Based on what I've seen/read (I own all of what's released for all the APs so far), here are my personal rankings:
1) Savage Tide
2) Shackled City
3) Age of Worms [could be #4]
4) Curse of the Crimson Throne [could be #3]
5) Rise of the Runelords
6) Second Darkness
7) Scales of War
So that would make it... #2 out of 7, for me.
For me it would be,but thats for various reasons....:
1) Savage Tide (Has Demogorgan, and pirates, and undead pirates, and all kinds of craziness so I like it)
2) Rise of the Runelords (Has some of the creepiest and awesomeness written so far, plus the PF Gobbies are awesomeness.)
3) Age of Worms [could be #4] (Well written and hard as heck, but good flavor)
4) Second Darkness[could be #3] (So far I love the way drow are portrayed and the adventures are just fun looking)
5) Curse of the Crimson Throne (Well written, but it just doesnt mesh aswell with my players styles)
6) Shackled City (same as CotCT, especially that it is city based for alot of it)
7) Scales of War (well alot of factors, that its 4e aswell as the overarching question of whats going on is hidden so it kind of irks us)
Those are just my takes.
My short takes between the 3 Dungeon APs are:
Shackled City (Hardcover): Least Railroady, Least Foreshadowing, Most Potential.
Age of Worms: Kinda Railroady, Decent Foreshadowing, Some Epic Scenes
Savage Tide: Can be Very Railroady, Great Foreshadowing, Memorable Villains.
I'd probably put a close tie, based on personal play style mesh, between Shackled City and Savage Tide, with Age of Worms coming in behind them.
Note: Played in Age of Worms to complettion. DMed SCAP and STAP to 3/4 mark.
Just my 2cp.
I haven't played or read any of the other AP's. I own the AoWAP, STAP and RotRAP but I haven't actually read all the adventures for them. I am currently running a group through the SCAP.
As I haven't read the others I can't give you a comparison. However, I would say that the hardcover version of SCAP is better than the magazine version as it has been tidied up and linked up a bit more. If you use the stuff on the RPGenius website (especially delvesdeep's ideas) it makes it even better again.
Olag the Stout
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Having played through both SCAP and AoW at least once and read the entire STAP, I'll say this...
Shackled City is by far the best of the three Paizo adventure paths (I've never gotten to play Pathfinder). There are a lot of personal reasons that I could give for loving the SCAP, but there is one really important reason that stands out a lot.
In SCAP the villains drive the story. This is important for a lot of reasons. First, if an AP is hero driven then it requires PCs to do certain things to progress the story and keep in on track. For example, in AoW the players basically have to follow the advice and words of a series of ever more powerful mages and sages starting almost at level 1. If at any point the PCs just say “Screw this” then the campaign skips off the rails and you have to start planning a new story. STAP is about 10 times worse in this area. There are parts in the AP where it literally says that no amount of skill or planning can prevent certain things from happening (anyone who knows the AP knows what I’m talking about), and there is actually a part in the AP where the PCs HAVE to pick up a certain item and keep it for most of the campaign only for it to become important in one of the last adventures.
Essentially in AoW and STAP the heroes have to do stuff in certain ways to keep the plot moving, but in SCAP the villains are running the game. Because SCAP basically gives you all the villains ahead of time and tells you their plans (I’m talking about the hardcover here, and the DelvesDeep foreshadowing add-ons) you can basically mold the game to fit your players. So your players didn’t want to go chase Drakthar…big deal, the Stormblades will solve the problem but will miss that vital clue about the Blue Duke. So your PCs thought ahead and captured one of the XIII…Well there are still several others who can continue the plan and are able to save their ally. The AP is wonderful, because it gives you a really detailed setting and a story going on in the background and basically your PCs start to see that story as it crosses paths with them over time and it’s THEIR choice in how they want to pursue it. The only way to de-rail shackled city is for the PCs to just leave Cauldron. As long as they stay in the city, the plans of the XIII are going to keep affecting their lives, and even if they pass by the first few adventures, eventually stuff will start happening that pulls them in. It’s really a beautiful thing and Paizo really struck gold when they made it.
