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I can understand the want of a longer adventure because you homebrew, I simply don't think that would make a better product. The reason I have subscribed to the APs since AP#1 is because of the full immersion in the adventure. This doesn't mean that all the extra "fluff" at the end is useless (including the fiction) to the adventure. In fact I've found that the fluff helps just as much for a homebrew campaign as it does for the adventure set in Golarion. Here's my take:
When I got AP#1 it was set in a world that I basically knew nothing about. To me, Golarion didn't exist before this and Sandpoint was just the city that this adventure was located in. However what the fluff in the back did do is give me the generic feeling/mood of the adventure. It detailed both the current events (the city surrounding the adventure) and the past events (the Thassilonian empire). While in a homebrew setting this may not be directly useful to you... it is absolutely required reading to move the AP into your own setting. Without understanding the underpinnings of the story you could never successfully move the story to a different setting. Burnt Offerings would not be Burnt Offerings without some ancient odd civilization (or some replacement) in the backgrounds.
In the AP you mention the demons are given an article because it gives the underpinnings of the drow culture detailed in the adventure. The drow are deeply connected with the demons of the world and the only way to understand the drow is to also understand the demons that they work with. The mood and consistency of the story simply wouldn't be the same if you didn't understand the background before moving it to your own world, the game just won't be as fulfilling.
I subscribe to the APs for the sole reason that Paizo has done an absolutely wonderful job of creating an immersive, detailed, lore-backed, world. The adventure may be the "meat" of the product, but the reason the AP is better than any other "collection of adventures" that I've ever seen is because of the completeness of it's backstory.
Adventures have character builds that have to be verified, which involves math and spell lists that have to be checked and rechecked. Location descriptions have to be compared to maps. Somebody has to ensure that everything that needs a stat block has a stat block, and that every location on a map has description, and vice-versa. We have to ensure that characters don't switch gender, races, class, or level throughout the whole of an adventure, and that their names and titles are spelled the same each time they're mentioned. We have to verify that the text and the art don't contradict one another. Adventure text blocks also have lots of special formatting that has to be applied and checked. And that's just some of what has to be done in addition to regular spelling-and-grammar editing.Support materials are generally prose-heavy, meaning there's less math to check. And while internal consistency is still important, it's a lot easier to achieve that over five pages than 50.
In short, an editor might spend the same amount of time on one chapter of back matter as on one single page—or even one single complicated stat block—in the adventure.
1) The solution to all math problems is always a standardized rule set and an automated program to generate stuff for you given x, y, z [et al] inputs. Which would also ensure the character, if appearing later in the adventure, has a consistent base.
2) Yes, I realize X man hours are required to provide Y service, and I would say the solution is adding more people, but whatever.3) To Jacob, I reject the novel reading analogy because it just doesn't make sense.
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1) The solution to all math problems is always a standardized rule set and an automated program to generate stuff for you given x, y, z [et al] inputs. Which would also ensure the character, if appearing later in the adventure, has a consistent base.
2) Yes, I realize X man hours are required to provide Y service, but I'm not seeing where it is a proper excuse to limit Y service.
Yeah, because the gaming industry is a gold mine and hordes of excellent editors with RPG experience swamp Paizo with their resumes daily.
Anybody who can and has the opportunity to leaves the gaming industry for greener pastures UNLESS they have a real dedication to it OR a second job that pays their bills.
Hey, I'll should send my resume in then. I'm sure it looks nothing like I know anything about editing but it's closer to what I have been doing than what my degree is for.
I can understand the want of a longer adventure because you homebrew, I simply don't think that would make a better product. The reason I have subscribed to the APs since AP#1 is because of the full immersion in the adventure. This doesn't mean that all the extra "fluff" at the end is useless (including the fiction) to the adventure. In fact I've found that the fluff helps just as much for a homebrew campaign as it does for the adventure set in Golarion. Here's my take:
When I got AP#1 it was set in a world that I basically knew nothing about. To me, Golarion didn't exist before this and Sandpoint was just the city that this adventure was located in. However what the fluff in the back did do is give me the generic feeling/mood of the adventure. It detailed both the current events (the city surrounding the adventure) and the past events (the Thassilonian empire). While in a homebrew setting this may not be directly useful to you... it is absolutely required reading to move the AP into your own setting. Without understanding the underpinnings of the story you could never successfully move the story to a different setting. Burnt Offerings would not be Burnt Offerings without some ancient odd civilization (or some replacement) in the backgrounds.
In the AP you mention the demons are given an article because it gives the underpinnings of the drow culture detailed in the adventure. The drow are deeply connected with the demons of the world and the only way to understand the drow is to also understand the demons that they work with. The mood and consistency of the story simply wouldn't be the same if you didn't understand the background before moving it to your own world, the game just won't be as fulfilling.
I subscribe to the APs for the sole reason that Paizo has done an absolutely wonderful job of creating an immersive, detailed, lore-backed, world. The adventure may be the "meat" of the product, but the reason the AP is better than any other "collection of adventures" that I've ever seen is...
+1
The support material is absolutely necessary. I think they have the right format, it's just a matter of continually tweaking it, making it better around the "edges."These are Golarion products, so I can understand if you are doing a homebrew, they may not be as directly useful. As an aside, when I see folks asking for the removal of the support material I often get the feeling that these same folks are probably running homebrews and/or a different campaign setting. Run whatever setting you like, but realize this is the fountainhead of Golarion, and it should stay that way. Other people do other settings.
Cheers!
1) The solution to all math problems is always a standardized rule set and an automated program to generate stuff for you given x, y, z [et al] inputs. Which would also ensure the character, if appearing later in the adventure, has a consistent base.
