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As my players and I are playing through Second Darkness and Crimson Throne, having finished Rise of the Runelords, they are already picking out trends in the adventures. They are at the point when they can predict what the next encounter will be and where it will lead them. Maybe my Players are just too smart for their own good, but I am beginning to notice it too.
From what I have read, all of the adventures are structured the exact same way. I think it would be good to mix up the styles a bit, maybe start with a boss encounter and have that be the adventure hook. Perhapes a Mythic Vistas setup would be better, letting the PCs choose what to do next.
Any thoughts?
As my players and I are playing through Second Darkness and Crimson Throne, having finished Rise of the Runelords, they are already picking out trends in the adventures. They are at the point when they can predict what the next encounter will be and where it will lead them. Maybe my Players are just too smart for their own good, but I am beginning to notice it too.
From what I have read, all of the adventures are structured the exact same way. I think it would be good to mix up the styles a bit, maybe start with a boss encounter and have that be the adventure hook. Perhapes a Mythic Vistas setup would be better, letting the PCs choose what to do next.
Any thoughts?
Thats pretty interesting stuff but could you elaborate more? I'd love to know what kinds of trends you and your players are picking up.
Creative Director
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As my players and I are playing through Second Darkness and Crimson Throne, having finished Rise of the Runelords, they are already picking out trends in the adventures. They are at the point when they can predict what the next encounter will be and where it will lead them. Maybe my Players are just too smart for their own good, but I am beginning to notice it too.
From what I have read, all of the adventures are structured the exact same way. I think it would be good to mix up the styles a bit, maybe start with a boss encounter and have that be the adventure hook. Perhapes a Mythic Vistas setup would be better, letting the PCs choose what to do next.
Any thoughts?
Absolutely; if you're seeing trends in adventure paths that are making them predictable, I'd ABSOLUTELY love to hear about them!
There are a couple of things we've found predictable. My player can generally spot where the obligatory dungeon is going to be inserted, and where the "boss fight" falls. His players identified the main villain of RotRL #2 based on a brief encounter in RotRL #1.
I think that the decision to do room-by-room dungeon descriptions is sometimes made unthinkingly; some adventures would feel a lot less stock if done in a different way.
My biggest predictability problem, especially with SD, is the handling of betrayal. Too many repetitions of "you can see you're being set up for betrayal, but you'll break the plotline if you don't cooperate." We had problems with that in SCAP and the SD scenarios look, to the best of my current understanding, very similar. My player sees these coming a mile away. He identified the traitor in RotRL #3 instantly, for example, probably based on consideration of character archetypes. In the case of SD #1 I think I'd better not run it as written, because he will see the betrayal coming and the PCs are likely to disengage.
The other thing that is bothering me is scenarios that promise critical information or tools to defeat the foe, but don't deliver on their promises. This happened in RotRL #5 and it sounds as though it happens again in SD #5. My player is becoming cynical (and therefore hard to hook) about promises of strategically useful information.
The large-scale structure of the APs is certainly predictable. The first couple of modules develop the small-scale detail of the starting location. The PCs are then forcibly removed from that location and sent off on increasingly distant missions. There is generally one symbolic "return to your origin" adventure later on, usually not a whole module's worth. It's hard to avoid this, given the need for radical level advancement, but it does make them all feel somewhat the same. I thought this was particularly a problem in CotCT, which had been billed as a single-setting city adventure, but it also troubled us in RotRL and CotCT.
Mary
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I thought this was particularly a problem in CotCT, which had been billed as a single-setting city adventure, but it also troubled us in RotRL...
I doubt that your problem is with the PFAP adventures, actually. if you ran SCAP, RotRL and CotCT (and who know's how many modules and homebrew adventures before that), than you mast be truly hardcore players. I'm now runing CotCT and STAP simultaniously to diffrent groups, and I doubt very much that I will atempt a second AP with either. each one shall span more or less a year (assuming you play a single sassion per week). if you played three... well than, maybe you should try a diffrent system, one that is radicly diffrent than D&D. maybe WoD, Exalted or Grim.
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I thought this was particularly a problem in CotCT, which had been billed as a single-setting city adventure, but it also troubled us in RotRL...I doubt that your problem is with the PFAP adventures, actually. if you ran SCAP, RotRL and CotCT (and who knows how many modules and homebrew adventures before that), than you mast be truly hardcore players. I'm now running CotCT and STAP simultaneously to different groups, and I doubt very much that I will atempt a second AP with either. each one shall span more or less a year (assuming you play a single sassion per week). if you played three... well than, maybe you should try a different system, one that is radically different than D&D. maybe WoD, Exalted or Grim.
Actually, from her comments on RotRL Mary sounds like an awesome DM. But she has an advantage which I share and I cast testify that it speeds up play and boosts the amount that you can regularly play.
She plays with one other person (unless I've got the wrong end of the stick somewhere) and that person is her partner (unless the stick is huge and about to fall on me).This will keep her campaigns ticking over at pace, but if there is one disadvantage of playing with your partner it is that you're playing someone who can read you like a book - which helps them to see things coming.
