, lads!"
Regardless, rapid advancement is easily addressed by the removal of gratuitous combat and some DM creativity. Replace some of the combat encounters with puzzles, skill related obstacles or roleplaying; then award XP for success at those. Just because the rules say you can't do it doesn't mean you have to play it their way...
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One thing I've noticed with RotRL is that the authors are finding it more and more difficult to fit everything into their pagecount as the level increases.
Actually... this was a problem for all six adventures. Including the one I wrote. My original draft of Burnt Offerings was about 9,000 words too long; I had to cut those 9,000 words to get it to fit into Pathfinder #1. (The original version had several more goblin encounters during the initial raid and included fireworks, a much more robust room-by-room treatment of a sinspawn and goblin infested Glassworks, and about 3 additional meaty encounters in Sandpoint between the initial raid and the Glassworks that had the runewell of wrath infecting certain members of town with anger. All of which, it turned out, was WAY too much to fit into an adventure scheduled to take characters up to 3rd/4th level.)
It's not really a problem of long stat blocks. Long stat blocks certainly complicate the situation... but it's mostly us at Paizo overestimating how much room we ACTUALLY had going into Pathfinder from Dungeon. Turns out... there's more room than Dungeon, but not as much more as we'd hoped.
It's not really a problem of long stat blocks. Long stat blocks certainly complicate the situation... but it's mostly us at Paizo overestimating how much room we ACTUALLY had going into Pathfinder from Dungeon. Turns out... there's more room than Dungeon, but not as much more as we'd hoped.
There is a a bunch of 'wasted' space in all six of the Pathfinders that I have read. Well, it's not really wasted, so much as not used to the best benefit of the reader/user.
Are the five or so pages of advertising at the back of the book (not periodical) so important to Paizo's sales? Perhaps if there was no or less advertising in the book where would be more room for adventures.
Are the pregenerated characters such sacred cows? They eat 1-2 pages per book.
The same with some of of the articles. Some of them seem like advertisements for Golarion campaign settings to be released later. They are of little or no use to the adventure at hand. The write up on real castles in PF3 was useless. It makes no allowances for magic or fantastic creatures. It was literally a waste of time to read. The write up of Golarion dragons was interesting, but of little use in the RotRL. It did not affect how the dragons would be run in the adventures. It did seem to pimp them for that campaign setting to be released at a later date, with the same info. The write up for Desna was never necessary for the Rise of the Runelords. The write up for Lamashtu was, but it was placed several issues past the where it could help things out.
I disagree wholeheartedly, I don't mind the advertising, but the iconics are one of my favourite elements of Pathfinder, and they allow for quick play, are excellent introductory characters for new players, or old players who want to try something different, they set the tone of the campaign and world of Golarion. And their excellent pregenerated NPCs.
About the extra articles, I've tohught they were all excellent, a break from it just being one long adventure, their useful as player information, and for doing your own games in Golarion. I'll admit that I'm the least zealous about the castle article, but that's because it hasnt come up yet. When it does it'll be excellent, and I say when because from what I've seen most PC's like having bases, be they apartment townhouses, mansions or keeps.
That's my opinion, I'm fairly happy with the whole product overall so far, I like the 6/6 a year layout and think the level advancement nicely covers the best range of play, missing out on the highest levels, where higher level complication becomes it's most exagerrated.
My two copper, keep up the good work.
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Are the five or so pages of advertising at the back of the book (not periodical) so important to Paizo's sales? Perhaps if there was no or less advertising in the book where would be more room for adventures.
Actually, yes, those Ad pages are that important. Pathfinder goes out to THOUSANDS of people—it's one of the best ways we have to let folk know about our other products.
Are the pregenerated characters such sacred cows? They eat 1-2 pages per book.
Two pages. And they're there because of overwhelming reader demand, believe it or not. We REGULARLY had requests to do characters for the iconic heroes we designed for Dungeon, and the overall feedback we've recieved so far from these two pages in Pathfinder have been positive. Some day in the future, these pages might lose their vaule and be replaced by something else, sure, but for now they're actually a rather popular feature.