Have you ever produced a book? There isn't some automated process where you can tag specific character info and have it automatically change all references to that character.
They do have a spreadsheet that helps them with stat blocks. Even with it, errors can happen. As the work is developed changes happen. An NPC might originally be a halfling and then later the developer decides to make him human. Someone then has to read through the entire manuscript to make certain that all the references to that character are now consistent. That's one change that could take hours of labor to verify. Now make dozens of changes to the manuscript throughout development. This isn't an automated process. Computers can't fix everything.
I say that as both a professional computer programmer and as an amateur adventure writer. I have a stat building program I wrote, and when the adventure I wrote went through editing, revision, and layout, we still had errors in the final text. Paizo works overtime to produce a ton of material every month. The fact that they produce such high quality with relatively few errors is amazing.
To everyone who sits back and says "I could proofread better than this" I ask you to do this exercise at home: Take a Paizo book. Look over every page and find all the errors you can. Write them down in a notebook. Time how long this takes you. Do the same for any other RPG book on your shelf of comparable size. Compare how long your notes are for each product.
Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.
Hiring more people doesn't help as much as you think it does. Co-ordinating the changes of a dozen proof readers is a challenging task. If you've never worked on a book it is difficult to understand how much work is actually involved.
Have you ever produced a book? There isn't some automated process where you can tag specific character info and have it automatically change all references to that character.1) The solution to all math problems is always a standardized rule set and an automated program to generate stuff for you given x, y, z [et al] inputs. Which would also ensure the character, if appearing later in the adventure, has a consistent base.
I am pretty sure Word does it, but that's neither here nor there.
He was talking about the production of the character and making sure all the math and stuff is correct and everything is consistent. That's what character creators are for. You can take the output for the generation and put it in the book and the saved character will provide a base that is guaranteeably consistent for later if making the character a higher level and re-introducing it.
Someone then has to read through the entire manuscript to make certain that all the references to that character are now consistent.
Which is a basic editing task and has nothing to do with math or consistency of the character within its stat block.
I have a stat building program I wrote, and when the adventure I wrote went through editing, revision, and layout, we still had errors in the final text.
That's why programs are separately debugged. As a "professional programmer," you should recognize encapsulation, or a need for it, when you see it.
Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.
Being what I have done every day for months. Believe me, I know.
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OK. Seriously. Can you guys, for one second just think that these supplements are not made Just-For-You. You will be hard pressed to find supplements made Just-For-You because supplements made Just-For-You have a really low base of subscription. So what Paizo does is create great content that everyone can find a little bit of something worth paying for and then they sell it to you for a very reasonable price every month. Some of the cost is subsumed by a little bit of advertising in the back. You might be willing to pay the two dollars extra but that's dinner to some people.
The fact is that the AP's are an amazing product that has a lot of good stuff in it. Mine it for what you like and let the people who want the other stuff in there enjoy the other articles. I don't particularly care for the fiction, but I know a lot of people do and I know that adding that means they get more subscribers which means more money for them which means a better end product for me in the future.
Think of it this way, if they took out all of the fluff in the back and you were left with just 50+ or so pages of adventure, they'd likely have less subscribers. It would be a less well-rounded product. You'd likely end up still getting only 50+ pages of adventure and then you'd have another couple of pages of advertising in the back just to make ends meet and it would still be ~$20.
So think of it as free content that makes it a really robust product. There is a whole community that wants different things from their ap's and currently we're all well served. And for that I really appreciate Paizo's hard work.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Adventures have character builds that have to be verified, which involves math and spell lists that have to be checked and rechecked. Location descriptions have to be compared to maps. Somebody has to ensure that everything that needs a stat block has a stat block, and that every location on a map has description, and vice-versa. We have to ensure that characters don't switch gender, races, class, or level throughout the whole of an adventure, and that their names and titles are spelled the same each time they're mentioned. We have to verify that the text and the art don't contradict one another. Adventure text blocks also have lots of special formatting that has to be applied and checked. And that's just some of what has to be done in addition to regular spelling-and-grammar editing.Support materials are generally prose-heavy, meaning there's less math to check. And while internal consistency is still important, it's a lot easier to achieve that over five pages than 50.
In short, an editor might spend the same amount of time on one chapter of back matter as on one single page—or even one single complicated stat block—in the adventure.
1) The solution to all math problems is always a standardized rule set and an automated program to generate stuff for you given x, y, z [et al] inputs. Which would also ensure the character, if appearing later in the adventure, has a consistent base.
2) Yes, I realize X man hours are required to provide Y service, and I would say the solution is adding more people, but whatever.3) To Jacob, I reject the novel reading analogy because it just doesn't make sense.
As an aside, Jacobs is James' last name.
To the point, however, the novel reading analogy makes perfect sense, as does a novel-writing analogy. At a certain point in writing, you must break up your writing into pieces, while keeping the whole in mind. To ensure a coherent authorial vision, one person needs to write it (unless it is expressly planned as a collaboration). To ensure that it READS coherently, one person needs to read it.
If four people each read one chapter of an AP adventure, they'll be able to agree on the salient points, but they may not notice any number of fine details or inconsistencies that may crop up. If their individual sections read as "clean," they would pass it through, but at some point someone needs to check all of them and make sure they are all the SAME "clean" copy.
Shoot, leave AP's behind. My dissertation, counting appendices, was 273 pages, and everything has to match. Usage must be consistent. Conventions must be consistent. Style must be consistent. I wrote the thing over the course of 3 years of research and writing. Some pieces were vastly older than others, but they all had to work together.