I’m not knocking the other APs, they are great and fun. But SCAP allows for a more fluid game and leaves lots of room for customization. Just look at what DMs have done with the setting on these forums alone!
I'll add my voice to Sean's that Shackled City is by far the best. I'm running it online and it has held my players' and mine interest for coming to 3 years now.
My personal ranking, based on running SC and CotCT and skimming the rest:
1. Shackled City
2. Curse of the Crimson Throne
3. Age of Worms
4. Savage Tide
5. Rise of the Runelords
I haven't read WotBS, and it's too early to judge Second Darkness.
Seems there is a lot of personal taste involved here.
Personally I'd go
1. Age of Worms (I really love those epic scenes)
2. Curse of the Crimson Throne (Great plot, most potential for story now style of play)
3. Savage Tide (great NPCs - the play between Lavina and her brother could be awesome - on the other hand the tail end of the plot mostly left me cold)
4. Shackled City (love the city and its really easy to slot into my homebrew, the plot is overly complex and involved themes that are often so outlandish that they are in danger of falling flat during the big reveal moments - To many and too long dungeon crawls)
5. Rise of the Rune Lords (Many great individual scenes but the larger component parts of the plot felt disjointed)
Now I have to say that I love all these APs and think any of them would be a great game. Beyond that the bottom three are nearly tied. I really really love Age of Worms and really want to try running a Story Now style game using Curse of the Crimson Throne. The rest of them are great but by the time I've finished running these two APs I expect that there will be another 5 or so to choose from.
I haven't read WotBS, and it's too early to judge Second Darkness.
What is WotBS?
I haven't read WotBS, and it's too early to judge Second Darkness.What is WotBS?
War of the burning sky.
An AP from ENworld site.
Creative Director
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Interesting thread! I'm particularly intrigued by the fact that there's such a wide range of rankings; it doesn't seem like one AP in particular is the best or the worst, which is pretty cool to me. Makes it seem like the APs are managing to spread around their themes pretty well and aren't falling into a rut...
Keep posting the comments and criticisms! That's the only way we AP writers will learn how to make better ones, after all! :-)
The AP is wonderful, because it gives you a really detailed setting and a story going on in the background and basically your PCs start to see that story as it crosses paths with them over time and it’s THEIR choice in how they want to pursue it. The only way to de-rail shackled city is for the PCs to just leave Cauldron. As long as they stay in the city, the plans of the XIII are going to keep affecting their lives, and even if they pass by the first few adventures, eventually stuff will start happening that pulls them in. It’s really a beautiful thing and Paizo really struck gold when they made it.
If you have not already picked it up then I would strongly recommend Curse of the Crimson Throne as I feel it hits pretty much all the high notes you appear to like about Shackled City. Essentially you have a major villain and that villains lackeys running the show and events in the city (riots, a plague, establishment of of a brutal tyranny) simply take place. One of the aspects I really liked about Curse of the Crimson Throne, compared to Shackled City, was that the background city events took centre stage - in Cauldron basically the players leave to explore a dungeon and when they come back something awful will have happened to the city. In Curse of the Crimson Throne the players will be in the thick of it when the plague strikes or innocents are executed etc.
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Interesting thread! I'm particularly intrigued by the fact that there's such a wide range of rankings; it doesn't seem like one AP in particular is the best or the worst, which is pretty cool to me. Makes it seem like the APs are managing to spread around their themes pretty well and aren't falling into a rut...
Keep posting the comments and criticisms! That's the only way we AP writers will learn how to make better ones, after all! :-)
I think you really hit the mark there James.
After reading or playing in all of the APs (except WotBS)they really do all have their good and bad points to them.I dont think that I could rank them as they all are somthing that I would play in or run at sometime.
I would have to say I out of all the AP's I really thought STAP was the best of the 3 made for Dungeon. Though as a player in Shackled City that eventually became the Lord Mayor that was really fun!
As for the Pathfinder APs if I had to choose one to start running right now I might go with CotCT mostly for the urban aspects as well as the number of reoccuring npc's. But honestly there all really good so I would probably choose on the basis of what the majority of players felt like trying out.
