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The only thing that really bugs me about the format of the magazine is the "Faiths" articles. NOT because they aren't well-written, because they ARE. It's because a player doesn't have these articles readily available for them. These books are supposed to be for DMs.
I think the faith articles should NOT be in the Pathfinder adv path issues....they need their own book. For all I know there may be one in the works...but it will contain alot of recycled content if thats the case.
What I would really like to see in the magazine is the return of set-pieces...or something similar, like adventure hooks or short side treks.
Just a reminder to everyone to please keep things friendly. As Jacobs has noted, we do listen to feedback, but we also don't foresee changing our formula greatly anytime soon where Pathfinder's concerned (in large part because of said feedback).
Now let's all take a deep breath and enjoy whatever parts of Pathfinder are our favorite, knowing that allowing other people to have *their* favorite parts is the price we all pay for receiving an awesome product. Even if you like only the adventure, and want to think of it as a 50-page adventure for $20... I'd say that's still a pretty competitive deal, given the quality involved.
Now if all you liked was the foreword, we might have an issue...
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The only thing that really bugs me about the format of the magazine is the "Faiths" articles. NOT because they aren't well-written, because they ARE. It's because a player doesn't have these articles readily available for them. These books are supposed to be for DMs.
I think the faith articles should NOT be in the Pathfinder adv path issues....they need their own book. For all I know there may be one in the works...but it will contain alot of recycled content if thats the case.What I would really like to see in the magazine is the return of set-pieces...or something similar, like adventure hooks or short side treks.
Good news: In 2011, there will be a series of Faith books for players in the Companion line.
As for the Set Pieces ... nooooo ... !!!! They were a major mistake and I'm glad that Paizo backed out of them. I still want to stab the author of the sidetrek in End of Eternity and the person who ordered it. Blergh.
The only thing that really bugs me about the format of the magazine is the "Faiths" articles. NOT because they aren't well-written, because they ARE. It's because a player doesn't have these articles readily available for them. These books are supposed to be for DMs.
I think the faith articles should NOT be in the Pathfinder adv path issues....they need their own book. For all I know there may be one in the works...but it will contain alot of recycled content if thats the case.
There are two faiths books in the companion line announced for early next year. They have promised not to be just reprints and to have more player focused content. (Less about the Gods, more about the church and what it means to be a member/cleric/paladin/etc.)
I myself always print out the Faiths articles to hand out to interested players, but as a subscribe I have the free pdf for most of them (I'm missing PDFS of RotRL and CotCT.) That reminds me I should create a binder to collect them all. I'm tempted to make a Bestiary binder too, but my book shelf has a lot of binders already.
EDIT: Ninja'd by a bag of devouring!
I'm very happy with the product, to the point that I recently re-subscribed even though my issues are just going on a shelf for the time being.
Since we are on the subject of adventure writing and development: Does the author or developer playtest the adventure (or parts of it) during the process?
Btw, +1 on not bringing back set pieces :)
Since we are on the subject of adventure writing and development: Does the author or developer playtest the adventure (or parts of it) during the process?
It is expected that the authors playtest the adventure some, but I suspect the schedule is too tight for the developers to do a front-to-back playtest of an AP segment.
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I'm not sure I understand the hate for the set pieces.
As far as I could tell, they were just little side-treks... an encounter or two that was only tangentally related to the overarching AP.In theory, they are just as related to the AP as the gazeteer material and/or the fiction... If I had to choose between fiction and gazeteer or a set piece, I'd take the set piece.
I really cannot figure out why a fully fleshed out encounter was so bad? Perhaps I should peruse the boards and find the threads where this is hashed out.
I loved the Set Pieces... and Miss them..:(
Take out the Fiction..Bring back the Set Pieces!!!
I'm not sure I understand the hate for the set pieces.
As far as I could tell, they were just little side-treks... an encounter or two that was only tangentally related to the overarching AP.
I believe they ate into the space for the main adventure somewhat. Or at least they extended the main adventure by a few pages once they eliminated the Set Pieces.