The same with some of of the articles. Some of them seem like advertisements for Golarion campaign settings to be released later. They are of little or no use to the adventure at hand. The write up on real castles in PF3 was useless. It makes no allowances for magic or fantastic creatures. It was literally a waste of time to read. The write up of Golarion dragons was interesting, but of little use in the RotRL. It did not affect how the dragons would be run in the adventures. It did seem to pimp them for that campaign setting to be released at a later date, with the same info. The write up for Desna was never necessary for the Rise of the Runelords. The write up for Lamashtu was, but it was placed several issues past the where it could help things out.
Not all the articles are going to appeal to every reader, simply because all our readers have different tastes. Therefore, it's an unfortunate truth that now and then, you'll get an article (or adventure, or even an entire Adventure Path) you don't like. I try to vary things up and hold everything to the same high quality so that, in theory, these problems won't happen TOO often. The castle article was disappointing for me too... that was a result of us asking Nick to write too much at once at a busy time in his life, and we had to have on-staff editors/designers write that article about a week before the book shipped to the printer to fill the gam. Sorry you didn't like it, but would you have preferred empty pages? Because that was really our only option at the time.
As for the writeups for the deities, sure, they're not THAT necessary for the adventure path, but they ARE one of the more popular features. I get regular mail and requests to do this god or that in Pathfinder now. Going forward, the deities we choose are going to be more closely aligned with the adventure, but for Runelords we didn't really have that luxury since all of our writers had to write those initial adventures (and articles) in something of a vacuum, since we didn't have really ANY information about Golarion to give them.
Regardless, rapid advancement is easily addressed by the removal of gratuitous combat and some DM creativity. Replace some of the combat encounters with puzzles, skill related obstacles or roleplaying; then award XP for success at those.
It seems to me, though, that the fundamental problem with an AP is that if you slow advancement below what the AP expects, you can't use the later modules without massive revision.
Our plan for CotCT is to start the PCs at 4th, put a side adventure before every module, and slow advancement to 1 level per module or side adventure. This doesn't quite work, and we will probably have to abandon either the slow-advancement goal or the final module. But it's closer to our preferred rate. (I would prefer it to be still slower, but that's just not going to happen.) We do pay the price of running the first module, meant for 1st level PCs, for 5th level PCs. I don't expect it will be as challenging as hoped.
If you just slow advancement to this 1 level/module rate without taking other drastic steps (higher starting level, side adventures), you might be able to save modules 2-3 by drastic revision, but in my opinion you'd have to kiss modules 4-6 goodbye; it's just not practical to run a level 15 module for level 6 PCs.
Advancement rate is clearly not a problem at all for some groups, but it is a continual, severe, and eventually game-killing problem for mine. Without the drastic solution outlined above I would not be considering CotCT at all. After SCAP I will never play in a standard-advancement AP again.
A group which doesn't run the whole AP obviously can manipulate advancement any way they like. It's much more of a problem if you run published material, especially APs but also long modules. The side-adventure solution runs into trouble with some modules. RotRL #5 had the PCs in my group go up 3 levels in 4 hours of their time (4 sessions of play). There is no way they could have had a side adventure during that time--it was one continuous raid--and the player balked at this much advancement this quickly. I'm not sure what we'll do if CotCT forces a situation like this.
Mary
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I don't think that any of the article space has been wasted. The iconics will come in handy, the bestiaries are the right size, and the deity articles are invaluable. The only article that I was less impressed with was the castle one, and that's a pretty good record for 6 issues of a new magazine.
Going forward, I could see that the beastiaries could be cut by 1 or 2 monsters an issue, and that the iconics might be less useful after the complete run of all 12. But that is in the far future.
I still agree with the sentiment of the OP, but maybe that niche is better served by the GameMastery Modules. I'm interested in seeing more about the Last Baron series, for example. Judging by the popularity of the thread/poll on sequels, I'm not alone in wanting to see more series in GMM.
It's much more of a problem if you run published material, especially APs but also long modules.