Although Shackled City is what brought me into Paizo's products and turned me into a fan, it really does rank bottom of the AP list for me.
It just felt kind of random and, while I don't really care about any lack of foreshadowing, there were enough shifts of focus that it felt really disjointed. It does remain a good source for idea mining, though, as moments like Vhalantru's first appearance, Crazy Jared, and the whole city evacuation are just a few of the really inspired elements of the series.
Top of my list is probably Savage Tide. Not only did it have a wide variety of locations (urban, at sea, underground, jungle, Abyss...) but a wide variety of adventure styles (dungeon crawl, city-building, journey, etc.) When adventuring for 20 levels on the same storyline, that kind of diversity is priceless.
If I had to put them all in order, I'd likely go with:
#1 Savage Tide
#2 Age of Worms
#3 Rise of the Runelords
#4 Curse of the Crimson Throne
#5 Shackled City
Age of Worms gets lots of points for its epic name recognition with Kyuss, Bucknard, Rod of Seven Parts, and so on, but suffered from multiple dungeoncrawls and a tendency to make the PCs errand boys to more powerful characters.
Runelords started strong, with Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw Murders being two of my all-time favorite adventures ever. Unfortunately, it almost completely derailed for me with Hook Mountain. I also never saw the strong motivation for the PCs to care about the return of a wizard nobody remembers.
Crimson Throne had potential but a lack of a pre-regicide Korvosa during the path lessens the impact of the act itself. It also features a lot of scripting and directed actions ranging from watching a dramatic rescue to "you suddenly feel like performing a Harrow reading".
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Although Shackled City is what brought me into Paizo's products and turned me into a fan, it really does rank bottom of the AP list for me.
Ditto for me there! But I still had an excellent time playing this one.
Top of my list is probably Savage Tide. Not only did it have a wide variety of locations (urban, at sea, underground, jungle, Abyss...) but a wide variety of adventure styles (dungeon crawl, city-building, journey, etc.) When adventuring for 20 levels on the same storyline, that kind of diversity is priceless.
I strongly agree with you on that. In addtion I would add that the nautical and tropical themes made it stand out against the tradtional temporate climate and land locked type of adventures. While Shackled City was set in the Amedio jungle I found STAP played up the feeling alot more.
Age of Worms gets lots of points for its epic name recognition with Kyuss, Bucknard, Rod of Seven Parts, and so on, but suffered from multiple dungeoncrawls and a tendency to make the PCs errand boys to more powerful characters.
I would add as a classic Greyhawk campaign this was really cool. I thought that some of the adventures seemed to be lacking a little. Then again this could be a case of reads bad , plays well. Like Rise of the Runelords I think it also suffred from the players investing themselves in a home base that in the end has little to no bearing on the outcome of the AP.
Runelords started strong, with Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw Murders being two of my all-time favorite adventures ever. Unfortunately, it almost completely derailed for me with Hook Mountain. I also never saw the strong motivation for the PCs to care about the return of a wizard nobody remembers..
I didnt really see anything wrong this AP except as noted above.I also found the adventures tended to not be connected as tight as they could be but thats pretty minor.
Crimson Throne had potential but a lack of a pre-regicide Korvosa during the path lessens the impact of the act itself. It also features a lot of scripting and directed actions ranging from watching a dramatic rescue to "you suddenly feel like performing a Harrow reading".
I really liked the harrow reading stuff. The intro to this campaign is AMAZING! I do agree though that the sudden and way that the city falls into chaos seemed a little quick. Though Im not sure how you would fix that and still have it being meaningful to the campaign story...
I can say, without fear of contradiction, that Shackled City is the best adventure path that Paizo has ever issued in hardcover form. If only it had more competition for the title of "Best Paizo Adventure Path Hardcover"...
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I can say, without fear of contradiction, that Shackled City is the best adventure path that Paizo has ever issued in hardcover form. If only it had more competition for the title of "Best Paizo Adventure Path Hardcover"...
Yeah I would have liked to have seen AoW and STAP compiled as hardcovers too...