Never used the set pieces. They're not exactly my favorite, and a lot of them were so out of the way or under par for threat level that they felt silly to play through. Such as, for instance, the Morlock Cave in Endless Night. CR 2, CR 1, CR 2, CR 1... wait, aren't we level 10? Or the Livid Sanctum in Descent into Midnight that has the players facing off against spider swarms and monstrous spiders at level 16.
I just never used any past the first in Second Darkness. Maybe Legacy of Fire has better ones, but I never bothered to look.
I guess I just can't see how anyone can call the gazetteers "a complete waste of space". Even the deity articles, which are almost always the most loosely associated, offer a lot of insight into the AP. I guess if you only run the APs text-as-written with absolutely nothing that isn't included in the module section, the gazetteers wouldn't be useful, but I simply cannot imagine doing that. The flavor articles are a tremendous help, I'd say essential in fact, to bringing the adventure to life...
Run them in any setting that is not Golorion and they can be a lot less useful.
That said even if I where to chop out the rest of the material and just keep the adventure this is still a pretty good price for an excellent product (plus the fiction transcends so I usually like the fiction) and sometimes there is something in the rest of the material that is interesting and can be salvaged in one form or another.
Creative Director
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I think the faith articles should NOT be in the Pathfinder adv path issues....they need their own book. For all I know there may be one in the works...but it will contain alot of recycled content if thats the case.
What I would really like to see in the magazine is the return of set-pieces...or something similar, like adventure hooks or short side treks.
Which is why we did "Gods & Magic."
The ONLY way we can currently present the faiths articles is in the format of regular articles in Pathfinder. That kind of article doesn't really have a good place to "live" elsewhere.
And I disagree that these articles are only usable by players. They can certainly BE used by players, but GMs need to know about the deities as well. In fact, since GMs are more likely to be roleplaying a much larger array of religious characters as NPCs during the course of a campaign, I would say it's more important that GMs have access to this information than players in an overall sense.
Once we've got all 20 core deity articles... there's probably a VERY VERY good chance that sometime thereafter we'll compile these articles and perhaps revise or revisit some of them in another book, but that's still a few years away.
The set pieces won't be returning. They had the double kiss of death: they were relatively unpopular among the overall readership, and for the amount of room they took up they were VERY difficult to develop and edit (since adventures are among the most difficult parts of the game to write and develop and edit).
Also, it has ALWAYS been close to impossible to get authors to write short, 5000 or so word adventures. Authors just don't want to do that, in my experience, and it simply got to be too frustrating for us to wrestle with overwritten set pieces month after month after month. And on top of THAT... the Pathfinder Society Scenarios now pretty much fill the niche of "short adventure" for us (although they're about twice the size of a typical set piece).
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Creative Director
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Since we are on the subject of adventure writing and development: Does the author or developer playtest the adventure (or parts of it) during the process?
Btw, +1 on not bringing back set pieces :)
Playtesting of an adventure is the author's responsibility.
But also, the developer's job is specifically designed to duplicate the needs and types of things playtesting reveals, so if an author doesn't playtest an adventure, the developer, in theory, will find the problems and fix what a playtest would have normally revealed.
Essentially, a developer is a "one-man playtester." The skills a developer needs are pretty specific and hard to find as a result.
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Creative Director
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In theory, they are just as related to the AP as the gazeteer material and/or the fiction... If I had to choose between fiction and gazeteer or a set piece, I'd take the set piece.
I really cannot figure out why a fully fleshed out encounter was so bad? Perhaps I should peruse the boards and find the threads where this is hashed out.
A fully fleshed out encounter is NOT bad. But if it's something that's tied into the actual adventure... it's place is not separated from the adventure. It's place is IN the adventure. Written by the person who WROTE the adventure, so that the encounter fits in with the rest of the adventure.
With set pieces, they were written by other authors (again, because the length of the actual adventure was already "maxed out" more or less), and that caused a HELL of a lot of problems since those other authors were not nearly as familiar with the whole AP... nor were they generally as familiar with adventure writing.