I've always found APs to be unplayable to begin with. That isn't a criticism of Paizo in any way. The simple truth is that the campaigns aren't written for me, my players or my world. So, I spend several months tearing each adventure down and rebuilding them from scratch. Granted, this isn't a solution available to everyone. But, to address the lack of equilibrium between PC levels and the requirements of a particular adventure, some revision is required. I would advise as you read through each adventure, make notes on what can be removed, what can be expanded and where you can insert material of your own. Do this specifically with the pace of the adventure and rate of advancement in mind. As I stated above, most combat in an adventure serves no other purpose than rewarding XP. Remove those and find other activities that are just as engaging, that slow the tempo down and offer a more comfortable rate of reward. I also talk with my players regularly for their ideas. Subplots that relate to the group but are still attached to the main story are a great way of keeping players invested while moderating the pace. Really, in short, the DM has to be the maestro and take control of the game. If the adventure conflicts with how you and your group want to play, change the adventure...
The castle article was disappointing for me too... that was a result of us asking Nick to write too much at once at a busy time in his life, and we had to have on-staff editors/designers write that article about a week before the book shipped to the printer to fill the gam. Sorry you didn't like it, but would you have preferred empty pages? Because that was really our only option at the time.
I can see the need for advertising and the pregens. I don't agree with them fully, but I can see the need. I'm not sure why Lamashtu's write up was so late in the series
when the big bad of the first book is one of her clerics and bears the marks of her worship
but after the whole RotR series was released, that was less of a problem.
A tremendous amount of sound and fury had been posted about the problems with PF3 due to sections and continuity removed from the adventure because it submitted over the assigned page count. Now you're telling us that there were empty pages in the book that had to be filled with random junk at the last minute?
Sometimes I think your oft stated claim of lack of space or too much writer output is just a blanket response to the public at large. "We had so much cool stuff I had to cut some!" sounds better than "We screwed up a little."
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I would like to suggest that Paizo seriously consider a line of 'optional' AP adventures. Side quests that are tied to the AP but are unnecessary, and can be used to slow advancement. It would be sort of like an additional GameMastery line that focuses strictly on expanding the AP. A great place for some 'cut' material.
I'd subscribe. At least, as long as it remains 3.x. And if conversion isn't TOO difficult, I might stay if it went 4th (please, god, no!).
A tremendous amount of sound and fury had been posted about the problems with PF3 due to sections and continuity removed from the adventure because it submitted over the assigned page count. Now you're telling us that there were empty pages in the book that had to be filled with random junk at the last minute?
I don't think that's reasonable. A lot of advertising material had already been released, and all of it said "There is an article on castles." For Paizo to then publish a book with no article on castles would be false advertising. This erodes trust even faster than publishing the occasional bad article.
The books are constrained by the fact that they are advertised in advance. Of course, if they weren't they wouldn't sell. But this means that the basic article content pretty much has to be determined in advance, and if those articles don't work out, it's a problem.
It's hard to publish something monthly. If we'd be willing to get them bi-monthly and pay twice as much, I'm sure we could get a much stronger product. (I'd consider it, actually, though it would have made RotRL a real pain as my group played them as fast as they came out. But the extra 20K on each adventure might have covered some of that.)
Mary
As I stated above, most combat in an adventure serves no other purpose than rewarding XP.
This really depends on the group's preferences.
As a player, one of the things I hate most about rapid advancement is that there are not *enough* combats at each level. This means that I don't get to enjoy my characters' capabilities in combat thoroughly, and also that I get less and less competent at playing them (because I don't get enough practice to become proficient with one set of abilities before another is added). So pruning out combats and replacing them with roleplaying doesn't help me at all; it makes things worse.
Remove those and find other activities that are just as engaging, that slow the tempo down and offer a more comfortable rate of reward.
Rate of reward is not a problem for us--we don't use EXP. But if you want to slow a 3 levels/adventure AP to one level/adventure, 2/3 of your material must be GM generated subplots. At that point, the AP is no longer fulfilling its goal of allowing a GM with limited prep time to run a game. If I have to write 2/3 of every game and shoehorn in the AP adventure somehow, I'm probably worse off than if I write the entire campaign from scratch.
I wrote a side adventure between RotRL #3 and #4; it played well, but the time cost was around 5-6 hours, and I simply can't afford to do that most of the time. (That week I had a 5 hour train ride to spend on prep.)