Coming back to the fantasy vein, I talked with Dave Gross at PaizoCon about his writing, and he had much the same to say, making sure that chapters dealing with certain characters or from a certain point of view remained consistent in tone, style, language use, and so on. Margaret Weis just talked about the same thing on her facebook page about her most recent novel, revising 5 chapters for the same reason.
Once the pieces are finished, they have to be put back together in order and arranged in a way that makes sense INTERNALLY. THEN, the real fun starts for a mod when the AP developer has to say, "Okay, this manuscript works on its own. Now, how does it fit with the other 6 mods?"
In writing War of the River Kings, for example, after having plotted the adventure, I wrote the second chapter first, simply because that was where my inspiration for detail was at that moment. The whole Whiterose Abbey section grew to almost 10,000 words (way too much for one section, but I knew I would be trimming it later). In continuing to write, I would move from section to section as time and attention allowed (since I, like most people in the RPG world, am doing my primary writing in my "free" time after my regular job; even people at Paizo, for instance, write the things they write mostly after hours, since they have regular work dealing with other peoples' stuff!). Back and forth, here and there, assembling the bits and pieces, and if a new bit of writing affects something in a previously finished section, go back and fix it there. Cut this. Add that. Move this over here. On second thought, dump that part entirely. Okay, now that fits.
The adventure gets done and sent in and Paizo has it now in house. What if the author has left out some important piece that needs to be in there (like in my Kingmaker mod - I had somehow gotten the impression that the hexcrawling part of the AP would be completed by #4 and wrote my adventure as purely event- and location-based. Oops. Now James has to write up a hexcrawling section.)? What if there is disagreement between modules, written at different times by different people, about particular NPCs or items or locations. Or things that end up being too similar to one another?
Hopefully the turnover milestones will catch some of these, but you never know. What if, heaven forbid, the author just turns over something that is complete crap if taken in the context of the whole AP but might seem good if you just read it in its bits and pieces? Fun and creative parts, but no good as a whole.
Reminds me of Spider-Man 3. Each of the individual elements of the movie was reasonably competently done (just take it for the same of argument), but as a whole the movie just never really came together.
You may well disagree about the value of one person being able to take it all in and make sure the AP elements and the AP whole connect and fit well at both an up-close and high-level view. Paizo feels like it is not only helpful but necessary to maintain consistency and quality to have one person pull each AP together. It's certainly no guarantee, but having one person manage the project from end to end seems like a better idea than not.
YMMV
P.S. Actual stat blocks usually only appear once, the first time they occur in the text. All other references to that creature will say "Thunderlancer troll: hp 95, see pg. xxx." The stat block itself (hit points excepted) doesn't repeatly appear. However, there are a ton of stat blocks in there, and even with an excel generator that is continually being tweaked and updated and improved, some things won't quite fit, or won't add up precisely.
Paizo practice has evolved over time, from entirely DIY stat blocks, to the stat block generator, to send in plain text output PLUS the original excel file you used, so that if changes need to be made they can be made in the source doc.
The stat block itself (hit points excepted) doesn't repeatly appear. However, there are a ton of stat blocks in there, and even with an excel generator that is continually being tweaked and updated and improved, some things won't quite fit, or won't add up precisely.
THAT is a version control issue.
The adventure gets done and sent in and Paizo has it now in house. What if the author has left out some important piece that needs to be in there (like in my Kingmaker mod - I had somehow gotten the impression that the hexcrawling part of the AP would be completed by #4 and wrote my adventure as purely event- and location-based. Oops. Now James has to write up a hexcrawling section.)? What if there is disagreement between modules, written at different times by different people, about particular NPCs or items or locations. Or things that end up being too similar to one another?
Then there should be better up-front collaboration?
Also, it is not productive to continue this discussion with some one taking the system critique personally.
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Why would a game be less fulfilling if I place it in my homebrew world with homebrewed demons and gods? What if four years ago in a different campaign the players found themselves getting screwed over by a spider trickster god named Anansi... and now in the Second Darkness AP it turns out that Anansi was leaking secrets to Alevrah?
I find it more rewarding to expand on the adventure path my homebrew material rather than the published material.
I think you might be misconstruing my argument. I didn't say that homebrewing the adventure would make it less fulfilling. I did say that mindlessly plopping the adventure into another setting without looking at all the connections could make the game less fulfilling.
I have no problem with the example you gave, in fact it's a great idea for a game. But in the same context, what if you didn't have other demons prepped, or didn't have your entire cosmology worked out, and the players decided they wanted to make a pact with another demon to fight Anansi, wouldn't you find inspiration and/or ideas from the demon article to help you in your own homebrew campaign, thereby making the game better?
Anyways I believe we've both made our points. I think having setting specific material is invaluable in making a coherent, complete, robust adventure path. You believe it can be done by just giving the adventure itself. I think both ideas have merit. But if the APs lost the extra fluff I'd probably stop subscribing.
In the AP you mention the demons are given an article because it gives the underpinnings of the drow culture detailed in the adventure. The drow are deeply connected with the demons of the world and the only way to understand the drow is to also understand the demons that they work with. The mood and consistency of the story simply wouldn't be the same if you didn't understand the background before moving it to your own world, the game just won't be as fulfilling.I don't buy this argument. The drow gods that are relevant to the AP are described in the adventure. There are demon lords listed in the back that have absolutely nothing to do with the Adventure Path. Alevrah does not need to be beholden to any particular demon lord, even a demon lord of secrets, in order for the adventure path to work fine as written. The demon lord of secrets is an entertaining bit for the GMs but I don't see it impacting he players in any way.
Why would a game be less fulfilling if I place it in my homebrew world with homebrewed demons and gods? What if four years ago in a different campaign the players found themselves getting screwed over by a spider trickster god named Anansi... and now in the Second Darkness AP it turns out that Anansi was leaking secrets to Alevrah?