Put simply; we tend to want to have our strongest adventure writers working on the big adventures, and thus they have no real time to write the set pieces, so those went to less practiced adventure writers, which in theory was a good way for us to develop and train up new adventure writers, but it was taking FAR too much time out of our work cycles to devote to it. Especially since we had a CHRONIC problem with the set piece writers overwriting and overdesigning their encounters.
It's a problem that's been with the industry forever. We had a category of short encounter in Dungeon magazine called "Side Treks." The readers liked them, but it was annoyingly difficult getting authors to write them. Because authors want to write lots, not little.
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As for the Set Pieces ... nooooo ... !!!! They were a major mistake and I'm glad that Paizo backed out of them. I still want to stab the author of the sidetrek in End of Eternity and the person who ordered it. Blergh.
A) Chill man. There might be some people in the world who deserve to be stabbed, but someone who wrote or ordered some fiction you happened not to like aren’t those people.
B) I’m pretty sure threats of violence against Paizo staff members and contributers violates some sort of messageboard policy.
I didn’t mind the set pieces, but the quality was mixed, and while I was sad to see them go at the time, in retrospect I don’t miss them.
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)
Interesting; thanks.
I retract my comment about prefering there to be no fiction. The way I now see it, having read what has been said by the Paizo employees, the fiction is cheap to include, probably increases the number of people who purchase the product (more than it decreases it), which probably means it actually helps keep the AP price down.
Lets face it the 50 page AP adventure is 50% more adventure (and has the linking benefits with 5 other adventures) than a 32 page module but isn't 50% more expensive. Sweet deal!
Keep the AP sales up and the price down.
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As for the Set Pieces ... nooooo ... !!!! They were a major mistake and I'm glad that Paizo backed out of them. I still want to stab the author of the sidetrek in End of Eternity and the person who ordered it. Blergh.A) Chill man. There might be some people in the world who deserve to be stabbed, but someone who wrote or ordered some fiction you happened not to like aren’t those people.
B) I’m pretty sure threats of violence against Paizo staff members and contributers violates some sort of messageboard policy.
I didn’t mind the set pieces, but the quality was mixed, and while I was sad to see them go at the time, in retrospect I don’t miss them.
A stab means, amongst other, criticsim. In a hindsight, I should have phrased it "take a stab", but hey, English isn't my first (or even second) language.
I don't call for violence against Paizo staff members (and considering the amount of subscriptions I have and 5-star reviews I gave out, that would be somewhat counter-productive). However I really, really, REALLY dislike having a great adventure (and EoE was great) and suddenly you have 4 pages wasted on a sidetrek which has no plot, no mood, disconnects with the adventure as a whole and I could throw it together using a pencil and Bestiary in 5 minutes.
I'm an overseas customer, and let's be frank, Paizo products are rather expensive for me, between the USD exchange ratio, shipping costs, long wait times. I want a bang for a buck from my AP subscription. I really want to hold that book and tell myself "man, sure it wasn't that cheap, but it's worth it !". Hence I crusade with passion against any Paizo decisions that decrease the worth of their products for me (so far: map folios, set pieces and coming up in a major rant, Companions).
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I know I've mentioned this in another thread but my only problem with adventure paths is the speed of character progression.
On reflection, I don't understand why the earlier modules in the path are 3 level adventures and the later ones 2, considering the modules are the same length. My understanding has always been that Pathfinder was a steady-level-progression system.
Still, given that that may not change, one suggestion I would like to make is would it be possible to produce "Director's Cuts" of modules on the internet, maybe unlocked with a code included in the module itself. This would allow you to provide us GMs who want to flesh the module out with all the bits that didn't make it in, due to space, plus whatever notes the writer might wish to provide. Hopefully this wouldn't cost you very much to produce, since you could caveat the whole thing by saying these are just rough cuts that didn't make it into the final product.
Richard
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I know I've mentioned this in another thread but my only problem with adventure paths is the speed of character progression.
On reflection, I don't understand why the earlier modules in the path are 3 level adventures and the later ones 2, considering the modules are the same length. My understanding has always been that Pathfinder was a steady-level-progression system.