When I was in college I could spend 2-4 hours prep time for every gaming session and still run weekly. I can't now. And that was for low-level play; high level play, for me, has an exponentially greater prep burden. I spent all the free time I had available yesterday evening doing one monster for RotRL #6. Writing a full side adventure, with combats, for 15th level PCs is totally beyond my time budget. That's why I buy APs in the first place.
I customize a lot. Roleplaying customization is not that hard for me. But customized combats are very, very hard, and I really can't afford to do the kind of drastic stuff that a 2/3 slowdown requires. The person who will GM CotCT thinks he can do it--we'll see. I think it may be too much time investment for him as well.
Mary
I don't think that's reasonable. A lot of advertising material had already been released, and all of it said "There is an article on castles." For Paizo to then publish a book with no article on castles would be false advertising. This erodes trust even faster than publishing the occasional bad article.
y
Obviously I don't agree with you here. Shipping a ridiculously below par article rather than bumping it one issue (sorry, book) forward is very corrosive to consumer trust. Including an article about Golarion dragons (coincidentally in time to match a Gamemastery module about dragons) in a transparent attempt to advertise one of Paizo's unrelated products in a Patherfinder is corrosive of trust.
When I bought into Pathfinder, it was advertised to me as the successor to the APs and associated support articles from Dungeon and Dragon magazines. The Wormfood and Savage Tidings articles in Dragon always tied in with the adventure in Dungeon. They elaborated on or expanded upon the adventure content and theme. Many of the articles that I see in Pathfinder don't quite manage to do this. Some that do it do so in such a tangental manner that I have to strain to see the connection. What I do see is the Pathfinder APs used to shill the other Paizo products, and that's starting to bother me more and more. The self contained AP/support article idea has been co-opted into advertising for other Paizo items to a greater and greater degree.
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Creative Director
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A tremendous amount of sound and fury had been posted about the problems with PF3 due to sections and continuity removed from the adventure because it submitted over the assigned page count. Now you're telling us that there were empty pages in the book that had to be filled with random junk at the last minute?
Sometimes I think your oft stated claim of lack of space or too much writer output is just a blanket response to the public at large. "We had so much cool stuff I had to cut some!" sounds better than "We screwed up a little."
No... what I'm telling you is that we had a castle article scheduled for that volume of Pathfinder. It had been solicited into the distribution channel with the article, it had been mentioned in the blog, and it had been mentioned in Pathfinder 2's "Coming next month" section. When the castle article failed to deliver, we did indeed have the option to expand the adventure into that section... IF we'd had had time to do so. The sections that were cut were never edited; worse, they were never developed. It would have taken a week or more to expand the adventure back out to fill the gap... and with Gen Con occuring and us STILL producing Dragon and Dungeon at the same time we were working on Pathfinder and the modules... that wasn't time that was available to us. And even if we DID take the extra week or two to do so, then we would have been looking at angry readers demanding where the castle article we'd promised went.
My decision was to have James Sutter and Mike McArtor salvage what they could from the castle article and we went with that. I think they did a pretty good job, given that they were assigned the article a day or three before it had to be laid out.
Certainly we and Nick screwed up Pathfinder 3—in fact, of all the Pathfinders so far, I thnk that Pathfinder 3 suffered the MOST due to overlapping conflicts (be they Nick having multiple writing assignments at the same time he was getting married and moving from Hawaii to New York, or be they us trying to put out Pathfinder, Dragon, Dungeon, a GameMastery module, AND go to Gen Con all at the same time), but I did everything I could to minimize the errors. I'm confident that the "tremendous sound and fury" you talk about would have been even more so had we abandoned the castle article completely.
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Creative Director
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It's hard to publish something monthly. If we'd be willing to get them bi-monthly and pay twice as much, I'm sure we could get a much stronger product. (I'd consider it, actually, though it would have made RotRL a real pain as my group played them as fast as they came out. But the extra 20K on each adventure might have covered some of that.)