I find it more rewarding to expand on the adventure path my homebrew material rather than the published material.
Yes, but the published material will give you an idea of where the authors were coming from in order to change it to your world. Kingmaker 1, for instance, has a section of Brevoy. This sets up the entire backdrop so the GM can set up what is going on. Sure, the GM can change it drasticly and still get a good game. But then he may find something later that doesn't quite fit, and having the backdrop allows him to know where it came from and change it to his world accodingly. And without this information, I would never have been able to properly sell the backstory to my players and get them to have decent backstories that they fell in love with. It is necessary information for the GM to sell the world to the players. If you don't want to use the default world and want to build it into your own, you can, but that is not what these products are designed for.
In the case of demon gods (I don't have that AP, so I don't really know), that article tells you that these are the default demons we were thinking of and how they are incorporated into the society. Sure, you can replace them with your own just fine, but not every homebrew world is going to have Anansi by default, or demon gods at all. Just knowing that the AP assumes there are these things will cause me to change my campaign world, or the AP, so that it works. I may change who they are, what they are, and their flavor, but this gives me the baseline to know what I need to develop in my world or change in the AP to get the players immersed and make sure my world stays consistent.
Personally, the side articles have been crucial to me to sell the world to my players. I would not want them in a seprate book, as that would make the adventures much harder to run.
Have you ever produced a book? There isn't some automated process where you can tag specific character info and have it automatically change all references to that character.I am pretty sure Word does it, but that's neither here nor there.
He was talking about the production of the character and making sure all the math and stuff is correct and everything is consistent. That's what character creators are for. You can take the output for the generation and put it in the book and the saved character will provide a base that is guaranteeably consistent for later if making the character a higher level and re-introducing it.
Adventures aren't written mad-lib style with form variables all over the place to insert data. Yes, it is theoretically possible. But a form style document a lot of work to setup and is only worthwhile if you are going to re-produce the same document over again with different data.
I have a stat building program I wrote, and when the adventure I wrote went through editing, revision, and layout, we still had errors in the final text.That's why programs are separately debugged. As a "professional programmer," you should recognize encapsulation, or a need for it, when you see it.
My point is that even if the statblocks are coming from a program perfectly, as the document goes through development it becomes just a word document. Eventually it becomes an InDesign document. Depending on what stage a change is made it becomes a very manual check. Even if you re-input it into the stat program, you have to compare that new output with what is on the page. You can check and re-check every statblock and you'll still miss things.
I understand encapsulation, but I've also seen the workflow of book production. I've been a member of several Open Design projects and I've seen how books are put together. Once the manuscript is turned over there is a long process it goes through. Mistakes and errors can be inadvertently put into the document all along the way.
I know my post moved beyond simple statblocks to the general editing process. That's because it all becomes the same after a certain point. I just get tired of people who look at the finished product and say "Ah, how could they make such glaring errors?" without realizing how much work is involved in making a 99% error free product. I love the Warhammer 40k RPG stuff Fantasy Flight Games produces, but they are terrible at editing compared to Paizo. And they aren't on a multi-book monthly schedule.
I for one appreciate what an amazing job Paizo does. Is there room for improvement? Always. But there is a reason they received all of those ennie awards. It's more than just good artists and creative writers. It's the incredible amounts of work the development and editing teams put into the books.
The stat block itself (hit points excepted) doesn't repeatly appear. However, there are a ton of stat blocks in there, and even with an excel generator that is continually being tweaked and updated and improved, some things won't quite fit, or won't add up precisely.THAT is a version control issue.
I wonder how much experience you have with publishing a printed book.
When my partner and I co-wrote a module, we came at it from a software point of view. We setup SVN to version files. We created an app to automate stat-block creation and output nice formatted HTML files. Going from Word manuscript to In Design all of that formatting has to be redone. I know we made a ton of mistakes in our process that caused extra work and re-work. It gave me an appreciation for what it takes for a real company like Paizo to produce a product.
I'm certain that if Paizo wasn't on a monthly schedule they could produce books with less errors, tighter collaboration, and other improvements. I'm also certain they would go out of business spending twice as much money producing the same books.
I wonder how much experience you have with publishing a printed book.The stat block itself (hit points excepted) doesn't repeatly appear. However, there are a ton of stat blocks in there, and even with an excel generator that is continually being tweaked and updated and improved, some things won't quite fit, or won't add up precisely.THAT is a version control issue.
I wonder how often you intend to dismiss all my points out of hand by saying "We're making a book!" seemingly only because it is wholly irrelevant to what I said.
I'm not talking about the book. When I am, I will bloody well let you know. But this is no longer productive because you intend to take everything personally and then branch out into things I am not talking about.
Why would a game be less fulfilling if I place it in my homebrew world with homebrewed demons and gods? What if four years ago in a different campaign the players found themselves getting screwed over by a spider trickster god named Anansi... and now in the Second Darkness AP it turns out that Anansi was leaking secrets to Alevrah?
I find it more rewarding to expand on the adventure path my homebrew material rather than the published material.
You have to take into consideration:
1) not all people's homebrews are the same. Say you want to expand the adventure and adapt it to your setting, but you've never needed to develop a pantheon of Drow gods. In that situation the article would be a great help. Of course, if your campaign has a 12-page detailed Drow pantheon, the article won't be useful, but, on the other hand, some other AP support material may be great for you, like the whole info on dealing with plagues in a fantasy setting in AP8, the "shipwreck and other castaway" survival rules in the latest AP37. Maybe other people have worked on those materials extensively and they will not even skim through those pages when running their campaigns. The only thing Paizo may do is to offer a good selection of different articles, so you may find some useful.