Still, given that that may not change, one suggestion I would like to make is would it be possible to produce "Director's Cuts" of modules on the internet, maybe unlocked with a code included in the module itself. This would allow you to provide us GMs who want to flesh the module out with all the bits that didn't make it in, due to space, plus whatever notes the writer might wish to provide. Hopefully this wouldn't cost you very much to produce, since you could caveat the whole thing by saying these are just rough cuts that didn't make it into the final product.
Richard
The simple fact is, a lower level adventure takes up less pages per level than a higher level one- stat blocks etc are smaller, so more adventure can be squeezed into the 50ish pages.
As for additional content, Paizo have always been quite reluctant to release web enhancements. Generally, stuff that is cut is still in a very raw, under developed form, and Paizo don't want to associate low quality stuff with their brand (quite rightly IMO), so if they are releasing extra stuff they want to take extra development & editing passes on it. See the rest of the thread for why that's quite difficult!
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OP - I am the opposite. If they dropped all the other stuff, then i would likely drop mine and just buy the AP's I wanted to run. I subscribe mostly for the other stuff. The adventures are just a bonus for me.
+1: I've considered dumping my AP subscription on a number of occasions just to save a little money. Every time I think about the non-AP stuff I'd be losing.
Every person has their own like/dislike about pretty much every Paizo product. Trying to keep us all happy isn't easy.
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The ads are a pain in the arse and the pregen iconics also bug me, but I am not sure what I'd do with more adventure. I can't get through a month's worth in a month as it is...
In an ideal world I'd want more of the non-adventure stuff in place of ads and the tedious iconic pregens, but I personally find the product to be about 90% good; in particular, I have warmed to the fiction (at least, when it's well-written).
Just quickly chiming in to say: Don't change anything - especially not the fiction - you're doing a bloody good job of churning out a high-quality, coherently themed product as is.
The way I view it, for $120 I get a mega-adventure. An adventure path. First level to 15th level or so. That's pretty decent considering an AP is easily a year of game play. I'd pay the $120 for just the adventure content.
But Paizo doesn't stop there. I get around 36 new monsters. Bonus.
But Paizo doesn't stop there. I get in-depth information about the specific cities and deities involved with the AP. Bonus.
But Paizo doesn't stop there. I get context in the form of a few pages of fiction, giving me a feel for the setting for this particular AP. Bonus.
The point is that you can look at it as "I pay $20 for an adventure and there are pages that should be more adventure" or you can look at it as "I pay $20 for an adventure and Paizo rigs things so I get that and more". It's all in perspective. Do I use all the material? No. Do I even read it all? No. But the bits that are useful to me I'm glad to have.
Just quickly chiming in to say: Don't change anything - especially not the fiction - you're doing a bloody good job of churning out a high-quality, coherently themed product as is.
Preach it brother!!
I also generally really enjoy the fiction. Keep on keepin' on :)
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I like the AP's the way they are, including the fiction and the pre-gen characters.
I also appreciate the OP's polite statements of his preferences, whether or not I agree with them. When someone who wants something different speaks up, it helps us all get a better product, even the only result is a re-examination of the status quo.
Thanks, Olshanski.
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Creative Director
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On reflection, I don't understand why the earlier modules in the path are 3 level adventures and the later ones 2, considering the modules are the same length. My understanding has always been that Pathfinder was a steady-level-progression system.
The amount of levels a particular adventure covers is, ultimately, a factor of how efficiently the author packs in the encounters. In some adventures, authors manage to get an astounding number of encounters in the adventure—Erik Mona's "Howl of the Carrion King," for example, has enough material to bring characters all the way to 5th level if folks do everything. Other adventures don't have as many encounters, either because they include an unusual amount of exposition, alternate methods of presenting adventures (such as Sean Reynold's method of presenting sewers in "Bastards of Erebus," or Jason Nelson's "War of the River Kings" with its tournament encounters and mass combat), and so on.
When we initially plot out an AP, though, we generally assume that a single adventure will carry a group through three levels. The baseline formula is: adventure 1 (levels 1–3); 2 (levels 4–6), 3 (levels 7–9), 4 (levels 10–12), 5 (levels 13–15), and 6 (levels 16–18). But we don't know the ACTUAL span until an adventure is developed. My philosophy is that an adventure, in the end, needs to cover whatever level range it can in order to tell its story. In most cases, we're able to match that to the 3 level span, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way.