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Creative Director
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I can say, without fear of contradiction, that Shackled City is the best adventure path that Paizo has ever issued in hardcover form. If only it had more competition for the title of "Best Paizo Adventure Path Hardcover"...Yeah I would have liked to have seen AoW and STAP compiled as hardcovers too...
I would have LOVED to do that. That would have preserved those two APs for a lot longer, but WotC wasn't interested in letting us run with the idea, alas. Maybe because the Shackled City hardcover looked like competition, maybe because they didn't want big adventures coming out at the end of an edition's cycle, maybe because of a hundred other reasons.
Ah well. Yet another reason why striking out on our own with Pathfinder is Win for Paizo! We own the adventures and we get to do what we want with them! :)
SCAP made a huge transition from the original magazine based AP to the hardcover. James did a lot of tweaking and smothing over in order to make the adventures fit together better. He also did a great job adding more background info and removing some of the more glaring inconsistencies. A lot of that was, I believe, based on feedback he got from the boards.
I think all APs benefit from a revisit. I would have loved to see what a hardcover would have done to STAP or Curse of the Crimson Throne.
I couldn't really rank this AP. It's definitely one of my favorites. After having run it well over 3 years, I must say I was glad it was over. I'm glad the pathfinder APs are a bit shorter, which should make them less of a burden to run to the end. I'm running STAP at the moment and love that too. However, almost 6 months into the game we're just starting Bullywug Gambit. This may be a long one too...
I really liked the harrow reading stuff. The intro to this campaign is AMAZING! I do agree though that the sudden and way that the city falls into chaos seemed a little quick. Though Im not sure how you would fix that and still have it being meaningful to the campaign story...
I LOVE this campaign intro, but felt it was wasted on Crimson Throne. It's a really clever way of assembling an adventuring group, but it's resolved in the first half of the first adventure. If I could armchair quarterback this one, I'd have the hunt for Lamm be the entirety of the first adventure to give the group enough time to grow together and realy take advantage of this great campaign hook. I'd use that time to delay the death of the king long enough to show the players the difference between King-Korvosa and Queen-Korvosa.
But anyhoo, this thread's about Shackled City, so I have to ask about the hardbound book. Is it really that much an improvement over the originals? It was well outside my price range, especially since I already own the original magazine issues it's based on. Is anybody willing to give some examples of what was added or changed to make the Path so much better?
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Creative Director
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But anyhoo, this thread's about Shackled City, so I have to ask about the hardbound book. Is it really that much an improvement over the originals? It was well outside my price range, especially since I already own the original magazine issues it's based on. Is anybody willing to give some examples of what was added or changed to make the Path so much better?
The Shackled City adventure path was the first one we did in Dungeon, and we learned a LOT about the process in so doing. We used what we learned to make Age of Worms and Savage Tide better, which is why there's an increasing focus on story and interconnected elements in those later adventure paths, and why the adventures fit together better.
When I went through the process of developing Shackled City for the hardcover, I took advantage of what I'd learned to fix the problems the campaign faced the first time through. This was also a chance to add in elements that had to be cut from the final adventures as they'd appeared in print in the magazine (including the truncated encounter areas in "Lords of Oblivion" and details on the Flood Festival for starters). We were even able to add in an additional adventure by Chris Perkins to ease the XP gap between the first two adventures. I also added in a fair amount of support material for Cauldron as well, including descriptions of the NPCs and locations, and a few web supplements got returned to the fold as well.
I don't remember the EXACT numbers... but there's about 50,000 new words in the hardcover edition of Shackled City, along with a fair amount of new art and some additional monsters and magic items. That equates to over 60 additional pages of content, more or less.
But anyhoo, this thread's about Shackled City, so I have to ask about the hardbound book. Is it really that much an improvement over the originals? It was well outside my price range, especially since I already own the original magazine issues it's based on. Is anybody willing to give some examples of what was added or changed to make the Path so much better?The Shackled City adventure path was the first one we did in Dungeon, and we learned a LOT about the process in so doing. We used what we learned to make Age of Worms and Savage Tide better, which is why there's an increasing focus on story and interconnected elements in those later adventure paths, and why the adventures fit together better.