2) many people do play on Golarion; for expanding the adventures, the support materials are great.
3) another case: the support material is useful for people who are not going to run the AP (perhaps right now) but to scavenge the book for materials they can use in their own homebrew. "I want to drop in a freakish pantheon of Demon Lords" or "I'm not playing Golarion but I think the First World is a neat idea to put my PCs into plane-hopping".
Finally, probably you're a savy DM with lots of experience, but some people are not. Fiction, for instance, is a great vehicle for giving the DM a fresh and not purely "dry gazetteer description" feel for the atmosphere of an area or setting. Want to show the DM what kind of ambiance he should convey for Egorian, Varisia, the River Kingdoms? Set a story in them.
If you take care to read it, the AP fiction does wonders to flesh out the adventure locales:
AP1-12: Varisia, Eastern and Western.
AP13-18: Underdark.
AP19-24: Katapesh.
AP25-30: Cheliax
AP31-36: River Kingdoms
I found the fiction for AP#5 particularly useful when trying to immerse my players in living in an "evil" country as their campaign homeland. I have 20+ years of DMing but I still find the fiction quite great for getting my narrator's skills jumpstarted for the campaign locations.
So I really find the AP structure as it is forms a very coherent product which can be easily adapted to different usages and settings. You must contemplate not only your interests, but also the likely usages other players can give to it.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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The stat block itself (hit points excepted) doesn't repeatly appear. However, there are a ton of stat blocks in there, and even with an excel generator that is continually being tweaked and updated and improved, some things won't quite fit, or won't add up precisely.THAT is a version control issue.
Sure, a complex one, given that it's not only going through several people and several versions but also several programs.
The adventure gets done and sent in and Paizo has it now in house. What if the author has left out some important piece that needs to be in there (like in my Kingmaker mod - I had somehow gotten the impression that the hexcrawling part of the AP would be completed by #4 and wrote my adventure as purely event- and location-based. Oops. Now James has to write up a hexcrawling section.)? What if there is disagreement between modules, written at different times by different people, about particular NPCs or items or locations. Or things that end up being too similar to one another?Then there should be better up-front collaboration?
There is obviously a benefit to up-front collaboration, but another part of the process is the professional creativity that Paizo expects from its paid contributors. They provide a certain amount of framing for the AP, including necessary beginning points and endpoints for each adventure, and any necessary people, places, or events that must occur during the adventure. How an author realizes those people, places, events, starting points, and ending points, and fills in the remainder of the adventure with neat stuff, is what Paizo is paying for.
In sum: There's only so much total control that Paizo would WANT to exercise from the get-go, on the assumption that they get better turnovers from allowing authorial discretion than they would from tightly controlled fill-in-the-blanks turnover. It may make more work for them on the back side, but presumably they feel that it is worth it for a better overall end product.
Also, it is not productive to continue this discussion with some one taking the system critique personally.
That would be true if that were the case, though I haven't seen anyone doing that. Perhaps this remark should be directed to James, since he's the only one on this thread in a position to take a Paizo system critique personally.
If you meant me, I've only written 2 out of 37 AP adventures, and offered up my interface with that system as an example of how things work. I couldn't take it personally even if I wanted to, but I can provide personal experiences that might allow a bit of insight to people curious about the process.
There is obviously a benefit to up-front collaboration, but another part of the process is the professional creativity that Paizo expects from its paid contributors. They provide a certain amount of framing for the AP, including necessary beginning points and endpoints for each adventure, and any necessary people, places, or events that must occur during the adventure. How an author realizes those people, places, events, starting points, and ending points, and fills in the remainder of the adventure with neat stuff, is what Paizo is paying for.
In sum: There's only so much total control that Paizo would WANT to exercise from the get-go, on the assumption that they get better turnovers from allowing authorial discretion than they would from tightly controlled fill-in-the-blanks turnover. It may make more work for them on the back side, but presumably they feel that it is worth it for a better overall end product.
All the points he mentioned were items that pertain to the adventure as the whole and have to make sense throughout the parts. Stuff that has to agree throughout should be collaborated about up-front and agreed to what they are, where they are, and what they do.
If you people are seeing "sensible suggestions about collaborating on global details," as "OMG EVERYTHING SHOULD BE A FILL IN THE BLANKS EXERCISE," well you can't be helped.
Sure, a complex one, given that it's not only going through several people and several versions but also several programs.
Each program's version should at least be internally consistent throughout the process of a single publication.
Creative Director
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I don't buy this argument. The drow gods that are relevant to the AP are described in the adventure. There are demon lords listed in the back that have absolutely nothing to do with the Adventure Path. Alevrah does not need to be beholden to any particular demon lord, even a demon lord of secrets, in order for the adventure path to work fine as written. The demon lord of secrets is an entertaining bit for the GMs but I don't see it impacting he players in any way.
Why would a game be less fulfilling if I place it in my homebrew world with homebrewed demons and gods? What if four years ago in a different campaign the players found themselves getting screwed over by a spider trickster god named Anansi... and now in the Second Darkness AP it turns out that Anansi was leaking secrets to Alevrah?
I find it more rewarding to expand on the adventure path my homebrew material rather than the published material.
Whether or not an article like that is particularly useful to one person... the fact remains that it's useful to ENOUGH people that it's worth keeping.
We've removed elements from APs before when we've received overwhelming customer feedback that those elements are inappropriate. For the 2nd and 3rd Adventure Paths, we tried a new type of content in the form of shorter supplementary adventures (we called them "set pieces"). They never quite worked. They took FAR too much time to develop and edit compared to other content. And folks griped a LOT about how they split the AP up too much. So we abandoned them.