Still, given that that may not change, one suggestion I would like to make is would it be possible to produce "Director's Cuts" of modules on the internet, maybe unlocked with a code included in the module itself. This would allow you to provide us GMs who want to flesh the module out with all the bits that didn't make it in, due to space, plus whatever notes the writer might wish to provide. Hopefully this wouldn't cost you very much to produce, since you could caveat the whole thing by saying these are just rough cuts that didn't make it into the final product
Not really possible. Anything we produce, be it a print adventure or a web-supplement "author's cut" HAS to be up to the same level of quality. I'm not interested in making public unedited or undeveloped adventure portions. Sometimes authors might decide to share parts of their adventures that got cut, but they generally have to clear that with me first, and they need to be comfortable with the fact that those elements will be shared without the benefit of professional development or editing or layout. And since, as I've already explained, we're at capacity as to how many pages of adventure we can produce per month (and since a web enhancement doesn't take any less time to produce for us than a print product)... we just simply cannot produce additional web content without another of our product lines (or more likely, one of our employees) suffering for it.
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Creative Director
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The ads are a pain in the arse and the pregen iconics also bug me, but I am not sure what I'd do with more adventure. I can't get through a month's worth in a month as it is...
In an ideal world I'd want more of the non-adventure stuff in place of ads and the tedious iconic pregens, but I personally find the product to be about 90% good; in particular, I have warmed to the fiction (at least, when it's well-written).
The pregen iconics are going away, starting with Carrion Crown. Those two pages will be absorbed by whatever article needs them the most for that particular volume.
The ads, though, are going nowhere. It's foolish for us to abandon one of our BEST opportunities to get the word out about our products—after all, the Adventure Path volumes are seen by thousands and thousands of people!
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Creative Director
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The way I view it, for $120 I get a mega-adventure. An adventure path. First level to 15th level or so. That's pretty decent considering an AP is easily a year of game play. I'd pay the $120 for just the adventure content.
Most of our adventure paths actually take players up to 17th level or so, actually. Council of Thieves topped out at 14th-15th, but every other one has had enough material so that once the last encounter is done, most PCs should be 16th to 18th level.
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The ads, though, are going nowhere. It's foolish for us to abandon one of our BEST opportunities to get the word out about our products—after all, the Adventure Path volumes are seen by thousands and thousands of people!
A friend of mine gave me an AP as a Christmas gift, and there in the back was the ad for Paizo. I had not gamed in several years due to work, family, etc, so I investigated what you guys were up to now, and I was hooked.
So, leave them in...its how I got started with Pathfinder, and considering I now subscribe to almost every line, its effective marketing :)
Never used the set pieces. They're not exactly my favorite, and a lot of them were so out of the way or under par for threat level that they felt silly to play through. Such as, for instance, the Morlock Cave in Endless Night. CR 2, CR 1, CR 2, CR 1... wait, aren't we level 10? Or the Livid Sanctum in Descent into Midnight that has the players facing off against spider swarms and monstrous spiders at level 16.
I just never used any past the first in Second Darkness.
Funny, those two were the only ones in Second Darkness that I didn't use - though both were options for the PCs, just didn't work out.
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Adding more staff would not help, because of the fundamental fact that one person needs to do the development of each adventure.
In software we like to tell the bosses that 9 women can't make a baby in one month. That usually shuts them up, until they start sputtering about deadlines again, and we bust out the good fast cheap rule.
Adding more staff would not help, because of the fundamental fact that one person needs to do the development of each adventure.In software we like to tell the bosses that 9 women can't make a baby in one month. That usually shuts them up, until they start sputtering about deadlines again, and we bust out the good fast cheap rule.
Word.
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I think the faith articles should NOT be in the Pathfinder adv path issues....they need their own book. For all I know there may be one in the works...but it will contain alot of recycled content if thats the case.