Switching to a bi-monthly schedule for Pathfinder would certainly help us in giving us more time to edit things together... but it would, in the end, bring Pathfinder to an end. A bi-monthly schedule means that cash flow into the company from Pathfinder happens less often, and I'm pretty sure a $40 200-page softcover book wouldn't fly in today's market.
So: Monthly it must remain.
And when Gen Con/magazines make you fall a month behind (which was the situation at Pathfinder 3)... it takes a while to get caught up.
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Creative Director
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Obviously I don't agree with you here. Shipping a ridiculously below par article rather than bumping it one issue (sorry, book) forward is very corrosive to consumer trust. Including an article about Golarion dragons (coincidentally in time to match a Gamemastery module about dragons) in a transparent attempt to advertise one of Paizo's unrelated products in a Patherfinder is corrosive of trust.
When I bought into Pathfinder, it was advertised to me as the successor to the APs and associated support articles from Dungeon and Dragon magazines. The Wormfood and Savage Tidings articles in Dragon always tied in with the adventure in Dungeon. They elaborated on or expanded upon the adventure content and theme. Many of the articles that I see in Pathfinder don't quite manage to do this. Some that do it do so in such a tangental manner that I have to strain to see the connection. What I do see is the Pathfinder APs used to shill the other Paizo products, and that's starting to bother me more and more. The self contained AP/support article idea has been co-opted into advertising for other Paizo items to a greater and greater degree.
I've tried to explain why things happened the way they do for multiple problems multiple times over the past several months, Doppelganger, and you never seem to be satisfied. I (and the rest of us here at Paizo) are doing the best we can to make Pathfinder and our other products as excellent as can be. I think we're succeeding. I'm very proud of what they are. If that's STILL not cutting it for you, well it sounds to me like you might be happier spending your 20 bucks a month on something else, then.
In any event, I've about run out of energy trying to win you back. Thanks for giving Pathfinder a chance, though!
I've tried to explain why things happened the way they do for multiple problems multiple times over the past several months, Doppelganger, and you never seem to be satisfied. I (and the rest of us here at Paizo) are doing the best we can to make Pathfinder and our other products as excellent as can be. I think we're succeeding. I'm very proud of what they are. If that's STILL not cutting it for you, well it sounds to me like you might be happier spending your 20 bucks a month on something else, then.In any event, I've about run out of energy trying to win you back. Thanks for giving Pathfinder a chance, though!
It IS getting better, James. I've seen it in Pathfinder 6 and in posts on the boards. I have literally seen things that I personally asked for appear in the book. I was responding here to your claims that you just don't have as much space as you thought you would have. I took exception to those claims, for the reasons I stated. That doesn't mean that I even have to be 'won back' to Pathfinder. I'm liking what I am seeing. I just find some of your statements about space to be a little specious.
You can still have my $20 a month. Here, take it! No, take it! It will go well with the $147.14 I've already spent!
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Hi, James.
I hear you explain that time and space limitations, as well as simple growing pains from the first year of a new product-type, required that some compromises had to be made, and that you think you made the best choices you could, given circumstances, some of which were outside your control.
I'm going to raise my hand here and vote. Take it as a single vote, for whatever its worth.
Given a choice between keeping on schedule and putting out a more polished product, I know you won't be able to please everybody, but I'll vote for the more polished product. Five years from now, nobody will care if, say, Pathfinder #9 was two weeks late to the presses, and it took four months to get back on schedule. If people five years from now look back and say that Pett did the best darn job they've ever seen on that kind of module, I think you'll be prouder of that work.
Given a choice between fulfilling "next issue" promises and filling a book with the very best stories and articles you can muster, I know that you'll make people angry one way or the other, but I'll vote for the best stories and articles.
And here's hoping that, with several issues of Pathfinder under Paizo's belt and without two other magazines to publish at the same time, you'll never have these growing pains again, and never have to make the choice of what to do when contracted articles don't appear three days before they need to be typeset.
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I had stopped reading this thread because I am very happy with the first AP and I trust Paizo to give me a quality product. Today I notice Dr/Baron JJ had posted so I read his post.
I just want to weigh in here. Obviously you can not please all of the people all of the time - I am in business and I know how true those words are. But I want to say I am very pleased. I have no complaints at all about Pathfinder or the Modules. I am loving every second of the AP I am running and I will be buying them as long as you are producing them.