We DO listen to customer feedback, but in order for that feedback to result in a significant change to our flagship product line, the feedback has to be a lot closer to unanimous in theme for us to make changes. Because, again, the current format is doing VERY well for us.
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Creative Director
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Then there should be better up-front collaboration?
On this I agree completely, and it's something that I feel that we've been getting better at since the first AP we did 7 years ago. For Carrion Crown, we have all our authors working from a 16,000 word outline and communicating on a devoted messageboard here at paizo.com, in ADDITION to all our other tricks we've pulled.
We're getting there, but since no two writers are ever equally talented in every way, there's ALWAYS going to have to be a strong element of an in-house-at-Paizo "mastermind" (developer) that works to make everything tie together.
At the same time, though, as Jason Nelson points out... we WANT our authors to bring their own material and ideas to the APs. That's part of what we pay them for—their creativity. Too much control over their ideas stunts that creativity. It's a delicate balance.
I wonder how often you intend to dismiss all my points out of hand by saying "We're making a book!" seemingly only because it is wholly irrelevant to what I said.
I'm not talking about the book. When I am, I will bloody well let you know. But this is no longer productive because you intend to take everything personally and then branch out into things I am not talking about.
That's because the things you are talking about are only a small part of the process. I'm pointing out that there are many changes that happen to a manuscript between initial statblock turnover and printing of the product.
Discounting the majority of the process is like optimizing a section of code that is only 1% of a program when the errors and slowdowns are in an entirely different module.
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Then there should be better up-front collaboration?On this I agree completely, and it's something that I feel that we've been getting better at since the first AP we did 7 years ago. For Carrion Crown, we have all our authors working from a 16,000 word outline and communicating on a devoted messageboard here at paizo.com, in ADDITION to all our other tricks we've pulled.
We're getting there, but since no two writers are ever equally talented in every way, there's ALWAYS going to have to be a strong element of an in-house-at-Paizo "mastermind" (developer) that works to make everything tie together.
At the same time, though, as Jason Nelson points out... we WANT our authors to bring their own material and ideas to the APs. That's part of what we pay them for—their creativity. Too much control over their ideas stunts that creativity. It's a delicate balance.
So you're a mastermind... you seem more of a robot or demon one to me. :)
Sorry been playing a lot of City of Heroes lately and there is a "class" called that in the game. When you mentioned that, that's just where my mind went.
Discounting the majority of the process is like optimizing a section of code that is only 1% of a program when the errors and slowdowns are in an entirely different module.
Unless of course the unoptimized 1% causes output issues that are contributing to the bottleneck issues in other parts of code.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Here's an analogy: I am allergic to lettuce. When I go to a restraunt and a salad is served with my dinner. I have no problem paying full price for an entree and asking the server to "Hold the salad". When I forget to ask to hold the salad, and it is delivered to me, I feel a little bad knowing that it is just going to be thrown away (especially if it is a gorgeous Ceasar salad with croutons and chunks of chicken, or a baby-greens salad with walnuts and mandarin oranges). In the same way, I feel bad looking at the last 1/3 of my APs, knowing that it is completely going to waste.
I think that's a pretty good analogy, and I do get where you're coming from. But where the analogy breaks down is that restaurants generally have the ability to customize, which is not generally true with professionally printed books. To go back to the restaurant analogy, what we're talking about here would be more like a customer that doesn't like lettuce asking a restaurant to stop serving salad with *everyone's* dinner.
If you people are seeing "sensible suggestions about collaborating on global details," as "OMG EVERYTHING SHOULD BE A FILL IN THE BLANKS EXERCISE," well you can't be helped.
I'm not taking your criticism personally, although I do try to use my personal experience as examples to illustrate points.
Trust me, I really wish that In Design had a way to take XML data and insert it into a formatted statblock template. If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know. Then when I write my next module I can go from statblock utility to finished book in an automated process.
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Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.Being what I have done every day for months. Believe me, I know.
You write gaming products? Neat! Which ones?
You write gaming products? Neat! Which ones?Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.Being what I have done every day for months. Believe me, I know.
So you don't have to read the same crap over and over in your day to day job? What do you do? Does it pay over minimum wage?
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Chief Technical Officer
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Here's an analogy: I am allergic to lettuce. When I go to a restraunt and a salad is served with my dinner. I have no problem paying full price for an entree and asking the server to "Hold the salad". When I forget to ask to hold the salad, and it is delivered to me, I feel a little bad knowing that it is just going to be thrown away (especially if it is a gorgeous Ceasar salad with croutons and chunks of chicken, or a baby-greens salad with walnuts and mandarin oranges). In the same way, I feel bad looking at the last 1/3 of my APs, knowing that it is completely going to waste.I think that's a pretty good analogy, and I do get where you're coming from. But where the analogy breaks down is that restaurants generally have the ability to customize, which is not generally true with professionally printed books. To go back to the restaurant analogy, what we're talking about here would be more like a customer that doesn't like lettuce asking a restaurant to stop serving salad with *everyone's* dinner.
...or, upon further review, it's more like asking us to just serve everyone a larger entree instead of a salad. It's just as unfeasible for Paizo as it is for a restaurant.
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So you don't have to read the same crap over and over in your day to day job? What do you do? Does it pay over minimum wage?You write gaming products? Neat! Which ones?Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.Being what I have done every day for months. Believe me, I know.
You realize that you're incredibly rude, right? I was asking a serious question because you were speaking with authority on this and I read your statement as "I do edit several different gaming products every day for months."
Since your response to my interest was to personally attack me, I'm going to guess that I was mistaken and apologize for touching the wrong nerve.