Plus, for me, when we're nearing the end of one module and I am looking through the next book in bed to check that everything gels and I can flow seamlessly into the next section - well then my girlfriend can probably guess that we're nearing the end of that part of the AP, and she knows/guesses that BEGs lurk at the end of each book...
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There are a couple of things we've found predictable. My player can generally spot where the obligatory dungeon is going to be inserted, and where the "boss fight" falls. His players identified the main villain of RotRL #2 based on a brief encounter in RotRL #1.
I think that the decision to do room-by-room dungeon descriptions is sometimes made unthinkingly; some adventures would feel a lot less stock if done in a different way.
My biggest predictability problem, especially with SD, is the handling of betrayal. Too many repetitions of "you can see you're being set up for betrayal, but you'll break the plotline if you don't cooperate." We had problems with that in SCAP and the SD scenarios look, to the best of my current understanding, very similar. My player sees these coming a mile away. He identified the traitor in RotRL #3 instantly, for example, probably based on consideration of character archetypes. In the case of SD #1 I think I'd better not run it as written, because he will see the betrayal coming and the PCs are likely to disengage.
The other thing that is bothering me is scenarios that promise critical information or tools to defeat the foe, but don't deliver on their promises. This happened in RotRL #5 and it sounds as though it happens again in SD #5. My player is becoming cynical (and therefore hard to hook) about promises of strategically useful information.
The large-scale structure of the APs is certainly predictable. The first couple of modules develop the small-scale detail of the starting location. The PCs are then forcibly removed from that location and sent off on increasingly distant missions. There is generally one symbolic "return to your origin" adventure later on, usually not a whole module's worth. It's hard to avoid this, given the need for radical level advancement, but it does make them all feel somewhat the same. I thought this was particularly a problem in CotCT, which had been billed as a single-setting city adventure, but it also troubled us in RotRL...
These are several of the problems I've run into as well.
Second Darkness is, however, the least predictable of all of the current PFAPs.One problem may be that my players and I are running CotCT and Second Darkness side by side so they can pick up on trends more easily.
As a side note, we are all having a lot of fun playing through these and they are, on a whole, very well written.
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There are a couple of things we've found predictable. My player can generally spot where the obligatory dungeon is going to be inserted, and where the "boss fight" falls. His players identified the main villain of RotRL #2 based on a brief encounter in RotRL #1.
aye me too
i don't know if that DM did it obvius or suddenly i mixed with my cleric's mind and Sense Motive of +13 (3rd level) and just read it on his face... but i knew that guy had done horrible things... don't know hot to explain it... just when we stopped playing that campaign (issues between most of the table and the GM) and i began reading the AP (still haven't read the adventure... but the summaries at the end just said everything) i realized how close i was to the truth...anyway i haven't read the rest of APs or played them so i don't know
still it was good to know the villain of the 2nd 'season' like that :P
Sometimes you keep working for those you know will betray you... And then December comes around. ;^)
Just keep your swords loose in the scabbard and all that.
~D
Shrug. There are only so many tropes. Fantasy adventures are going to include many of our favourites. Betrayals. Dungeons. Forests. Undead. Dragons. It's not that the adventure paths are getting more predictable, it's that you and your players are acquiring more and more data to notice trends.
The untrustworthy NPC becomes somewhat obvious because they're made important. Most NPCs are just resources for PCs to visit occasionally, or guys who throw a few dialogue lines. If they talk too much, they're probably going to turn out dirty.
Hidden, forgotten dungeons are going to come up in environments where there are either ruins or pretty much nothing. Don't expect a need-to-sneak-into-town segment if you're on Devil's Elbow. It's abandoned, and it's reasonably close to town. What do you expect? Right. A cave, with baddies inside.
Things get predictable purely because the process of elimination tells you what comes next. As long as the story is good and the encounters are written well, it shouldn't matter that your players sense a betrayal coming. If they can't keep their out-of-character expectations in check, it's your job to fix their lack of role-playing talent by smashing their expectations. If their characters act oblivious... then what does it matter?
There are some trends that I had noticed, not as a players, but as a DM:
1)Characters with complex backstories, that are pretty much irrelevant to their actual roles as sword fodder and probably can only be learned after you kill them, if you even bother.
2)Any evil NPC who offers you to work for him will double-cross you, even if this makes no sense (Arconas, Saul, just about any drow who takes any interest in PCs). I think that players can quickly figure this out too.
3)Levels has little impact on NPCs' behavior and seem to be assigned according purely to the overall aventure level. I remember at least two cowardly losers who, nevertheless, are 7th-level super-badasses.
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The other thing that is bothering me is scenarios that promise critical information or tools to defeat the foe, but don't deliver on their promises. This happened in RotRL #5 and it sounds as though it happens again in SD #5. My player is becoming cynical (and therefore hard to hook) about promises of strategically useful information.
I just downloaded Descent into Midnight and gave it a quick look-through, and it looks like you don’t really have to worry about the particular point here.
Hope that helps some.