When I went through the process of developing Shackled City for the hardcover, I took advantage of what I'd learned to fix the problems the campaign faced the first time through. This was also a chance to add in elements that had to be cut from the final adventures as they'd appeared in print in the magazine (including the truncated encounter areas in "Lords of Oblivion" and details on the Flood Festival for starters). We were even able to add in an additional adventure by Chris Perkins to ease the XP gap between the first two adventures. I also added in a fair amount of support material for Cauldron as well, including descriptions of the NPCs and locations, and a few web supplements got returned to the fold as well.
I don't remember the EXACT numbers... but there's about 50,000 new words in the hardcover edition of Shackled City, along with a fair amount of new art and some additional monsters and magic items. That equates to over 60 additional pages of content, more or less.
And it was well done, so well done in fact that I sort of wish we had this level of introductory detail in the current APs. Not sure how feasible that is but I get the impression that you guys are working on the next AP even before the first issue of the current one is officially out for delivery. So maybe you could consider adding more to the background of the first adventure by including things like a caste of characters and a detailed plot synopsis and all the other good stuff that makes up the first 32 pages of the hard cover by making this the last thing you write for an AP, so that you have the finalized manuscripts of all the adventures in hand before writing the detailed plot synopsis and the cast of characters and such.
But anyhoo, this thread's about Shackled City, so I have to ask about the hardbound book. Is it really that much an improvement over the originals?
'Nuff said!
I would have LOVED to do that. That would have preserved those two APs for a lot longer, but WotC wasn't interested in letting us run with the idea, alas. Maybe because the Shackled City hardcover looked like competition, maybe because they didn't want big adventures coming out at the end of an edition's cycle, maybe because of a hundred other reasons.
Ah well. Yet another reason why striking out on our own with Pathfinder is Win for Paizo! We own the adventures and we get to do what we want with them! :)
The ironic part is that even though you can do what you want with your adventures now, the result is the same for me, the consumer: no more hardcover collections of adventure paths because they would compete with other products. It makes sense, but it's still disappointing.
Wow, this is a hard one. They've all been great to me, but:
1) Shackled City: I loved that everything was right around Cauldron; both of the groups I ran through the SCAP really took to the city and the NPCs
2) Age of Worms: Though I missed the "hometown feel" of Cauldron, I loved all the chances for side quests. The areas were rife with things to do, encounters to flesh out, and pretty much anything the players wanted. The main story arcs were almost a back seat to the locations and NPCs (Loved the AoW Overload!!!)
3) Curse of the Crimson Throne: Another city-campaign, but with a neat twist: you don't have to wait a few levels for everything to fall apart!
4) Savage Tide: I loved the inclusion of the affiliations, and the great back drop articles; if I were rating the AP based on DM and Player options, this might be my #1 choice; I wish all the APs had affilitations and detailed organizations; it's the biggest reason the CotCT or RotRL aren't in the top spots
5) Rise of the Runelords: I love the tone of the adventures, especially the very first encounters. They start off with a bit a levity, but get deadly serious. The players I usually play with like to have fun, but also take the game seriously, and this AP fits that really well.
But, man, I could have really picked any of these as my favorite, depending on what I was basing it on.
I can't comment on any of the Pathfinder paths as I have done little more than read outlines. However, I own all of the issues of Dungeon Magazine, so I feel comfortable commenting on them.
When I first got a metric asston of Dungeon back issues I poked around online a bit to see what everyone thought of the different paths and which one I should run first. What I found was encouraging. It seems everyone has favorites when it comes to the paths. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and all are great to play or run.
Age of Worms grabbed me the most from skimming through the issues but I think that was because of all the Lovecraftian imagery in the artwork. I eventually decided to just start at the beginning and work my way out from there. In running Shackled City I have had some of the most fun I have had at a gaming table in a long time. This is as much due to the newish group I have now as it is to do with the adventures.
So, ultimately, all three paths are great and should be played and enjoyed.
Scales of War... well, I guess we'll see about that one.