So you don't have to read the same crap over and over in your day to day job? What do you do? Does it pay over minimum wage?You write gaming products? Neat! Which ones?Now imagine doing this for several different products a day. Remember that after that you'll have to read the same product many times as different changes are made to the text. Trust me, after you've read something 4 times, your mind expects things to be a certain way. It will actually fool you into believing that the text is the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is.Being what I have done every day for months. Believe me, I know.You realize that you're incredibly rude, right? I was asking a serious question because you were speaking with authority on this and I read your statement as "I do edit several different gaming products every day for months."
Since your response to my interest was to personally attack me, I'm going to guess that I was mistaken and apologize for touching the wrong nerve.
Sorry, I mistook your statement for being patronizing as I never said I wrote any gaming products. A lot of jobs involving reviewing the same stuff over and over until you are inserting corrections naturally in reading that aren't there.
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To the OP, I understand that you homebrew your campaign setting and I in no way want to doubt the amount of effort or creativity you have placed in that setting. But to the same extent that you are using the Adventure Paths and molding them into your world, there is not any bit of information you can take from any of the supplemental guide articles that you could do the same with? The people who are producing this supplemental informative articles are very creative people who have made a living of creating detailed immersive worlds. Looking at all the ENnies that were won this year speaks to that. The gazeteer articles that are tied to the Adventure Paths may not fit 100% into your world just as the adventure themselves do not but nothing can be taken from them at all? I am not that experienced a GM myself and in no way want to argue semantics of things I do not know about. I love the Adventure Paths as they have sold me on Golarion as a whole, something I was not sure of by just looking at the setting itself in my initial viewings. I do not have the time to homebrew I really wish I did even though I am not sure how it would turn out. I just see it as everything can be tweeked, everything can be improved upon. As much as you love all the details you may have in your homebrew setting, I am sure that someone out there somewhere not just in these Adventure Paths has come up with an idea that if you saw it you would say "I'm adding that into my game somehow."
To the Paizo crew-
As an inexperienced GM who does not have the time to homebrew my own world, thank you for letting me play in your sandbox in a great campaign world. I did not think I would ever like any setting more than I did Eberron ( I found that very unique and fell for it hook line and sinker ) but Golarion has that bit of everything I just love. Please keep up the Adventure Paths as they are, and I don't just mean the format I mean the awesomeness. Thanks.
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Sorry, I mistook your statement for being patronizing as I never said I wrote any gaming products. A lot of jobs involving reviewing the same stuff over and over until you are inserting corrections naturally in reading that aren't there.
Apology accepted. As a sidenote, you often come across as arrogant or patronizing in your own posts, perhaps unintentionally. The irony is that I assumed you write/edit gaming products because of that patronizing tone in your prodigious volume of rules posts--when I read what you said, I immediately thought, "Oh, that explains his usual tone. He IS an authority on the subjects." (not trying to argue that you arent or are an authority, just that it isn't for the reason I assumed and I am slightly bemused by the misunderstanding)
For the record, I am an unpublished novelist and former English teacher, and I do not make more than minimum wage as a stay-at-home parent to my two children. I have graded incredibly mediocre writing, so I have also been forced to read the same crap every day as part of a job. That's something I won't miss.
I hadn't purchased the Pathfinder Campaign Setting subscription, but it seems to me that people who really like the campaign setting material but don't like prefabricated adventures might be put off having to purchase an Adventure Path subscription just to get the 30% of the sourcebook material that they care about, and likewise, those of us that want to purchase only prefabricated adventres are somewhat put off thinking that we are subsidizing the creation of sourcebook material and short fiction.
The support articles tend to be multi-purpose. I look at them as buffers. You may not always need them while running adventures, but they tend to be helpful if players go off the rails.
For example, the first Serpent Skill has a support article on shipwrecks and a support article on Serpentfolk. While the Serpentfolk may or may not be prevalent in the first adventure (I haven't read it yet), I'm certain they will touch the majority of the AP. Since Paizo doesn't write a whole lot of pre-scripted dialog, a GM will find it handy to read the article and have a feel for the history and attitude of the Serpentfolk in general.
The other article has rules for running a shipwreck and survival afterward, which I presume is directly relevant to the AP. It also has a collection on NPC stats which are definitely used in the adventure.
So while sometimes they go a little far off field, they do tend to be there to support the actual adventure. The demon lords mentioned before can indeed be ignored. But if your players go off course and want to learn more about other drow households, the article can be used for inspiration to assist. You may not always need it running the adventures, but it is nice to have.
Kingmaker would be a very different campaign without the kingdom building support article. While some people are interested in the wider world and picked up the River Kingdoms book, it is totally unneeded for the Kingmaker AP.
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There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.
Duh, did you ever hear of that Tolkien guy person ? He wrote books which were 90% superfluous background material unrelated to the main plot whatsoever. See where it got him ?
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There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.Duh, did you ever hear of that Tolkien guy person ? He wrote books which were 90% superfluous background material unrelated to the main plot whatsoever. See where it got him ?
Roundly hated in some quarters for establishing fantasy tropes that some authors slavishly copy out of laziness or worship? (I don't personally hate Tolkein or wish to start a Rabbit Season/Duck Season flamewar, but I greatly respect anyone who quotes Chekov with authority and your reply seemed a little snippy and unnecessarily patronizing since the original poster was gracefully withdrawing).
There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole.
Except in a story the author controls the action. While RPGs take a lot from fiction writing, the action is controlled by several players. "No plan can survive contact with the enemy for long." (Helmuth von Moltke the Elder if my google search is to be believed.) Another good example from Kingmaker is the Brevoy article. It serves two purposes, it helps give the characters a background to come from. It also is helpful for many GMs later when their players decide they want to invade Brevoy. Sure, it isn't part of the AP script. I've certainly see a lot of GMs/Players of Kingmaker express their intent to do so anyway. I understand this is less helpful if you are migrating the whole thing to homebrew though, but it does serve as a useful tool for many GMs of the AP.