What I would really like to see in the magazine is the return of set-pieces...or something similar, like adventure hooks or short side treks.
Which is why we did "Gods & Magic."
The ONLY way we can currently present the faiths articles is in the format of regular articles in Pathfinder. That kind of article doesn't really have a good place to "live" elsewhere.
And I disagree that these articles are only usable by players. They can certainly BE used by players, but GMs need to know about the deities as well. In fact, since GMs are more likely to be roleplaying a much larger array of religious characters as NPCs during the course of a campaign, I would say it's more important that GMs have access to this information than players in an overall sense.
Once we've got all 20 core deity articles... there's probably a VERY VERY good chance that sometime thereafter we'll compile these articles and perhaps revise or revisit some of them in another book, but that's still a few years away.
Want now, must have, write faster so we can have that book.
OP - I am the opposite. If they dropped all the other stuff, then i would likely drop mine and just buy the AP's I wanted to run. I subscribe mostly for the other stuff. The adventures are just a bonus for me.
+1 - don't change a thing. I love the world building and fiction addition to the core adventure presented. Even if I don't love the adventure in that issue, I'll have other interesting things to read.
I don't get the dislike of the Gazetteer/Bestiary articles. My players are always wandering far from the path. The extra background helps me fill in the flavour and provide on the fly story lines and alternatives to the adventure as written so that I can get them back on track.
The background is very important to avoid being seen as rail-roading, the richer it is the better the immersion.
For people that home brew their worlds I cant see how it is a problem. Its extra background and you can take it as written, change the names and dates or ignore it completely.
Adding more staff would not help, because of the fundamental fact that one person needs to do the development of each adventure.In software we like to tell the bosses that 9 women can't make a baby in one month. That usually shuts them up, until they start sputtering about deadlines again, and we bust out the good fast cheap rule.
Kind of off-topic, but weren't you a previous Avatar?
I know some people really like the fiction and gazeteer style substance, but those people are also probably subscribing to other lines of your products... it seems out of place in an adventure path to have pure world-building information.
Actually, you wouldn't be the first to bring up this subject ;)
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,...
Y'know, this wouldn't be the first time Chekov's 2nd Amendment rights get bought up ;)
I'm not sure I understand the hate for the set pieces. As far as I could tell, they were just little side-treks... an encounter or two that was only tangentally related to the overarching AP.
In theory, they are just as related to the AP as the gazeteer material and/or the fiction... If I had to choose between fiction and gazeteer or a set piece, I'd take the set piece.
I really cannot figure out why a fully fleshed out encounter was so bad? Perhaps I should peruse the boards and find the threads where this is hashed out.
You might want to take a gander at these older threads...
From the Second Darkness archives
Another from the Second Darkness archives
A third one from the Second Darkness archives
From the Legacy of Fire archives
From the Council of Thieves archives
No need for any thanks, just merely a small public service for all the freeswag I got here at these boards; that and a chance to talk about tentacled aberrations too. ;)
Once we've got all 20 core deity articles... there's probably a VERY VERY good chance that sometime thereafter we'll compile these articles and perhaps revise or revisit some of them in another book, but that's still a few years away.
When you do, could you write the "opinions on other deities" section like how you did with Erastil? The individual opinions on other factions were always very amusing in White Wolf books and I feel that other deity write-ups missed something when they went in a more general direction with that section.
Very good idea (although it's already looking to be a big book [120-200 pages] if nothing about them is changed).
I don't get the dislike of the Gazetteer/Bestiary articles. My players are always wandering far from the path. The extra background helps me fill in the flavour and provide on the fly story lines and alternatives to the adventure as written so that I can get them back on track.
The background is very important to avoid being seen as rail-roading, the richer it is the better the immersion.
For people that home brew their worlds I cant see how it is a problem. Its extra background and you can take it as written, change the names and dates or ignore it completely.
+1
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Word.Adding more staff would not help, because of the fundamental fact that one person needs to do the development of each adventure.In software we like to tell the bosses that 9 women can't make a baby in one month. That usually shuts them up, until they start sputtering about deadlines again, and we bust out the good fast cheap rule.
+1