First of, I live in Norway, so it is very unlikely that I will ever play as a part of the Pathfinder Society. Still, some of the adventure plots intrigues me.
How easy is it to incorporate these adventures into a non PFS-campaign? I was thinking of a campaign where the characters are Pathfinders and go on different but exciting adventures every time, not necessarily following an arc.
If the answer is "yes, that is totally possible, please buy the adventures", my next question is:
Where is it best to start the campaign? I mean, I could always send them around the world, from the Land of the Linnorm Kings to Mwangi by means of teleportation, but barring that, would Absalom be the best bet?
Thanks.
Director of Brand Strategy
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It sounds like what you'd be looking to do would be to set up a PFS home game. The benefit of doing so is that you could include whatever exposition and roleplay you'd like in the downtime between missions as well as expand the travel time to different parts of the world (so far only Qadira has been a significant distance from Absalom without an in-scenario explanation of how the PCs get there, though I haven't read/played Among the Living and know that it takes place in Oppara). You'd be limited in how you handled additional encounters and PC wealth, but there's no reason that you can't play the adventures as your own ongoing PFS game.
If you didn't want to bother with the wealth restrictions and such, I'd say that the scenarios can be pieced together quite well into an episodic campaign. Basing the campaign in Absalom makes the most sense to me, since most of the adventures take place there, and the Venture Captain who gives the PCs their missions is in the City at the Center of the World. Then again, you could change a lot of that flavor, whether you're playing in PFS or outside of it.
If you do play outside the PFS structure, would you still include the factions into your campaign?
To echo what Yoda said, you can absolutely participate in the Pathfinder Society in Norway--run a home game! PFS is designed to be played at conventions, in stores, and in your own home. You still get to participate, you just have a little extra paperwork to do for the PCs.
If that idea doesn't thrill you and you just want a homebrew PFS game based on the scenarios, I'd recommend starting at the beginning and working your way through. They're designed to work as mini-adventures in anyone's game.
If you're using them for a home game, I'd recommend skipping the travel bits (just as the scenarios do) and just get your PCs to the adventure location. The scenarios quickly jump into the action and it seems to me to be easier to run them that way if you're using them in a home game.
Thanks for the swift replies. Piecing together the PFS adventures and some of the other GameMastery modules seems like a possible future campaign. I'm not too fond of AP's (they are too long and there are bound to be parts I don't care for) and creating your own campaign, while fun, is too time-consuming.
One more question: all the adventures so far (correct me if I am wrong) are for levels 1-5. Does this mean that there are scaling sidebars for those levels? Seems like a wide specter to me.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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One more question: all the adventures so far (correct me if I am wrong) are for levels 1-5. Does this mean that there are scaling sidebars for those levels? Seems like a wide specter to me.
My suggestion to you would be to pick up a few of the scenarios to see how they're structured and then decide how best to fit them in with what you want to do, be that run a home game or use them as part of a non-PFS campaign. As far as scaling goes, each adventure has a set of statblocks for each encounter for all tiers that the scenario covers. Thus, for Silent Tide, which covers two tiers (1-2 and 4-5) each encounter has a statblock for running 1st or 2nd level characters through it, as well as statblocks for a party of a higher level. Parties whose APL falls between two included tiers can choose to play a lower or higher CR, taking into consideration that higher risk brings higher rewards. Again, though, the structuring of the scenarios themselves might be best grokked through actually reading them.
Thanks for the answers. I'll give them a look, the price is very nice!