They have become my favorite adventure source. I also want to say that I do love the supplemental material and it is exciting to watch the world and its mythology grow.
Thank you JJ and everyone at Paizo for what IMO is the best group of products being produced today and maybe during the past 30 years of D&D products.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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I (and the rest of us here at Paizo) are doing the best we can to make Pathfinder and our other products as excellent as can be. I think we're succeeding. I'm very proud of what they are. If that's STILL not cutting it for you, well it sounds to me like you might be happier spending your 20 bucks a month on something else, then.
In any event, I've about run out of energy trying to win you back. Thanks for giving Pathfinder a chance, though!
I've only purchased and seen Burnt Offerings, but that one alone sold me. It was a GREAT module and one I'd dearly love to run if only we didn't have such a wealth of ideas to run already. Fear not, it will have its chance and it will be run, if only for the excellent chance to DM the goblins. I love me them goblins!
If a business slips its schedule, the money that was supposed to come in from that project slips too. I've seen a couple of businesses go bankrupt from this; it's a significantly risky strategy. Even if the money involved is exactly the same, money tomorrow is worth less than money today. You have bills today, after all, and creditors don't like to get their money late. And you have some expenses that don't slip, like rent, so if you do 11 Pathfinders rather than 12 over the course of year, 10% of the rent money just vanished.
I wouldn't advocate the bi-monthly approach; I think monthly is a much better financial gamble, even if the schedule is hard. (I was just saying, if you *did* do it, I personally would pay the $40.) I hope, as other posters have said, that reducing your Dragon/Dungeon commitments will help keep that schedule livable--I don't want to see you guys burn out.
It sounds as though things may improve as the writers internalize the necessary size of a Pathfinder module, so they don't overwrite so much in the first place. Cutting things down is hard, and usually leaves scars.
So far, I think the weakest Pathfinder episodes are as strong or stronger than the best episodes of AoW or SCAP. I certainly haven't had any "why on earth did I agree to run this?" debacles as I did in AoW. I'm looking forward, despite the massive surgery it will take to slow it down, to playing in CotCT.
Mary
I'm going to throw in my 2 cents here and say that I'm opposed to the idea of slowing down the rate of advancement in the AP. I personally feel that if one wants this sort of thing badly enough its essentially incumbent upon them to create the side treks themselves by modifying the plot line of the AP so that the side quest becomes integral to the main plot. I suggest that old issues of Dungeon could probably do a pretty good job as a foundation for such side quests. Building a campaign or adding to one is not usually all that hard. Prior to their being APs most campaigns were essentially adventures strung together in this manner.
While I understand that this does involve a fair amount of prep work and that might make it impossible for some DMs, I don't think this is enough of a justification to stray from the current system. Those that want slower advancement can put in some elbow grease and get it - its not nearly so easy to do the reverse. If you make a 'slow advancement AP' one can't then easily convert it to a normal paced advancement AP. I suppose one could throw out half the material and rework it but throwing away all this interesting material kind of defeats the point of buying the product in the first place.
While I understand some of the complaints with how fast characters seem to level in 3.5 I also suspect that most groups will take between 9 and 18 months to actually run a whole AP in real time, depending on how often they play and how long those sessions are. Thats a pretty hefty chunk of real life and slowing that down does not appeal to me.
For all its flaws I like the fact that its reasonably possible, in 3.5, to run a whole campaign in something vaguely resembling a reasonable amount of real life.
If you think about the previous APs you have run or played in - are you really sure that it would have been better if you had spent twice as long on these stories as you actually did? Where they that gripping that you where certain that you did not want a change? I suspect, some of the time at least, the answer is no.
What made this long drawn out advancement tolerable in 1st and 2nd edition, I contend, was that, most of the time, adventures where not about the same story at all. Instead many stories would be woven into the mix. My gut feeling on this is 'careful what you wish for - you might get it'.