Roundly hated in some quarters for establishing fantasy tropes that some authors slavishly copy out of laziness or worship? (I don't personally hate Tolkein or wish to start a Rabbit Season/Duck Season flamewar, but I greatly respect anyone who quotes Chekov with authority and your reply seemed a little snippy and unnecessarily patronizing since the original poster was gracefully withdrawing).
I agree, which is what prompted me to write a more polite response to that quote above.
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Roundly hated in some quarters for establishing fantasy tropes that some authors slavishly copy out of laziness or worship? (I don't personally hate Tolkein or wish to start a Rabbit Season/Duck Season flamewar, but I greatly respect anyone who quotes Chekov with authority and your reply seemed a little snippy and unnecessarily patronizing since the original poster was gracefully withdrawing).There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.Duh, did you ever hear of that Tolkien guy person ? He wrote books which were 90% superfluous background material unrelated to the main plot whatsoever. See where it got him ?
No, I just think that comparing playwright and dramaturgy to gaming adventure design is a somewhat stray shot.
I do understand where the OP is coming, he's just making a lot of apples to oranges (eg. adventure =/= menu in a burger bar).
Now, Paizo, how about getting rid of fiction in the APs ? ;)
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Another good example from Kingmaker is the Brevoy article. It serves two purposes, it helps give the characters a background to come from. It also is helpful for many GMs later when their players decide they want to invade Brevoy. Sure, it isn't part of the AP script. I've certainly see a lot of GMs/Players of Kingmaker express their intent to do so anyway. I understand this is less helpful if you are migrating the whole thing to homebrew though, but it does serve as a useful tool for many GMs of the AP.
Very good example. I used that article to build an NPC based on the Dwarven child that became heir to one of the noble houses and one of my players was able to get roleplaying mileage out of friendship with him(her character is a half-elf raised by a Dwarf). It also gave me a much better grasp of the politics of the PCs original mission.
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No, I just think that comparing playwright and dramaturgy to gaming adventure design is a somewhat stray shot.
I do understand where the OP is coming, he's just making a lot of apples to oranges (eg. adventure =/= menu in a burger bar).
Vic Wertz liked the restaurant analogy... :P
And not for nothing, but I remember reading in a Paizo blog or post that the authors of the adventures are often influenced by things like plays, novels, classic films...Nick Logue in particular made it something of a trademark to incorporate his experience with theatre into his writing.
All opinions valid, though. Apples and oranges, as you say, as long as there's still salad with the entree.
There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.Duh, did you ever hear of that Tolkien guy person ? He wrote books which were 90% superfluous background material unrelated to the main plot whatsoever. See where it got him ?
Nowhere particular for 10 years?
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Chief Technical Officer
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...or, upon further review, it's more like asking us to just serve everyone a larger entree instead of a salad. It's just as unfeasible for Paizo as it is for a restaurant.I didn't necessarily ask for more adventure, I asked for less fluff (less fiction and gazeteer stuff).
Fair enough. Everything I said earlier about the relative complexity of editing or developing adventures? That all applies to a lot of crunch as well.
Of the categories of stuff we put in our products, here's a rough ranking of the difficulty (and thus the time and—in most cases—the cost) of development and editing, from easiest/fastest/cheapest to hardest/longest/most expensive:
- Art (this is the exception to the "cost" ranking, as—though it's relatively easy to deal with, it's also relatively very expensive)
- Fiction
- Setting material
- Simple crunch (like monsters or stuff that's similar to existing crunch)
- Short Adventures
- Long Adventures
- Complex crunch (like classes or all-new complex rules systems)
Nowhere particular for 10 years?There is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov about writing that goes something like "one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story." It seems that some of the fiction and gazeteer material is only tangentally related to the Adventure Paths, and their inclusion (to me) waters down the quality of the whole. Obviously many other people feel differently though, so I am not expecting any change based on my feedback.Duh, did you ever hear of that Tolkien guy person ? He wrote books which were 90% superfluous background material unrelated to the main plot whatsoever. See where it got him ?
HAHA!
As if his subsequent success had nothing to do with those years.(PS In the meantime he entertained himself, family, and friends, and was a successful professor in a little known joint named Oxford.
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Vic, an interesting break down.
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not sure why I'm chiming in here, except to say "Thanks" to Nelson, Jacobs, Wertz, et al, who have graciously explained their reasoning and rationales.
You guys really do make a customer feel appreciated!
And yes, Charter Subscriber for a reason...I almost cried (well, not really, but I WAS bummed out) when they announced the cancellation of Dungeon & (to a lesser extent) Dragon Magazines.
woohoo...paizo fanboi i!
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not sure why I'm chiming in here, except to say "Thanks" to Nelson, Jacobs, Wertz, et al, who have graciously explained their reasoning and rationales.
You guys really do make a customer feel appreciated!
And yes, Charter Subscriber for a reason...I almost cried (well, not really, but I WAS bummed out) when they announced the cancellation of Dungeon & (to a lesser extent) Dragon Magazines.
woohoo...paizo fanboi i!
I lost my charter status when I had to drop some subscriptions and come back to them later. It makes me very sad that I don't have a complete set of the APs or the fancy badge of pride next to my name anymore...but not as sad as when I subscribed to the awesomeness of Dungeon and Dragon and found out a month later that they were being canceled. I will never forgive Wizards of the Coast for that particular "circle the wagons" maneuver that left me holding a functionally useless(at the time)paid subscription to a product I'd just discovered and loved.