Given a choice between keeping on schedule and putting out a more polished product, I know you won't be able to please everybody, but I'll vote for the more polished product. Five years from now, nobody will care if, say, Pathfinder #9 was two weeks late to the presses, and it took four months to get back on schedule. If people five years from now look back and say that Pett did the best darn job they've ever seen on that kind of module, I think you'll be prouder of that work.
Given a choice between fulfilling "next issue" promises and filling a book with the very best stories and articles you can muster, I know that you'll make people angry one way or the other, but I'll vote for the best stories and articles.
FWIW, here's another STRONG vote for quality over keeping to a tight schedule that's obviously unmanageable on top of juggling all your other product lines.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I'm going to throw in my 2 cents here and say that I'm opposed to the idea of slowing down the rate of advancement in the AP.
For all its flaws I like the fact that its reasonably possible, in 3.5, to run a whole campaign in something vaguely resembling a reasonable amount of real life.
Fair enough, Jeremy. Whereas I really like the depth of character that you can derive from playing a whole campaign for a decade or longer.
If Gygax had been able to advance Mordenkainen from 1st Level to retirement in a year to 15 months, do you think anybody'd care about the character?
While I understand some of the complaints with how fast characters seem to level in 3.5 I also suspect that most groups will take between 9 and 18 months to actually run a whole AP in real time, depending on how often they play and how long those sessions are. Thats a pretty hefty chunk of real life and slowing that down does not appeal to me.
I don't think anyone is asking that the AP take twice as long to run (though I personally would be happy--my most fun campaigns as player and GM went 3-5 years each). What I'd really like from Paizo is a 6-12 month game that went up in level slowly enough that I could enjoy it.
SCAP was fun for me as a player about 2 months and then increasingly miserable thereafter, culminating in campaign death at 1 year and me swearing never to play in another AP. The problems were complex but advancement rate was a major component.
The extremely high quality of RotRL has coaxed me into playing in CotCT, but only because the GM is willing to make heroic efforts to slow down advancement. The price is that we'll start at 5th level, which of course will make hash of the first module and perhaps the second unless he rewrites them completely. We brainstormed other solutions but nothing worked. Putting 2-3 full length side adventures between or inside each CotCT episode would totally muddy the main line plot, and also may not be possible. (Episode #5 of RotRL took my player's PCs, in toto, 4 hours. How to put side adventures in that??) Nothing else seems to get advancement down to the point where I can actually develop a character.
I am just not, as a player, capable of doing a coherent character who starts as a street urchin and becomes an archmage in 6 months. I can't play the result competently, and I can't develop a meaningful personality. Lacking both of those things, I don't enjoy myself at all.
I had a PC I really, really liked in SCAP. Watching him get destroyed by advancement was an awful experience.
Mary
While I understand some of the complaints with how fast characters seem to level in 3.5 I also suspect that most groups will take between 9 and 18 months to actually run a whole AP in real time, depending on how often they play and how long those sessions are. Thats a pretty hefty chunk of real life and slowing that down does not appeal to me.
I don't think anyone is asking that the AP take twice as long to run (though I personally would be happy--my most fun campaigns as player and GM went 3-5 years each). What I'd really like from Paizo is a 6-12 month game that went up in level slowly enough that I could enjoy it.
SCAP was fun for me as a player about 2 months and then increasingly miserable thereafter, culminating in campaign death at 1 year and me swearing never to play in another AP. The problems were complex but advancement rate was a major component.
The extremely high quality of RotRL has coaxed me into playing in CotCT, but only because the GM is willing to make heroic efforts to slow down advancement. The price is that we'll start at 5th level, which of course will make hash of the first module and perhaps the second unless he rewrites them completely. We brainstormed other solutions but nothing worked. Putting 2-3 full length side adventures between or inside each CotCT episode would totally muddy the main line plot, and also may not be possible. (Episode #5 of RotRL took my player's PCs, in toto, 4 hours. How to put side adventures in that??) Nothing else seems to get advancement down to the point where I can actually develop a character.
I am just not, as a player, capable of doing a coherent character who starts as a street urchin and becomes an archmage in 6 months. I can't play the result competently, and I can't develop a meaningful personality. Lacking both of those things, I don't enjoy myself at all.
I had a PC I really, really liked in SCAP. Watching him get destroyed by advancement was an awful experience.
Mary
Well this brings up another issue - how slow is good slow? It sounds to me like you'd like a really slow in depth game, your also obviously fairly confident that your characters won't die. Probably fairly heavily story driven style of play. Thats certianly a valid style of gaming but I'm not at all sure that it particularly jives with even those that want to slow level advancement down. I also have to wonder if 'pure APs' will really serve your gaming needs as effectively as one more tailored by the GM for your gaming group. You can get into a lot of interesting subplots if the DM is willing to work them in.
I don't know the plot line of Curse of the Crimson Throne but I'd be rather surprised if an innovative DM can't make the plot line progress much more slowly if s/he sets out with that as a goal. Might mean rewriting some of the plot points of course but, on the upside, you get a game tailored to your tastes much more then your likely to get with an off the shelf AP, even one designed to, say, go from 4th to 10th with each issue advancing the characters one level.
Anyway I can sympathize to some extent even if thats not what I want from the game. I think you can get this style of game if thats what you want but I feel its incumbent on you to make it. I'm certain that if you do make such a game it will, ultimately, be worth all the effort. What you want is something more suited to your tastes, which is fine but your tastes run more to a fine merloit meant to be savored while many of the rest of us are happy with grape soda pop.
I'm going to throw in my 2 cents here and say that I'm opposed to the idea of slowing down the rate of advancement in the AP.
For all its flaws I like the fact that its reasonably possible, in 3.5, to run a whole campaign in something vaguely resembling a reasonable amount of real life.
Fair enough, Jeremy. Whereas I really like the depth of character that you can derive from playing a whole campaign for a decade or longer.
If Gygax had been able to advance Mordenkainen from 1st Level to retirement in a year to 15 months, do you think anybody'd care about the character?
Which is a fine style of play but I think you need to build that campaign yourself. If you quarter the total XP received you might get what your looking for but I don't really believe that one could do any of the APs at this rate. You need to break up this sort of campaign - it can't be 3 years of endlessly inching closer to a single BBEG relentlessly. There has to be sub plots and other things going on in this style of gaming. Plus the characters should usually live - if your loosing a PC every six weeks then its pretty much pointless. In other words I think you have to bring a fairly different philosophy to the game for this style to really work and I don't think having a company, even one that delivers good quality product, is really capable of delivering the kind of personalized stories that this kind of gaming is so good at emphasizing. Better to have the DM do the work to personalize the campaign.
In our last campaign, the DM dispensed with experience entirely and we all went up a level whenever we agreed it was time to do so. (Fortunately there weren't any serious munchkins in the group, so it wound up being about every four or five sessions. Seemed okay to us.)
In our last campaign, the DM dispensed with experience entirely and we all went up a level whenever we agreed it was time to do so. (Fortunately there weren't any serious munchkins in the group, so it wound up being about every four or five sessions. Seemed okay to us.)
How did you guys handle spells with xp costs and the creation of magic items? That's usually the sticking point that I see with xpless games.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Which is a fine style of play but I think you need to build that campaign yourself. If you quarter the total XP received you might get what your looking for but I don't really believe that one could do any of the APs at this rate. You need to break up this sort of campaign - it can't be 3 years of endlessly inching closer to a single BBEG relentlessly.
I'm imagining a story arc that takes just as long as an Adventure Path, but takes the characters from, say, 3rd Level all the way to 6th, rising one level every two Pathfinder episodes. It's a good, long block of the character's career, but it's not the whole thing.
Shrug.
And you're right, that's not the way 3.5's experience charts work. We'll have to design that kind of adventure path ourselves.
In our last campaign, the DM dispensed with experience entirely and we all went up a level whenever we agreed it was time to do so. (Fortunately there weren't any serious munchkins in the group, so it wound up being about every four or five sessions. Seemed okay to us.)How did you guys handle spells with xp costs and the creation of magic items? That's usually the sticking point that I see with xpless games.
The campaign wound up breaking up, for unrelated reasons, before we became high enough level for that to matter. I can't remember what the DM might have said about it; I think we'd get an "xp ration" per session or per level or something, or maybe have to hunt power components...